The theory that teachers treat students from whom they expect superior achievement differently than those from whom they expect inferior performance is examined. Five ways of reacting on the part of the teacher are identified for the purpose of this study--teacher warmth, teacher feedback, teacher selection of materials, opportunity offered for…

The author argues here that progress toward greater validity in description through increasingly specifiable standards for quality control is crucial for the advancement of theory as well as for the improvement of method in descriptive studies of classroom life. Some standards for judging the validity of descriptions of classroom action are…

The ultimate goal of this study was to specify conditions which affect achievement in the chemistry laboratory through an understanding of instructor-student interaction. The Flanders System of Interaction Analysis was used to measure the ratio of indirect to direct teaching (I/D/ Ratio) during pre-lab and post-lab sections of eight two-hour…

This paper reports a study of selected examples of verbal behavior patterns in primary grade classrooms during science activities. The subjects were 32 elementary teachers within five mid-Michigan public school districts. A control group of 16 teachers taught science in the conventional manner. The experimental group received an in-depth study of…

A category system was developed to describe verbal and non-verbal classroom behavior of junior high school science students. The category system contained two major sections: communicative (symbolic) behavior and non-communicative (non-symbolic) behavior. The instrument was used in conjunction with a teacher behavior category system (developed in…

A category system was developed for describing the classroom behavior of earth science teachers. Video tape recordings were made of a random sample of 16 junior high school science teachers in Franklin County, Ohio. Classification of behaviors resulted in four major dimensions: Content Development, Management, Facilitating, and Classroom Climate.…

The Reciprocal Category System (RCS) is an observational system used to record and assess teacher-student classroom verbal interaction. The RCS is composed of nine verbal categories which are applicable to either the student or teacher (and as such are numbered differently, thus producing 18 categories) and one additional category--silence or…

Reported is a study designed to describe the nature of teacher-pupil-materials interactions occurring in classrooms using Australian Science Education Project (ASEP) materials and to investigate relationships between these interaction patterns, changes in student achievement and attitudes toward science in classes taught by teachers whose…

The specific purposes of this study were to identify new and unique dimensions of teaching and to identify the commonalities of several existing classroom observation systems. The objectives or anticipated outcomes were to: (a) increase interpretation and cross validation of research using different observation systems and more efficient…

The Guided Self-Analysis System for Professional Development (GSA) has been designed to assist practicing classroom teachers in their efforts toward self-improvement. The system consists of several programs of carefully sequenced interaction codes with which the teacher analyzes a videotape made in his own classroom and comes to a more objective…

This study focused on the Instructor-Group Interaction Scale, formulated by Hildebrand, Wilson, and Dienst (1971), to explore the feasibility and usefulness of an instrument for recording instructor-group interaction in the college classroom. It was hypothesized that data from the scale would (a) provide the instructor with the pattern of…

The fundamental differences in classroom social structure and the effect of teaching behavior on the unique patterns of classroom social structures were studied. Subjects included fifth-grade classrooms with female teachers in a small city school system. Eighteen classrooms with a total of 576 children fit these criteria. Instrumentation included…

Describes the ACI (Activities Categories), a system based on Flander's interaction analysis. Each of eleven activity categories is explained and classified as being either student centered or teacher centered. Reviews the use of ACI and how the data are analyzed. (PR)

Adult assistance procedures were experimentally compared for their effects upon the preschool child's tendency to persist in self-selected manipulative tasks in a free-play setting. (JMB)

An instrument, "The Teacher Student Interaction Analysis," was developed to supply direct observation data on the number and kinds of teacher/student interactions and display data visually. The paper describes the instrument, summarizes field testing procedures and outcomes, and illustrates analysis outcomes. (Author/DB)