ResearchAuthor(s): J. Wesley SchneyerSource: The Reading Teacher, Vol. 23, No. 4, Learning Disabilities (Jan., 1970), pp. 369, 371Published by: Wiley on behalf of the International Reading AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20196321 .

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Research

/. WESLEY SCHNEYER University of Pennsylvania

Classroom verbal inter action and pupil learning

The cooperative first grade reading studies suggest that teacher charac

teristics and teaching styles may

play a vital role in determining the

level of pupil reading achievement.

Differences among teachers may be

far more significant than differences

among methods or materials in af

fecting the reading achievement of

children. Actual knowledge of the

kinds of teacher behavior associated

with good and poor reading achieve ment of pupils is limited. One ap

proach that seems useful in studying teaching characteristics and teach

ing styles is the analysis of teacher

pupil verbal interaction in the class room. The few studies which have

employed this type of analysis in the teaching of reading suggest that more

effective pupil achievement seems to

be associated with a classroom at

mosphere that induces a high pro

portion of pupil involvement in class room activities.

One of the most widely used and

best known systems for examining verbal interaction in the classroom

was developed by Flanders in the

1950*8 at the University of Minne

sota (Amidon and Flanders, 1963). In the Flanders system of Interaction

Analysis, ten categories are used to

classify the verbal behavior of teach ers and students. Seven of the ten?

categories describe teacher behavior as indirect teacher influence (teach er maximizes freedom of students to

respond) or direct teacher influence

(teacher minimizes freedom of stu

dents to respond. ) The indirect influ ence is assumed to make the student

less dependent upon the teacher. Of

the three remaining categories, two

describe student talk, while the last

category covers silence or confusion and is used to describe anything

369

that is not teacher or student talk

(Flanders and Amidon, 1963). In studies in Minnesota and New

Zealand, Flanders (1965) found that pupils of teachers rated high in use

of indirect verbal patterns had high er achievement and more desirable

attitudes toward their work and fel

low pupils than pupils of teachers

using more direct verbal patterns. F?rst and Amidon (1965) used

the Flanders system to study differ

ences in interaction patterns among the elementary school grades in the

teaching of reading and various con

tent areas. They found that teachers

tended to be more direct (lecture

more) in social studies than in read

ing and arithmetic, and that first,

fifth, and sixth grade teachers did more talking during the social

studies. Praise was used most fre

quently by early primary and inter

mediate grade teachers.

Morrison (1968) studied teacher pupil interaction within three pat terns of elementary classroom read

ing organization. She found that the use of the same text for all pupils resulted in lack of pupil-teacher in

volvement while use of multi-level

and supplementary materials pro duced "more positive and education

ally sound relationships."

Categorizing student and teacher

behavior during a series of two min ute samples, Perkins (1965), in a

study of under achievement of high ability fifth graders, found that teach er lecturing and criticizing was re

lated to loss in reading comprehen sion and to pupil withdrawal. Soar

(1967) found that the greatest gains in vocabulary occurred when the

teacher maximized freedom of ex

pression in her teaching. Herman

(1967) analyzed the teacher-pupil verbal interaction in sixty-five classes

of fifth graders and found that as the intelligence level of a class in

creased the teacher's verbal pattern was more flexible and democratic

and activities tended to be more

pupil-centered than teacher-centered.

As knowledge gained from research

based upon pupil-teacher verbal in

teraction analysis increased, a num

ber of investigators developed other

systems or modifications of current

ones to study the relationship be

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Research

tween teaching strategies and various

cognitive processes including critical

reading ability (Gallagher and Asch

ner, 1963; Taba, et al, 1964; Wolf, et al, 1967; Davidson, 1969). These investigators agree that the nature of

the questions employed by the teach

er and the strategies she uses in

leading pupils' thought from one level

to another are central in influencing the depth of thinking developed among pupils. The use of clarifying

questions and slow-paced teacher

pupil interaction which allows time

for pupil thinking are vital teacher

strategies. Davidson (1969) suggests that

feedback based upon data from inter

action analysis can be used by teach

ers to refocus their teaching strate

gies to exert greater effect on levels

of children's thinking. The analysis of teacher-pupil interaction based

upon discussions during lessons de

veloping critical reading skills sug

gests possibilities of wider applica tion of this technique in the exami

nation of discussions during the

teaching of other reading skills such

as reading comprehension. Taba's

(1964) multidimensional model for interaction analysis provides a

scheme for coding and classifying the teacher's behavipr in terms of

teaching functions and the pupil's

responses in a way that describes

the type and level of thinking activi

ty. While such coding schemes may be somewhat awkward, they offer

promises for taking a closer look at

what really goes on in the classroom

between teacher and pupil during the process of learning to read.

References

Amidon, E., and Flanders, N. A. The

role of the teacher in the classroom.

Minneapolis: Amidon and Associates, 1963.

Davidson, R. Teacher influence and

371

children's levels of thinking. The Read

ing Teacher, 1969, 22, 702-704.

Flanders, N. A. Teacher influence, pu

pil attitudes, and achievement. (Coop erative Research Monograph No. 12, Office of Education, United States De

partment of Health, Education, and Wel

fare) Washington, D. C: United States

Government Printing Office, 1965.

F?rst, Norma, and Amidon, E.

Teacher-pupil interaction patterns in the

teaching of reading in the elementary school. The Reading Teacher, 1965, 18, 283-287.

Gallagher, J. J., and Aschner, Mary

Jane. A preliminary report on analyses of classroom interaction. Merrill-Palmer

Quarterly, 1963, 9, 183-194.

Herman, W. L., Jr. An analysis of the

activities and verbal behavior of selected

fifth-grade social studies classes. Journal

of Educational Research, 1967, 60, 339

345.

Morrison, Virginia B. Teacher-pupil interaction in three types of elementary classroom reading situations. The Read

ing Teacher, 1968, 22, 271-275.

Perkins, H. V. Classroom behavior

and underachievement. American Edu

cational Research Journal, 1965, 2, 1-12.

Soar, R. S. Pupil needs and teacher

pupil relationships: experiences needed

for comprehension in reading. In E. J. Amidon and J. B. Hough (Eds.) Inter

action analysis: theory, research, and

application. Reading, Mass.: Addison

Wesley, 1967.

Taba, Hilda, Levine, S., and Elzey, F.

Thinking in elementary school chil

dren. (Cooperative Research Project No.

1574) San Francisco: San Francisco

State College, 1964.

Wolf, Willavene, Huck, Charlotte S.,

King, Martha L., Ellinger, Bernice D., and Gansneder, B. M. Critical reading

ability of elementary school children.

(Final report of Project No. 5-1040, Of

fice of Education United States Depart ment of Health, Education and Welfare)

Columbus, Ohio: Research Foundation, The Ohio State University, 1967.

Fifteeth Annual Convention?Anaheim, California, May 6-9, 1970

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