Educational Psychology
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Educational PsychologySecond Edition
Kelvin Seifert and Rosemary Sutton
Copyright © 2009 Kelvin Seifert
For any questions about this text, please email: [email protected]
Editor-In-Chief: Kelvin Seifert
Associate Editor: Marisa Drexel
Editorial Assistant: Jackie Sharman
Proofreader: Rachel Pugliese
The Global Text Project is funded by the Jacobs Foundation, Zurich, Switzerland
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Educational Psychology 2 A Global Text
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About the authors and reviewerAuthor, Kelvin Seifert
Kelvin Seifert is professor of educational psychology at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. He
earned a BA from Swarthmore College in 1967 and a PhD from the University of Michigan in 1973, in a combined
program from the School of Education and the Department of Psychology. His research interests include the
personal identity development of teachers, the impact of peers in 0pre-service teacher education, and the
development of effective strategies of blended learning. He is the author of four university textbooks (with
Houghton Mifflin, in traditional print format) about educational psychology, child and adolescent development,
and lifespan human development. He is also the editor of the online Canadian Journal of Educational
Administration and Policy. Recent publications include “Student cohorts: Support groups or intellectual
communities?” (Teachers College Record) and “Learning about peers: A missed opportunity for educational
psychology” (The Clearinghouse). His professional service includes serving as chair of the Department of
Educational Administration, Foundations, and Psychology at the University of Manitoba, and serving as president
of the American Educational Research Association Special Interest Group on Teaching Educational Psychology.
During his career of 35 years, he has taught introductory educational psychology over 75 times.
Author, Rosemary Sutton
After four years of teaching high school mathematics in New Zealand, Dr Rosemary Sutton attended graduate
school and earned her MS in Educational Psychology from the University of Illinois and her PhD from Pennsylvania
State University in Human Development. She joined the Cleveland State University faculty in Cleveland, Ohio in
1983 and since that time has taught pre-service and in service undergraduates and graduate students educational
psychology and educational technology. She has received several University awards for her teaching and has
conducted numerous workshops for teachers in North East Ohio.
Dr Sutton has published a variety research articles on teacher development as well as equity issues in
mathematics, technology, and assessment. Her recent research interests have focused in two areas: teaching
educational psychology and teachers' emotions. Recent publications can be found in Social Psychology of
Education, Educational Psychology Review, Journal of Teacher Education, and an edited volume, Emotions and
Education.
Since 2004, Dr Sutton has been working as an Administrator, first as the Director of Assessment for the
University. This position involved coordinating the student learning assessment for all graduate, undergraduate,
and student support programs. In August 2007, Dr Sutton was appointed Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies
and is now responsible for overseeing offices and functions from academic and student service areas in order to
create a campus culture that coordinates student services with the academic mission of the University.
Reviewer, Sandra Deemer
Sandra Deemer is professor of educational foundations at Millersville University, in Millersville, PA. She is also
the editor of the online journal called “Teaching Educational Psychology,” and has contributed to the development
of the Special Interest Group on Teaching Educational Psychology (TEP SIG) sponsored by the American
Educational Research Association. She teaches courses in educational psychology and educational research; her
research interests focus on how motivational theory can be used to create learning-focused classrooms.
Educational Psychology 3 A Global Text
Table of ContentsPreface……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………7
1. The changing teaching profession and you…………………………………………………………………..8The joys of teaching………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 8
Are there also challenges to teaching?………………………………………………………………………………………………10Teaching is different from in the past……………………………………………………………………………………………… 10
How educational psychology can help………………………………………………………………………………………………16
2. The learning process ……………………………………………………………………………………………….20Teachers’ perspectives on learning…………………………………………………………………………………………………. 20Major theories and models of learning……………………………………………………………………………………………. 23
3. Student development………………………………………………………………………………………………. 41Why development matters…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 42
Physical development during the school years…………………………………………………………………………………. 43Cognitive development: the theory of Jean Piaget……………………………………………………………………………. 46
Social development: relationships,personal motives, and morality …………………………………………………….50Moral development: forming a sense of rights and responsibilities……………………………………………………. 56
Understanding “the typical student” versus understanding students………………………………………………….. 61
4. Student diversity……………………………………………………………………………………………………..66Individual styles of learning and thinking……………………………………………………………………………………….. 67Multiple intelligences……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 68
Gifted and talented students………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 70Gender differences in the classroom……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 72
Differences in cultural expectations and styles…………………………………………………………………………………. 75Accommodating diversity in practice……………………………………………………………………………………………… 80
5. Students with special educational needs…………………………………………………………………… 85Three people on the margins…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..85
Growing support for people with disabilities: legislation and its effects……………………………………………… 86Responsibilities of teachers for students with disabilities…………………………………………………………………..87
Categories of disabilities—and their ambiguities………………………………………………………………………………. 91Learning disabilities……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….91
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder…………………………………………………………………………………………… 94Intellectual disabilities………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 96
Behavioral disorders………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………99Physical disabilities and sensory impairments…………………………………………………………………………………101
The value of including students with special needs…………………………………………………………………………. 104
6. Student motivation……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 109Motives as behavior………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………110Motives as goals…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 113
Motives as interests……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 116Motives related to attributions……………………………………………………………………………………………………….118
Motivation as self-efficacy……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 120Motivation as self-determination………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 125
Expectancy x value: effects on students’ motivation…………………………………………………………………………130TARGET: a model for integrating ideas about motivation…………………………………………………………………131
7. Classroom management and the learning environment……………………………………………. 138Why classroom management matters……………………………………………………………………………………………. 139
4
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Preventing management problems by focusing students on learning…………………………………………………140Responding to student misbehavior……………………………………………………………………………………………….150
Keeping management issues in perspective……………………………………………………………………………………. 155
8. The nature of classroom communication………………………………………………………………….159Communication in classrooms vs communication elsewhere…………………………………………………………… 159Effective verbal communication……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 162
Effective nonverbal communication……………………………………………………………………………………………….163Structures of participation: effects on communication……………………………………………………………………..166
Communication styles in the classroom………………………………………………………………………………………….169Using classroom talk to stimulate students’ thinking………………………………………………………………………. 172
The bottom line: messages sent, messages reconstructed………………………………………………………………… 176
9. Facilitating complex thinking………………………………………………………………………………….183Forms of thinking associated with classroom learning……………………………………………………………………..184Critical thinking………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 185
Creative thinking …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………186Problem-solving………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 187
Broad instructional strategies that stimulate complex thinking………………………………………………………… 191Teacher-directed instruction………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 193
Student-centered models of learning……………………………………………………………………………………………. 200Inquiry learning………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 201
Cooperative learning…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 202Examples of cooperative and collaborative learning……………………………………………………………………….. 203
Instructional strategies: an abundance of choices……………………………………………………………………………205
10. Planning instruction……………………………………………………………………………………………. 210Selecting general learning goals……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 210Formulating learning objectives……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 215
Students as a source of instructional goals…………………………………………………………………………………….. 223Enhancing student learning through a variety of resources………………………………………………………………226
Creating bridges among curriculum goals and students’ prior experiences……………………………………….. 229Planning for instruction as well as for learning………………………………………………………………………………. 235
11. Teacher-made assessment strategies…………………………………………………………………….. 240Basic concepts…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 241
Assessment for learning: an overview of the process………………………………………………………………………..241Selecting appropriate assessment techniques I: high quality assessments…………………………………………243
Reliability ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 245Absence of bias ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 246
Selecting appropriate assessment techniques II: types of teacher-made assessments…………………………246Selected response items………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..249
Constructed response items ………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 254Portfolios…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….264
Assessment that enhances motivation and student confidence………………………………………………………… 267Teachers’ purposes and beliefs …………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 267
Choosing assessments ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 268Providing feedback …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 268
Self and peer assessment ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..269Adjusting instruction based on assessment…………………………………………………………………………………….270
Communication with parents and guardians…………………………………………………………………………………..270
Educational Psychology 5 A Global Text
Action research: studying yourself and your students……………………………………………………………………… 271
Grading and reporting ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 272
12. Standardized and other formal assessments……………………………………………………………277Basic concepts…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 277High-stakes testing by states…………………………………………………………………………………………………………283
International testing……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 291International comparisons ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 292
Understanding test results…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 292Issues with standardized tests ………………………………………………………………………………………………………298
Appendix A: Preparing for licensure………………………………………………………………………….. 304Appendix B: Deciding for yourself about the research…………………………………………………..319Appendix C: The reflective practitioner………………………………………………………………………. 351
Types of resources for professional development and learning………………………………………………………… 352
Reading and understanding professional articles ……………………………………………………………………………355Action research: hearing from teachers about improving practice……………………………………………………. 366
The challenges of action research………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 371Benefiting from all kinds of research…………………………………………………………………………………………….. 373
6
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PrefaceDr. Kelvin Seifert: Why I wanted this book to be part of the Global Textbook Project
I have taught educational psychology to future
teachers for nearly 35 years, during which I used one or
another of the major commercial textbooks written for
this subject. In general I found all of the books well-
written and thorough. But I also found problems:
(1) Though they differed in details, the major
textbooks were surprisingly similar in overall coverage.
This fact, coupled with their large overall size, made it
hard to tailor any of the books to the particular interests
or needs of individuals or groups of students. Too often,
buying a textbook was like having to buy a huge Sunday
newspaper when all you really want is to read one of its
sections. In a similar way, commercial educational
psychology textbooks usually told you more than you
ever needed or wanted to know about the subject. As a
format, the textbook did not allow for individualization.
(2) Educational psychology textbooks were always
expensive, and over the years their costs rose faster than inflation, especially in the United States, where most of the
books have been produced. Currently every major text about educational psychology sells for more than USD 100.
At best this cost is a stress on students' budgets. At worst it puts educational psychology textbooks beyond the reach
of many. The problem of the cost is even more obvious when put in worldwide perspective; in some countries the
cost of one textbook is roughly equivalent to the average annual income of its citizens.
(3) In the competition to sell copies of educational psychology textbooks, authors and publishers have gradually
added features that raise the cost of books without evidence of adding educational value. Educational psychology
publishers in particular have increased the number of illustrations and photographs, switched to full-color editions,
increased the complexity and number of study guides and ancillary publications, and created proprietary websites
usable fully only by adopters of their particular books. These features have sometimes been attractive. My teaching
experience suggests, however, that they also distract students from learning key ideas about educational psychology
about as often as they help students to learn.
By publishing this textbook online with the Global Textbook Project, I have taken a step toward resolving these
problems. Instructors and students can access as much or as little of the textbook as they really need and find
useful. The cost of their doing is minimal. Pedagogical features are available, but are kept to a minimum and
rendered in formats that can be accessed freely and easily by anyone connected to the Internet. In the future,
revisions to the book will be relatively easy and prompt to make. These, I believe, are desirable outcomes for
everyone! –Kelvin Seifert
Educational Psychology 7 A Global Text
Dr. Kelvin Seifert
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1. The changing teaching profession and you
A teacher named Ashley reflects: She looked around the classroom, enjoying a blessed moment of
quiet after the students left at the end of the day. “Ashley, the teacher, that’s me”, she said proudly to
the empty room. “But why am I doing this?” she asked herself quietly—and realized she wasn’t
always sure of the answer. But then she remembered one reason: she was teaching for Nadia, who
sat at the table to the left, always smiled so well and always (well, usually) tried hard. And another
reason: she was teaching for Lincoln, tired old Lincoln, who needed her help more than he realized.
She remembered twenty other reasons—twenty other students. And one last reason: she was also
teaching for herself, challenging herself to see if she really could keep up with twenty-two young
people at once, and really accomplish something worthwhile with them. She was teaching so she
could keep growing as a person, keep connecting with others, keep learning new ideas. That’s why
she was teaching.
The joys of teaching
Why be a teacher? The short answer is easy:
• to witness the diversity of growth in young people, and their joy in learning
• to encourage lifelong learning—both for yourself and for others
• to experience the challenge of devising and doing interesting, exciting activities for the young
There is, of course, more than this to be said about the value of teaching. Consider, for instance, the “young
people” referred to above. In one class they could be six years old; in another they could be sixteen, or even older.
They could be rich, poor, or somewhere in between. They could come from any ethnic background. Their first
language could be English, or something else. There are all sorts of possibilities. But whoever the particular
students are, they will have potential as human beings: talents and personal qualities—possibly not yet realized—
that can contribute to society, whether as leaders, experts, or supporters of others. A teacher's job—in fact a
teacher's privilege—is to help particular “young people” to realize their potential.
Another teacher reflects: Nathan paused for a deep breath before speaking to me. “It’s not like I
expected it to be,” he said. “I’ve got five kids who speak English as a second language. I didn’t expect
that. I’ve got two, maybe three, with reading disabilities, and one of them has a part-time aide. I’ve
had to learn more about using computers than I ever expected—they’re a lot of curriculum materials
online now, and the computers help the kids that need more practice or who finish activities early.
I’m doing more screening and testing of kids than I expected, and it all takes time away from
teaching.
Educational Psychology 8 A Global Text
1. The changing teaching profession and you
“But it’s not all surprises. I expected to be able to ‘light a fire’ under kids about learning to read. And
that has actually happened, at least sometimes with some children!”
As a teacher, you will be able to do this by laying groundwork for lifelong learning. You will not teach any one
student forever, of course, but you will often work with them long enough to convey a crucial message: that there is
much in life to learn—more in fact than any one teacher or school can provide in a lifetime. The knowledge may be
about science, math, or learning to read; the skills may be sports, music, or art—anything. Whatever you teach, its
immensity can be a source of curiosity, wonder and excitement. It can be a reason to be optimistic about life in
general and about your students in particular. Learning, when properly understood, is never-ending, even though it
often focuses on short-term, immediate concerns. As a teacher, you will have an advantage not shared by every
member of society, namely the excuse not only to teach valuable knowledge and skills, but to point students beyond
what they will be able to learn from you. As an old limerick put it (before the days of gender-balanced language),
“The world is full of such a plenty of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.”
Jennifer Fuller, a third teacher reflects: “OK”, suddenly getting businesslike in her tone. “Here’s my
typical day teaching tenth grade: I get up at 6:30, have a quick breakfast, get to school by 7:45 if the
traffic’s not bad. Then I check my email—usually there’s a little stuff from the principal or some other
administrator, maybe one or two from parents concerned because their child is doing poorly in one
of my classes, maybe one or two from students—“I’m going to be sick today, Ms Fuller!”—that sort of
thing. Now it’s 8:15 and I have two hours before my first class—this term I teach only biology, and I
only teach periods 2, 3, and 5. Maybe I have marking to do before class, or maybe I have to get a lab
demonstration ready. Or maybe we all have to troupe down to the library for a staff meeting
(groan…). Whatever I don’t finish in the morning, I have to finish after school. But that’s also when I
meet with the Ecology Club (I’m the faculty advisor), so I might have to finish stuff in the evening. I
try not to do it then, but a lot of times I have to. But I always quit by 9:00—that’s always when I
watch TV for an hour, or just “vegetate ” with a book.”
Whatever you teach, you will be able to feel the satisfaction of designing and orchestrating complex activities
that communicate new ideas and skills effectively. The challenge is attractive to many teachers, because that is
where they exercise judgment and “artistry” the most freely and frequently. Your students will depend on your skill
at planning and managing, though sometimes without realizing how much they do so. Teachers will need you to
know how to explain ideas clearly, to present new materials in a sensible sequence and at an appropriate pace, to
point out connections between their new learning and their prior experiences. Although these skills really take a
lifetime to master, they can be practiced successfully even by beginning teachers, and they do improve steadily with
continued teaching over time. Right from the start, though, skill at design and communication of curriculum is one
of the major “perks” of the job.
The very complexity of classroom life virtually guarantees that teaching never needs to get boring. Something
new and exciting is bound to occur just when you least expect it. A student shows an insight that you never
expected to see—or fails to show one that you were sure he had. An activity goes better than expected—or worse, or
merely differently. You understand for the first time why a particular student behaves as she does, and begin
thinking of how to respond to the student's behavior more helpfully in the future. After teaching a particular
9
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learning objective several times, you realize that you understand it differently than the first time you taught it. And
so on. The job never stays the same; it evolves continually. As long as you keep teaching, you will have a job with
novelty.
Are there also challenges to teaching?
Here, too, the simple answer is “yes”. Every joy of teaching has a possible frustration related to it. You may wish
to make a positive difference in students' lives, but you may also have trouble reaching individuals. A student seems
not to learn much, or to be unmotivated, or unfriendly, or whatever. And some teaching problems can be subtle:
when you call attention to the wonderful immensity of an area of knowledge, you might accidentally discourage a
student by implying that the student can never learn “enough”. The complexity of designing and implementing
instruction can sometimes seem overwhelming, instead of satisfying. Unexpected events in your classroom can
become chaos rather than an attractive novelty. To paraphrase a popular self-help book, sometimes “bad things
happen to good teachers” (Kushner, 1983). But as in the rest of life, the “bad things” of teaching do not negate the
value of the good. If anything, the undesired events make the good, desired ones even more satisfying, and render
the work of teaching all the more valuable. As you will see throughout this book, there are resources for maximizing
the good, the valuable, and the satisfying. You can bring these resources to your work, along with your growing
professional knowledge and a healthy dose of common sense. In this sense you will not need to “go it alone” in
learning to teach well. You will, however, be personally responsible for becoming and remaining the best teacher
that you can possibly be; the only person who can make that happen will be you. Many of the resources for making
this happen are described in this book in the chapters ahead.
Teaching is different from in the past
In the past decade or two teaching has changed significantly, so much in fact that schools may not be what some
of us remember from our own childhood. Changes have affected both the opportunities and the challenges of
teaching, as well as the attitudes, knowledge, and skills needed to prepare for a teaching career. The changes have
influenced much of the content of this book.
To see what we mean, look briefly at four new trends in education, at how they have changed what teachers do,
and at how you will therefore need to prepare to teach:
• increased diversity: there are more differences among students than there used to be. Diversity has
made teaching more fulfilling as a career, but also made more challenging in certain respects.
• * increased instructional technology: classrooms, schools, and students use computers more often
today than in the past for research, writing, communicating, and keeping records. Technology has created
new ways for students to learn (for example, this textbook would not be possible without Internet
technology!). It has also altered how teachers can teach most effectively, and even raised issues about what
constitutes “true” teaching and learning.
• greater accountability in education: both the public and educators themselves pay more attention
than in the past to how to assess (or provide evidence for) learning and good quality teaching. The attention
has increased the importance of education to the public (a good thing) and improved education for some
students. But it has also created new constraints on what teachers teach and what students learn.
Educational Psychology 10 A Global Text
1. The changing teaching profession and you
• increased professionalism of teachers: Now more than ever, teachers are able to assess the quality of
their own work as well as that of colleagues, and to take steps to improve it when necessary.
Professionalism improves teaching, but by creating higher standards of practice it also creates greater
worries about whether particular teachers and schools are “good enough”.
How do these changes show up in the daily life of classrooms? The answer depends partly on where you teach;
circumstances differ among schools, cities, and even whole societies. Some clues about the effects of the trends on
classroom life can be found, however, by considering one particular case—the changes happening in North America.
New trend #1: diversity in students
Students have, of course, always been diverse. Whether in the past or in the present day, students learn at
unique paces, show unique personalities, and learn in their own ways. In recent decades, though, the forms and
extent of diversity have increased. Now more than ever, teachers are likely to serve students from diverse language
backgrounds, to serve more individuals with special educational needs, and to teach students either younger and
older than in the past.
Language diversity
Take the case of language diversity. In the United States, about 40 million people, or 14 per cent of the
population are Hispanic. About 20 per cent of these speak primarily Spanish, and approximately another 50 per
cent speak only limited English (United States Census Bureau, 2005). The educators responsible for the children in
this group need to accommodate instruction to these students somehow. Part of the solution, of course, is to
arrange specialized second-language teachers and classes. But adjustment must also happen in “regular”
classrooms of various grade levels and subjects. Classroom teachers must learn to communicate with students
whose English language background is limited, at the same time that the students themselves are learning to use
English more fluently (Pitt, 2005). Since relatively few teachers are Hispanic or speak fluent Spanish, the
adjustments can sometimes be a challenge. Teachers must plan lessons and tasks that students actually understand.
