Looking in Classrooms

Thomas L. Good, Alyson L. Lavigne

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317238256
• Edition: 11
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Educational Psychology

Looking in Classrooms uses educational, psychological, and social science theories and classroom-based research to teach future classroom teachers about the complexities and demands of classroom instruction. While maintaining the core approach of the first ten editions, the book has been thoroughly revised and updated with new research-based content on teacher evaluation, self-assessment, and decision-making; special emphases on teaching students from diverse ethnic, cultural, class, and gender-identity contexts; and rich suggestions for integrating technology into classroom instruction.

Widely considered to be the most comprehensive and authoritative source available on effective, successful teaching, Looking in Classrooms synthesizes the knowledge base on student motivation, classroom management, teacher expectations, teacher effectiveness, adaptive instruction for individual learners, and informative observational techniques for enhancing teaching. It addresses key topics in classroom instruction in an accessible fashion, promoting easy intepretation and transfer to practice, and articulates the roles of teacher-centered pedagogy, student-centered instruction, and project-based learning in today's classroom.

Guided by durable historical knowledge as well as dynamic, emerging conceptions of teaching, this text is ideal for undergraduate teacher training programs and for masters-level courses for teachers, administrators, and superintendents.

1

Classrooms Are Complex

Introduction

Teaching has more influence on student learning than any other variable that can be used to improve student potential. Good teachers enhance students’ learning and their social development. Obviously teachers cannot eliminate all the factors that impede student growth, including unequal funding of schools, poverty, nutrition, and violence (Biddle, 2014; Valent & Newark, 2016). However, teachers can influence student performance in important ways. Furthermore, and importantly, research-based knowledge can be taught to teachers in ways that improve their students’ achievement in some contexts (Good & Grouws, 1979; Rubie-Davies, 2014). Clearly, some teachers have more impact than do others (Chetty, Friedman, & Rockoff, 2014).

Why do some teachers have more success than do others? This book identifies the actions, beliefs, and knowledge that lead to teaching success. We share rich suggestions about good teaching based on research evidence, and we integrate what we have learned from older, but enduring, research with the latest findings from current research and conceptions of successful teaching.

We provide empirical findings, theoretical concepts, and language to describe teaching concepts and strategies to help you plan, enact instruction, and reflect upon your teaching. To enhance teaching, we discuss, among other topics, how to create and communicate appropriate expectations that support students’ learning, how to manage classrooms and motivate students in ways that increasingly help them to assume more responsibility for their own learning, how to deliver whole-class and small-group instruction, how to design instruction for a diverse range of students, and how to use technology to enrich classroom learning. Thus, we provide much material about how you can teach successfully.

A Plan for This Chapter

This chapter stresses that successful teaching requires more than content knowledge, as important as that is. To teach effectively you need to be a decision maker and combine research-based information on students’ learning and motivation and apply it to your context. First, we discuss the complexity of teaching and illustrate that this complexity makes teaching very difficult. Despite the perception of many citizens that good teaching is easy (Lortie (1975) and Barton and Avery (2016) remind us that adults in their youth spent over 14,000 hours observing teachers), the evidence we review suggests that good teaching is, in fact, very difficult. Our analysis illustrates that some teachers are unaware of much that occurs in their classroom and, hence, often miss opportunities for improving teaching.

Given the speed of classroom events, how can teachers understand and cope with the difficulties they face? We discuss several frameworks that have been used to study teaching. This includes research on teacher actions, their subject-matter knowledge, and so forth. We conclude that the most comprehensive way to conceptualize teaching is as decision making. Unfortunately, sometimes schools adopt reform packages that recommend practices that use a “one size fits all” format that limits teachers’ autonomy and decision making. We discuss how research is often misused and the self-defeating effects of faddism, and we illustrate how research needs to be adjusted to your class.

Classroom Life Is Complex

In a single day, an elementary teacher engages in as many as 1,500 exchanges with students. Teachers in secondary schools may interact with 150 different students a day. Beyond the sheer number of contacts, teachers must interpret and respond to student behavior on the spot. Given these conditions, it is not surprising that most teachers are hard-pressed to keep track of the number and quality of contacts they have with the class and with individual students. This lack of knowledge can have negative effects on teaching. Although it may not be important to remember all contacts, lacking certain information (the ten students who did not get a chance to respond, the student who repeatedly volunteered to answer questions, but did not get called on) can reduce student motivation and opportunities to learn. To deal with the fast-moving pace of classrooms, teaching requires adaptive teachers who are skilled at navigating the multi-faceted and intersecting realities of the ever-evolving nature and growing diversity of classrooms and classroom life. For example, even in schools enrolling students who share the same general socio-economic status, students in a given grade will vary considerably. In some classrooms students will come to school well-rested and fed, while others are tired and hungry. Some classes will inevitably have more eager students, while other classrooms have more reluctant students. And of course, in many classrooms, teachers teach students who come from all socioeconomic levels, including students of various ethnicities and those who are emerging bilinguals or multilinguals. In some classrooms, many students are often absent, yet in others, most students are consistently there. Given this wide diversity, there are no magic formulas for successful teaching. Although research does not yield definitive answers, it is, nevertheless, valuable.

