The Art and Science of Teaching and Learning

The Selected Works of Ted Wragg

E. C. Wragg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9781134263097
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Ted Wragg is well-known for his writing on all the essential issues in education and over the last thirty years contributed over forty books and a thousand articles to the field. This book offers a personal selection of his key writings in one volume for the first time. With a specially written introduction, this internationally renowned author contextualises his work and gives an overview of his career. The broad-ranging subjects covered include:

• classroom teaching and learning
• training new and experienced teachers
• curriculum in action
• educational policy and its implementation
• communicating with professional and lay people.

This is the ideal book for those who want to have what Ted Wragg considered to be his best pieces in one place.

PART 1
CLASSROOM TEACHING AND
LEARNING

Analysing classroom transactions and processes is the thread that runs through almost all the research that I do. In this section there are extracts from some of the books reporting the major research projects I have directed. Usually these have been three- or four-year programmes, often involving a mixture of large-scale questionnaire surveys, interviews and case studies of individual schools, teachers and children. I like the multi-layered ‘big picture’ approach, in which practices in a large number of schools are elicited and then the lifeblood is supplied to this large skeleton through intimate case studies. The survey provides an overall context, the case study furnishes the fine detail that brings it to life.

Sitting in classrooms is endlessly fascinating and lessons which might, in other circumstances, be excruciatingly tedious, can be utterly absorbing, if the research focus is on the teacher’s classroom management strategies, or apparent lack of them, or on the behaviour of individual children. Managing a class, asking questions, explaining concepts, are fundamental teaching skills, and there is no shortage of events to study. Virtually, every research project I have undertaken has had a classroom observation element.

The five chapters in this part come from empirical studies in three of my biggest projects. Among them they involved the analysis of some 2,000 lessons observed in primary and secondary schools over a twenty-year period. Chapter 1 describes a study of the very first encounters between teachers and their pupils, a much understudied field, yet an important one. Chapter 2 addresses another neglected area: pupils’ views of teaching, the findings of which are amazingly consistent over many years and age groups. Chapters 3 and 4 deal with the vitally important area of how primary, secondary and student teachers manage their classes. Chapter 5 was originally a long article, written in a 1973 book entitled Towards a Science of Teaching, describing what 104 teacher trainees did in nearly 600 lessons during which they were observed.

I had to smile from time to time as I re-read them all. My early work was much more quantitative than my later research, as I moved to a much more mixed mode of investigation. And did we really put data on punched cards in the 1970s? We did indeed. The results of the earliest statistical calculations (Chapter 5) thundered out on huge, fat wads of computer paper. The later ones were done on my own computer or laptop, using statistical packages that would have given our 1970s’ university mainframe computer a nervous breakdown.

CHAPTER 1
FIRST ENCOUNTERS

Originally published as ‘Teachers’ First Encounters with their Classes’, by Wragg E. C. and Wood E. K., in E. C. Wragg (ed.), Classroom Teaching Skills, Routledge, 1984, pp. 47–78

Teachers have to meet new classes every September, student teachers usually encounter them part way through the year, supply teachers may master a fresh environment almost every day. Yet, these first meetings have rarely been studied. This investigation of how experienced and student teachers handle classes when they first meet was part of the Teacher Education Project, Chapter 3 of my 1984 book Classroom Teaching Skills.

Student teachers usually begin their school experience or teaching practice part way through the school year. By the time they arrive routines, have been established which, for better or worse, will persist through the school year.

A chemistry graduate once arrived at his teaching practice school in January. Before commencing his own teaching he watched a third-year class’s regular chemistry teacher take a double period of practical work. After a brief exposition delivered, whilst seated on the front bench, one or two shared jokes and asides, the experienced chemistry teacher signalled the start of the practical phase with, ‘Right 3C, you know what to do, so get the gear out and make a start.’ The class dispersed briskly to hidden cupboards and far recesses for various pieces of equipment, and an hour of earnest and purposeful experimental work ensued.

In the following week the chemistry graduate took the class himself, and began by lolling on the front bench in imitation of the apparently effortless and casual manner he had witnessed only seven days earlier. After a few minutes of introduction, he delivered an almost identical instruction to the one given by the experienced man the week before, ‘Right 3C, get the gear out and do the experiment.’ Within seconds pupils were elbowing their fellows out of the way, wrestling each other for bunsen burners, slamming cupboard doors. He spent most of the practical phase calling for less noise and reprimanding the many pupils who misbehaved.

This true story illustrates the problems faced by student teachers. What they have not seen is experienced teachers’ first encounters with their classes in early September at the beginning of the school year, when rules and relationships are established. There are few studies available of teachers during their first phase of the year. Indeed a common response to a request to be allowed to watch lessons in early September, is for the teacher to say, ‘Would you mind coming in a fortnight when things have settled down?’

The research reported in this chapter involved observing and analysing the first lessons of a sample of experienced teachers at the beginning of the school year from the very first minute of the first lesson in early September, and comparing these with the lessons given by a sample of third-year BEd students at the start of their final teaching practice in October, and then with the first lessons given by a sample of PGCE students on their block practice in January. Over 100 lessons were observed with each of the three groups, and this chapter describes the 313 lessons and the interviews with the teachers concerned before, during and after the observation period.

