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Research In Science Education, 1986, 16, 184-190.

MOVING FROM ONE SETTING TO ANOTHER:

STUDENT REACTIONS AROUND TRANSITIONS

Warren Beasley and Jim Butler

INTROD UCTION

This study focuses on the off-task behaviour patterns of students before, during and

after a teacher initiated transition from one classroom setting to another. In an earlier

study of transitions in science classrooms (Butler and Beasley, 1985), the overall level of

student off-task behaviour decreased during the transition phase. This decrease in off-

task behaviour was explained in terms of a student perspective which would regard

transitions as a period of relief from cognitive and physical strain, and greater co-

operation in the expected behaviours would be anticipated.

That study also presented results which showed that the better managers of

classrooms are the better managers of transitions which cause no significant change in the

off-task behaviours and fit into the flow of the classroom. In the case of the below

average manager, the transition does cause a significant decrease in off-task behaviour

and can probably be interpreted as the students in these classrooms experiencing much

greater relief from the fairly disorganised settings on either side.

This study makes a more fine grained analysis of the individual student reactions

around transitions. The main questions are: Do individual students maintain a consistent

bebaviour pattern around transitions? Are these behaviour patterns related to the level of

management expertise demonstrated by their science teachers? Does a rapid increase of

off-task behaviour trigger a transition to a new setting?

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK FOR STUDENT CO-OPERATION

It will be assumed with Westbury (1978) that the classroom appoints four goals for

the teacher:

(I) Coverage of the syllabus objectives.

(2) Mastery by students of those objectives.

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(3) Affect on the part of students towards the subject.

(4) Attention that students give to the classroom activities and tasks (Doyle, 1979).

These goals create a four ball juggling act for the teacher because exclusive

concentration on any one is sure to jeopardise success at achieving the others. It is

impossible to disentangle the four goals but in this study, the latter two are considered

more relevant. There may be some tension between affect and attention in certain

situations. For example, begining teachers are often given advice by their peers not to

smile in class until three months into the school year. Affect must be sacrificed on the

altar of attention, but it can be otherwise.

Doyle (1979) subsumes these two goals stressing attention more than affect under the

topic of co-operation, and sees the fundamental goal of a teacher as gaining and

maintaining co-operation in classroom activities. Co-operation is a necessary but not

sufficient condition for learning. What Doyle argues is that the implicit theories of

teachers are primarily theories of co-operation - how to optimise and maintain it, rather

than theories of learning. Practising teachers tend to assess the worth of an activity, and

when and how to make the transition to a new topic of activity on the basis of student

reaction and involvement rather than on achievement. And even though Doyle does not

directly state the reason, it is clear that affect and attention are much more apparent in

the classroom than is achievement. Teachers, according to Doyle allocate time to

activities in a manner that maximises student co-operation.

The observational implications of Doyle's position are as follows:

(I) teachers will plan their lessons so that the activities they include and the time they

devote to these activities as determined by the transitions they plan, will maximise

co-operation.

(2) teachers will make transitions to new activities in order to reduce an unacceptable

level of off-task behaviour.

(3) teachers will continue an activity for a time that is well beyond the time of mastery

for most if the level of co-operation is high.

METHODOLOGY

The intention of the project was to observe naturalistically the off-task behaviour

patterns of students in science classrooms. The subjects for the study were the teachers

and pupils in 24 junior science classrooms in six metropolitan schools. The details of the

methodology are provided in an earlier study (Butler and Beasley, 1985). In essence,

sire ultaneous video records of teacher and students were obtained of corn plete lessons.

The ninety-one lessons obtained were divided into the three lesson settings of Whole

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Class Activity (WCA), Small Group Activity (SGA) and Individual Activity (A) (Butler,

1980). The transitions chosen for this study were those which separated lesson settings

which existed for a period of at least 5 minutes. Six students were selected for continuous

observations from the videotape of each lesson (Butler and Beasley, 1985).

The crucial feature of the methodology that needs to be discussed is the coding of

off-task behaviour (Butler et al, 1980). The student behaviours were coded as off-task if

they were outside the implicit or explicit behavioural expectations of the teacher. These

expectations changed significantly from one setting to another and in the transition

periods between settings. The on-task and off-task sets of student behaviours were

defined for each type of setting and for each type of transition. Some behaviours-like

throwing objects - are always in the off-task set; but some others - like students talk - can

transfer between the two sets depending on the setting, or type of transition.

The off-task sets in each of the three settings generally overlap but do have unique

features. For example, animated 'student-student' talk is off-task in WCA and IA, but not

in SGA where it is essential to the setting. In relation to coding, the WCA and IA settings

generally show up off-task behaviours more starkly than SGA where it is more difficult to

decide.

RESULTS

The thirty-two lessons (with 46 transitions) accepted in this study were taught by 15

teachers and contain four types of transitions within two major lesson patterns.

(I) Explanatory Lesson: WCA - IA - WCA

(2) Practical Lesson: WCA - SGA - WCA

The encoded data represented the level of task involvement of each student for each

ten second period of the completed lesson. Four distinct phases of time surrounding the

transition period were identified from the lesson sequence. These phases are represented

in Figure I and are labelled as: Whole Setting prior to Transition; Two Minute Segment

prior to Transition; The Transition; Two Minute Segment after Transition; Whole Setting

after Transition.