At the same time teachers must also keep track of the major learning goals of the curriculum. In Chapter 4
(“Student Diversity”) and Chapter 10 (“Planning Instruction”), some strategies for doing so are described. As you
gain experience teaching, you will no doubt find additional strategies and resources (Gebhard, 2006), especially if
second-language learners become an important part of your classes.
Diversity of special educational needs
Another factor making classroom increasingly diverse has been the inclusion of students with disabilities into
classrooms with non-disabled peers. In the United States the trend began in the 1970s, but accelerated with the
passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1975, and again when the Act was amended in 2004
(United States Government Printing Office, 2005). In Canada similar legislation was passed in individual provinces
during the same general time period. The laws guarantee free, appropriate education for children with disabilities
of any kind—whether the impairment is physical, cognitive, emotional, or behavioral. The laws also recognize that
such students need special supports in order to learn or function effectively in a classroom with non-disabled peers,
so they provide for special services (for example, teaching assistants) and procedures for making individualized
educational plans for students with disabilities.
11
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As a result of these changes, most American and Canadian teachers are likely to have at least a few students with
special educational needs, even if they are not trained as special education teachers or have had no prior personal
experience with people with disabilities. Classroom teachers are also likely to work as part of a professional team
focused on helping these students to learn as well as possible and to participate in the life of the school. The trend
toward inclusion is definitely new compared to circumstances just a generation or two ago. It raises new challenges
about planning instruction (such as how is a teacher to find time to plan for individuals?), and philosophical
questions about the very nature of education (such as what in the curriculum is truly important to learn?). These
questions will come up again in Chapter 5, where we discuss teaching students with special educational needs.
Lifelong learning
The diversity of modern classrooms is not limited to language or disabilities. Another recent change has been
the broadening simply of the age range of individuals who count as “students”. In many nations of the world, half or
most of all three- and four-year-olds attend some form of educational program, either part-time preschool or full-
time child care (National Institute for Early Education Research, 2006). In North America some public school
divisions have moved toward including nursery or preschool programs as a newer “grade level” preceding
kindergarten. Others have expanded the hours of kindergarten (itself considered a “new” program early in the 20th
century) to span a full-day program.
The obvious differences in maturity between preschoolers and older children lead most teachers of the very
young to use flexible, open-ended plans and teaching strategies, and to develop more personal or family-like
relationships with their young “students” than typical with older students (Bredekamp & Copple, 1997). Just as
important, though, are the educational and philosophical issues that early childhood education has brought to
public attention. Some educational critics ask whether preschool and day care programs risk becoming
inappropriate substitutes for families. Other educators suggest, in contrast, that teachers of older students can learn
from the flexibility and open-ended approach common in early childhood education. For teachers of any grade
level, it is a debate that cannot be avoided completely or permanently. In this book, it reappears in Chapter 3, where
I discuss students’ development—their major long-term, changes in skills, knowledge, and attitudes.
The other end of the age spectrum has also expanded. Many individuals take courses well into adulthood even if
they do not attend formal university or college. Adult education, as it is sometimes called, often takes place in
workplaces, but it often also happens in public high schools or at local community colleges or universities. Some
adult students may be completing high school credentials that they missed earlier in their lives, but often the
students have other purposes that are even more focused, such as learning a trade-related skill. The teachers of
adult students have to adjust their instructional strategies and relationships with students so as to challenge and
respect their special strengths and constraints as adults (Bash, 2005). The students’ maturity often means that they
have had life experiences that enhance and motivate their learning. But it may also mean that they have significant
personal responsibilities—such as parenting or a full-time job—which compete for study time, and that make them
impatient with teaching that is irrelevant to their personal goals or needs. These advantages and constraints also
occur to a lesser extent among “regular” high school students. Even secondary school teachers must ask, how they
can make sure that instruction does not waste students’ time, and how they can make it truly efficient, effective, and
valuable. Elsewhere in this book (especially in Chapters 9 through 11, about assessment and instruction), we discuss
these questions from a number of perspectives.
Educational Psychology 12 A Global Text
1. The changing teaching profession and you
New trend #2: using technology to support learning
For most teachers, “technology” means using computers and the Internet as resources for teaching and learning.
These tools have greatly increased the amount and range of information available to students, even if their benefits
have sometimes been exaggerated in media reports (Cuban, 2001). With the Internet, it is now relatively easy to
access up-to-date information on practically any subject imaginable, often with pictures, video clips, and audio to
accompany them. It would seem not only that the Internet and its associated technologies have the potential to
transform traditional school-based learning, but also that they have in fact begun to do so.
For a variety of reasons, however, technology has not always been integrated into teachers’ practices very
thoroughly (Haertel & Means, 2003). One reason is practical: in many societies and regions, classrooms contain
only one or two computers at most, and many schools have at best only limited access to the Internet. Waiting for a
turn on the computer or arranging to visit a computer lab or school library limits how much students use the
Internet, no matter how valuable the Internet may be. In such cases, furthermore, computers tend to function in
relatively traditional ways that do not take full advantage of the Internet: as a word processor (a “fancy typewriter”),
for example, or as a reference book similar to an encyclopedia.
Even so, single-computer classrooms create new possibilities and challenges for teachers. A single computer can
be used, for example, to present upcoming assignments or supplementary material to students, either one at a time
or small groups. In functioning in this way, the computer gives students more flexibility about when to finish old
tasks or to begin new ones. A single computer can also enrich the learning of individual students with special
interests or motivation. And it can provide additional review to students who need extra help. These changes are
not dramatic, but they lead to important revisions in teachers’ roles: they move teachers away from simply
delivering information to students, and toward facilitating students’ own constructions of knowledge.
A shift from “full-frontal teaching” to “guide on the side” becomes easier as the amount and use of computer and
Internet technologies increases. If a school (or better yet, a classroom) has numerous computers with full Internet
access, then students’ can in principle direct their own learning more independently than if computers are scarce
commodities. With ample technology available, teachers can focus much more on helping individuals in developing
and carrying out learning plans, as well as on assisting individuals with special learning problems. In these ways a
strong shift to computers and the Internet can change a teacher’s role significantly, and make the teacher more
effective.
But technology also brings some challenges, or even creates problems. It costs money to equip classrooms and
schools fully: often that money is scarce, and may therefore mean depriving students of other valuable resources,
like additional staff or additional books and supplies. Other challenges are less tangible. In using the Internet, for
example, students need help in sorting out trustworthy information or websites from the “fluff”, websites that are
unreliable or even damaging (Seiter, 2005). Providing this help can sometimes be challenging even for experienced
teachers. And some educational activities simply do not lend themselves to computerized learning—sports, for
example, driver education, or choral practice. As a new teacher, therefore, you will need not only to assess what
technologies are possible in your particular classroom, but also what will actually be assisted by new technologies.
Then be prepared for your decisions to affect how you teach—the ways you work with students.
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New trend #3: accountability in education
In recent years, the public and its leaders have increasingly expected teachers and students to be accountable for
their work, meaning that schools and teachers are held responsible for implementing particular curricula and goals,
and that students are held responsible for learning particular knowledge. The trend toward accountability has
increased the legal requirements for becoming and (sometimes) remaining certified as a teacher. In the United
States in particular, preservice teachers need more subject-area and education-related courses than in the past.
They must also spend more time practice teaching than in the past, and they must pass one or more examinations
of knowledge of subject matter and teaching strategies. The specifics of these requirements vary among regions, but
the general trend—toward more numerous and “higher” levels of requirements—has occurred broadly throughout
the English-speaking world. The changes obviously affect individuals’ experiences of becoming a teacher—
especially the speed and cost of doing so.
Public accountability has led to increased use of high-stakes testing, which are tests taken by all students in a
district or region that have important consequences for students' further education (Fuhrman & Elmore, 2004).
High-stakes tests may influence grades that students receive in courses or determine whether students graduate or
continue to the next level of schooling. The tests are often a mixture of essay and structured-response questions
(such as multiple-choice items), and raise important issues about what teachers should teach, as well as how (and
whether) teachers should help students to pass the examinations. It also raises issues about whether high-stakes
testing is fair to all students and consistent with other ideals of public education, such as giving students the best
possible start in life instead of disqualifying them from educational opportunities. Furthermore, since the results of
high-stakes tests are sometimes also used to evaluate the performance of teachers, schools, or school districts,
insuring students’ success on them becomes an obvious concern for teachers—one that affects instructional
decisions on a daily basis. For this reason we discuss the purpose, nature, and effects of high-stakes tests in detail in
Chapter 12.
New trend #4: increased professionalism of teachers
Whatever your reactions to the first three trends, it is important to realize that they have contributed to a fourth
trend, an increase in professionalism of teachers. By most definitions, an occupation (like medicine or law—or in
this case teaching) is a profession if its members take personal responsibility for the quality of their work, hold each
other accountable for its quality, and recognize and require special training in order to practice it.
By this definition, teaching has definitely become more professional than in the past (Cochran-Smith & Fries,
2005). Increased expectations of achievement by students mean that teachers have increased responsibility not
only for their students’ academic success, but also for their own development as teachers. Becoming a new teacher
now requires more specialized work than in the past, as reflected in the increased requirements for certification and
licensing in many societies and regions. The increased requirements are partly a response to the complexities
created by the increasing diversity of students and increasing use of technology in classrooms.
Greater professionalism has also been encouraged by initiatives from educators themselves to study and
improve their own practice. One way to do so, for example, is through action research (sometimes also called
teacher research), a form of investigation carried out by teachers about their own students or their own teaching.
Educational Psychology 14 A Global Text
1. The changing teaching profession and you
Action research studies lead to concrete decisions that improve teaching and learning in particular educational
contexts (Mertler, 2006; Stringer, 2004). The studies can take many forms, but here are a few brief examples:
• How precisely do individual children learn to read? In an action research study, the teacher might observe
and track one child’s reading progress carefully for an extended time. From the observations she can get
clues about how to help not only that particular child to read better, but also other children in her class or
even in colleagues’ classes.
• Does it really matter if a high school social studies teacher uses more, rather than fewer, open-ended
questions? As an action of research study, the teacher might videotape his own lessons, and systematically
compare students’ responses to his open-ended questions compared to their responses to more closed
questions (the ones with more fixed answers). The analysis might suggest when and how much it is indeed
desirable to use open-ended questions.
• Can an art teacher actually entice students to take more creative risks with their drawings? As an action
research study, the teacher might examine the students’ drawings carefully for signs of visual novelty and
innovation, and then see if the signs increase if she encourages novelty and innovation explicitly.
Table 1: Examples of action research project
Steps in action research
Project
Example 1: students’ use of
the Internet
Example 2: a teacher’s
helpfulness to ESL students
Purpose of the research (as
expressed by the teacher doing the
research)
“In doing assignments, how
successful are my students at finding
high-quality, relevant information?”
“Am I responding to my ESL
students as fully and helpfully as to
my English-speaking students, and
why or why not?”
Who is doing the study? Classroom teacher (elementary
level) and school computer specialist
teacher
Classroom teacher (senior high
level)—studying self;
Possibly collaborating with other
teachers or with ESL specialist.
How information is gathered and
recorded
Assessing students’ assignments;
Observing students while they
search the Internet.
Interviewing students about their
search experiences
Videotaping of self interacting
during class discussions;
Journal diary by teacher of
experiences with ESL vs other
students;
Interviews with teacher’s ESL
students
How information is analyzed Look for obstacles and “search
tips” expressed by several students;
Look for differences in type and
amount of interactions with ESL vs.
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Look for common strengths and
problems with research cited on
assignments.
other students;
Look for patterns in the
differences;
Try altering the patterns of
interaction and observe the result.
How information is reported and
communicated
Write a brief report of results for
fellow staff;
Give a brief oral report to fellow
staff about results
Write a summary of the results in
teacher’s journal diary;
Share results with fellow staff;
Share results with teacher’s
students.
Two other, more complete examples of action research are summarized in Table 1. Although these examples, like
many action research studies, resemble “especially good teaching practice”, they are planned more thoughtfully
than usual, carried out and recorded more systematically, and shared with fellow teachers more thoroughly and
openly. As such, they yield special benefits to teachers as professionals, though they also take special time and
effort. For now, the important point is that use of action research simultaneously reflects the increasing
professionalism of teachers, but at the same time creates higher standards for teachers when they teach.
How educational psychology can help
All things considered, then, times have changed for teachers. But teaching remains an attractive, satisfying, and
worthwhile profession. The recent trends mean simply that you need to prepare for teaching differently than you
might have in the past, and perhaps differently than your own school teachers did a generation ago. Fortunately,
there are ways to do this. Many current programs in teacher education provide a balance of experiences in tune
with current and emerging needs of teachers. They offer more time for practice teaching in schools, for example,
and teacher education instructors often make deliberate efforts to connect the concepts and ideas of education and
psychology to current best practices of education. These and other features of contemporary teacher education will
make it easier for you to become the kind of teacher that you not only want to be, but also will need to be.
This book—about educational psychology and its relation to teaching and learning—can be one of your supports
as you get started. To make it as useful as possible, we have written about educational psychology while keeping in
mind the current state of teaching, as well as your needs as a unique future teacher. The text draws heavily on
concepts, research and fundamental theories from educational psychology. But these are selected and framed
around the problems, challenges, and satisfactions faced by teachers daily, and especially as faced by teachers new
to the profession. We have selected and emphasized topics in proportion to two factors: (1) their importance as
reported by teachers and other educational experts, and (2) the ability of educational psychology to comment on
particular problems, challenges, and satisfactions helpfully.
Educational Psychology 16 A Global Text
1. The changing teaching profession and you
There is a lot to learn about teaching, and much of it comes from educational psychology. As a career, teaching
has distinctive features now that it did not have a generation ago. The new features make it more exciting in some
ways, as well as more challenging than in the past. The changes require learning teaching skills that were less
important in earlier times. But the new skills are quite learnable. Educational psychology, and this text, will get you
started at that task.
Chapter summary
Teaching in the twenty-first century offers a number of satisfactions—witnessing and assisting the growth of
young people, lifelong learning, the challenge and excitement of designing effective instruction. Four trends have
affected the way that these satisfactions are experienced by classroom teachers: (1) increased diversity of students,
(2) the spread of instructional technology in schools and classrooms, (3) increased expectations for accountability
in education, and (4) the development of increased professionalism among teachers. Each trend presents new
opportunities to students and teachers, but also raises new issues for teachers. Educational psychology, and this
textbook, can help teachers to make constructive use of the new trends as well as deal with the dilemmas that
accompany them. It offers information, advice, and useful perspectives specifically in three areas of teaching: (1)
students as learners, (2) instruction and assessment, and (3) the psychological and social awareness of teachers.
On the Internet
about licensing examinations for teachers, including the PRAXIS II test that is prominent in the United States (see
pp. xxx). As you will see, specific requirements vary somewhat by state and region.
abbreviation for the “United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.” It has extensive
information and news about all forms of diversity in education, viewed from an international perspective. The
challenges of teaching diverse classrooms, it seems, are not restricted to the United States, though as the new items
on the website show, the challenges take different forms in different countries.
for teachers from a North American (USA and Canada) perspective. They are both useful for planning instruction.
The first one—maintained by a group of educators and calling itself EdChange—focuses on culturally related forms
of diversity, and the second one—by the Council for Exceptional Children—focuses on children with special
educational needs.
Key termsAccountability in education
Action researchAssessment
DiversityHigh-stakes testing
Instructional technology
Lifelong learningProfessionalism
Teacher research
References
Bash, L. (Ed.). (2005). Best practices in adult learning. Boston: Anker Publications.
Bredekamp, S. & Copple, C. (1997). Developmentally appropriate practice, Revised edition. Washington,
D.C.: National Association for the Education of Young Children.
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Cochran-Smith, M. (2003). Assessing assessment in teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 54(3),
187-191.
Cochran-Smith, M. & Fries, K. (2005). Research teacher education in changing times: Politics and
paradigms. In M. Cochran-Smith & K. Zeichner (Eds.), Studying teacher education: The report of the
AERA Panel on Research and Teacher Education, 69-110.
Cuban, L. (2001). Oversold and underused: Computers in the classroom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Educational Testing Service. (2004). Study guide for Principles of Learning and Teaching, 2nd edition.
Princeton, NJ: Author.
Fuhrman, S. & Elmore, R. (2004). Redesigning accountability systems for education. New York: Teachers
College Press.
Gebhard, L. (2006). Teaching English as a second or foreign language: A teacher self-development and
methodology guide, 2nd edition. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Glassford, L. (2005). Triumph of politics over pedagogy? The case of the Ontario Teacher Qualifying Test.
Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy, Issue #45. Online at
Haertel, G. & Means, B. (2003). Evaluating educational technology: Effective research designs for
improving learning. New York: Teachers College Press.
Harris, D. & Herrington, C. (2006). Accountability, standards, and the growing achievement gap: Lessons
from the past half-century. American Journal of Education, 112(2), 163-208.
Harvard Educational Review. (2005). Interview: United States Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.
Harvard Educational Review, 75(4), 364-382.
Kushner, H. (1983). When bad things happen to good people. New York: Schocken Books.
Lubienski, C. (2005). Public schools in marketized environments: Shifting incentives and unintended
consequences of competition-based educational reforms. American Journal of Education, 111(4), 464-
486.
Mertler, C. (2006). Action research: Teachers as researchers in the classroom. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
National Institute for Early Education Research. (2006). Percent of population age 3 and 4 who are enrolled
in school: Census 2000. Retrieved on March 21, 2006 from
Neil, M. (2003). The dangers of testing. Educational Leadership, 60(5), 43-46.
Pitt, K. (2005). Debates in ESL teaching and learning: Culture, communities, and classrooms. London, UK:
Routledge.
Rudalevige, A. (2005, August). Reform or séance? Seeking the “spirit” of the No Child Left Behind. Teachers
College Record. Online at
Educational Psychology 18 A Global Text
1. The changing teaching profession and you
Seiter, E. (2005). The INTERNET playground: Children’s access, entertainment, and miseducation. New
York: Peter Lang.
Stringer, E. (2004). Action research in education. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
Sutton, R. (2004). Teaching under high-stakes testing: Dilemmas and decisions of a teacher educator.
Journal of Teacher Education, 55(5), 463-475.
United States Census Bureau. (2005). The Hispanic population in the United States: 2004. Retrieved on
March 21, 2006 from
United States Government Printing Office. (2002). No Child Left Behind Act: A desktop reference.
Washington, D.C.: Author.
Federal Registry. (2005, June 21). Assistance To States for the Education of Children with Disabilities.
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Journal of Educational Administration and Policy, Issue #35. Online at
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2. The learning process When my son Michael was old enough to talk, and being an eager but naïve dad, I decided to bring
Michael to my educational psychology class to demonstrate to my students “how children learn”. In
one task I poured water from a tall drinking glass to a wide glass pie plate, which according to
Michael changed the “amount” of water—there was less now than it was in the pie plate. I told him
that, on the contrary, the amount of water had stayed the same whether it was in the glass or the pie
plate. He looked at me a bit strangely, but complied with my point of view—agreeing at first that,
yes, the amount had stayed the same. But by the end of the class session he had reverted to his
original position: there was less water, he said, when it was poured into the pie plate compared to
being poured into the drinking glass. So much for demonstrating “learning”!
(Kelvin Seifert)
Learning is generally defined as relatively permanent changes in behavior, skills, knowledge, or attitudes
resulting from identifiable psychological or social experiences. A key feature is permanence: changes do not count
as learning if they are temporary. You do not “learn” a phone number if you forget it the minute after you dial the
number; you do not “learn” to eat vegetables if you only do it when forced. The change has to last. Notice, though,
that learning can be physical, social, or emotional as well as cognitive. You do not “learn” to sneeze simply by
catching cold, but you do learn many skills and behaviors that are physically based, such as riding a bicycle or
throwing a ball. You can also learn to like (or dislike) a person, even though this change may not happen
deliberately.