First encounters with a class

A number of social psychologists have looked at first encounters between human beings in a variety of social settings. Goffman (1971) has described the process of impression management which commences at first meetings and continues through subsequent encounters:

The individual’s initial projection commits him to what he is proposing to be and requires him to drop all pretences of being other things. As the interaction among the participants progresses, additions and modifications in this informational state will of course occur, but it is essential that these later developments be related without contradiction to, and even built up from the initial positions taken by the several participants.

(pp. )

Argyle (1967) has described the rapidity with which people reach conclusions about those they meet, the difference in sensitivity of acute observers, like Sherlock Holmes, and mental patients whose perceptions appear distorted, and the growth of relationships in the early period of acquaintance.

A will categorize B in terms of social class, race, age, intelligence or whatever dimensions of people are most important to him, and this will activate the appropriate set of social techniques on the part of A. It is found that people vary widely in what they look for first in others.

(p. )

It is not merely the individual personalities which are important when people meet. The social setting is also a powerful influence on events: whether one person meets another as a colleague, employer, supplicant; whether someone holds a certain rank or status, wears a uniform; whether the encounter is in private or in public, is between two people or several, takes place informally on the street, in a home, or formally at a gathering, in an institution or work-place.

When teachers meet a new class of pupils, a variety of social, environmental and institutional factors are at work in addition to the effects of the several individual personalities involved. Teachers, whatever their individual style, are known to be legally in loco parentis. They are inescapably part of a national, local and professional culture, even if they personally reject a number of aspects of it.

When teachers have been in a school for some time, their reputation will precede them, and pupil folklore will have told their new classes a great deal about what to expect. Experienced teachers who have moved to another school frequently express surprise during their first few weeks about the difficulty of establishing their identity in a new location after their previous school in which so much could be taken for granted. Supply teachers in particular have to become adept at managing first encounters in new and varying locations, because they have so many of them.

It is not too surprising, therefore, that there has been relatively little research into these intimate first moments of contact between teacher and pupils. The success or failure of a whole year may rest on the impressions created, the ethos, rules and relationships established during the first two or three weeks in September, and that is one reason why many teachers see it as a private matter rather than something to be observed and analysed.

Evertson and Anderson (1978) studied 27 teachers of third-grade classes in eight American elementary schools for the first three weeks of the school year, followed by occasional visits later in the school year. They used a mixture of interviews and observations of lessons, concentrating largely on pupils’ engagement in their task. Those teachers who secured highest pupil involvement as measured by their schedule showed more evidence of having thought in advance about rules and procedures, gave more time to clarifying rules and procedures, and introduced their pupils gradually to independent work. This kind of study is of considerable interest, but is sometimes criticised for being self-fulfilling, that is, by setting a premium on task involvement, finding that formal and carefully structured teaching is ‘effective’.

Eltis (1978) in an Australian study, concentrated on the extent to which impressions formed in early lessons influenced subsequent events. He found that both experienced and student teachers’ perceptions of pupils were influenced by speech, appearance, voice and written work. Pupils’ accents were thought to be particularly influential on teachers’ early and subsequent judgements. He also found that both trainee and experienced teachers were reluctant to discuss pupils’ progress and attributes during this early phase.

Eisenhart (1977) concentrated on teachers’ methods of establishing control in her 2-year study of fifth- and sixth-grade classes in a city in Southern USA. Most teachers assigned seats to pupils rather than let them choose, and several developed their own distinct style of control from the beginning. One teacher capitalised on the impending arrival of autumn by writing each pupil’s name on a leaf which was pinned to a large picture of a tree. Children were exhorted to keep their leaf from falling, and miscreants found their personal leaf removed from sight.

Soar (1973) followed the progress of a cohort of children in 289 kindergarten, first- and second-grade classes for three years. In a small-scale study of twenty teachers who were especially high or low in class control, he found that teachers with a high degree of control had started by permitting little pupil freedom and then increasing it, and teachers with a low degree of control had begun with high pupil freedom which they then attempted to decrease.

Some investigators have concentrated on the establishment of classroom rules. Buckley (1977), in an ethnographic study of one classroom, identified 32 rules, of which 22 had been spoken of in some form by the teacher within the first six days of the school year. Of these 32 rules, some 15 came from outside the classroom, mainly from the principal. A number of rules emerged after the initial period, such as when a pupil in the third week played in a certain courtyard during break and was told by the teacher on duty that this was not allowed, even though no formal announcement had ever been made. Some rules were established indirectly and by euphemism. For example, the teacher, rather than stating that cheating was not permitted, proclaimed that some pupils ‘had big eyes’. Duke (1978) analysed discipline matters raised at staff meetings in an American High School, and found considerable inconsistency in the establishment and enforcement of rules by different teachers.

Kelley (1950) looked at the effect of first impressions of teachers on college students. He distributed to the class, information about their ‘new’ teacher which was identical except that half the group had the phrase ‘a very warm person’ and the other half ‘rather a cold person’ in one sentence. When members of the class were asked to give their first impressions of the teacher, those given the ‘warm’ message consistently rated him higher on characteristics such as sociability, modesty, informality, humour and popularity, even though they had been exposed to precisely the same lesson.

There is not, therefore, a well-documented literature on first encounters based on observation from the beginning of the school year. On the other hand, there is a great deal of information about established classrooms from which one might speculate ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1: Classroom Teaching and Learning
• Part 2: Training New and Experienced Teachers
• Part 3: Curriculum In Action
• Part 4: Educational Policy and Its Implementation
• Part 5: Communicating With Professional and Lay People