Analyzing Teacher Behavior

A few ambitious research projects in volve attempts to quantify the qualitative aspects of spontaneous classroom be havior. A research team working with ele mentary teachers in Provo, Utah, (Romney and Hughes, 1958, 1961) believes that patterns of spontaneous teacher action can be identified and that more effective patterns can be distinguished from less effective patterns. The 1958 progress report states that inventories can be developed and administered to prospective teachers and to teachers in service that will predict spontaneous teaching patterns fairly accurately. Wright and Proctor (1961) have de veloped a system for analyzing the rigor, or lack of it, in class discussions of mathe matics as well as the degree of student participation. They studied four typos of classrooms in which rigor was either high or low and student participation was either high or low. Their report ex presses some optimism concerning the utilization of their methods of observa tion for training more effective teachers of mathematics. . Bowers and Soar (1961) exposed ex perienced teachers to group discussions of one's own behavior and the behavior nf others, following a pattern of human relations training that is becoming more prominent, and then traced the conse quences of this training in terms of spon taneous verbal behavior in the classroom and other aspects' of teaching. They found that not all teachers respond con structively to this kind of training, but that it was possible to predict which teachers would have constructive re actions from inventory scale scores. B. O. Smith (I960) and his associates at the University of Illinois are working hard at the difficult task of analyzing classroom conversation in terms of models of logical thinking. Thus far they have developed a system of analysis and have isolated examples of class room communication that illustrate