Influence of lecturers’ classroom questioning effectiveness on university students’ achievement in economics in south-west Nigeria

Abstract

Questions typically communicate a specific purpose related to identified content and context, and are usually intended to elicit an answer. In general, research shows that instruction involving questioning is more effective than instruction without questioning. The effective teaching and learning of economics require frequent use of questions to develop critical thinking skill in the learners which will graduate into the development of necessary skills to solve the societal problems. The study used ex-post facto design of survey research type; twenty (20) economics lecturers as well as two hundred (200) students were selected through multi-stage sampling techniques from the two sampled institutions. Two validated instruments were used to gather information in this study. These are: Students’ Perception of Economics Lecturers’ Questioning Effectiveness Scale (r = .889) and Economics Achievement Test (r = .065).Three research questions were raised and answered in this study. The data obtained were analyzed using Descriptive statistics (frequency count) and Pearson product moment correlation at 0.05 level of significance. Result revealed that lecturers are fond of using overhead, higher-order, probing, factual, lower-order, direct, display, follow-up, and rhetorical, questions sequentially, for facilitating teaching-learning processes. Result revealed a positive moderate significant relationship exist between lecturers’ questioning effectiveness and University students’ achievement in economics at (r = 0.340, p < 0.05_(.000)).The paper recommended that: lecturers should be effective in the use of various questions at appropriate time; moreover, it is important for lecturers to always follow the procedure outline in this paper that will aid the effective classroom questioning practices. Also, there should be periodic seminars and workshops for lecturers on the use of questions in facilitating teaching and learning process.

Keywords: Questioning approaches, Classroom-interaction, Critical-thinking, Effective-teaching in Economics