Each year after that first visit to my students, while Michael was still a preschooler, I returned with
him to my ed-psych class to do the same “learning demonstrations”. And each year Michael came
along happily, but would again fail the task about the drinking glass and the pie plate. He would
comply briefly if I “suggested” that the amount of water stayed the same no matter which way it was
poured, but in the end he would still assert that the amount had changed. He was not learning this
bit of conventional knowledge, in spite of my repeated efforts.
But the year he turned six, things changed. When I told him it was time to visit my ed-psych class
again, he readily agreed and asked: “Are you going to ask me about the water in the drinking glass
and pie plate again?” I said yes, I was indeed planning to do that task again. “That’s good”, he
responded, “because I know that the amount stays the same even after you pour it. But do you want
me to fake it this time? For your students’ sake?”
Teachers’ perspectives on learning
For teachers, learning usually refers to things that happen in schools or classrooms, even though every teacher
can of course describe examples of learning that happen outside of these places. Even Michael, at age 6, had begun
realizing that what counted as “learning” in his dad’s educator-type mind was something that happened in a
Educational Psychology 20 A Global Text
2. The learning process
classroom, under the supervision of a teacher (me). For me, as for many educators, the term has a more specific
meaning than for many people less involved in schools. In particular, teachers’ perspectives on learning often
emphasize three ideas, and sometimes even take them for granted: (1) curriculum content and academic
achievement, (2) sequencing and readiness, and (3) the importance of transferring learning to new or future
situations.
Viewing learning as dependent on curriculum
When teachers speak of learning, they tend to emphasize whatever is taught in schools deliberately, including
both the official curriculum and the various behaviors and routines that make classrooms run smoothly. In practice,
defining learning in this way often means that teachers equate learning with the major forms of academic
achievement—especially language and mathematics—and to a lesser extent musical skill, physical coordination, or
social sensitivity (Gardner, 1999, 2006). The imbalance occurs not because the goals of public education make
teachers responsible for certain content and activities (like books and reading) and the skills which these activities
require (like answering teachers’ questions and writing essays). It does happen not (thankfully!) because teachers
are biased, insensitive, or unaware that students often learn a lot outside of school.
A side effect of thinking of learning as related only to curriculum or academics is that classroom social
interactions and behaviors become issues for teachers—become things that they need to manage. In particular,
having dozens of students in one room makes it more likely that I, as a teacher, think of “learning” as something
that either takes concentration (to avoid being distracted by others) or that benefits from collaboration (to take
advantage of their presence). In the small space of a classroom, no other viewpoint about social interaction makes
sense. Yet in the wider world outside of school, learning often does happen incidentally, “accidentally” and without
conscious interference or input from others: I “learn” what a friend’s personality is like, for example, without either
of us deliberately trying to make this happen. As teachers, we sometimes see incidental learning in classrooms as
well, and often welcome it; but our responsibility for curriculum goals more often focuses our efforts on what
students can learn through conscious, deliberate effort. In a classroom, unlike in many other human settings, it is
always necessary to ask whether classmates are helping or hindering individual students’ learning.
Focusing learning on changes in classrooms has several other effects. One, for example, is that it can tempt
teachers to think that what is taught is equivalent to what is learned—even though most teachers know that doing
so is a mistake, and that teaching and learning can be quite different. If I assign a reading to my students about the
Russian Revolution, it would be nice to assume not only that they have read the same words, but also learned the
same content. But that assumption is not usually the reality. Some students may have read and learned all of what I
assigned; others may have read everything but misunderstood the material or remembered only some of it; and still
others, unfortunately, may have neither read nor learned much of anything. Chances are that my students would
confirm this picture, if asked confidentially. There are ways, of course, to deal helpfully with such diversity of
outcomes; for suggestions, see especially Chapter 10 “Planning instruction” and Chapter 11 “Teacher-made
assessment strategies”. But whatever instructional strategies I adopt, they cannot include assuming that what I
teach is the same as what students understand or retain of what I teach.
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Viewing learning as dependent on sequencing and readiness
The distinction between teaching and learning creates a secondary issue for teachers, that of educational
readiness. Traditionally the concept referred to students’ preparedness to cope with or profit from the activities
and expectations of school. A kindergarten child was “ready” to start school, for example, if he or she was in good
health, showed moderately good social skills, could take care of personal physical needs (like eating lunch or going
to the bathroom unsupervised), could use a pencil to make simple drawings, and so on. Table 3 shows a similar set
of criteria for determining whether a child is “ready” to learn to read (Copple & Bredekamp, 2006). At older ages
(such as in high school or university), the term readiness is often replaced by a more specific term, prerequisites. To
take a course in physics, for example, a student must first have certain prerequisite experiences, such as studying
advanced algebra or calculus. To begin work as a public school teacher, a person must first engage in practice
teaching for a period of time (not to mention also studying educational psychology!).
Table 2: Reading readiness in students vs in teachers
Signs of readiness in the child or student Signs of readiness to teach reading
• productive (speaking) vocabulary of 5,000-
8,000 words
• child understands and uses complete sentences
• child’s questions tend to be relevant to the task
at hand
• child’s correctly using most common
grammatical constructions
• child can match some letters to some sounds
• child can string a few letters together to make a
few simple words
• child can tell and retell stories, poems, and
songs
• teacher answers children’s questions when
possible
• teacher encourages child to find out more
through other means in addition to asking teacher
• teacher asks questions designed to elaborate or
expand child’s thinking
• teacher highlights letters and sounds in the
classroom
• teacher provides lots of paper and marking
tools
• teacher assists child with initial writing of
letters
• teacher encourages children to enact stories,
poems, and songs
Source: Copple & Bredekamp, 2006.
Note that this traditional meaning, of readiness as preparedness, focuses attention on students’ adjustment to
school and away from the reverse: the possibility that schools and teachers also have a responsibility for adjusting
to students. But the latter idea is in fact a legitimate, second meaning for readiness: If 5-year-old children
normally need to play a lot and keep active, then it is fair to say that their kindergarten teacher needs to be “ready”
for this behavior by planning for a program that allows a lot of play and physical activity. If she cannot or will not
Educational Psychology 22 A Global Text
2. The learning process
do so (whatever the reason may be), then in a very real sense this failure is not the children’s responsibility. Among
older students, the second, teacher-oriented meaning of readiness makes sense as well. If a teacher has a student
with a disability (for example, the student is visually impaired), then the teacher has to adjust her approach in
appropriate ways—not simply expect a visually impaired child to “sink or swim”. As you might expect, this sense of
readiness is very important for special education, so I discuss it further in Chapter 5 “Students with special
educational needs”. But the issue of readiness also figures importantly whenever students are diverse (which is
most of the time), so it also comes up in Chapter 4 “Student diversity”.
Viewing transfer as a crucial outcome of learning
Still another result of focusing the concept of learning on classrooms is that it raises issues of usefulness or
transfer, which is the ability to use knowledge or skill in situations beyond the ones in which they are acquired.
Learning to read and learning to solve arithmetic problems, for example, are major goals of the elementary school
curriculum because those skills are meant to be used not only inside the classroom, but outside as well. We teachers
intend, that is, for reading and arithmetic skills to “transfer”, even though we also do our best to make the skills
enjoyable while they are still being learned. In the world inhabited by teachers, even more than in other worlds,
making learning fun is certainly a good thing to do, but making learning useful as well as fun is even better.
Combining enjoyment and usefulness, in fact, is a “gold standard” of teaching: we generally seek it for students,
even though we may not succeed at providing it all of the time.
Major theories and models of learning
Several ideas and priorities, then, affect how we teachers think about learning, including the curriculum, the
difference between teaching and learning, sequencing, readiness, and transfer. The ideas form a “screen” through
which to understand and evaluate whatever psychology has to offer education. As it turns out, many theories,
concepts, and ideas from educational psychology do make it through the “screen” of education, meaning that they
are consistent with the professional priorities of teachers and helpful in solving important problems of classroom
teaching. In the case of issues about classroom learning, for example, educational psychologists have developed a
number of theories and concepts that are relevant to classrooms, in that they describe at least some of what usually
happens there and offer guidance for assisting learning. It is helpful to group the theories according to whether they
focus on changes in behavior or in thinking. The distinction is rough and inexact, but a good place to begin. For
starters, therefore, consider two perspectives about learning, called behaviorism (learning as changes in overt
behavior) and constructivism, (learning as changes in thinking). The second category can be further divided into
psychological constructivism (changes in thinking resulting from individual experiences), and social
constructivism, (changes in thinking due to assistance from others). The rest of this chapter describes key ideas
from each of these viewpoints. As I hope you will see, each describes some aspects of learning not just in general,
but as it happens in classrooms in particular. So each perspective suggests things that you might do in your
classroom to make students’ learning more productive.
Behaviorism: changes in what students do
Behaviorism is a perspective on learning that focuses on changes in individuals’ observable behaviors—
changes in what people say or do. At some point we all use this perspective, whether we call it “behaviorism” or
something else. The first time that I drove a car, for example, I was concerned primarily with whether I could
actually do the driving, not with whether I could describe or explain how to drive. For another example: when I
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reached the point in life where I began cooking meals for myself, I was more focused on whether I could actually
produce edible food in a kitchen than with whether I could explain my recipes and cooking procedures to others.
And still another example—one often relevant to new teachers: when I began my first year of teaching, I was more
focused on doing the job of teaching—on day-to-day survival—than on pausing to reflect on what I was doing.
Note that in all of these examples, focusing attention on behavior instead of on “thoughts” may have been
desirable at that moment, but not necessarily desirable indefinitely or all of the time. Even as a beginner, there are
times when it is more important to be able to describe how to drive or to cook than to actually do these things. And
there definitely are many times when reflecting on and thinking about teaching can improve teaching itself. (As a
teacher-friend once said to me: “Don’t just do something; stand there!”) But neither is focusing on behavior which
is not necessarily less desirable than focusing on students’ “inner” changes, such as gains in their knowledge or
their personal attitudes. If you are teaching, you will need to attend to all forms of learning in students, whether
inner or outward.
In classrooms, behaviorism is most useful for identifying relationships between specific actions by a student and
the immediate precursors and consequences of the actions. It is less useful for understanding changes in students’
thinking; for this purpose we need a more cognitive (or thinking-oriented) theory, like the ones described later in
this chapter. This fact is not really a criticism of behaviorism as a perspective, but just a clarification of its particular
strength or source of usefulness, which is to highlight observable relationships among actions, precursors and
consequences. Behaviorists use particular terms (or “lingo”, some might say) for these relationships. They also rely
primarily on two basic images or models of behavioral learning, called respondent (or “classical”) conditioning and
operant conditioning. The names are derived partly from the major learning mechanisms highlighted by each type,
which I describe next.
Respondent conditioning: learning new associations with prior behaviors
As originally conceived, respondent conditioning (sometimes also called classical conditioning) begins with
the involuntary responses to particular sights, sounds, or other sensations (Lavond, 2003). When I receive an
injection from a nurse or doctor, for example, I cringe, tighten my muscles, and even perspire a bit. Whenever a
contented, happy baby looks at me, on the other hand, I invariably smile in response. I cannot help myself in either
case; both of the responses are automatic. In humans as well as other animals, there is a repertoire or variety of
such specific, involuntary behaviors. At the sound of a sudden loud noise, for example, most of us show a “startle”
response—we drop what we are doing (sometimes literally!), our heart rate shoots up temporarily, and we look for
the source of the sound. Cats, dogs and many other animals (even fish in an aquarium) show similar or equivalent
responses.
Involuntary stimuli and responses were first studied systematically early in the twentieth-century by the Russian
scientist Ivan Pavlov (1927). Pavlov’s most well-known work did not involve humans, but dogs, and specifically
their involuntary tendency to salivate when eating. He attached a small tube to the side of dogs’ mouths that
allowed him to measure how much the dogs salivated when fed (Exhibit 1 shows a photograph of one of Pavlov's
dogs). But he soon noticed a “problem” with the procedure: as the dogs gained experience with the experiment, they
often salivated before they began eating. In fact the most experienced dogs sometimes began salivating before they
even saw any food, simply when Pavlov himself entered the room! The sight of the experimenter, which had
Educational Psychology 24 A Global Text
2. The learning process
originally been a neutral experience for the dogs, became associated with the dogs’ original salivation response.
Eventually, in fact, the dogs would salivate at the sight of Pavlov even if he did not feed them.
This change in the dogs’ involuntary response, and especially its growing independence from the food as
stimulus, eventually became the focus of Pavlov’s research. Psychologists named the process respondent
conditioning because it describes changes in responses to stimuli (though some have also called it “classical
conditioning” because it was historically the first form of behavioral learning to be studied systematically).
Respondent conditioning has several elements, each with a special name. To understand these, look at and imagine
a dog (perhaps even mine, named Ginger) prior to any conditioning. At the beginning Ginger salivates (an
unconditioned response (UR)) only when she actually tastes her dinner (an unconditioned stimulus
(US)). As time goes by, however, a neutral stimulus—such as the sound of opening a bag containing fresh dog food
—is continually paired with the eating/tasting experience. Eventually the neutral stimulus becomes able to elicit
salivation even before any dog food is offered to Ginger, or even if the bag of food is empty! At this point the neutral
stimulus is called a conditioned stimulus (UCS) and the original response is renamed as a conditioned
response (CR). Now, after conditioning, Ginger salivates merely at the sound of opening any large bag,
regardless of its contents. (I might add that Ginger also engages in other conditioned responses, such as looking
hopeful and following me around the house at dinner time.)
Before Conditioning:
(UCS) Food→ Salivation (UR)
(UCS) Bell→ No response (UR)
During Conditioning:
Bell + Food→ Salivation
After Conditioning:
(CS) Bell only→ Salivation (CR)
Exhibit 1: Classical conditioning of Ginger, the dog. Before conditioning, Ginger salivates only to the taste of
food and the bell has no effect. After conditioning, she salivates even when the bell is presented by itself.
Respondent Conditioning and Students
“OK,” you may be thinking, “Respondent conditioning may happen to animals. But does anything like it happen
in classrooms?” It might seem like not much would, since teaching is usually about influencing students’ conscious
words and thoughts, and not their involuntary behaviors. But remember that schooling is not just about
encouraging thinking and talking. Teachers, like parents and the public, also seek positive changes in students’
attitudes and feelings—attitudes like a love for learning, for example, and feelings like self-confidence. It turns out
that respondent conditioning describes these kinds of changes relatively well.
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Consider, for example, a child who responds happily whenever meeting a new person who is warm and friendly,
but who also responds cautiously or at least neutrally in any new situation. Suppose further that the “new, friendly
person” in question is you, his teacher. Initially the child’s response to you is like an unconditioned stimulus: you
smile (the unconditioned stimulus) and in response he perks up, breathes easier, and smiles (the unconditioned
response). This exchange is not the whole story, however, but merely the setting for an important bit of behavior
change: suppose you smile at him while standing in your classroom, a “new situation” and therefore one to which
he normally responds cautiously. Now respondent learning can occur. The initially neutral stimulus (your
classroom) becomes associated repeatedly with the original unconditioned stimulus (your smile) and the child’s
unconditioned response (his smile). Eventually, if all goes well, the classroom becomes a conditioned stimulus in its
own right: it can elicit the child’s smiles and other “happy behaviors” even without your immediate presence or
stimulus. Exhibit 2 diagrams the situation graphically. When the change in behavior happens, you might say that
the child has “learned” to like being in your classroom. Truly a pleasing outcome for both of you!
Before Conditioning:
(UCS) Seeing Teacher Smile → Student Smiles (UR)
(UCS) Seeing Classroom → No response (UR)
During Conditioning:
Seeing Teaching Smile + Seeing Classroom → Student Smiles
After Conditioning:
(CS) Seeing Classroom → Student Smiles (CR)
Exhibit 2: Respondent conditioning of student to classroom. Before conditioning, the student smiles only when
he sees the teacher smile, and the sight of the classroom has no effect. After conditioning, the student smiles at the
sight of the classroom even without the teacher present.
But less positive or desirable examples of respondent conditioning also can happen. Consider a modification of
the example that I just gave. Suppose the child that I just mentioned did not have the good fortune of being placed
in your classroom. Instead he found himself with a less likeable teacher, whom we could simply call Mr Horrible.
Instead of smiling a lot and eliciting the child’s unconditioned “happy response”, Mr Horrible often frowns and
scowls at the child. In this case, therefore, the child’s initial unconditioned response is negative: whenever Mr
Horrible directs a frown or scowl at the child, the child automatically cringes a little, his eyes widen in fear, and his
heart beat races. If the child sees Mr Horrible doing most of his frowning and scowling in the classroom, eventually
the classroom itself will acquire power as a negative conditioned stimulus. Eventually, that is, the child will not
need Mr Horrible to be present in order to feel apprehensive; simply being in the classroom will be enough. Exhibit
3 diagrams this unfortunate situation. Obviously it is an outcome to be avoided, and in fact does not usually happen
in such an extreme way. But hopefully it makes the point: any stimulus that is initially neutral, but that gets
Educational Psychology 26 A Global Text
2. The learning process
associated with an unconditioned stimulus and response, can eventually acquire the ability to elicit the response by
itself. Anything—whether it is desirable or not.
Before Conditioning:
( UCS) Mr Horrible Frowns → Student Cringes (UCR)
Mr Horrible’s Classroom → No response
During Conditioning:
Mr Horrible Frowns + Sight of Classroom → Student Cringes
After Conditioning:
( CS) Seeing Classroom → Student Cringes ( CR)
Exhibit 3: Respondent conditioning of student to classroom. Before conditioning, the student cringes only
when he sees Mr Horrible smile, and the sight of the classroom has no effect. After conditioning, the student
cringes at the sight of the classroom even without Mr Horrible present.
The changes described in these two examples are important because they can affect students’ attitude about
school, and therefore also their motivation to learn. In the positive case, the child becomes more inclined to please
the teacher and to attend to what he or she has to offer; in the negative case, the opposite occurs. Since the changes
in attitude happen “inside” the child, they are best thought of as one way that a child can acquire i intrinsic
motivation, meaning a desire or tendency to direct attention and energy in a particular way that originates from
the child himself or herself. Intrinsic motivation is sometimes contrasted to extrinsic motivation, a tendency to
direct attention and energy that originates from outside of the child. As we will see, classical conditioning can
influence students’ intrinsic motivation in directions that are either positive or negative. As you might suspect,
there are other ways to influence motivation as well. Many of these are described in Chapter 6 (“Student
motivation”). First, though, let us look at three other features of classical conditioning that complicate the picture a
bit, but also render conditioning a bit more accurate, an appropriate description of students’ learning.
Three key ideas about respondent conditioning
Extinction: This term does not refer to the fate of dinosaurs, but to the disappearance of a link between the
conditioned stimulus and the conditioned response. Imagine a third variation on the conditioning “story” described
above. Suppose, as I suggested above, that the child begins by associating your happy behaviors—your smiles—to
his being present in the classroom, so that the classroom itself becomes enough to elicit his own smiles. But now
suppose there is a sad turn of events: you become sick and must therefore leave the classroom in the middle of the
school year. A substitute is called in who is not Mr Horrible, but simply someone who is not very expressive,
someone we can call Ms Neutral. At first the child continues to feel good (that is, to smile) whenever present in the
classroom. But because the link between the classroom and your particular smile is no longer repeated or
associated, the child’s response gradually extinguishes, or fades until it has disappeared entirely. In a sense the
child’s initial learning is “unlearned”.
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Extinction can also happen with negative examples of classical conditioning. If Mr Horrible leaves mid-year
(perhaps because no one could stand working with him any longer!), then the child’s negative responses (cringing,
eyes widening, heart beat racing, and so on) will also extinguish eventually. Note, though, that whether the
conditioned stimulus is positive or negative, extinction does not happen suddenly or immediately, but unfolds over
time. This fact can sometimes obscure the process if you are a busy teacher attending to many students.
