Investigation of text-based comprehension questions in emergency distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Abstract The purpose of this study was to analyze text-based comprehension questions asked by fourth-grade teachers in Turkish (L1) lessons in emergency distance education that started during the COVID-19 pandemic and to compare the results with those of other studies conducted in face-to-face educational settings. The text-based comprehension questions were evaluated in terms of different text types (narrative and expository) according to the distribution of the questions in the reading/listening process, answer source (whether the answer to the question was intratextual, extratextual, or intertextual), format, inference type, and teacher specificity. The study was designed to utilize a qualitative description method. Two fourth-grade teachers working in different primary schools were selected as participants. The data were collected through online lesson observations. A total of 56 lesson hours were observed and videotaped. The content analysis technique was applied for the analysis of the data. As in the results of previous studies, the present study, which was conducted in an emergency distance education environment, revealed that the text-based comprehension questions asked by teachers are generally asked after reading/listening, are answered with intratextual and extratextual sources, are prepared only in an open-ended question format, and are mainly of the propositional inference type. Additionally, it was found that teachers do not take the initiative to generate questions themselves and remain primarily dependent on the textbook.