Teachers’ language-promoting questions in primary classroom discourse: Relations with teacher expectations and student learning

Background Enhancing student learning with the use of cognitively and linguistically challenging questions is considered key for fostering student learning in classroom discourse. Theoretical models suggest that teachers’ use of questions is related to their achievement expectations for students. However, evidence for the interplay of teacher expectations, teacher questions, and student learning is scarce. Aims This study (1) describes the use of teacher questions in whole-classroom discourse, (2) examines relations between teacher expectations and teacher questions, (3) and investigates the effects of teacher questions on student achievement in reading, vocabulary, and mathematics. Sample The sample includes 329 first grade students and 17 teachers ( n schools = 13) from 15 German language and 14 mathematics classrooms in Germany. Methods First, we coded the language-promoting quality of teacher questions based on video recordings of whole-classroom discourse. Second, we employed multilevel modeling to examine links between teachers’ (inaccurate) expectations, teacher questions, and later student achievement. Results Teacher questions were mostly of low language-promoting quality. Teachers asked significantly more questions in mathematics, including more open-ended questions. For mathematics, (inaccurately) low expectations were linked with higher frequencies of questions that promote elaboration and description. A positive effect on vocabulary emerged from questions that motivate students to hypothesize and conclude. Conclusions Overall, language-promoting questions occur comparatively rarely in content lessons. Evidence for class-level expectancy effects on teacher behavior was limited. Our findings suggest that the effectiveness of teacher questioning is domain-specific.