Generalization: When Pavlov studied conditioning in dogs, he noticed that the original conditioned stimulus
was not the only neutral stimulus that elicited the conditioned response. If he paired a particular bell with the sight
of food, for example, so that the bell became a conditioned stimulus for salivation, then it turned out that other
bells, perhaps with a different pitch or type or sound, also acquired some ability to trigger salivation—though not as
much as the original bell. Psychologists call this process generalization, or the tendency for similar stimuli to elicit a
conditioned response. The child being conditioned to your smile, for example, might learn to associate your smile
not only with being present in your classroom, but also to being present in other, similar classrooms. His
conditioned smiles may be strongest where he learned them initially (that is, in your own room), but nonetheless
visible to a significant extent in other teachers’ classrooms. To the extent that this happens, he has generalized his
learning. It is of course good news; it means that we can say that the child is beginning to “learn to like school” in
general, and not just your particular room. Unfortunately, the opposite can also happen: if a child learns negative
associations from Mr Horrible, the child’s fear, caution, and stress might generalize to other classrooms as well. The
lesson for teachers is therefore clear: we have a responsibility, wherever possible, to make classrooms pleasant
places to be.
Discrimination: Generalization among similar stimuli can be reduced if only one of the similar stimuli is
associated consistently with the unconditioned response, while the others are not. When this happens,
psychologists say that discrimination learning has occurred, meaning that the individual has learned to
distinguish or respond differently to one stimulus than to another. From an educational point of view,
discrimination learning can be either desirable or not, depending on the particulars of the situation. Imagine again
(for the fourth time!) the child who learns to associate your classroom with your smiles, so that he eventually
produces smiles of his own whenever present in your room. But now imagine yet another variation on his story: the
child is old enough to attend middle school, and therefore has several teachers across the day. You—with your
smiles—are one, but so are Mr Horrible and Ms Neutral. At first the child may generalize his classically conditioned
smiles to the other teachers’ classrooms. But the other teachers do not smile like you do, and this fact causes the
child’s smiling to extinguish somewhat in their rooms. Meanwhile, you keep smiling in your room. Eventually the
child is smiling only in your room and not in the other rooms. When this happens, we say that discrimination has
occurred, meaning that the conditioned associations happen only to a single version of the unconditioned stimuli—
in this case, only to your smiles, and not to the (rather rare) occurrences of smiles in the other classrooms. Judging
by his behavior, the child is making a distinction between your room and others.
In one sense the discrimination in this story is unfortunate in that it prevents the child from acquiring a liking
for school that is generalized. But notice that an opposing, more desirable process is happening at the same time:
the child is also prevented from acquiring a generalized dislike of school. The fear-producing stimuli from Mr
Horrible, in particular, become discriminated from the happiness-producing smiles from you, so the child’s learns
to confine his fearful responses to that particular classroom, and does not generalize them to other “innocent”
Educational Psychology 28 A Global Text
2. The learning process
classrooms, including your own. This is still not an ideal situation for the student, but maybe it is more desirable
than disliking school altogether.
Operant conditioning: new behaviors because of new consequences
Instead of focusing on associations between stimuli and responses, operant conditioning focuses on how the
effects of consequences on behaviors. The operant model of learning begins with the idea that certain consequences
tend to make certain behaviors happen more frequently. If I compliment a student for a good comment during a
discussion, there is more of a chance that I will hear comments from the student more often in the future (and
hopefully they will also be good ones!). If a student tells a joke to several classmates and they laugh at it, then the
student is more likely to tell additional jokes in the future and so on.
As with respondent conditioning, the original research about this model of learning was not done with people,
but with animals. One of the pioneers in the field was a Harvard professor named B. F. Skinner, who published
numerous books and articles about the details of the process and who pointed out many parallels between operant
conditioning in animals and operant conditioning in humans (1938, 1948, 1988). Skinner observed the behavior of
rather tame laboratory rats (not the unpleasant kind that sometimes live in garbage dumps). He or his assistants
would put them in a cage that contained little except a lever and a small tray just big enough to hold a small amount
of food. (Exhibit 4 shows the basic set-up, which is sometimes nicknamed a “Skinner box”.) At first the rat would
sniff and “putter around” the cage at random, but sooner or later it would happen upon the lever and eventually
happen to press it. Presto! The lever released a small pellet of food, which the rat would promptly eat. Gradually the
rat would spend more time near the lever and press the lever more frequently, getting food more frequently.
Eventually it would spend most of its time at the lever and eating its fill of food. The rat had “discovered” that the
consequence of pressing the level was to receive food. Skinner called the changes in the rat’s behavior an example of
operant conditioning, and gave special names to the different parts of the process. He called the food pellets the
reinforcement and the lever-pressing the operant (because it “operated” on the rat’s environment). See below.
Operant → Reinforcement
Press lever → Food pellet
Exhibit 4: Operant conditioning with a laboratory rat
Skinner and other behavioral psychologists experimented with using various reinforcers and operants. They also
experimented with various patterns of reinforcement (or schedules of reinforcement), as well as with various
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cues or signals to the animal about when reinforcement was available. It turned out that all of these factors—the
operant, the reinforcement, the schedule, and the cues—affected how easily and thoroughly operant conditioning
occurred. For example, reinforcement was more effective if it came immediately after the crucial operant behavior,
rather than being delayed, and reinforcements that happened intermittently (only part of the time) caused learning
to take longer, but also caused it to last longer.
Operant conditioning and students’ learning: As with respondent conditioning, it is important to ask
whether operant conditioning also describes learning in human beings, and especially in students in classrooms. On
this point the answer seems to be clearly “yes”. There are countless classroom examples of consequences affecting
students’ behavior in ways that resemble operant conditioning, although the process certainly does not account for
all forms of student learning (Alberto & Troutman, 2005). Consider the following examples. In most of them the
operant behavior tends to become more frequent on repeated occasions:
• A seventh-grade boy makes a silly face (the operant) at the girl sitting next to him. Classmates sitting around
them giggle in response (the reinforcement).
• A kindergarten child raises her hand in response to the teacher’s question about a story (the operant). The
teacher calls on her and she makes her comment (the reinforcement).
• Another kindergarten child blurts out her comment without being called on (the operant). The teacher frowns,
ignores this behavior, but before the teacher calls on a different student, classmates are listening attentively
(the reinforcement) to the student even though he did not raise his hand as he should have.
• A twelfth-grade student—a member of the track team—runs one mile during practice (the operant). He notes
the time it takes him as well as his increase in speed since joining the team (the reinforcement).
• A child who is usually very restless sits for five minutes doing an assignment (the operant). The teaching
assistant compliments him for working hard (the reinforcement).
• A sixth-grader takes home a book from the classroom library to read overnight (the operant). When she
returns the book the next morning, her teacher puts a gold star by her name on a chart posted in the room (the
reinforcement).
Hopefully these examples are enough to make four points about operant conditioning. First, the process is
widespread in classrooms—probably more widespread than respondent conditioning. This fact makes sense, given
the nature of public education: to a large extent, teaching is about making certain consequences for students (like
praise or marks) depend on students’ engaging in certain activities (like reading certain material or doing
assignments). Second, learning by operant conditioning is not confined to any particular grade, subject area, or
style of teaching, but by nature happens in nearly every imaginable classroom. Third, teachers are not the only
persons controlling reinforcements. Sometimes they are controlled by the activity itself (as in the track team
example), or by classmates (as in the “giggling” example). A result of all of the above points is the fourth: that
multiple examples of operant conditioning often happen at the same time. The skill builder for this chapter (The
decline and fall of Jane Gladstone) suggests how this happened to someone completing student teaching.
Educational Psychology 30 A Global Text
2. The learning process
Because operant conditioning happens so widely, its effects on motivation are a bit more complex than the
effects of respondent conditioning. As in respondent conditioning, operant conditioning can encourage intrinsic
motivation to the extent that the reinforcement for an activity can sometimes be the activity itself. When a student
reads a book for the sheer enjoyment of reading, for example, he is reinforced by the reading itself; then we often
say that his reading is “intrinsically motivated”. More often, however, operant conditioning stimulates both
intrinsic and extrinsic motivation at the same time. The combining of both is noticeable in the examples that I
listed above. In each example, it is reasonable to assume that the student felt intrinsically motivated to some partial
extent, even when reward came from outside the student as well. This was because part of what reinforced their
behavior was the behavior itself—whether it was making faces, running a mile, or contributing to a discussion. At
the same time, though, note that each student probably was also extrinsically motivated, meaning that another
part of the reinforcement came from consequences or experiences not inherently part of the activity or behavior
itself. The boy who made a face was reinforced not only by the pleasure of making a face, for example, but also by
the giggles of classmates. The track student was reinforced not only by the pleasure of running itself, but also by
knowledge of his improved times and speeds. Even the usually restless child sitting still for five minutes may have
been reinforced partly by this brief experience of unusually focused activity, even if he was also reinforced by the
teacher aide’s compliment. Note that the extrinsic part of the reinforcement may sometimes be more easily
observed or noticed than the intrinsic part, which by definition may sometimes only be experienced within the
individual and not also displayed outwardly. This latter fact may contribute to an impression that sometimes
occurs, that operant conditioning is really just “bribery in disguise”, that only the external reinforcements operate
on students’ behavior. It is true that external reinforcement may sometimes alter the nature or strength of internal
(or intrinsic) reinforcement, but this is not the same as saying that it destroys or replaces intrinsic reinforcement.
But more about this issue later! (See especially Chapter 6, “Student motivation”.)
Comparing operant conditioning and respondent conditioning: Operant conditioning is made more
complicated, but also more realistic, by many of the same concepts as used in respondent conditioning. In most
cases, however, the additional concepts have slightly different meanings in each model of learning. Since this
circumstance can make the terms confusing, let me explain the differences for three major concepts used in both
models—extinction, generalization, and discrimination. Then I will comment on two additional concepts—
schedules of reinforcement and cues—that are sometimes also used in talking about both forms of conditioning, but
that are important primarily for understanding operant conditioning. The explanations and comments are also
summarized in Table 2.
Table 3: Comparison of terms common to operant and respondent conditioning
Term As defined in respondent conditioning As defined in operant
conditioning
Extinction Disappearance of an association between a
conditioned stimulus and a conditioned
response
Disappearance of the operant
behavior due to lack of
reinforcement
Generalization Ability of stimulus similar to the conditioned
stimulus to elicit the conditioned response
Tendency of behaviors similar to
operant to be conditioned along with
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the original operant
Discrimination Learning not to respond to stimuli that are
similar to the originally conditioned stimulus
Learning not to emit behaviors that
are similar to the originally
conditioned operant
Schedule of Reinforcement The pattern or frequency by which a CS is
paired with the UCS during learning
The pattern or frequency by which a
reinforcement is a consequence of
an operant during learning
Cue Not applicable Stimulus prior to the operant that
signals the availability or not of
reinforcement
In both respondent and operant conditioning, extinction refers to the disappearance of “something”. In
operant conditioning, what disappears is the operant behavior because of a lack of reinforcement. A student who
stops receiving gold stars or compliments for prolific reading of library books, for example, may extinguish (i.e.
decrease or stop) book-reading behavior. In respondent conditioning, on the other hand, what disappears is
association between the conditioned stimulus (the CS) and the conditioned response (CR). If you stop smiling at a
student, then the student may extinguish her association between you and her pleasurable response to your smile,
or between your classroom and the student’s pleasurable response to your smile.
In both forms of conditioning, generalization means that something “extra” gets conditioned if it is somehow
similar to “something”. In operant conditioning, the extra conditioning is to behaviors similar to the original
operant. If getting gold stars results in my reading more library books, then I may generalize this behavior to other
similar activities, such as reading the newspaper, even if the activity is not reinforced directly. In respondent
conditioning, however, the extra conditioning refers to stimuli similar to the original conditioned stimulus. If I am a
student and I respond happily to my teacher’s smiles, then I may find myself responding happily to other people
(like my other teachers) to some extent, even if they do not smile at me. Generalization is a lot like the concept of
transfer that I discussed early in this chapter, in that it is about extending prior learning to new situations or
contexts. From the perspective of operant conditioning, though, what is being extended (or “transferred” or
generalized) is a behavior, not knowledge or skill.
In both forms of conditioning, discrimination means learning not to generalize. In operant conditioning,
though, what is not being overgeneralized is the operant behavior. If I am a student who is being complimented
(reinforced) for contributing to discussions, I must also learn to discriminate when to make verbal contributions
from when not to make verbal contributions—such as when classmates or the teacher are busy with other tasks. In
respondent conditioning, what are not being overgeneralized are the conditioned stimuli that elicit the conditioned
response. If I, as a student, learn to associate the mere sight of a smiling teacher with my own happy, contented
behavior, then I also have to learn not to associate this same happy response with similar, but slightly different
sights, such as a teacher looking annoyed.
Educational Psychology 32 A Global Text
2. The learning process
In both forms of conditioning, the schedule of reinforcement refers to the pattern or frequency by which
“something” is paired with “something else”. In operant conditioning, what is being paired is the pattern by which
reinforcement is linked with the operant. If a teacher praises me for my work, does she do it every time, or only
sometimes? Frequently or only once in awhile? In respondent conditioning, however, the schedule in question is
the pattern by which the conditioned stimulus is paired with the unconditioned stimulus. If I am student with Mr
Horrible as my teacher, does he scowl every time he is in the classroom, or only sometimes? Frequently or rarely?
Behavioral psychologists have studied schedules of reinforcement extensively (for example, Ferster, et al., 1997;
Mazur, 2005), and found a number of interesting effects of different schedules. For teachers, however, the most
important finding may be this: partial or intermittent schedules of reinforcement generally cause learning to take
longer, but also cause extinction of learning to take longer. This dual principle is important for teachers because so
much of the reinforcement we give is partial or intermittent. Typically, if I am teaching, I can compliment a student
a lot of the time, for example, but there will inevitably be occasions when I cannot do so because I am busy
elsewhere in the classroom. For teachers concerned both about motivating students and about minimizing
inappropriate behaviors, this is both good news and bad. The good news is that the benefits of my praising students’
constructive behavior will be more lasting, because they will not extinguish their constructive behaviors
immediately if I fail to support them every single time they happen. The bad news is that students’ negative
behaviors may take longer to extinguish as well, because those too may have developed through partial
reinforcement. A student who clowns around inappropriately in class, for example, may not be “supported” by
classmates’ laughter every time it happens, but only some of the time. Once the inappropriate behavior is learned,
though, it will take somewhat longer to disappear even if everyone—both teacher and classmates—make a concerted
effort to ignore (or extinguish) it.
Finally, behavioral psychologists have studied the effects of cues. In operant conditioning, a cue is a stimulus
that happens just prior to the operant behavior and that signals that performing the behavior may lead to
reinforcement. Its effect is much like discrimination learning in respondent conditioning, except that what is
“discriminated” in this case is not a conditioned behavior that is reflex-like, but a voluntary action, the operant. In
the original conditioning experiments, Skinner’s rats were sometimes cued by the presence or absence of a small
electric light in their cage. Reinforcement was associated with pressing a lever when, and only when, the light was
on. In classrooms, cues are sometimes provided by the teacher or simply by the established routines of the class.
Calling on a student to speak, for example, can be a cue that if the student does say something at that moment, then
he or she may be reinforced with praise or acknowledgment. But if that cue does not occur—if the student is not
called on—speaking may not be rewarded. In more everyday, non-behaviorist terms, the cue allows the student to
learn when it is acceptable to speak, and when it is not.
Constructivism: changes in how students think
Behaviorist models of learning may be helpful in understanding and influencing what students do, but teachers
usually also want to know what students are thinking, and how to enrich what students are thinking. For this goal
of teaching, some of the best help comes from constructivism, which is a perspective on learning focused on how
students actively create (or “construct”) knowledge out of experiences. Constructivist models of learning differ
about how much a learner constructs knowledge independently, compared to how much he or she takes cues from
people who may be more of an expert and who help the learner's efforts (Fosnot, 2005; Rockmore, 2005). For
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convenience these are called psychological constructivism and social constructivism, even though both
versions are in a sense explanations about thinking within individuals.
Psychological constructivism: the independent investigator
The main idea of psychological constructivism is that a person learns by mentally organizing and reorganizing
new information or experiences. The organization happens partly by relating new experiences to prior knowledge
that is already meaningful and well understood. Stated in this general form, individual constructivism is sometimes
associated with a well-known educational philosopher of the early twentieth century, John Dewey (1938-1998).
Although Dewey himself did not use the term constructivism in most of his writing, his point of view amounted to a
type of constructivism, and he discussed in detail its implications for educators. He argued, for example, that if
students indeed learn primarily by building their own knowledge, then teachers should adjust the curriculum to fit
students’ prior knowledge and interests as fully as possible. He also argued that a curriculum could only be justified
if it related as fully as possible to the activities and responsibilities that students will probably have later, after
leaving school. To many educators these days, his ideas may seem merely like good common sense, but they were
indeed innovative and progressive at the beginning of the twentieth century.
A more recent example of psychological constructivism is the cognitive theory of Jean Piaget (Piaget, 2001;
Gruber & Voneche, 1995). Piaget described learning as interplay between two mental activities that he called
assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is the interpretation of new information in terms of pre-existing
concepts, information or ideas. A preschool child who already understands the concept of bird, for example, might
initially label any flying object with this term—even butterflies or mosquitoes. Assimilation is therefore a bit like the
idea of generalization in operant conditioning, or the idea of transfer described at the beginning of this chapter. In
Piaget’s viewpoint, though, what is being transferred to a new setting is not simply a behavior (Skinner's “operant”
in operant conditioning), but a mental representation for an object or experience.
Assimilation operates jointly with accommodation, which is the revision or modification of pre-existing
concepts in terms of new information or experience. The preschooler who initially generalizes the concept of bird to
include any flying object, for example, eventually revises the concept to include only particular kinds of flying
objects, such as robins and sparrows, and not others, like mosquitoes or airplanes. For Piaget, assimilation and
accommodation work together to enrich a child’s thinking and to create what Piaget called cognitive
equilibrium, which is a balance between reliance on prior information and openness to new information. At any
given time, cognitive equilibrium consists of an ever-growing repertoire of mental representations for objects and
experiences. Piaget called each mental representation a schema (all of them together—the plural—was called
schemata). A schema was not merely a concept, but an elaborated mixture of vocabulary, actions, and experience
related to the concept. A child’s schema for bird, for example, includes not only the relevant verbal knowledge (like
knowing how to define the word “bird”), but also the child’s experiences with birds, pictures of birds, and
conversations about birds. As assimilation and accommodation about birds and other flying objects operate
together over time, the child does not just revise and add to his vocabulary (such as acquiring a new word,
“butterfly”), but also adds and remembers relevant new experiences and actions. From these collective revisions
and additions the child gradually constructs whole new schemata about birds, butterflies, and other flying objects.
In more everyday (but also less precise) terms, Piaget might then say that “the child has learned more about birds”.
Educational Psychology 34 A Global Text
2. The learning process
The upper part of Exhibit 5 diagrams the relationships among the Piagetian version of psychological
constructivist learning. Note that the model of learning in the Exhibit is rather “individualistic”, in the sense that it
does not say much about how other people involved with the learner might assist in assimilating or accommodating
information. Parents and teachers, it would seem, are left lingering on the sidelines, with few significant
responsibilities for helping learners to construct knowledge. But the Piagetian picture does nonetheless imply a role
for helpful others: someone, after all, has to tell or model the vocabulary needed to talk about and compare birds
from airplanes and butterflies! Piaget did recognize the importance of helpful others in his writings and theorizing,
calling the process of support or assistance social transmission. But he did not emphasize this aspect of
constructivism. Piaget was more interested in what children and youth could figure out on their own, so to speak,
than in how teachers or parents might be able to help the young to figure out (Salkind, 2004). Partly for this reason,
his theory is often considered less about learning and more about development, which is long-term change in a
person resulting from multiple experiences. For the same reason, educators have often found Piaget’s ideas
especially helpful for thinking about students’ readiness to learn, another one of the lasting educational issues that
I discussed at the beginning of this chapter. I will therefore return to Piaget later to discuss development and its
importance for teaching in more detail.