For the 179 students coded, the mean off-task behaviour levels in each phase are

presented in Figure 2. Correlation coefficients of student off-task behaviour across the

five periods of time described above are presented in Figure 3.

Similar data is segmented into two groups. Those students of the above-average

managers (Butler and Beasley, 1985), and those of students of below-average managers.

Figures 4 and 5 represent the correlation coefficients of student off-task behaviour across

the five phases for these two classifications of teacher management effectiveness.

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Two Two Mins ~ Mins ] Before After

l

4-Setting Before > ( Setting After~

Transition Period

Figure I: Phases of Lesson Sequence around Transitions

%

Time

Off

Task

20

t0

/ Students of below average managers

~/ (N=SS)

(N=179)

Students of above average managers

(N=I21)

Setting Two During Two Before Mins Transitions Mins

Transition Before After

Setting After

Transition

Figure 2: Effect of transitions on student task involvement.

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I ' ~ ' N - 179

Figure 3: Correlations of Student Off-task behaviour across transitions for all Students.

.42

N = 121

Figure 4: Correlations of student off-task behaviour across Transitions for students of above average managers.

/ NS

N = 58

Figure 4: Correlations of student off-task behaviour across Transitions for students of below average managers.

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DISCUSSION

The results represented in Figure 2 do show that for below average managers the

transitional phase provides a period of increased attention to the task by students. This

attention does continue with the new setting for at least two minutes. However the off-

task behaviour increases rapidly soon after. For above average managers the low level of

off-task behaviour is consistent across all phases of the lesson. For the below average

managers, the results are generally consistent with one of the implications of Doyle's

(1979) co-operation model of classroom management. Transitions to new activities do

reduce unacceptably high levels of off-task behaviour. However after a few minutes, any

gain is soon dissipated.

The actual timing of the transition does not seem to be related to the class level of

off-task behaviour. The prediction would be for higher levels of off-task behaviour just

prior to a teacher initiated transition to trigger a transition. However, the mean off-task

levels for the whole setting prior to a transition and for two minutes just prior to a

transition remain fairly constant for all teachers. The reasons for transition to another

segment do not appear to be related to rising levels of off-task behaviour. It may be more

related to coverage of syllabus objectives (Westb'ury, 1978).

Some insight into the reaction to transitions of individual students is given by the

correlation coefficients presented in Figures 3 to 5. Taken collectively, the correlation

coefficients reported for all students (Figure 3) appear to be accounted for by the students

of the above-average managers (Figure 4) with the exception of the two minute period just

prior to the transition and the transition phase. For both classifications of managerial

effectiveness, the correlation coefficient for student off-taskness just prior to transition

and during the transition phase is constant and is of the order of .33.

In interpreting the magnitude of the correlation coefficients, the effect of the

transition in reducing the overall level of off-task behaviour must be kept in mind. It does

encourage more on-task behaviour. For some students, the off-task behaviour becomes

on-task, without a corresponding number going off-task. Therefore, it is predictable that

correlations of student behaviour patterns around transitions cannot approach one.

For students of above-average managers (Figure 4), the pattern shows some

consistency. It is apparent that students who are off-task during the setting prior to the

transition are more likely to be off-task during the consequent phases of the lesson.

Above-average managers keep most of the students on-task for the whole lesson. One

hypothesis would be that a small core of students continue off-task for most of the lesson

and are generally unaffected by a transition or a new setting. This group either remains

undetected by their teacher or are ignored as the overall level of off-task behaviour is

acceptably low.

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For below average managers, the effect of transitions on individual students is much

more random (Figure 5). The lack of stability appears to indicate that students are

engaged in random off-task behaviour. It was only the period just prior to the transition

and the transition itself that a degree of stability of students who are off-task was

observed.

Transitions are challenging phenomena to understand. This study has suggested a

more predictable pattern of student off-task behaviour is possible for above-average

managers. Although different settings do attract different levels of off-task behaviour of

students (Butler et al. 1980), it appears that it is the overall management expertise of

teachers across the whole lesson which is related to the attention of students. The timing

of a transition does not seem to be related to the level of student off-task behaviour just

prior to the transition. For science teachers in this study, it could be postulated that

coverage of course content might be a more important determinant.

REFERENCES

BUTLER, J. (1980). Science classroom settings and pupil task involvement. Proceedings of the International Conference on Education for Physics Teachers, September.

BUTLER, J. & BEASLEY, W. (1985). Transitions and student task involvement. Research in Science Education, 15, 28-36.

BUTLER, J., BEASLEY, W., BUCKLEY, D. & ENDEAN, L. (1980). Pupil task involvement in secondary science classrooms, Research in Science Education, i0, 93-106.

DOYLE, W. (1979). iVlaking managerial decisions in classrooms. In D.L. Duke (Ed.), Classroom Management, 78th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. Chicago, NSSE.

WESTBURY, I. (1978). Research into classroom processes: a review of ten years' work. Journal of Curriculum Studies, I0, 4, 283-308.