Questions in the classroom: Power, topic and knowledge

Authors

  • José Carlos Lima dos Santos Universidade Federal de Sergipe
  • Raquel Meister Ko. Freitag Universidade Federal de Sergipe

Abstract

This article aims to show the relationship established between power, questions, topic and construction of knowledge in the classroom. We defend that the teacher has the institutionally conferred power to control discursive topics and that such control is implemented by means of questions designed so as construct knowledge. In order to investigate this claim we analyzed a corpus formed by recordings of science classes to control questions-answer pair, social actors and their relationship to the discursive topic. The results point that 96% question from the corpus (435 in total) were devised by the teacher, 95% of the questions are open, 92% are “didactic” and 94% questions are related to the development of the discursive topic. The teacher asks more because he has control over the topic of discourse, and questions – mostly didactic – are related to development of topic. The data confirm the initial claim that there is a relationship between power, questions, topic and construction of knowledge. 

Key words: question, topic, knowledge, power.

Author Biographies

José Carlos Lima dos Santos, Universidade Federal de Sergipe

Graduado em Letras pela Uneal. Mestre em Letras pela Universidade Federal de Sergipe.

Raquel Meister Ko. Freitag, Universidade Federal de Sergipe

Doutora em Linguística pela Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Professora do Departamento de Letras Vernáculas e do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras da Universidade Federal de Sergipe. Bolsista de Produtividade em Pesquisa do CNPq.

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Published

2012-03-23

How to Cite

Santos, J. C. L. dos, & Freitag, R. M. K. (2012). Questions in the classroom: Power, topic and knowledge. Calidoscópio, 10(1), 83–96. Retrieved from https://www.revistas.unisinos.br/index.php/calidoscopio/article/view/cld.2012.101.08

Issue

Vol. 10 No. 1 (2012): January/April

Section

Articles

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