Learning According to Piaget:
Assimilation + Accommodation → Equilibrium → Schemata
Learning According to Vygotsky:
Novice →Zone of Proximal Development ← Expert
(ZPD)
Exhibit 5: Constructivist models of learning
Social Constructivism: assisted performance
Unlike Piaget’s rather individually oriented version of constructivism, some psychologists and educators have
explicitly focused on the relationships and interactions between a learner and more knowledgeable and experienced
individuals. One early expression of this viewpoint came from the American psychologist Jerome Bruner (1960,
1966, 1996), who became convinced that students could usually learn more than had been traditionally expected as
long as they were given appropriate guidance and resources. He called such support instructional scaffolding—
literally meaning a temporary framework, like one used in constructing a building, that allows a much stronger
structure to be built within it. In a comment that has been quoted widely (and sometimes disputed), he wrote: “We
[constructivist educators] begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually
honest form to any child at any stage of development.” (1960, p. 33). The reason for such a bold assertion was
Bruner’s belief in scaffolding—his belief in the importance of providing guidance in the right way and at the right
time. When scaffolding is provided, students seem more competent and “intelligent,” and they learn more.
Similar ideas were proposed independently by the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1978), whose writing
focused on how a child’s or novice’s thinking is influenced by relationships with others who are more capable,
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knowledgeable, or expert than the learner. Vygotsky proposed that when a child (or any novice) is learning a new
skill or solving a new problem, he or she can perform better if accompanied and helped by an expert than if
performing alone—though still not as well as the expert. Someone who has played very little chess, for example, will
probably compete against an opponent better if helped by an expert chess player than if competing alone against an
opponent. Vygotsky called the difference between solo performance and assisted performance the zone of
proximal development (or ZPD for short)—meaning the place or area (figuratively speaking) of immediate
change. From this perspective learning is like assisted performance (Tharp & Gallimore, 1991). Initially during
learning, knowledge or skill is found mostly “in” the expert helper. If the expert is skilled and motivated to help,
then the expert arranges experiences that allow the novice to practice crucial skills or to construct new knowledge.
In this regard the expert is a bit like the coach of an athlete—offering help and suggesting ways of practicing, but
never doing the actual athletic work himself or herself. Gradually, by providing continued experiences matched to
the novice learner’s emerging competencies, the expert-coach makes it possible for the novice or apprentice to
appropriate (or make his or her own) the skills or knowledge that originally resided only with the expert. These
relationships are diagrammed in the lower part of Exhibit 5.
In both the psychological and social versions of constructivist learning, the novice is not really “taught” so much
as just allowed to learn. The social version of constructivism, however, highlights the responsibility of the expert for
making learning possible. He or she must not only have knowledge and skill, but also know how to arrange
experiences that make it easy and safe for learners to gain knowledge and skill themselves. These requirements
sound, of course, a lot like the requirements for classroom teaching. In addition to knowing what is to be learned,
the expert (i.e. the teacher) also has to break the content into manageable parts, offer the parts in a sensible
sequence, provide for suitable and successful practice, bring the parts back together again at the end, and somehow
relate the entire experience to knowledge and skills already meaningful to the learner. But of course, no one said
that teaching is easy!
Implications of constructivism for teaching
Fortunately there are strategies that teachers can use for giving students this kind of help—in fact they constitute
a major portion of this book, and are a major theme throughout the entire preservice teacher education programs.
For now, let me just point briefly to two of them, saving a complete discussion for later. One strategy that teachers
often find helpful is to organize the content to be learned as systematically as possible, because doing this allows the
teacher to select and devise learning activities that are more effective. One of the most widely used frameworks for
organizing content, for example, is a classification scheme proposed by the educator Benjamin Bloom, published
with the somewhat imposing title of Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Handbook #1: Cognitive Domain
(Bloom, et al., 1956; Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). Bloom’s taxonomy, as it is usually called, describes six kinds
of learning goals that teachers can in principle expect from students, ranging from simple recall of knowledge to
complex evaluation of knowledge. (The levels are defined briefly in Table 2.3 with examples from Goldilocks and
the Three Bears.)
Bloom’s taxonomy makes useful distinctions among possible kinds of knowledge needed by students, and
therefore potentially helps in selecting activities that truly target students’ “zones of proximal development” in the
sense meant by Vygotsky. A student who knows few terms for the species studied in biology unit (a problem at
Bloom’s knowledge and comprehension levels), for example, may initially need support at remembering and
Educational Psychology 36 A Global Text
2. The learning process
defining the terms before he or she can make useful comparisons among species (Bloom’s analysis level).
Pinpointing the most appropriate learning activities to accomplish this objective remains the job of the teacher-
expert (that’s you), but the learning itself has to be accomplished by the student. Put in more social constructivist
terms, the teacher arranges a zone of proximal development that allows the student to compare species
successfully, but the student still has to construct or appropriate the comparisons for him or herself.
Table 4: Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives: cognitive domain
Category or type of
thinking
Definition Example
(with apologies to Goldilocks
and her bear friends!)
Knowledge Remembering or recalling facts,
information, or procedures
List three things Goldilocks did in
the three bears’ house.
Comprehension Understanding facts, interpreting
information
Explain why Goldilocks liked the
little bear’s chair the best.
Application Using concepts in new situations,
solving particular problems
Predict some of the things that
Goldilocks might have used if she
had entered your house.
Analysis Distinguish parts of information, a
concept, or a procedure
Select the part of the story where
Goldilocks seemed most
comfortable.
Synthesis Combining elements or parts into a new
object, idea, or procedure
Tell how the story would have been
different if it had been about three
fishes.
Evaluation Assessing and judging the value or
ideas, objects, or materials in a
particular situation
Decide whether Goldilocks was a
bad girl, and justify your position.
A second strategy may be coupled with the first. As students gain experience as students, they become able to
think about how they themselves learn best, and you (as the teacher) can encourage such self-reflection as one of
your goals for their learning. These changes allow you to transfer some of your responsibilities for arranging
learning to the students themselves. For the biology student mentioned above, for example, you may be able not
only to plan activities that support comparing species, but also to devise ways for the student to think about how he
or she might learn the same information independently. The resulting self-assessment and self-direction of learning
often goes by the name of metacognition—an ability to think about and regulate one’s own thinking (Israel,
2005). Metacognition can sometimes be difficult for students to achieve, but it is an important goal for social
constructivist learning because it gradually frees learners from dependence on expert teachers to guide their
learning. Reflective learners, you might say, become their own expert guides. Like with using Bloom’s taxonomy,
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though, promoting metacognition and self-directed learning is important enough that I will come back to it later in
more detail (especially in Chapter 9, “Facilitating complex thinking”).
By assigning a more visible role to expert helpers—and by implication also to teachers—than does the
psychological constructivism, social constructivism is seemingly more complete as a description of what teachers
usually do in classrooms, and of what they usually hope students will experience there. As we will see in the next
chapter, however, there are more uses to a theory than whether it describes the moment-to-moment interactions
between teacher and students. As I explain there, some theories can be helpful for planning instruction rather than
for doing it. It turns out that this is the case for psychological constructivism, which offers important ideas about
the appropriate sequencing of learning and development. This fact makes the psychological constructivism valuable
in its own way, even though it (and a few other learning theories as well) seem to “omit” mentioning teachers,
parents, or experts in detail. So do not make up your mind about the relative merits of different learning theories
yet!
Chapter summary
Although the term learning has many possible meanings, the term as used by teachers emphasizes its
relationship to curriculum, to teaching, and to the issues of sequencing, readiness, and transfer. Viewed in this
light, the two major psychological perspectives of learning—behaviorist and constructivist—have important ideas to
offer educators. Within the behaviorist perspective are two major theories or models of learning, called respondent
conditioning and operant conditioning. Respondent conditioning describes how previously neutral associations can
acquire the power to elicit significant responses in students. Operant conditioning describes how the consequences
and cues for a behavior can cause the behavior to become more frequent. In either case, from a teacher’s point of
view, the learned behaviors or responses can be either desirable or unwanted.
The other major psychological perspective—constructivism—describes how individuals build or “construct”
knowledge by engaging actively with their experiences. The psychological version of constructivism emphasizes the
learners’ individual responses to experience—their tendency both to assimilate it and to accommodate to it. The
social version of constructivism emphasizes how other, more expert individuals can create opportunities for the
learner to construct new knowledge. Social constructivism suggests that a teacher’s role must include deliberate
instructional planning, such as facilitated by Bloom’s taxonomy of learning objectives, but also that teachers need to
encourage metacognition, which is students’ ability to monitor their own learning.
On the Internet
Analysis, and as such it is an excellent source of examples of how behaviorist learning principles can be applied to a
wide variety of behavior-related difficulties. Any article older than one year is available in full-text, free of charge
from the website. (If it is from the most recent three issues, however, you have to subscribe to the journal.)
Piaget, but about all forms of constructivist research about learning and development, including social
constructivist versions. They have excellent brief publications about this perspective, available free of charge at the
website, as well as information about how to find additional information.
Educational Psychology 38 A Global Text
2. The learning process
Key termsAppropriate (verb)Behaviorism
Bloom’s taxonomyClassical conditioning
ConstructivismPsychological constructivism
John DeweyJean Piaget
AssimilationAccommodation
EquilibriumSchema
Social constructivismJerome Bruner
Instructional scaffoldingLev Vygotsky
Zone of proximal developmentDiscrimination
Extinction
Extrinsic motivationGeneralization
LearningIntrinsic motivation
MetacognitionOperant conditioning
CueOperant
ReinforcementSchedule of reinforcement
Ivan PavlovReadiness
Respondent conditioningConditioned response
Conditioned stimulusUnconditioned response
Unconditioned stimulusB. F. Skinner
Transfer
References
Alberto, P. & Troutman, A. (2005). Applied behavior analysis for teachers, 7th edition. Upper Saddle River,
NJ: Prentice Hall.
Anderson, L. & Krathwohl, D. (Eds.). (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision
of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. New York: Longman.
Bruner, J. (1960). The process of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bruner, J. (1966). Toward a theory of instruction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bruner, J. (1996). The culture of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Copple, C. & Bredekamp, S. (2006). Basics of developmentally appropriate practice. Washington, D.C.:
National Association for the Education of Young Children.
Dewey, J. (1938/1998). How we think. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Ferster, C., Skinner, B. F., Cheney, C., Morse, W., & Dews, D. Schedules of reinforcement. New York: Copley
Publishing Group.
Fosnot, C. (Ed.). (2005). Constructivism: Theory, perspectives, and practice, 2nd edition. New York:
Teachers College Press.
Gardner, H. (1999). Intelligence reframed: Multiple intelligences for the 21st century. New York: Basic
Books.
Gardner, H. (2006). The development and education of the mind. New York: Routledge.
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Goldman, J. (2006). Web-based designed activities for young people in health education: A constructivist
approach. Health Education Journal 65(1), 14-27.
Gruber, H. & Voneche, J. (Eds.). (1995). The essential Piaget. New York: Basic Books.
Israel, S. (Ed.). (2005). Metacognition in literacy learning. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Lavond, D. & Steinmetz, J. (2003). Handbook of classical conditioning. Boston: Kluwer Academic
Publishing.
Mazur, J. (2005). Learning and behavior, 6th edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Onslow, M., Menzies, R., & Packman, A. (2001). An operant intervention for early stuttering. Behavior
modification 25(1), 116-139.
Pavlov, I. (1927). Conditioned reflexes. London, UK: Oxford University Press.
Piaget, J. (2001). The psychology of intelligence. London, UK: Routledge.
Rockmore, T. (2005). On constructivist epistemology. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Salkind, N. (2004). An introduction to theories of human development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications.
Skinner, B. F. (1938). The behavior of organisms. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Skinner, B. F. (1948). Walden Two. New York: Macmillan.
Skinner, B. F. (1988). The selection of behavior: The operant behaviorism of B. F. Skinner. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Tharp, R. & Gallimore, R. (1991). Rousing minds to life: Teaching, learning, and schooling in social context.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Educational Psychology 40 A Global Text
This book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
3. Student developmentWhen one of our authors (Kelvin Seifert) was growing up, he was provided with piano lessons. Daily
practice was a staple of childhood–365 days a year, and in a home that was deliberately kept quiet
to facilitate practice. Music—especially the piano—defined a major part of his emerging self-identity.
Altogether he studied piano for 13 years, from age 4 to the end of high school, with only occasional
interruptions.
At any one time, Kelvin witnessed small changes in his skills. He performed a simple piece a bit
better than he had the previous week, or he played more of it from memory. There were direct,
obvious connections between his skills at one moment and at the moment just before or after. Back
then, if you had asked him what accounted for the changes, he would have stated without hesitation
that they were because he was “learning” specific piano pieces.
Across broader spans of time, however, he noticed changes that were more dramatic. Kelvin learned
much more complex pieces than he had several years earlier, for example. He also played with
significantly more “finesse”, sensitivity and polish than as a young child. He was even listening to
classical music on the radio some of the time! Kelvin's musical talent became transformed over the
long term, and in some sense he did not have the “same” talent that he had had as a beginner.
If you had asked what accounted for these longer-term changes, he would have had a harder time
answering than when asked about the short-term changes. He might have said simply and a bit
vaguely: “I have been getting better at piano.” If you ask the same question now, however, he would
say that his music skills had developed, that their development had been slow and gradual, and
that the changes resulted not just from simple practice, but also from becoming more widely skilled
about music in general.
Development refers to long-term personal changes that have multiple sources and multiple effects. It is like
the difference between Kelvin's music at age fifteen compared to his music at age five, rather than the difference
between his music one week and his music the next. Some human developments are especially broad and take years
to unfold fully; a person's ever-evolving ability to “read” other's moods, for example, may take a lifetime to develop
fully. Other developments are faster and more focused, like a person's increasing skill at solving crossword puzzles.
The faster and simpler is the change, the more likely we are to call the change “learning” instead of development.
The difference between learning and development is a matter of degree. When a child learns to name the planets of
the solar system, for example, the child may not need a lot of time, nor does the learning involve a multitude of
experiences. So it is probably better to think of that particular experience—learning to name the planets—as an
example of learning rather than of development (Salkind, 2004; Lewis, 1997).
Educational Psychology 41 A Global Text
3. Student development
Why development matters
Students’ development matters for teachers, but the way it matters depends partly on how schooling is
organized. In teaching a single, “self-contained” grade-level, the benefits of knowing about development will be less
explicit, but just as real, as if you teach many grade levels. Working exclusively with a single grade (like, say, a third-
grade classroom) highlights differences among students that happen in spite of their similar ages, and obscures
similarities that happen because of having similar ages. Under these conditions it is still easy to notice students’
diversity, but harder to know how much of it comes from differences in long-term development, compared to
differences in short-term experiences. Knowledge about long term changes is still useful, however, in planning
appropriate activities and in holding appropriate expectations about students. What changes in students can you
expect relatively soon simply from your current program of activities, and which ones may take a year or more to
show up? This is a question that developmental psychology can help to answer.
If you teach multiple grade levels, as often is true of specialists or teachers in middle school or high school, then
your need for developmental knowledge will be more obvious because you will confront wide age differences on a
daily basis. As a physical education teacher, for example, you may teach kindergarten children at one time during
the day, but sixth-graders at another time, or teach seventh-graders at one time but twelfth-graders at another.
Students will differ more obviously because of age, in addition to differing because of other factors like their skills
or knowledge learned recently. Nonetheless, the instructional challenge will be the same as the one faced by
teachers of single-grade classes: you will want to know what activities and expectations are appropriate for your
students. To answer this question, you will need to know something not only about how your students are unique,
but also about general trends of development during childhood and adolescence.
Note that developmental trends vary in two important ways. The first, as indicated already, is in their generality.
Some theories or models of development boldly assert that certain changes happen to virtually every person on the
planet, and often at relatively predictable points in life. For example, a theory might assert that virtually every
toddler acquires a spoken language, or that every teenager forms a sense of personal identity. Individuals who do
not experience these developments would be rare, though not necessarily disabled as a result. Other theories
propose developmental changes that are more limited, claiming only that the changes happen to some people or
only under certain conditions. Developing a female gender role, for example, does not happen to everyone, but only
to the females in a population, and the details vary according to the family, community, or society in which a child
lives.
The second way that developmental trends vary is in how strictly they are sequenced and hierarchical. In some
views of development, changes are thought to happen in a specific order and to build on each other—sort of a
“staircase” model of development (Case, 1991, 1996). For example, a developmental psychologist (and many of the
rest of us) might argue that young people must have tangible, hands-on experience with new materials before they
can reason about the materials in the abstract. The order cannot be reversed. In other views of development, change
happens, but not with a sequence or end point that is uniform. This sort of change is more like a “kaleidoscope”
than a staircase (Levinson, 1990; Lewis, 1997; Harris, 2006). A person who becomes permanently disabled, for
example, may experience complex long-term changes in personal values and priorities that are different both in
timing and content from most people's developmental pathway.
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In general, educational psychologists have tended to emphasize explanations of development that are relatively
general, universal and sequential, rather than specific to particular cultures or that are unsequenced and
kaleidoscopic (see, for example, Woolfolk, 2006, Chapter 3; or Slavin, 2005, Chapters 8 and 9). Such models
(sometimes called “grand theories”) have the advantage of concisely integrating many features of development,
while also describing the kind of people children or adolescents usually end up to be. The preference for integrative
perspectives makes sense given educators’ need to work with and teach large numbers of diverse students both
efficiently and effectively. But the approach also risks overgeneralizing or oversimplifying the experiences of
particular children and youth. It can also confuse what does happen as certain children (like the middle-class ones)
develop with what should happen to children. To understand this point, imagine two children of about the same age
who have dramatically very different childhood experiences—for example, one who grows up in poverty and
another who grows up financially well-off. In what sense can we say that these two children experience the same
underlying developmental changes as they grow up? And how much should they even be expected to do so?
Developmental psychology, and especially the broad theories of developmental psychology, highlight the
“sameness” or common ground between these two children. As such, it serves as counterpoint to knowledge of their
obvious uniqueness, and places their uniqueness in broader perspective.
Physical development during the school years
Although it may be tempting to think that physical development is the concern of physical education teachers
only, it is actually a foundation for many academic tasks. In first grade, for example, it is important to know
whether children can successfully manipulate a pencil. In later grades, it is important to know how long students
can be expected to sit still without discomfort—a real physical challenge. In all grades, it is important to have a
sense of students’ health needs related to their age or maturity, if only to know who may become ill, and with what
illness, and to know what physical activities are reasonable and needed.
Trends in height and weight
Typical height and weight for well-nourished, healthy students are shown in Table 9. The figure shows averages
for several ages from preschool through the end of high school. But the table does not show the diversity among
children. At age 6, for example, when children begin school, the average boy or girl is about 115 centimeters tall, but
some are 109 and others are 125 centimeters. Average weight at age 6 is about 20 kilograms, but ranges between
about 16 and 24 kilograms—about 20% variation in either direction.
Table 5: Average height and weight of well-nourished children
Age Height (cm) Weight (kg)
2 85 7.0
6 115 20.0
10 135 31.0
14 162 52.0
18 169 60.5
Educational Psychology 43 A Global Text
3. Student development
There are other points to keep in mind about average height and weight that are not evident from Table 9. The
first is that boys and girls, on average, are quite similar in height and weight during childhood, but diverge in the
early teenage years, when they reach puberty. For a time (approximately age 10-14), the average girl is taller, but
not much heavier, than the average boy. After that the average boy becomes both taller and heavier than the
average girl—though there remain individual exceptions (Malina, et al., 2004). The pre-teen difference can
therefore be awkward for some children and youth, at least among those who aspire to looking like older teenagers
or young adults. For young teens less concerned with “image”, though, the fact that girls are taller may not be
especially important, or even noticed (Friedman, 2000).
