Enhancing pre-service Turkish teachers' question preparation skills for higher-order thinking skills in reading education: An action research

Abstract

Students often have difficulty in generating HOT questions during reading instruction. A teacher who aims to make students critical readers should compare them with examples of good questions. To do this, teachers should first be able to ask good questions themselves. This study examined how pre-service Turkish teachers' higher-order thinking question preparation skills can be improved through instructional practices designed to encourage the development of higher-order thinking questions. The study employed a collaborative action research method, utilising mixed methods such as a single-group pre-test and post-test design alongside a case study. An 8-week action plan was implemented that included both a pre-test and a post-test. The study group comprised 15 third-year pre-service Turkish teachers from a university, selected through purposive sampling. Data were gathered through researcher and student diaries, pre-interview forms, student products, and evaluation forms and were analysed using Cochran's Q test and content analysis. The results revealed that pre-service teachers generally prepared basic questions at a descriptive level at the start of the study and had limited knowledge of relating the questions to higher-order thinking (HOT). However, after the training, there was a significant improvement in question preparation skills across, inference, explanation, hypothesis, and evaluation criteria. The positive contributions of conceptual knowledge, scaffolding, self-assessment, feedback, and peer assessment included in the research procedure were notable in the development of the pre-service teachers. Consequently, the study concluded that pre-service Turkish teachers required explicit teaching to enhance their HOT questioning skills.