Use of Questions in the Didactic Setting: An Analysis of Athletic Training Educators? Use of Questions in the Didactic Instructional Setting

In many medical education programs, practitioners are placed in classrooms to deliver quality teaching. The focus of this study was to observe student-teacher interactions in didactic Athletic Training courses. Experienced and inexperienced athletic training educators located at universities in the southern United States were observed a total of nine observations each, along with the student participants. The researcher performed real time observations while using the Question-Response-Probe Sequential Event System-Athletic Training instrument to record student-teacher interaction patterns. Data generated was descriptively analyzed to identify relationships of student-teacher interaction patterns across observations. Summary statistics and rates per minute were also calculated. The findings of this investigation revealed that both experiential ATE groups asked more convergent questions than divergent questions, did not allow for a teacher wait-time greater than three seconds, and was deficient in providing teacher probe methods. Both experiential ATE groups had high mean percentages for the same student-teacher interaction patterns.