A second point is that as children get older, individual differences in weight diverge more radically than
differences in height. Among 18-year-olds, the heaviest youngsters weigh almost twice as much as the lightest, but
the tallest ones are only about 10 per cent taller than the shortest. Nonetheless, both height and weight can be
sensitive issues for some teenagers. Most modern societies (and the teenagers in them) tend to favor relatively short
women and tall men, as well as a somewhat thin body build, especially for girls and women. Yet neither “socially
correct” height nor thinness is the destiny for many individuals. Being overweight, in particular, has become a
common, serious problem in modern society (Tartamella, et al., 2004) due to the prevalence of diets high in fat and
lifestyles low in activity. The educational system has unfortunately contributed to the problem as well, by gradually
restricting the number of physical education courses and classes in the past two decades.
The third point to keep in mind is that average height and weight is related somewhat to racial and ethnic
background. In general, children of Asian background tend to be slightly shorter than children of European and
North American background. The latter in turn tend to be shorter than children from African societies (Eveleth &
Tanner, 1990). Body shape differs slightly as well, though the differences are not always visible until after puberty.
Asian youth tend to have arms and legs that are a bit short relative to their torsos, and African youth tend to have
relatively long arms and legs. The differences are only averages; there are large individual differences as well, and
these tend to be more relevant for teachers to know about than broad group differences.
Puberty and its effects on students
A universal physical development in students is puberty, which is the set of changes in early adolescence that
bring about sexual maturity. Along with internal changes in reproductive organs are outward changes such as
growth of breasts in girls and the penis in boys, as well as relatively sudden increases in height and weight. By about
age 10 or 11, most children experience increased sexual attraction to others (usually heterosexual, though not
always) that affects social life both in school and out (McClintock & Herdt, 1996). By the end of high school, more
than half of boys and girls report having experienced sexual intercourse at least once—though it is hard to be
certain of the proportion because of the sensitivity and privacy of the information. (Center for Disease Control,
2004b; Rosenbaum, 2006).
At about the same time that puberty accentuates gender, role differences also accentuate for at least some
teenagers. Some girls who excelled at math or science in elementary school may curb their enthusiasm and displays
of success at these subjects for fear of limiting their popularity or attractiveness as girls (Taylor & Gilligan, 1995;
Sadker, 2004). Some boys who were not especially interested in sports previously may begin dedicating themselves
to athletics to affirm their masculinity in the eyes of others. Some boys and girls who once worked together
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successfully on class projects may no longer feel comfortable doing so—or alternatively may now seek to be working
partners, but for social rather than academic reasons. Such changes do not affect all youngsters equally, nor affect
any one youngster equally on all occasions. An individual student may act like a young adult on one day, but more
like a child the next. When teaching children who are experiencing puberty, , teachers need to respond flexibly and
supportively.
Development of motor skills
Students’ fundamental motor skills are already developing when they begin kindergarten, but are not yet
perfectly coordinated. Five-year-olds generally can walk satisfactorily for most school-related purposes (if they
could not, schools would have to be organized very differently!). For some fives, running still looks a bit like a
hurried walk, but usually it becomes more coordinated within a year or two. Similarly with jumping, throwing, and
catching: most children can do these things, though often clumsily, by the time they start school, but improve their
skills noticeably during the early elementary years (Payne & Isaacs, 2005). Assisting such developments is usually
the job either of physical education teachers, where they exist, or else of classroom teachers during designated
physical education activities. Whoever is responsible, it is important to notice if a child does not keep more-or-less
to the usual developmental timetable, and to arrange for special assessment or supports if appropriate. Common
procedures for arranging for help are described in Chapter 5 (“Special education”).
Even if physical skills are not a special focus of a classroom teacher,, they can be quite important to students
themselves. Whatever their grade level, students who are clumsy are aware of that fact and how it could potentially
negatively effect respect from their peers. In the long term, self-consciousness and poor self-esteem can develop for
a child who is clumsy, especially if peers (or teachers and parents) place high value on success in athletics. One
research study found, for example, what teachers and coaches sometimes suspect: that losers in athletic
competitions tend to become less sociable and are more apt to miss subsequent athletic practices than winners
(Petlichkoff, 1996).
Health and illness
By world standards, children and youth in economically developed societies tend, on average, to be remarkably
healthy. Even so, much depends on precisely how well-off families are and on how much health care is available to
them. Children from higher-income families experience far fewer serious or life-threatening illnesses than children
fromlower-income families. Whatever their income level, parents and teachers often rightly note that children—
especially the youngest ones—get far more illnesses than do adults. In 2004, for example, a government survey
estimated that children get an average of 6-10 colds per year, but adults get only about 2-4 per year (National
Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, 2004). The difference probably exists because children’s immune
systems are not as fully formed as adults’, and because children at school are continually exposed to other children,
many of whom may be contagious themselves. An indirect result of children’s frequent illnesses is that teachers
(along with airline flight attendants, incidentally!) also report more frequent minor illnesses than do adults in
general—about five colds per year, for example, instead of just 2-4 (Whelen, et al., 2005). The “simple” illnesses are
not life threatening, but they are responsible for many lost days of school, both for students and for teachers, as well
as days when a student may be present physically, but functions below par while simultaneously infecting
classmates. In these ways, learning and teaching often suffer because health is suffering.
Educational Psychology 45 A Global Text
3. Student development
The problem is not only the prevalence of illness as such (in winter, even in the United States, approximately
one person gets infected with a minor illness every few seconds), but the fact that illnesses are not distributed
uniformly among students, schools, or communities. Whether it is a simple cold or something more serious, illness
is particularly common where living conditions are crowded, where health care is scarce or unaffordable, and where
individuals live with frequent stresses of any kind. Often, but not always, these are the circumstances of poverty.
Table 6 summarizes these effects for a variety of health problems, not just for colds or flu.
Table 6: Health effects of children's economic level
Health program Comparison: poor vs non-poor
Delayed immunizations 3 times higher
Asthma Somewhat higher
Lead poisoning 3 times higher
Deaths in childhood from accidents 2-3 times higher
Deaths in childhood from disease 3-4 times higher
Having a condition that limits school activity 2-3 times higher
Days sick in bed 40 per cent higher
Seriously impaired vision 2-3 times higher
Severe iron-deficiency (anemia) 2 times higher
Source: Richardson, J> (2005). The Cost of Being Poor. New York: Praeger. Spencer, N. (2000). Poverty and
Child Health, 2nd edition. Abington, UK: Radcliffe Medical Press. Allender, J. (2005). Community Health
Nursing. Philadelphia: Lippinsott, Williams & Wilkins.
As students get older, illnesses become less frequent, but other health risks emerge. The most widespread is the
consumption of alcohol and the smoking of cigarettes. As of 2004, about 75 per cent of teenagers reported drinking
an alcoholic beverage at least occasionally, and 22 per cent reported smoking cigarettes (Center for Disease Control,
2004a). The good news is that these proportions show a small, but steady decline in the frequencies over the past 10
years or so. The bad news is that teenagers also show increases in the abuse of some prescription drugs, such as
inhalants, that act as stimulants (Johnston, et al., 2006). As with the prevalence of illnesses, the prevalence of drug
use is not uniform, with a relatively small fraction of individuals accounting for a disproportionate proportion of
usage. One survey, for example, found that a teenager was 3-5 times more likely to smoke or to use alcohol, smoke
marijuana, or use drugs if he or she has a sibling who has also indulged these habits (Fagan & Najman, 2005).
Siblings, it seems, are more influential in this case than parents.
Cognitive development: the theory of Jean Piaget
Cognition refers to thinking and memory processes, and cognitive development refers to long-term
changes in these processes. One of the most widely known perspectives about cognitive development is the
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cognitive stage theory of a Swiss psychologist named Jean Piaget. Piaget created and studied an account of how
children and youth gradually become able to think logically and scientifically. Because his theory is especially
popular among educators, we focus on it in this chapter. We will look at other cognitive perspectives—ones that are
not as fully “developmental”, in later chapters, especially Chapter 9 (“Facilitating complex thinking”).
In brief comments in Chapter 2 (see “Psychological constructivism”) about how Piaget explained learning, we
described Piaget as a psychological constructivist: in his view, learning proceeded by the interplay of assimilation
(adjusting new experiences to fit prior concepts) and accommodation (adjusting concepts to fit new experiences).
The to-and-fro of these two processes leads not only to short-term learning, as pointed out in Chapter 1, but also to
long-term developmental change. The long-term developments are really the main focus of Piaget’s cognitive
theory.
After observing children closely, Piaget proposed that cognition developed through distinct stages from birth
through the end of adolescence. By stages he meant a sequence of thinking patterns with four key features:
1. They always happen in the same order.
2. No stage is ever skipped.
3. Each stage is a significant transformation of the stage before it.
4. Each later stage incorporated the earlier stages into itself. Basically this is the “staircase” model of
development mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. Piaget proposed four major stages of cognitive
development, and called them (1) sensorimotor intelligence, (2) preoperational thinking, (3) concrete
operational thinking, and (4) formal operational thinking. Each stage is correlated with an age period of
childhood, but only approximately.
The sensorimotor stage: birth to age 2
In Piaget’s theory, the sensorimotor stage is first, and is defined as the period when infants “think” by means
of their senses and motor actions. As every new parent will attest, infants continually touch, manipulate, look, listen
to, and even bite and chew objects. According to Piaget, these actions allow them to learn about the world and are
crucial to their early cognitive development.
The infant’s actions allow the child to represent (or construct simple concepts of) objects and events. A toy
animal may be just a confusing array of sensations at first, but by looking, feeling, and manipulating it repeatedly,
the child gradually organizes her sensations and actions into a stable concept, toy animal. The representation
acquires a permanence lacking in the individual experiences of the object, which are constantly changing. Because
the representation is stable, the child “knows”, or at least believes, that toy animal exists even if the actual toy
animal is temporarily out of sight. Piaget called this sense of stability object permanence, a belief that objects
exist whether or not they are actually present. It is a major achievement of sensorimotor development, and marks a
qualitative transformation in how older infants (24 months) think about experience compared to younger infants (6
months).
During much of infancy, of course, a child can only barely talk, so sensorimotor development initially happens
without the support of language. It might therefore seem hard to know what infants are thinking, but Piaget devised
several simple, but clever experiments to get around their lack of language, and that suggest that infants do indeed
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3. Student development
represent objects even without being able to talk (Piaget, 1952). In one, for example, he simply hid an object (like a
toy animal) under a blanket. He found that doing so consistently prompts older infants (18-24 months) to search
for the object, but fails to prompt younger infants (less than six months) to do so. (You can try this experiment
yourself if you happen to have access to young infant.) “Something” motivates the search by the older infant even
without the benefit of much language, and the “something” is presumed to be a permanent concept or
representation of the object.
The preoperational stage: age 2 to 7
In the preoperational stage, children use their new ability to represent objects in a wide variety of activities,
but they do not yet do it in ways that are organized or fully logical. One of the most obvious examples of this kind of
cognition is dramatic play, the improvised make-believe of preschool children. If you have ever had responsibility
for children of this age, you have likely witnessed such play. Ashley holds a plastic banana to her ear and says:
“Hello, Mom? Can you be sure to bring me my baby doll? OK!” Then she hangs up the banana and pours tea for
Jeremy into an invisible cup. Jeremy giggles at the sight of all of this and exclaims: “Rinnng! Oh Ashley, the phone
is ringing again! You better answer it.” And on it goes.
In a way, children immersed in make-believe seem “mentally insane”, in that they do not think realistically. But
they are not truly insane because they have not really taken leave of their senses. At some level, Ashley and Jeremy
always know that the banana is still a banana and not really a telephone; they are merely representing it as a
telephone. They are thinking on two levels at once—one imaginative and the other realistic. This dual processing of
experience makes dramatic play an early example of metacognition, or reflecting on and monitoring of thinking
itself. As we explained in Chapter 2, metacognition is a highly desirable skill for success in school, one that teachers
often encourage (Bredekamp & Copple, 1997; Paley, 2005). Partly for this reason, teachers of young children
(preschool, kindergarten, and even first or second grade) often make time and space in their classrooms for
dramatic play, and sometimes even participate in it themselves to help develop the play further.
The concrete operational stage: age 7 to 11
As children continue into elementary school, they become able to represent ideas and events more flexibly and
logically. Their rules of thinking still seem very basic by adult standards and usually operate unconsciously, but they
allow children to solve problems more systematically than before, and therefore to be successful with many
academic tasks. In the concrete operational stage, for example, a child may unconsciously follow the rule: “If
nothing is added or taken away, then the amount of something stays the same.” This simple principle helps children
to understand certain arithmetic tasks, such as in adding or subtracting zero from a number, as well as to do certain
classroom science experiments, such as ones involving judgments of the amounts of liquids when mixed. Piaget
called this period the concrete operational stage because children mentally “operate” on concrete objects and
events. They are not yet able, however, to operate (or think) systematically about representations of objects or
events. Manipulating representations is a more abstract skill that develops later, during adolescence.
Concrete operational thinking differs from preoperational thinking in two ways, each of which renders children
more skilled as students. One difference is reversibility, or the ability to think about the steps of a process in any
order. Imagine a simple science experiment, for example, such as one that explores why objects sink or float by
having a child place an assortment of objects in a basin of water. Both the preoperational and concrete operational
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child can recall and describe the steps in this experiment, but only the concrete operational child can recall them in
any order. This skill is very helpful on any task involving multiple steps—a common feature of tasks in the
classroom. In teaching new vocabulary from a story, for another example, a teacher might tell students: “First
make a list of words in the story that you do not know, then find and write down their definitions, and finally get a
friend to test you on your list”. These directions involve repeatedly remembering to move back and forth between a
second step and a first—a task that concrete operational students—and most adults—find easy, but that
preoperational children often forget to do or find confusing. If the younger children are to do this task reliably, they
may need external prompts, such as having the teacher remind them periodically to go back to the story to look for
more unknown words.
The other new feature of thinking during the concrete operational stage is the child’s ability to decenter, or
focus on more than one feature of a problem at a time. There are hints of decentration in preschool children’s
dramatic play, which requires being aware on two levels at once—knowing that a banana can be both a banana and
a “telephone”. But the decentration of the concrete operational stage is more deliberate and conscious than
preschoolers’ make-believe. Now the child can attend to two things at once quite purposely. Suppose you give
students a sheet with an assortment of subtraction problems on it, and ask them to do this: “Find all of the
problems that involve two-digit subtraction and that involve borrowing’ from the next column. Circle and solve
only those problems.” Following these instructions is quite possible for a concrete operational student (as long as
they have been listening!) because the student can attend to the two subtasks simultaneously—finding the two-digit
problems and identifying which actually involve borrowing. (Whether the student actually knows how to “borrow”
however, is a separate question.)
In real classroom tasks, reversibility and decentration often happen together. A well-known example of joint
presence is Piaget’s experiments with conservation, the belief that an amount or quantity stays the same even if it
changes apparent size or shape (Piaget, 2001; Matthews, 1998). Imagine two identical balls made of clay. Any child,
whether preoperational or concrete operational, will agree that the two indeed have the same amount of clay in
them simply because they look the same. But if you now squish one ball into a long, thin “hot dog”, the
preoperational child is likely to say that the amount of that ball has changed—either because it is longer or because
it is thinner, but at any rate because it now looks different. The concrete operational child will not make this
mistake, thanks to new cognitive skills of reversibility and decentration: for him or her, the amount is the same
because “you could squish it back into a ball again” (reversibility) and because “it may be longer, but it is also
thinner” (decentration). Piaget would say the concrete operational child “has conservation of quantity”.
The classroom examples described above also involve reversibility and decentration. As already mentioned, the
vocabulary activity described earlier requires reversibility (going back and forth between identifying words and
looking up their meanings); but it can also be construed as an example of decentration (keeping in mind two tasks
at once—word identification and dictionary search). And as mentioned, the arithmetic activity requires
decentration (looking for problems that meet two criteria and also solving them), but it can also be construed as an
example of reversibility (going back and forth between subtasks, as with the vocabulary activity). Either way, the
development of concrete operational skills support students in doing many basic academic tasks; in a sense they
make ordinary schoolwork possible.
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3. Student development
The formal operational stage: age 11 and beyond
In the last of the Piagetian stages, the child becomes able to reason not only about tangible objects and events,
but also about hypothetical or abstract ones. Hence it has the name formal operational stage—the period when
the individual can “operate” on “forms” or representations. With students at this level, the teacher can pose
hypothetical (or contrary-to-fact) problems: “What if the world had never discovered oil?” or “What if the first
European explorers had settled first in California instead of on the East Coast of the United States?” To answer such
questions, students must use hypothetical reasoning, meaning that they must manipulate ideas that vary in
several ways at once, and do so entirely in their minds.
The hypothetical reasoning that concerned Piaget primarily involved scientific problems. His studies of formal
operational thinking therefore often look like problems that middle or high school teachers pose in science classes.
In one problem, for example, a young person is presented with a simple pendulum, to which different amounts of
weight can be hung (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958). The experimenter asks: “What determines how fast the pendulum
swings: the length of the string holding it, the weight attached to it, or the distance that it is pulled to the side?” The
young person is not allowed to solve this problem by trial-and-error with the materials themselves, but must reason
a way to the solution mentally. To do so systematically, he or she must imagine varying each factor separately, while
also imagining the other factors that are held constant. This kind of thinking requires facility at manipulating
mental representations of the relevant objects and actions—precisely the skill that defines formal operations.
As you might suspect, students with an ability to think hypothetically have an advantage in many kinds of school
work: by definition, they require relatively few “props” to solve problems. In this sense they can in principle be
more self-directed than students who rely only on concrete operations—certainly a desirable quality in the opinion
of most teachers. Note, though, that formal operational thinking is desirable but not sufficient for school success,
and that it is far from being the only way that students achieve educational success. Formal thinking skills do not
insure that a student is motivated or well-behaved, for example, nor does it guarantee other desirable skills, such as
ability at sports, music, or art. The fourth stage in Piaget’s theory is really about a particular kind of formal
thinking, the kind needed to solve scientific problems and devise scientific experiments. Since many people do not
normally deal with such problems in the normal course of their lives, it should be no surprise that research finds
that many people never achieve or use formal thinking fully or consistently, or that they use it only in selected areas
with which they are very familiar (Case & Okomato, 1996). For teachers, the limitations of Piaget's ideas suggest a
need for additional theories about development—ones that focus more directly on the social and interpersonal
issues of childhood and adolescence. The next sections describe some of these.
Social development: relationships,personal motives, and morality
Social development refers to the long-term changes in relationships and interactions involving self, peers,
and family. It includes both positive changes, such as how friendships develop, and negative changes, such as
aggression or bullying. The social developments that are the most obviously relevant to classroom life fall into three
main areas: (1) changes in self-concept and in relationships among students and teachers, (2) changes in basic
needs or personal motives, and (3) changes in sense of rights and responsibilities. As with cognitive development,
each of these areas has a broad, well-known theory (and theorist) that provides a framework for thinking about how
the area relates to teaching. For development of self-concept and relationships, it is the theory of Erik Erikson;
for development of personal motives, it is the theory of Abraham Maslow; and for development of ethical
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knowledge and beliefs, it is the work of Lawrence Kohlberg and his critic, Carol Gilligan. Their theories are
definitely not the only ones related to social development of students, and their ideas are often debated by other
researchers. But their accounts do explain much about social development that is relevant to teaching and
education.
Erik Erikson: eight psychosocial crises of development
Like Piaget, Erik Erikson developed a theory of social development that relies on stages, except that Erikson
thought of stages as a series of psychological or social (or psychosocial) crises—turning points in a person’s
relationships and feelings about himself or herself (Erikson, 1963, 1980). Each crisis consists of a dilemma or
choice that carries both advantages and risks, but in which one choice or alternative is normally considered more
desirable or “healthy”. How one crisis is resolved affects how later crises are resolved. The resolution also helps to
create an individual’s developing personality. Erikson proposed eight crises that extend from birth through old age;
they are summarized in Table 7. Four of the stages occur during the school years, so we give these special attention
here, but it is helpful also to know what crises are thought to come both before and after those in the school years.
