Classroom Processes

1
Classroom Processes

• Chapter 5
• Pages 159 - 174

2
Teaching and Learning Contexts

• Individual
• Group
• Class
• School
• Home
• Community

3
Hidden Curriculum

• Behaviors of teachers and students and the
  transactions between them
• As teachers and students enact the formal
  curriculum, they must also deal with the informal
  curriculum which gives direction and structure to
  classroom life.

4
Classrooms

• Socially and culturally organized learning
  environments
• Descriptions of the hidden curriculum focus on
  the tacit values, attitudes, and unofficial rules
  of behavior students must learn to participate
  and succeed in school

5
Real Knowledge Transmitted Through the Hidden
Curriculum

• Functioning in crowds, but working in solitude
• Developing work habits and using time
  productively
• Being patient and passive, obedient, conforming
  and compliant
• Accepting assessment by others

6

• Competing to gain praise, rewards, and esteem
  from teachers and peers
• Living in a hierarchical society with clearly
  defined power relationships Collaborating with
  other students
• Sharing the norms for and meanings of
  participation in classroom activities

7
Interactional Dimension

• Teacher Expectations
• Inferences drawn from current knowledge of
  students to predict anticipated behavior or
  academic achievement
• Relationship between teachers perceptions of
  student academic ability, their expectations
  about how students will perform, and their
  interaction with individual students is very
  complex

8

• Creates conditions that cause expectation to be
  fulfilled, or sustaining expectation effects in
  which students will continue to exhibit
  established learning and behavior patterns
• According to Good (1981) an important
  contribution of research on teacher expectations
  has been the identification of specific ways in
  which some teachers treat high and low students
  differently

9

• Low achievers are likely to experience more
  variations in teacher communication patterns than
  high achievers
• By junior high school, some less successful
  students become passive learners, reluctant to
  ask for clarification and assistance from teachers

10

• Sociocultural factors seem to be closely
  associated with teacher expectations and the
  different treatment of students
• Students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds
  tend to be overrepresented among the ranks of low
  achievers

11

• Gollnick and Chinn (1994) cite research showing
  that teacher expectations may be influenced by
  nonacademic student characteristics such as
  dress, language, cleanliness, and family stability

12

• Sadker, Sadker, Klein (1991) report that many
  studies support the contention that most teachers
  do not expect children from racial and ethnic
  minorities to do as well as White children.

13

• Teachers need to examine their own
  expectationspositive or negativeand whether
  these affect their interaction with students in
  the classroom.

14

• Teacher expectations and perceptions of students
  are important facets of classroom interaction
  that are often influenced by the sociocultural
  characteristics of students and may be reflected
  in differential treatment of students by teachers
  in ways that continue, even promote, inequalities
  of information and skills.

15
Effects of Cultural Differences

• Variations among cultural groups my cause
  problems for students when classroom
  interactional patterns are not consistent or
  compatible with those that children experience in
  their homes and community.

16

• Less visible aspects of culture associated with
  everyday etiquette and interaction and with
  expression of rights, obligations, values, and
  aspirations through norms of communication are
  commonly overlooked.

17

• In Native American communities, the classroom
  learning environment may be structured according
  to rules not shared by the community to which the
  students belong.

18

• Critical in Native American communities were
  instructional demands that students respond
  competitively and individualistically.
• Cultural norms would be violated by cooperative
  and group efforts.

19

• Teachers should aim to maintain the integrity of
  the home culture while respecting the demands of
  the school.
• The cultural background that students bring to
  the classroom can influence their interpretation
  of and response to communication

20

• At the very heart of the educational process in
  most classrooms is communication between teacher
  and students. This communication influences
  students ability to assimilate curricular
  content.

21
Patterns of Differential Treatment

• In one study, the researchers concluded that
  students in the same classroom, with the same
  teacher, studying the same material were
  experiencing very different educational
  environments

22
Student/Teacher Interaction

• ¼ of students were silent and did not interact
  with teacher at all
• Majority interacted with teacher only once during
  class period
• Less than 10 had 3 or more exchanges with the
  teacher

23
Teacher Interaction Gender

• Teachers tend to interact more with boys than
  girls
• Significant proportion of attention focused on
  boys is negative
• Boys are more active in classrooms and receive
  more criticism and praise and behavioral,
  procedural, and academic exchanges

24

• Teachers tend to give high-achieving boys more
  positive attention than low-achieving boys who
  often receive negative feedback
• Teachers interact more with high-achieving boys
  and than high-achieving girls

25

• Ethnicity, racial background, and socioeconomic
  status are other factors that enter into the
  interaction equation
• Majority group studentsmale and femalefare
  better in interaction with teachers than those
  from minority groups

26

• Student achievement and attitudes are affected by
  teacher praise and corrective comments. Effective
  praise conveys the importance of the students
  accomplishments and acknowledges effort or
  ability that encourage students to persist in
  their efforts to succeed.

27
Monitoring of Interactions

• Observations of interactional and discourse
  patterns in a classroom can clarify how
  individual students and groups of students
  respond to different teacher behaviors and how
  teacher responds to them.

28

• Teachers who decide to monitor and examine their
  own patterns of interaction first need to
  determine the kind of interaction information
  they want to collect (e.g. treatment of boys and
  girls)
• They must select an observation technique to help
  describe their interaction

29

• Teachers must decide how to collect the
  information they need
• Peer observations can be used to enhance
  information obtained through self-monitoring
• Monitoring quantity and quality of interaction is
  a good place to start

30
Social Dimensions

• Language Attitudes
• Feelings, beliefs, and values associated with
  ones own language and/or dialect and those
  spoken by othersinfluence perceptions regarding
  the social identity, status, and ability of the
  speakers of a given language

31

• Speech is one of the most effective instruments
  in existence for maintaining a given social order
• In general, those who achieve the highest degree
  of success in U.S. society tend to have the least
  accented speech

32

• Few TV newscasters speak with a distinctive
  accent, and some have consciously eliminated
  certain regional characteristics from their
  speech.
• Achievement-oriented Chicanos have traditionally
  made an effort to erase all traces of Spanish
  influence from their English

33

• Language attitudes also operate within the
  classroom and can affect the teaching and
  learning process.
• Ramirez (1985) observed, the initial impressions
  teachers form about students are often based upon
  features of speech

34

• Because of the prestige associated with standard
  English, many teachers accept the premise that
  equality of opportunity is impossible unless all
  English speakers can use standard English at the
  level required for high status jobs or professions

35

• Black English is strongly valued by many African
  Americans as a symbol of intimacy and
  solidarityit represents intergroup
  distinctiveness from the white community.
• Difference between Black English and standard
  English are constantly reinforced

36

• Students who choose to use standard English must
  often confront peer pressure and accept
  corrections they may interpret as insulting to
  their own speech patterns and self-identity

37
Student Status

• Elementary level academic status is determined
  largely by competence in reading and math
• those who rank high are expected to do well in
  unrelated school tasks
• Those who rank low are not expected to do well

38

• Peer status at all grade levels is associated
  with individual traits (e.g. athletic ability,
  attractiveness, popularity) and societal
  distinctions related to class, race, ethnicity,
  exceptionality and sex.
• In interracial schools, interactions are
  dominated by Whites when valued intellectual
  tasks are involved