An Understanding of OAR
The understanding of QAR developed predictably, as teachers learned about the framework. The manner in which they demonstrated their knowledge in reflections remained relatively stable, in that most responses indicated a declarative knowledge of the strategy. However, many teachers shared some descriptions of the conditional benefits of the strategy (see Figure 1).
Qualitatively, teachers’ descriptions of QAR changed. In the beginning of the study, QAR was described simply as a strategy or by explaining the acronym as Question—Answer Relationships. This declarative understanding is Tag Heuer Replica representative of reciting a definition. An example of such a response is “a strategy to encourage metacognition in teachers and students regarding questioning and answering questions” (Nance’s field notes, July 2005).
As teachers saw additional demonstrations of the strategy and learned more about the framework, they were more likely to describe QAR as a framework that helps students with comprehension or improves metacognitive thinking. For instance, in May, Christina wrote, a tool/strategy to be used to guide and focus students to help them ask questions about what they are thinking. This tool helps to guide students when writing questions, reading, etc. It aids in diversifying how students have their information portrayed so I can reach more students [and through] modeling reach even more students.
Although the coding scheme did not permit this statement to be coded differently from the initial comment, there is an obvious difference in the teacher’s understanding of QAR that moves beyond repeating information verbatim from the professional development presentations toward describing declarative and conditional benefits knowledge in his or her own way. The qualitative difference between these comments was consistent across the data set and indicates that there were changes in teachers’ understandings of QAR that were not reflected in the coding.
Metacognitive understanding was not clearly developed by the participants in their conditional contextual explanations of why they chose to use QAR in a specific instance. This may be because of the format of the lesson Tag Heuer Carrera Replica plan or because this requires a deeper understanding of the strategy as something that is used flexibly and not during all activities around questioning. Additional research with a classroom observation component might settle this question more fully.
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