Teachers' Responses to Bias in the Classroom: How Response Type and Situational Factors Affect Student Perceptions

College students frequently encounter prejudice, discrimination, and stereotypes, but there is no research on effective teacher responses to classroom bias. Three studies examined students' perceptions of teacher responses to bias in the classroom. Study 1 experimentally manipulated the level of bias expressed and the teacher's response. Students perceived responding to bias as more effective than ignoring bias. Study 2 demonstrated that students perceive differences in the intensity of common responses to bias. Study 3 manipulated if bias occurred publicly or privately and if the target of bias was present or not, and students evaluated teacher responses of differing intensity for their effectiveness in achieving specific goals. The results provide evidence for the efficacy of matching responses to specific goals.     

Supporting Whole-class Collaborative Inquiry in a Secondary Mathematics Classroom

Recent mathematics education reform efforts call for the instantiation of mathematics classroom environments where students have opportunities to reason and construct their understandings as part of a community of learners. Despite some successes, traditional models of instruction still dominate the educational landscape. This limited success can be attributed, in part, to an underdeveloped understanding of the roles teachers must enact to successfully organize and participate in collaborative classroom practices. Toward this end, an in-depth longitudinal case study of a collaborative high school mathematics classroom was undertaken guided by the following two questions: What roles do these collaborative practices require of teacher and students? How does the community's capacity to engage in collaborative practices develop over time? The analyses produced two conceptual models: one of the teacher's role, along with specific instructional strategies the teacher used to organize a collaborative learning environment, and another of the process by which the class's capacity to participate in collaborative inquiry practices developed over time.     

A COGNITIVE ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE ON FIRST-GRADERS' CLASSIFICATIONS OF PICTURE

From the theoretical framework of cognitive anthropology based on the work of Charles Frake, this study explored children's classification systems underlying their interactions with illustrated picture storybooks in a classroom context. As a classroom participant-observer, the researcher carried out a classification task where children in a culturally diverse first-grade classroom sorted 15 picture books into piles of books having similar characteristics. It was found that the children classified books by topic, genre, author, culture, emotional response, and physical property of the book. The children's responses were placed in the context of the classroom setting. Some aspects of the children's classification systems were found to be similar to the teacher's way of categorizing books in the classroom library and also her way of classifying books in a book sorting activity.     

Students' R]eactions to Teachers' E]valuations: The Unique Impact of Negative Feedback1

This study attempts to identify some of the processes mediating self-fulfilling prophecies in the classroom. Specifically, we hypothesized that negative feedback conveyed by teachers would influence students' p]erceptions of how the teacher viewed their success/failure, effort, ability and task difficulty more than positive feedback. In response to college students' s]core on an anagrams test, a (confederate) teacher expressed either positive, negative or no evaluative feedback. Questionnaires assessed students' s]elf-perceptions and perceptions of the teacher's evaluations of them. Consistent with our hypotheses, negative feedback was seen as a more credible indicator of the teacher's evaluation than positive feedback. Furthermore, negative feedback led students to believe that the teacher held an extremely unfavorable but inaccurate impression of their effort and ability and that the teacher underestimated the difficulty of the task. There were few differences between the effects of positive feedback and no feedback, and there were no significant effects on self-perceptions. These findings suggest new insights into negativity effects in evaluations and into the mechanisms underlying self-fulfilling prophecies.     

The Dynamics of Creative Teaching

The following is a qualitative portrait of a creative teacher and her teaching process. Over a period of six months, five interviews were conducted with the teacher before, during, and following a university course in teacher education on instructing diverse learners. Additional interviews were conducted with six students at the beginning and end of the course and with the teacher's husband following the course. Additional data sets include classroom observations revealed in field notes, personal memos, and course materials. The overarching themes represented constructs involving intense and thorough course preparation, teacher‐student connections, and reflective teaching. Sub‐themes guiding the process of creative teaching emerged including constraints placed on preparation and reflective teaching, an awareness of self and students within the process of preparation and connection, feedback from colleagues and students guiding the connection and reflective teaching, and the values and goals formed from personal history and philosophy of life shaping all three major themes. This case study of creative teaching possesses characteristics resembling creative acts in other domains (e.g., art, literature, physics, economics) and presents a model for the education of future teachers.     