Table 7: Eight psychosocial crises according to Erikson
Psychosocial crisis Approximate age Description
Trust and mistrust Birth to one year Development of trust between caregiver and child
Autonomy and shame Age 1-3 Development of control over bodily functions and activities
Initiative and guilt Age 3-6 Testing limits of self-assertion and purposefulness
Industry and inferiority Age 6-12 Development of sense of mastery and competence
Identity and role confusion Age 12-19 Development of identity and acknowledge of identity by others
Intimacy and isolation Age 19-25+ Formation of intimate relationships and commitments
Generativity and
stagnation
Age 25-50+ Development of creative or productive activities that
contribute to future generations
Integrity and despair Age 50+ Acceptance of personal life history and forgiveness of self and
others
Crises of infants and preschoolers: trust, autonomy, and initiative
Almost from the day they are born, infants face a crisis (in Erikson’s sense) about trust and mistrust. They
are happiest if they can eat, sleep, and excrete according to their own physiological schedules, regardless of whether
their schedules are convenient for the caregiver (often the mother). Unfortunately, though, a young infant is in no
position to control or influence a mother’s care giving or scheduling needs; so the baby faces a dilemma about how
much to trust or mistrust the mother’s helpfulness. It is as if the baby asks, “If I demand food (or sleep or a clean
diaper) now, will my mother actually be able to help me meet this need?” Hopefully, between the two of them,
mother and child resolve this choice in favor of the baby's trust: the mother proves herself at least “good enough” in
her attentiveness, and the baby risks trusting mother's motivation and skill at care giving.
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3. Student development
Almost as soon as this crisis is resolved, however, a new one develops over the issue of autonomy and shame.
The child (who is now a toddler) may now trust his or her caregiver (mother), but the very trust contributes to a
desire to assert autonomy by taking care of basic personal needs, such as feeding, toileting, or dressing. Given the
child’s lack of experience in these activities, however, self-care is risky at first—the toddler may feed (or toilet or
dress) clumsily and ineffectively. The child’s caregiver, for her part, risks overprotecting the child and criticizing his
early efforts unnecessarily and thus causing the child to feel shame for even trying. Hopefully, as with the earlier
crisis of trust, the new crisis gets resolved in favor of autonomy through the combined efforts of the child to exercise
autonomy and of the caregiver to support the child’s efforts.
Eventually, about the time a child is of preschool age, the autonomy exercised during the previous period
becomes more elaborate, extended, and focused on objects and people other than the child and basic physical
needs. The child at a day care center may now undertake, for example, to build the “biggest city in the world” out of
all available unit blocks—even if other children want some of the blocks for themselves. The child’s projects and
desires create a new crisis of initiative and guilt, because the child soon realizes that acting on impulses or
desires can sometimes have negative effects on others—more blocks for the child may mean fewer for someone else.
As with the crisis over autonomy, caregivers have to support the child’s initiatives where possible, but also not make
the child feel guilty just for desiring to have or to do something that affects others' welfare. By limiting behavior
where necessary but not limiting internal feelings, the child can develop a lasting ability to take initiative. Expressed
in Erikson’s terms, the crisis is then resolved in favor of initiative.
Even though only the last of these three crises overlaps with the school years, all three relate to issues faced by
students of any age, and even by their teachers. A child or youth who is fundamentally mistrustful, for example, has
a serious problem in coping with school life. If you are a student, it is essential for your long-term survival to believe
that teachers and school officials have your best interests at heart, and that they are not imposing assignments or
making rules, for example, “just for the heck of it.” Even though students are not infants any more, teachers
function like Erikson’s caregiving parents in that they need to prove worthy of students’ trust through their initial
flexibility and attentiveness.
Parallels from the classroom also exist for the crises of autonomy and of initiative. To learn effectively, students
need to make choices and undertake academic initiatives at least some of the time, even though not every choice or
initiative may be practical or desirable. Teachers, for their part, need to make true choices and initiatives possible,
and refrain from criticizing, even accidentally, a choice or intention behind an initiative even if the teacher privately
believes that it is “bound to fail”. Support for choices and initiative should be focused on providing resources and on
guiding the student’s efforts toward more likely success. In these ways teachers function like parents of toddlers
and preschoolers in Erikson’s theory of development, regardless of the age of their students.
The crisis of childhood: industry and inferiority
Once into elementary school, the child is faced for the first time with becoming competent and worthy in the
eyes of the world at large, or more precisely in the eyes of classmates and teachers. To achieve their esteem, he or
she must develop skills that require effort that is sustained and somewhat focused. The challenge creates the crisis
of industry and inferiority. To be respected by teachers, for example, the child must learn to read and to behave
like a “true student”. To be respected by peers, he or she must learn to cooperate and to be friendly, among other
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things. There are risks involved in working on these skills and qualities, because there can be no guarantee of
success with them in advance. If the child does succeed, therefore, he or she experiences the satisfaction of a job
well done and of skills well learned—a feeling that Eriks0n called industry. If not, however, the child risks feeling
lasting inferiority compared to others. Teachers therefore have a direct, explicit role in helping students to resolve
this crisis in favor of industry or success. They can set realistic academic goals for students—ones that tend to lead
to success—and then provide materials and assistance for students to reach their goals. Teachers can also express
their confidence that students can in fact meet their goals if and when the students get discouraged, and avoid
hinting (even accidentally) that a student is simply a “loser”. Paradoxically, these strategies will work best if the
teacher is also tolerant of less-than-perfect performance by students. Too much emphasis on perfection can
undermine some students’ confidence—foster Erikson’s inferiority—by making academic goals seem beyond reach.
The crisis of adolescence: identity and role confusion
As the child develops lasting talents and attitudes as a result of the crisis of industry, he begins to face a new
question: what do all the talents and attitudes add up to be? Who is the “me” embedded in this profile of qualities?
These questions are the crisis of identity and role confusion. Defining identity is riskier than it may appear for
a person simply because some talents and attitudes may be poorly developed, and some even may be undesirable in
the eyes of others. (If you are poor at math, how do you live with family and friends if they think you should be good
at this skill?) Still others may be valuable but fail to be noticed by other people. The result is that who a person
wants to be may not be the same as who he or she is in actual fact, nor the same as who other people want the
person to be. In Erikson's terms, role confusion is the result.
Teachers can minimize role confusion in a number of ways. One is to offer students lots of diverse role models—
by identifying models in students’ reading materials, for example, or by inviting diverse guests to school. The point
of these strategies would be to express a key idea: that there are many ways to be respected, successful, and satisfied
with life. Another way to support students’ identity development is to be alert to students’ confusions about their
futures, and refer them to counselors or other services outside school that can help sort these out. Still another
strategy is to tolerate changes in students’ goals and priorities—sudden changes in extra-curricular activities or in
personal plans after graduation. Since students are still trying roles out, discouraging experimentation may not be
in students’ best interests.
The crises of adulthood: intimacy, generativity, and integrity
Beyond the school years, according to Erikson, individuals continue psychosocial development by facing
additional crises. Young adults, for example, face a crisis of intimacy and isolation. This crisis is about the risk
of establishing close relationships with a select number of others. Whether the relationships are heterosexual,
homosexual, or not sexual at all, their defining qualities are depth and sustainability. Without them, an individual
risks feeling isolated. Assuming that a person resolves this crisis in favor of intimacy, however, he or she then faces
a crisis about generativity and stagnation. This crisis is characteristic of most of adulthood, and not
surprisingly therefore is about caring for or making a contribution to society, and especially to its younger
generation. Generativity is about making life productive and creative so that it matters to others. One obvious way
for some to achieve this feeling is by raising children, but there are also many other ways to contribute to the
welfare of others. The final crisis is about integrity and despair, and is characteristically felt during the final
years of life. At the end of life, a person is likely to review the past and to ask whether it has been lived as well as
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possible, even if it was clearly not lived perfectly. Since personal history can no longer be altered at the end of life, it
is important to make peace with what actually happened and to forgive oneself and others for mistakes that may
have been made. The alternative is despair, or depression from believing not only that one’s life was lived badly, but
also that there is no longer any hope of correcting past mistakes.
Even though Erikson conceives of these crises as primarily concerns of adulthood, there are precursors of them
during the school years. Intimacy, for example, is a concern of many children and youth in that they often desire,
but do not always find, lasting relationships with others (Beidel, 2005; Zimbardo & Radl, 1999). Personal isolation
is a particular risk for students with disabilities, as well as for students whose cultural or racial backgrounds differ
from classmates’ or the teacher’s. Generativity—feeling helpful to others and to the young—is needed not only by
many adults, but also by many children and youth; when given the opportunity as part of their school program, they
frequently welcome a chance to be of authentic service to others as part of their school programs (Eyler & Giles,
1999; Kay, 2003). Integrity—taking responsibility for your personal past, “warts and all”, is often a felt need for
anyone, young or old, who has lived long enough to have a past on which to look. Even children and youth have a
past in this sense, though their pasts are of course shorter than persons who are older.
Abraham Maslow: a hierarchy of motives and needs
Abraham Maslow's theory frames personal needs or motives as a hierarchy, meaning that basic or “lower-level”
needs have to be satisfied before higher-level needs become important or motivating (1976, 1987). Compared to the
stage models of Piaget and Erikson, Maslow’s hierarchy is only loosely “developmental”, in that Maslow was not
concerned with tracking universal, irreversible changes across the lifespan. Maslow's stages are universal, but they
are not irreversible; earlier stages sometimes reappear later in life, in which case they must be satisfied again before
later stages can redevelop. Like the theories of Piaget and Erikson, Maslow’s is a rather broad “story”, one that has
less to say about the effects of a person’s culture, language, or economic level, than about what we all have in
common.
In its original version, Maslow’s theory distinguishes two types of needs, called deficit needs and being
needs (or sometimes deficiency needs and growth needs). Table 8 summarizes the two levels and their sublevels.
Deficit needs are prior to being needs, not in the sense of happening earlier in life, but in that deficit needs must be
satisfied before being needs can be addressed. As pointed out, deficit needs can reappear at any age, depending on
circumstances. If that happens, they must be satisfied again before a person’s attention can shift back to “higher”
needs. Among students, in fact, deficit needs are likely to return chronically to those whose families lack economic
or social resources or who live with the stresses associated with poverty (Payne, 2005).
Table 8: Maslow's hierarchy of motives and needs
Deficit Needs
Physiological needs
Safety and security needs
Love and belonging needs
Cognitive needs
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Being Needs Aesthetic needs
Self-actualization needs
Deficit needs: getting the basic necessities of life
Deficit needs are the basic requirements of physical and emotional well-being. First are physiological needs—
food, sleep, clothing, and the like. Without these, nothing else matters, and especially nothing very “elevated” or
self-fulfilling. A student who is not getting enough to eat is not going to feel much interest in learning! Once
physiological needs are met, however, safety and security needs become important. The person looks for stability
and protection, and welcomes a bit of structure and limits if they provide these conditions. A child from an abusive
family, for example, may be getting enough to eat, but may worry chronically about personal safety. In school, the
student may appreciate a well-organized classroom with rules that insures personal safety and predictability,
whether or not the classroom provides much in the way of real learning.
After physiological and safety needs are met, love and belonging needs emerge. The person turns attention to
making friends, being a friend, and cultivating positive personal relationships in general. In the classroom, a
student motivated at this level may make approval from peers or teachers into a top priority. He or she may be
provided for materially and find the classroom and family life safe enough, but still miss a key ingredient in life—
love. If such a student (or anyone else) eventually does find love and belonging, however, then his or her motivation
shifts again, this time to esteem needs. Now the concern is with gaining recognition and respect—and even more
importantly, gaining self-respect. A student at this level may be unusually concerned with achievement, for
example, though only if the achievement is visible or public enough to earn public recognition.
Being needs: becoming the best that you can be
Being needs are desires to become fulfilled as a person, or to be the best person that you can possibly be. They
include cognitive needs (a desire for knowledge and understanding), aesthetic needs (an appreciation of beauty and
order), and most importantly, self-actualization needs (a desire for fulfillment of one’s potential). Being needs
emerge only after all of a person’s deficit needs have been largely met. Unlike deficit needs, being needs beget more
being needs; they do not disappear once they are met, but create a desire for even more satisfaction of the same
type. A thirst for knowledge, for example, leads to further thirst for knowledge, and aesthetic appreciation leads to
more aesthetic appreciation. Partly because being needs are lasting and permanent once they appear, Maslow
sometimes treated them as less hierarchical than deficit needs, and instead grouped cognitive, aesthetic, and self-
actualization needs into the single category self-actualization needs.
People who are motivated by self-actualization have a variety of positive qualities, which Maslow went to some
lengths to identify and describe (Maslow, 1976). Self-actualizing individuals, he argued, value deep personal
relationships with others, but also value solitude; they have a sense of humor, but do not use it against others; they
accept themselves as well as others; they are spontaneous, humble, creative, and ethical. In short, the self-
actualizing person has just about every good quality imaginable! Not surprisingly, therefore, Maslow felt that true
self-actualization is rare. It is especially unusual among young people, who have not yet lived long enough to satisfy
earlier, deficit-based needs.
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In a way this last point is discouraging news for teachers, who apparently must spend their lives providing as
best they can for individuals—students—still immersed in deficit needs. Teachers, it seems, have little hope of ever
meeting a student with fully fledged being needs. Taken less literally, though, Maslow’s hierarchy is still useful for
thinking about students’ motives. Most teachers would argue that students—young though they are—can display
positive qualities similar to the ones described in Maslow’s self-actualizing person. However annoying students may
sometimes be, there are also moments when they show care and respect for others, for example, and moments
when they show spontaneity, humility, or a sound ethical sense. Self-actualization is an appropriate way to think
about these moments—the times when students are at their best. At the same time, of course, students sometimes
also have deficit needs. Keeping in mind the entire hierarchy outlined by Maslow can therefore deepen teachers'
understanding of the full humanity of students.
Moral development: forming a sense of rights and responsibilities
Morality is a system of beliefs about what is right and good compared to what is wrong or bad. Moral
development refers to changes in moral beliefs as a person grows older and gains maturity. Moral beliefs are
related to, but not identical with, moral behavior: it is possible to know the right thing to do, but not actually do it.
It is also not the same as knowledge of social conventions, which are arbitrary customs needed for the smooth
operation of society. Social conventions may have a moral element, but they have a primarily practical purpose.
Conventionally, for example, motor vehicles all keep to the same side of the street (to the right in the United States,
to the left in Great Britain). The convention allows for smooth, accident-free flow of traffic. But following the
convention also has a moral element, because an individual who chooses to drive on the wrong side of the street can
cause injuries or even death. In this sense, choosing the wrong side of the street is wrong morally, though the choice
is also unconventional.
When it comes to schooling and teaching, moral choices are not restricted to occasional dramatic incidents, but
are woven into almost every aspect of classroom life. Imagine this simple example. Suppose that you are teaching,
reading to a small group of second-graders, and the students are taking turns reading a story out loud. Should you
give every student the same amount of time to read, even though some might benefit from having additional time?
Or should you give more time to the students who need extra help, even if doing so bores classmates and deprives
others of equal shares of “floor time”? Which option is more fair, and which is more considerate? Simple dilemmas
like this happen every day at all grade levels simply because students are diverse, and because class time and a
teacher’s energy are finite.
Embedded in this rather ordinary example are moral themes about fairness or justice, on the one hand, and
about consideration or care on the other. It is important to keep both themes in mind when thinking about how
students develop beliefs about right or wrong. A morality of justice is about human rights—or more specifically,
about respect for fairness, impartiality, equality, and individuals’ independence. A morality of care, on the other
hand, is about human responsibilities—more specifically, about caring for others, showing consideration for
individuals’ needs, and interdependence among individuals. Students and teachers need both forms of morality. In
the next sections therefore we explain a major example of each type of developmental theory, beginning with the
morality of justice.
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Kohlberg’s morality of justice
One of the best-known explanations of how morality of justice develops was developed by Lawrence Kohlberg
and his associates (Kohlberg, Levine, & Hewer, 1983; Power, Higgins, & Kohlberg, 1991). Using a stage model
similar to Piaget’s, Kohlberg proposed six stages of moral development, grouped into three levels. Individuals
experience the stages universally and in sequence as they form beliefs about justice. He named the levels simply
preconventional, conventional, and (you guessed it) postconventional. The levels and stages are summarized in
Table 5.
Table 9: Moral stages according to Kohlberg
Moral stage Definition of what is “good”
Preconventional Level:
Stage 1: Obedience and punishment
Stage 2: Market exchange
Action that is rewarded and not punished
Action that is agreeable to the child and child's partner
Conventional Level:
Stage 3: Peer opinion
Stage 4: Law and order
Action that wins approval from friends or peers
Action that conforms to community customs or laws
Postconventional Level:
Stage 5: Social contract
Stage 6: Universal principles
Action that follows social accepted ways of making decisions
Action that is consistent with self-chosen, general principles
Preconventional justice: obedience and mutual advantage
The preconventional level of moral development coincides approximately with the preschool period of life and
with Piaget’s preoperational period of thinking. At this age the child is still relatively self-centered and insensitive to
the moral effects of actions on others. The result is a somewhat short-sighted orientation to morality. Initially
(Kohlberg’s Stage 1), the child adopts an ethics of obedience and punishment—a sort of “morality of keeping
out of trouble”. The rightness and wrongness of actions is determined by whether actions are rewarded or punished
by authorities such as parents or teachers. If helping yourself to a cookie brings affectionate smiles from adults,
then taking the cookie is considered morally “good”. If it brings scolding instead, then it is morally “bad”. The child
does not think about why an action might be praised or scolded; in fact, says Kohlberg, he would be incapable at
Stage 1 of considering the reasons even if adults offered them.
Eventually the child learns not only to respond to positive consequences, but also learns how to produce them by
exchanging favors with others. The new ability creates Stage 2, an ethics of market exchange. At this stage the
morally “good” action is one that favors not only the child, but another person directly involved. A “bad” action is
one that lacks this reciprocity. If trading the sandwich from your lunch for the cookies in your friend’s lunch is
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3. Student development
mutually agreeable, then the trade is morally good; otherwise it is not. This perspective introduces a type of fairness
into the child’s thinking for the first time. But it still ignores the larger context of actions—the effects on people not
present or directly involved. In Stage 2, for example, it would also be considered morally “good” to pay a classmate
to do another student's homework—or even to avoid bullying or to provide sexual favors—provided that both
parties regard the arrangement as being fair.
Conventional justice: conformity to peers and society
As children move into the school years, their lives expand to include a larger number and range of peers and
(eventually) of the community as a whole. The change leads to conventional morality, which are beliefs based on
what this larger array of people agree on—hence Kohlberg’s use of the term “conventional”. At first, in Stage 3, the
child’s reference group are immediate peers, so Stage 3 is sometimes called the ethics of peer opinion. If peers
believe, for example, that it is morally good to behave politely with as many people as possible, then the child is
likely to agree with the group and to regard politeness as not merely an arbitrary social convention, but a moral
“good”. This approach to moral belief is a bit more stable than the approach in Stage 2, because the child is taking
into account the reactions not just of one other person, but of many. But it can still lead astray if the group settles
on beliefs that adults consider morally wrong, like “Shop lifting for candy bars is fun and desirable.”
Eventually, as the child becomes a youth and the social world expands even more, he or she acquires even larger
numbers of peers and friends. He or she is therefore more likely to encounter disagreements about ethical issues
and beliefs. Resolving the complexities lead to Stage 4, the ethics of law and order, in which the young person
increasingly frames moral beliefs in terms of what the majority of society believes. Now, an action is morally good if
it is legal or at least customarily approved by most people, including people whom the youth does not know
personally. This attitude leads to an even more stable set of principles than in the previous stage, though it is still
not immune from ethical mistakes. A community or society may agree, for example, that people of a certain race
should be treated with deliberate disrespect, or that a factory owner is entitled to dump waste water into a
commonly shared lake or river. To develop ethical principles that reliably avoid mistakes like these require further
stages of moral development.