Early Lessons from Research

Teaching was once viewed as easy because almost anyone had the knowledge to teach, especially in elementary schools (Larabee, 1990). Further, social scientists, citizens, and policy makers did not believe that teachers made much impact on student learning (Good, Biddle, & Brophy, 1975). However, over time, research has shown that teaching is demanding. Now, we know that teaching is both difficult and important. And we also know that teachers vary markedly in their impact on learners and that some teachers are more successful than others (Brophy & Good, 1986; Chetty, Friedman, & Rockoff, 2014; Rubie-Davies, 2014; Scheerens, 2016). Unfortunately knowledge of the difficulty of teaching is still not fully understood by citizens and policy makers, and even by some who enter teacher education programs. After all, we have all seen many teachers as we grew up and, hence, teaching can appear deceptively simple. Good teaching requires knowledge, awareness of what has happened, and ongoing efforts and reflection to improve.

Classrooms Are Crowded and Fast-Moving

We know that individual teachers have important effects on student achievement because of research and especially because of observational research. Philip Jackson (1968) was one of the pioneering researchers who moved research from arm-chair analysis by investing time in studying and reporting on what really happened in classrooms. Michael Dunkin and Bruce Biddle, in their important book entitled The Study of Teaching (1974), noted that previous research on teaching was largely unproductive because researchers rarely observed teaching. Thus, Jackson’s work was pivotal in generating interest in other scholars to observe in classrooms. Jackson illustrated the rich dynamics occurring in classrooms. In time, more researchers progressively became interested in observing classrooms in the 1960s and subsequently.

Jackson’s classic book entitled Life in Classrooms (1968) provided striking evidence that teaching is difficult, and he identified the complexities that both teachers and students must deal with, including crowds, power, and constant public comparison. Unlike home situations where students need to vie with only siblings for parent attention, students entering school have to learn to live in crowds and to cope with the knowledge that what they do or do not do is highly public. His scholarship indicated that teachers must make decisions, but this is hard in part because classrooms are fast-moving environments that require teachers to make quick decisions with incomplete information.

Teachers’ Expectations for Students

Researchers soon identified other factors that make classroom teaching difficult. One research area involved the differential communication patterns due to teachers’ expectations for students believed to be high or low ability (Brophy & Good, 1970; Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968). Teachers hold judgments about the ability level of their students, and their beliefs about student ability can influence how they interpret students’ actions (for one student, looking at the floor after being asked a question by the teacher might be seen as embarrassment, but the same behavior from a student believed to be more capable might be seen as thinking). These different teacher inferences lead to different consequences for students. In one case, the student is given up on by the teacher; in the other case, the teacher continues to demand student attention and response.

As we will see in Chapter 4, what teachers believe often interacts with what they do, which, in turn, impacts student achievement. Although researchers can separate research on teacher-thinking from research on teacher actions in the classroom, teachers do not have this luxury. They must think, act, and react in an ongoing series of complicated events. Classroom teaching also involves dealing with ambiguous student actions. For example, while presenting information, Ms. Hill notices that only a few students take notes. Does this mean that most students understand the ideas presented or that they are bored? Mr. Randall notices that two students are quietly talking to one another while another student addresses the class. Should he redirect the attention of the two students and risk losing the attention of students who are fully involved, or should he let the lesson continue, assuming that the two students will quickly end their private conversation?

Students Vary in General Academic Preparation, Cultural, and Language Differences

Teaching is made even more difficult because students have various needs and motivation. Some are willing to state what they know, whereas others are more interested in looking good (defined in various ways by different students) than in truly learning. Accordingly, it is often difficult to determine what students do and do not know simply on the basis of their classroom verbal responses.

Most students want to feel competent and be respected. Hence, sometimes an action that might appear straightforward at first glance may be more complicated. For example, when Sam is called on to answer a question that his best friend Tommy could not answer, it potentially places Sam in an awkward position. Does he not answer to maintain solidarity with his friend, or does he answer the question in ways that please his teacher? Teachers not only deal with students’ academic needs, but they must also react to their anxiety and aspirations.

Over time, research suggested that students differ not only in how much knowledge they have about a subject, but also in how they view adults and how they cope with ambiguity, success, and failure (McCaslin, Vriesema, & Burggraf, 2016; Rohrkemper & Corno, 1988). Teachers do more than manage learners. They also deal with students as social beings, and students learn more than subject matter in school (McCaslin & Good, 1992, 1996). Teachers have to recognize students’ differences in learning and socialization and adjust accordingly.

Diverse Students

Classroom complexity is likely even greater in classrooms where teachers interact with students from various cultures and who have different ethnic ...