Changes in the teacher's authority structure as well as changes in the content of student talk during peer response sessions occur over the course of a school year in a first-grade classroom. In the beginning of the year, the teacher, a beginner in the Teachers College Writing Project, dominated the talk during share sessions, while the students'…

This paper reviews selected findings from two traditions of educational research--process-product research and sociolinguistic research. The first research method generally focuses on the teacher and identifies teacher behaviors (processes) that correlate with student outcome measures (products). Sociolinguistic research focuses on communicative…

This paper discusses several interrelated features of microethnography that are relevant and useful for the study of bilingual schooling. It is argued that an interactional approach provides a powerful way to study systematically the organization of bilingual learning environment, identify areas of difficulty, and suggest concrete interventions…

Noting that teachers' nonverbal behaviors are frequently inconsistent with their verbal messages, a situation that detracts from student learning, this paper offers an activity for focusing prospective teachers' attentions on the frequency and impact of discrepant verbal-nonverbal messages occurring in the classroom. The step-by-step process is…

This research study delineates some of the factors in classroom communication involved in the process of classroom interaction in the elementary schools and explores the psychological relevance of some matters brought up in ordinary language philosophy and modern linguistics. Samples of classroom speech were collected from twenty grade school…

A pilot study was conducted as part of a larger sociological investigation of small group interaction. Specifically, the study dealt with communication in three first-grade advanced reading groups, each composed of 15 children, and focused on two types of requests: those for action and those for information. Student interactions were audio- and…

Methods used in studies of the classroom language of the English teacher are described in this paper and some results of the research are reported. The paper first describes three methods traditionally employed in the description of the language of the English classroom--live observation systems, coding systems based on transcripts, and…

This master's thesis investigates the evaluative instruments currently available for measuring nonverbal behaviors in the classroom. Chapters discuss the following topics: classroom nonverbal communication, major and minor evaluative instruments, problems in current studies of nonverbal communication, and recommendations for further study of…

This paper argues that traditional techniques of content analysis which have been applied to classroom verbal interaction studies fail to account for certain types of implicit information, and presents a technique, called "reconstruction," that provides for the inclusion of such information in a content analysis. It is argued that if…

Instruments, not previously reported in the literature, for observational techniques that can be used in early childhood classrooms are described. Excluded are those instruments which the Research for Better Schools, Inc., a regional laboratory, will report. Section I of this report is an introduction to observational procedures and especially to…

The emphasis in this paper is on developing teacher awareness of how nonverbal communication fits into the classroom setting. Various positive and negative aspects of this phase of communication in the classroom are explored. A classroom teacher is observed closely by students every day, and her/his attitude, feelings, mood or state of mind,…

Four combinations of teacher verbal and nonverbal evaluative behavior were studied within a controlled microlesson. Two male and two female teachers presented each of the four combinations--(a) verbally and nonverbally positive; (b) verbally positive and nonverbally negative; (c) verbally negative and nonverbally positive; or (d) verbally and…

Verbal interactions of 46 special education teachers in specific language and learning disability (SLD) classrooms, educable mentally retarded (EMR) classrooms, and trainable mentally retarded (TMR) classrooms were described and compared. The teachers varied, by classroom type, in their use of direct or indirect teaching styles, but the former…

Explores the research paradigms found useful by Dr. Poole in her research of classroom discourse as well as her insights into cross-cultural classroom interaction and the differences between first and second language classrooms. She discusses the need for close interactional study of English-as-a-Second- Language classrooms as well as non-English…

Investigates teacher reformulation of student talk in order to determine the manner in which teachers affect student meaning and expression. Findings indicate that reformulation is a device used by teachers to control classroom dialog and that teachers disproportionately perform the language functions most commonly associated with higher-order…