MODIFICATION OF THE EXCESSIVE INAPPROPRIATE CLASSROOM BEHAVIOR OF TWO ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS USING HOME-BASED CONSEQUENCES AND DAILY REPORT-CARD PROCEDURES1

Two experiments investigated home-based reinforcement contingencies to control excessive behavior in normal classrooms. Subjects were, respectively, a 12-yr-old fifth-grade boy and a 9-yr-old fourth-grade boy, each in a separate classroom and with a different teacher. Following baseline observations in which observers recorded several categories of student behavior and teacher-student interaction, separate conferences were held including parents of the two children, the principal, teachers, and experimenters. A daily report-card procedure was agreed on, stipulating a one-day suspension from school following three successive “undesirable” daily report cards as well as the supervision of home-based privileges and other reinforcers usually contingent on satisfactory daily reports. Measurements of daily rates of teacher attention indicated no important change in this variable throughout the various experimental conditions. The daily report procedure significantly reduced disruptive classroom behavior. In a second experiment, a teacher-operated timer cued her own time-sample observations. Reliability measures revealed that the teacher could accurately measure the child's behavior while she was teaching the class. The procedure was ultimately successfully expanded to the teacher's total contact hours each day.     

Increasing Student Classroom Participation Through Self-Modeling

ABSTRACT

The study investigated the effect of self-modeling as an intervention to improve classroom participatory behavior and whether or not increased classroom participation influenced teacher's perceptions of the students' behavior. The study employed a multiple baseline design across five students, and a control, with a follow-up. All students evidenced an increase in classroom participation subsequent to viewing the intervention videotapes. In addition, teacher perceptions of students' behavior improved on several dimensions.     

“Living the Literate Life”: How Teachers Make Connections Between the Personal and Professional Literate Selves

This study examines teachers' beliefs about themselves as literate people and how those beliefs translate into classroom literary practice. Using a multi-method approach, it explores the private literate selves (via diary, survey, and interviews) of twelve K–12 teachers and establishes a foundational understanding of the influence of the social and personal nature of literacy on teacher support for literacy in the classroom and how teachers' personal literacy practices are made public to classroom learners. Results indicate that literacy played an important functional role in the lives of all 12 teachers. There was variability in the prominence of literacy for pleasure in the teachers' lives. In addition, there was variability in whether and in what ways teachers made their literacy practices public for their students. Implications for teacher education and professional development programs are offered.     

STIMULUS CONTROL IN THE CLASSROOM AS A FUNCTION OF THE BEHAVIOR REINFORCED

Eight fifth- and sixth-grade children with behavior problems performed in a classroom under three conditions: (1) unreinforced baseline, (2) reinforcement for being on task, and (3) reinforcement for the accuracy and rate of math problems solved. The teacher was absent for a portion of the class session under each of these conditions. In the teacher's absence, on-task behavior declined markedly and disruption markedly increased, regardless of the reinforcement condition in operation. In addition, the teacher's absence resulted in fewer problems attempted and decreased accuracy. However, the extent to which the children became disruptive was reduced and the number of problems attempted increased when reinforcement was contingent on academic accuracy and rate, instead of being contingent on being on task. The results suggest that by providing contingencies for the products of a child's classroom activities, rather than for being on task, the child will become more independent of the teacher's presence, and more under the control of the academic materials.     

Introducing educators to a psychodynamically informed teaching practice

Abstract

Prompted by the observation that many recently trained teachers find themselves unprepared to cope with many aspects of classroom life despite considerable subject matter competence and technical proficiency, this paper proposes and describes a brief instructional programme designed to enhance teachers' understanding of classroom interactions from a psychodynamic perspective. Published autobiographical accounts of gifted teachers serve as texts for reading and discussion. These personal narratives are conceptualized within psychodynamic frameworks illuminating in meaningful fashion mundane as well dramatic moments in classroom interaction. The course is intended to enhance teacher competence and morale, to stimulate further reflection and to facilitate professional discourse about children and teaching.     

FLUENCY SNAPSHOTS: A QUICK SCREENING TOOL FOR YOUR CLASSROOM

In this article, the authors present a research-based, classroom tested assessment tool, the Classroom Fluency Snapshot (CFS). This assessment is grounded in the research that establishes fluency as an important component of initial reading instruction and in the work on the efficacy of curriculum based measurement. The article presents the case of one classroom in which a teacher uses the CFS as a pre-, post-assessment. Rich classroom examples, details of the teacher's interpretation, and instructional decision making are shared along with ideas for instruction.     

Preschool Teacher Support Through Class-Wide Intervention

Abstract

Preparing professionals for class-wide consultation has a significant role in achieving goals associated with recent legislation and reform initiatives. Class-wide interventions are used to target achievement and social learning, are under a teacher's control and responsibility, and build on basic classroom interactions, routines, and resources. However, teachers may require considerable contextual appraisal and support from consultants. The purpose of this paper is to describe a teacher- support program evolving from Head Start consultations by school psychology students. Implications for training and practice are discussed.     

Development of an Expert Explanation: An Analysis of a Sequence of Subtraction Lessons

This article documents the teaching and learning that occurred during an 8-day unit on subtraction with regrouping in an expert teacher's second-grade classroom. Students in this study were found to be not only highly skilled in computation at the end of the sequence, but also to have, in some cases, unusual skill in solving problems beyond the range of instruction. Detailed analyses of the expert lessons that led to such high levels of student performance and understanding focused both on the explanations the teacher provided and on students' knowledge growth throughout the sequence. Two aspects of the teacher's explanations were analyzed: the subject-matter content and the explanational plan. Semantic nets were used to portray the teacher's subject-matter knowledge displayed in each lesson and were compared with corresponding nets of student knowledge for each day. All explanations were structurally analyzed to develop a network of goal states and action schemas, similar to other cognitive planning nets, that generated a model of an expert explanation. Student knowledge was traced by means of tests and interviews administered to a sample of 8 students before, during, and after instruction.     

Construction and validation of a children's interpersonal trust belief scale

A scale was constructed to assess children's generalized trust beliefs (CGTB) in four target groups (mother, father, teacher and peer) with respect to three bases of trust: reliability, emotionality, and honesty. The CGTB Scale was administered to 145 Year 5 and 156 Year 6 children (mean age = 10 years, 1 month) residing in the English Midlands, United Kingdom. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses yielded evidence for the expected factor structure of the CGTB Scale. The total CGTB Scale and subscales demonstrated acceptable internal consistency and expected levels of stability across time. As support for validity, Year 6 participants' scores on the CGTB peer subscale were correlated with their trust beliefs in classmates, assessed a year earlier. As hypothesized, children's helpfulness to their classmates was correlated with the CGTB Scale and subscales. Girls displayed greater trust beliefs and helpfulness to classmates than did boys.     

Self‐regulated learning of basic arithmetic skills: A longitudinal study

Background. Several studies have examined young primary school children's use of strategies when solving simple addition and subtraction problems. Most of these studies have investigated students’ strategy use as if they were isolated processes. To date, we have little knowledge about how math strategies in young students are related to other important aspects in self‐regulated learning. Aim. The main purpose of this study was to examine relations between young primary school children's basic mathematical skills and their use of math strategies, their metacognitive competence and motivational beliefs, and to investigate how students with basic mathematics skills at various levels differ in respect to the different self‐regulation components. Sample. The participants were comprised of 27 Year 2 students, all from the same class. Method. The data were collected in three stages (autumn Year 2, spring Year 2, and autumn Year 3). The children's arithmetic skills were measured by age relevant tests, while strategy use, metacognitive competence, and motivational beliefs were assessed through individual interviews. The participants were divided into three performance groups; very good students, good students, and not‐so‐good students. Results. Analyses revealed that young primary school children at different levels of basic mathematics skill may differ in several important aspects of self‐regulated learning. Analyses revealed that a good performance in addition and subtraction was related not only to the children's use of advanced mathematics strategies, but also to domain‐specific metacognitive competence, ability attribution for success, effort attribution for failure, and high perceived self‐efficacy when using specific strategies. Conclusions. The results indicate that instructional efforts to facilitate self‐regulated learning of basic arithmetic skills should address cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational aspects of self‐regulation. This is particularly important for low‐performing students.     

Mapping Teacher-Faces

This paper uses Deleuze and Guattari's concept of faciality to analyse the teacher's face. According to Deleuze and Guattari, the teacher-face is a special type of face because it is an 'overcoded' face produced in specific landscapes. This paper suggests four limit-faces for teacher faciality that actualise different mixes of signifiance and subjectification in a classroom in which individualisation and massifications are affected. Understanding these limit-faces suggests new ways to conceive the affects actualised in the classroom that are subjected to increasing levels of surveillance from education policy makers. Through this ‘partial mapping’ new possibilities emerge to “escape the face”.     

Attentes de motivation et comportements différenciés de l'enseignant d’éducation physique et sportive à l'égard de ses élèves : une étude en contexte naturel d'enseignement

Previous research set in both educational and sport settings has examined the relationship between, teacher's and coach's expectancies and differential behaviors issued to students and athletes. The purpose of the present study was to extend this line of research by analyzing consequences of a not much studied pre-existing expectation (i.e. non induced) — the one related to motivation — on the frequency, content, and style (i.e. controlling vs. autonomy-supportive) of interactions between PE teacher and his pupils. 144 pupils and their teachers from 7 classes were examined during physical education classes. The teacher's expectancies were assessed at the beginning of the academic cycle. Teacher-students interactions were taped and systematically coded with two instruments at 4 different occasions. Results showed that teacher's expectancies were related (1) positively to technical instruction and autonomy-supportive style, and (2) negatively to negative affective feedback and controlling style. These different dimensions could constitute important mediators of Pygmalion effect in PE.