Postconventional justice: social contract and universal principles
As a person becomes able to think abstractly (or “formally”, in Piaget’s sense), ethical beliefs shift from
acceptance of what the community does believe to the process by which community beliefs are formed. The new
focus constitutes Stage 5, the ethics of social contract. Now an action, belief, or practice is morally good if it has
been created through fair, democratic processes that respect the rights of the people affected. Consider, for
example, the laws in some areas that require motorcyclists to wear helmets. In what sense are the laws about this
behavior ethical? Was it created by consulting with and gaining the consent of the relevant people? Were cyclists
consulted and did they give consent? Or how about doctors or the cyclists' families? Reasonable, thoughtful
individuals disagree about how thoroughly and fairly these consultation processes should be. In focusing on the
processes by which the law was created, however, individuals are thinking according to Stage 5, the ethics of social
contract, regardless of the position they take about wearing helmets. In this sense, beliefs on both sides of a debate
about an issue can sometimes be morally sound even if they contradict each other.
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Paying attention to due process certainly seems like it should help to avoid mindless conformity to conventional
moral beliefs. As an ethical strategy, though, it too can sometimes fail. The problem is that an ethics of social
contract places more faith in democratic process than the process sometimes deserves, and does not pay enough
attention to the content of what gets decided. In principle (and occasionally in practice), a society could decide
democratically to kill off every member of a racial minority, for example, but would deciding this by due process
make it ethical? The realization that ethical means can sometimes serve unethical ends leads some individuals
toward Stage 6, the ethics of self-chosen, universal principles. At this final stage, the morally good action is
based on personally held principles that apply both to the person’s immediate life as well as to the larger
community and society. The universal principles may include a belief in democratic due process (Stage 5 ethics),
but also other principles, such as a belief in the dignity of all human life or the sacredness of the natural
environment. At Stage 6, the universal principles will guide a person’s beliefs even if the principles mean
disagreeing occasionally with what is customary (Stage 4) or even with what is legal (Stage 5).
Gilligan’s morality of care
As logical as they sound, Kohlberg’s stages of moral justice are not sufficient for understanding the development
of moral beliefs. To see why, suppose that you have a student who asks for an extension of the deadline for an
assignment. The justice orientation of Kohlberg’s theory would prompt you to consider issues of whether granting
the request is fair. Would the late student be able to put more effort into the assignment than other students?
Would the extension place a difficult demand on you, since you would have less time to mark the assignments?
These are important considerations related to the rights of students and the teacher. In addition to these, however,
are considerations having to do with the responsibilities that you and the requesting student have for each other
and for others. Does the student have a valid personal reason (illness, death in the family, etc.) for the assignment
being late? Will the assignment lose its educational value if the student has to turn it in prematurely? These latter
questions have less to do with fairness and rights, and more to do with taking care of and responsibility for
students. They require a framework different from Kohlberg’s to be understood fully.
One such framework has been developed by Carol Gilligan, whose ideas center on a morality of care, or
system of beliefs about human responsibilities, care, and consideration for others. Gilligan proposed three moral
positions that represent different extents or breadth of ethical care. Unlike Kohlberg, Piaget, or Erikson, she does
not claim that the positions form a strictly developmental sequence, but only that they can be ranked hierarchically
according to their depth or subtlety. In this respect her theory is “semi-developmental” in a way similar to Maslow’s
theory of motivation (Brown & Gilligan, 1992; Taylor, Gilligan, & Sullivan, 1995). Table 10 summarizes the three
moral positions from Gilligan’s theory
Table 10: Positions of moral development according to Gilligan
Moral position Definition of what is morally good
Position 1: Survival
orientation
Action that considers one's personal needs only
Position 2: Conventional
care
Action that considers others' needs or preferences, but not one's own
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Position 3: Integrated care Action that attempts to coordinate one's own personal needs with those of
others
Position 1: caring as survival
The most basic kind of caring is a survival orientation, in which a person is concerned primarily with his or
her own welfare. If a teenage girl with this ethical position is wondering whether to get an abortion, for example,
she will be concerned entirely with the effects of the abortion on herself. The morally good choice will be whatever
creates the least stress for herself and that disrupts her own life the least. Responsibilities to others (the baby, the
father, or her family) play little or no part in her thinking.
As a moral position, a survival orientation is obviously not satisfactory for classrooms on a widespread scale. If
every student only looked out for himself or herself, classroom life might become rather unpleasant! Nonetheless,
there are situations in which focusing primarily on yourself is both a sign of good mental health and relevant to
teachers. For a child who has been bullied at school or sexually abused at home, for example, it is both healthy and
morally desirable to speak out about how bullying or abuse has affected the victim. Doing so means essentially
looking out for the victim’s own needs at the expense of others’ needs, including the bully’s or abuser’s. Speaking
out, in this case, requires a survival orientation and is healthy because the child is taking caring of herself.
Position 2: conventional caring
A more subtle moral position is caring for others, in which a person is concerned about others’ happiness and
welfare, and about reconciling or integrating others’ needs where they conflict with each other. In considering an
abortion, for example, the teenager at this position would think primarily about what other people prefer. Do the
father, her parents, and/or her doctor want her to keep the child? The morally good choice becomes whatever will
please others the best. This position is more demanding than Position 1, ethically and intellectually, because it
requires coordinating several persons’ needs and values. But it is often morally insufficient because it ignores one
crucial person: the self.
In classrooms, students who operate from Position 2 can be very desirable in some ways; they can be eager to
please, considerate, and good at fitting in and at working cooperatively with others. Because these qualities are
usually welcome in a busy classroom, teachers can be tempted to reward students for developing and using them.
The problem with rewarding Position 2 ethics, however, is that doing so neglects the student’s development—his or
her own academic and personal goals or values. Sooner or later, personal goals, values, and identity need attention
and care, and educators have a responsibility for assisting students to discover and clarify them.
Position 3: integrated caring
The most developed form of moral caring in Gilligan’s model is integrated caring, the coordination of
personal needs and values with those of others. Now the morally good choice takes account of everyone including
yourself, not everyone except yourself. In considering an abortion, a woman at Position 3 would think not only
about the consequences for the father, the unborn child, and her family, but also about the consequences for
herself. How would bearing a child affect her own needs, values, and plans? This perspective leads to moral beliefs
that are more comprehensive, but ironically are also more prone to dilemmas because the widest possible range of
individuals are being considered.
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In classrooms, integrated caring is most likely to surface whenever teachers give students wide, sustained
freedom to make choices. If students have little flexibility about their actions, there is little room for considering
anyone’s needs or values, whether their own or others’. If the teacher says simply: “Do the homework on page 50
and turn it in tomorrow morning”, then the main issue becomes compliance, not moral choice. But suppose instead
that she says something like this: “Over the next two months, figure out an inquiry project about the use of water
resources in our town. Organize it any way you want—talk to people, read widely about it, and share it with the class
in a way that all of us, including yourself, will find meaningful.” An assignment like this poses moral challenges that
are not only educational, but also moral, since it requires students to make value judgments. Why? For one thing,
students must decide what aspect of the topic really matters to them. Such a decision is partly a matter of personal
values. For another thing, students have to consider how to make the topic meaningful or important to others in the
class. Third, because the time line for completion is relatively far in the future, students may have to weigh personal
priorities (like spending time with friends or family) against educational priorities (working on the assignment a bit
more on the weekend). As you might suspect, some students might have trouble making good choices when given
this sort of freedom—and their teachers might therefore be cautious about giving such an assignment. But the
difficulties in making choices are part of Gilligan’s point: integrated caring is indeed more demanding than the
caring based only on survival or on consideration of others. Not all students may be ready for it.
Understanding “the typical student” versus understanding students
In this chapter, in keeping with the general nature of developmental theory, we have often spoken of students in
a generalized way, referring to “the” child, student, or youngster, as if a single typical or average individual exists
and develops through single, predictable pathways. As every teacher knows, however, development is not that
simple. A class of 25 or 30 students will contain 25 or 30 individuals each learning and developing along distinct
pathways. Why then study developmental patterns at all? Because underlying their obvious diversity, students
indeed show important similarities. This chapter has indicated some of the similarities and how they relate to the
job of teaching. Our references to “the” student should not be understood, therefore, as supporting simple-minded
stereotypes; they refer instead to common tendencies of real, live children and youth. Pointing to developmental
changes is like pointing to a flock of birds in flight: the flock has a general location, but individual birds also have
their own locations and take individual flight paths. Development and diversity therefore have to be understood
jointly, not separately. There are indeed similarities woven among the differences in students, but also differences
woven among students’ commonalities. We recommend therefore that you read this chapter on development
together with the next one, which looks explicitly at student diversity.
Chapter summary
Understanding development, or the long-term changes in growth, behavior, and knowledge, helps teachers to
hold appropriate expectations for students as well as to keep students’ individual diversity in perspective. From
kindergarten through the end of high school, students double their height, triple their weight, experience the social
and hormonal effects of puberty, and improve basic motor skills. Their health is generally good, though illnesses are
affected significantly by students’ economic and social circumstances.
Cognitively, students develop major new abilities to think logically and abstractly, based on a foundation of
sensory and motor experiences with the objects and people around them. Jean Piaget has one well-known theory
detailing how these changes unfold.
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3. Student development
Socially, students face and resolve a number of issues—especially the issue of industry (dedicated, sustained
work) during childhood and the issue of identity during adolescence. Erik Erikson has described these crises in
detail, as well as social crises that precede and follow the school years. Students are motivated both by basic human
needs (food, safety, belonging, esteem) and by needs to enhance themselves psychologically (self-actualization).
Abraham Maslow has described these motivations and how they relate to each other.
Morally, students develop both a sense of justice and of care for others, and their thinking in each of these
realms undergoes important changes as they mature. Lawrence Kohlberg has described changes in children and
youth’s beliefs about justice, and Carol Gilligan has described changes in their beliefs about care.
On the Internet
organization that supports research about children and youth, and that advocates for government policies on their
behalf. The specific web page recommended here contains their press releases, which summarize findings from
current research and their implications for children’s welfare. You will need to register to use this page, but
registration is free.
association of psychologists in the English-speaking world. From the homepage you can go to a section called
“psychology topics”, which offers a variety of interesting articles and press releases free of charge. Among other
topics, for example, there are articles about obesity and its effects, as well as about factors that support (and/or
detract from) children’s well-being.
Key termsDevelopmentPuberty
CognitionCognitive stages
Jean PiagetSensorimotor stage
Object permanencePreoperational stage
Dramatic playConcrete operational stage
DecenterConservation
Formal operational stageHypothetical reasoning
Social developmentErik Erikson
Abraham MaslowLawrence Kohlberg
Carol GilliganPsychosocial crises
Trust, autonomy, and initiativeIndustry
IdentityIntimacy, generativity, and integrity
Maslow’s hierarchy of needsDeficit needs
Being needsSelf-actualization
Moral developmentLawrence Kohlberg
Carol GilliganMorality of justice
Preconventional justiceEthics of obedience
Ethics of mutual advantageConventional justice
Ethics of peer opinionEthics of law and order
Postconventional justiceEthics of social contract
Ethics of universal principlesMorality of care
Survival OrientationConventional care
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Integrated care
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4. Student diversityI’ll tell you this: There are some people, and then there are others.
(Anna Harris)
Anna Harris was Kelvin Seifert's grandmother as well as a schoolteacher from about 1910 to 1930.
She used to make comments, like the one above, that sounded odd but that also contained a grain of
wisdom. In this case her remark makes a good theme for this chapter—and even for teaching in
general. Students do differ in a multitude of ways, both individually and because of memberships in
families, communities or cultural groups. Sometimes the differences can make classroom-style
teaching more challenging, but other times, as Anna Harris implied, they simply enrich classroom
life. To teach students well, we need to understand the important ways that they differ among
themselves, and when or how the differences really matter for their education. This chapter offers
some of that understanding and suggests how you might use it in order to make learning effective
and enjoyable for everyone, including yourself.
For convenience we will make a major distinction between differences among individuals and
differences among groups of students. As the term implies, individual differences are qualities
that are unique; just one person has them at a time. Variation in hair color, for example, is an
individual difference; even though some people have nearly the same hair color, no two people are
exactly the same. Group differences are qualities shared by members of an identifiable group or
community, but not shared by everyone in society. An example is gender role: for better or for worse,
one portion of society (the males) is perceived differently and expected to behave a bit differently
than another portion of society (the females). Notice that distinguishing between individual and
group differences is convenient, but a bit arbitrary. Individuals with similar, but nonetheless unique
qualities sometimes group themselves together for certain purposes, and groups unusually contain a
lot of individual diversity within them. If you happen to enjoy playing soccer and have some talent
for it (an individual quality), for example, you may end up as a member of a soccer team or club (a
group defined by members’ common desire and ability to play soccer). But though everyone on the
team fits a “soccer player’s profile” at some level, individual members will probably vary in level of
skill and motivation. The group, by its very nature, may obscure these signs of individuality.
To begin, then, we look at several differences normally considered to be individually rather than
group based. This discussion will necessarily be incomplete simply because individual differences are
so numerous and important in teaching that some of them are also discussed in later chapters. Later
sections of this chapter deal with three important forms of group diversity: gender differences,
cultural differences, and language differences.
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4. Student diversity
Individual styles of learning and thinking
All of us, including our students, have preferred ways of learning. Teachers often refer to these differences as
learning styles, though this term may imply that students are more consistent across situations than is really the
case. One student may like to make diagrams to help remember a reading assignment, whereas another student
may prefer to write a sketchy outline instead. Yet in many cases, the students could in principle reverse the
strategies and still learn the material: if coaxed (or perhaps required), the diagram-maker could take notes for a
change and the note-taker could draw diagrams. Both would still learn, though neither might feel as comfortable as
when using the strategies that they prefer. This reality suggests that a balanced, middle-of-the-road approach may
be a teacher’s best response to students’ learning styles. Or put another way, it is good to support students’
preferred learning strategies where possible and appropriate, but neither necessary nor desirable to do so all of the
time (Loo, 2004; Stahl, 2002). Most of all, it is neither necessary nor possible to classify or label students according
to seemingly fixed learning styles and then allow them to learn only according to those styles. A student may prefer
to hear new material rather than see it; he may prefer for you to explain something orally, for example, rather than
to see it demonstrated in a video. But he may nonetheless tolerate or sometimes even prefer to see it demonstrated.
In the long run, in fact, he may learn it best by encountering the material in both ways, regardless of his habitual
preferences.
That said, there is evidence that individuals, including students, do differ in how they habitually think. These
differences are more specific than learning styles or preferences, and psychologists sometimes call them cognitive
styles, meaning typical ways of perceiving and remembering information, and typical ways of solving problems
and making decisions (Zhang & Sternberg, 2006). In a style of thinking called field dependence, for example,
individuals perceive patterns as a whole rather than focus on the parts of the pattern separately. In a
complementary tendency, called field independence, individuals are more inclined to analyze overall patterns
into their parts. Cognitive research from the 1940s to the present has found field dependence/independence
differences to be somewhat stable for any given person across situations, though not completely so (Witkin, Moore,
Goodenough, & Cox, 1977; Zhang & Sternberg, 2005). Someone who is field dependent (perceives globally or
“wholistically”) in one situation, tends to a modest extent to perceive things globally or wholistically in other
situations. Field dependence and independence can be important in understanding students because the styles
affect students’ behaviors and preferences in school and classrooms. Field dependent persons tend to work better in
groups, it seems, and to prefer “open-ended” fields of study like literature and history. Field independent persons,
on the other hand, tend to work better alone and to prefer highly analytic studies like math and science. The
differences are only a tendency, however, and there are a lot of students who contradict the trends. As with the
broader notion of learning styles, the cognitive styles of field dependence and independence are useful for tailoring
instruction to particular students, but their guidance is only approximate. They neither can nor should be used to
“lock” students to particular modes of learning or to replace students’ own expressed preferences and choices about
curriculum.
Another cognitive style is impulsivity as compared to reflectivity. As the names imply, an impulsive cognitive
style is one in which a person reacts quickly, but as a result makes comparatively more errors. A reflective style is
the opposite: the person reacts more slowly and therefore makes fewer errors. As you might expect, the reflective
style would seem better suited to many academic demands of school. Research has found that this is indeed the
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case for academic skills that clearly benefit from reflection, such as mathematical problem solving or certain
reading tasks (Evans, 2004). Some classroom or school-related skills, however, may actually develop better if a
student is relatively impulsive. Being a good partner in a cooperative learning group, for example, may depend
partly on responding spontaneously (i.e. just a bit “impulsively”) to others’ suggestions; and being an effective
member of an athletic team may depend on not taking time to reflect carefully on every move that you or your team
mates make.
There are two major ways to use knowledge of students’ cognitive styles (Pritchard, 2005). The first and the
more obvious is to build on students’ existing style strengths and preferences. A student who is field independent
and reflective, for example, can be encouraged to explore tasks and activities that are relatively analytic and that
require relatively independent work. One who is field dependent and impulsive, on the other hand, can be
encouraged and supported to try tasks and activities that are more social or spontaneous. But a second, less obvious
way to use knowledge of cognitive styles is to encourage more balance in cognitive styles for students who need it. A
student who lacks field independence, for example, may need explicit help in organizing and analyzing key
academic tasks (like organizing a lab report in a science class). One who is already highly reflective may need
encouragement to try ideas spontaneously, as in a creative writing lesson.
Multiple intelligences
For nearly a century, educators and psychologists have debated the nature of intelligence, and more specifically
whether intelligence is just one broad ability or can take more than one form. Many classical definitions of the
concept have tended to define intelligence as a single broad ability that allows a person to solve or complete many
sorts of tasks, or at least many academic tasks like reading, knowledge of vocabulary, and the solving of logical
problems (Garlick, 2002). There is research evidence of such a global ability, and the idea of general intelligence
often fits with society’s everyday beliefs about intelligence. Partly for these reasons, an entire mini-industry has
grown up around publishing tests of intelligence, academic ability, and academic achievement. Since these tests
affect the work of teachers, I return to discussing them later in this book.
But there are also problems with defining intelligence as one general ability. One way of summing up the
problems is to say that conceiving of intelligence as something general tends to put it beyond teachers’ influence.
When viewed as a single, all-purpose ability, students either have a lot of intelligence or they do not, and
strengthening their intelligence becomes a major challenge, or perhaps even an impossible one (Gottfredson, 2004;
Lubinski, 2004). This conclusion is troubling to some educators, especially in recent years as testing school
achievements have become more common and as students have become more diverse.
But alternate views of intelligence also exist that portray intelligence as having multiple forms, whether the
forms are subparts of a single broader ability or are multiple “intelligences” in their own right. For various reasons
such this perspective has gained in popularity among teachers in recent years, probably because it reflects many
teachers’ beliefs that students cannot simply be rated along a single scale of ability, but are fundamentally diverse
(Kohn, 2004).
One of the most prominent of these models is Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences
(Gardner, 1983, 2003). Gardner proposes that there are eight different forms of intelligence, each of which
functions independently of the others. (The eight intelligences are summarized in Table 11. Each person has a mix
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4. Student diversity
of all eight abilities—more of one and less of another—that helps to constitute that person’s individual cognitive
profile. Since most tasks—including most tasks in classrooms—require several forms of intelligence and can be
completed in more than one way, it is possible for people with various profiles of talents to succeed on a task
equally well. In writing an essay, for example, a student with high interpersonal intelligence but rather average
verbal intelligence might use his or her interpersonal strength to get a lot of help and advice from classmates and
the teacher. A student with the opposite profile might work well alone, but without the benefit of help from others.
Both students might end up with essays that are good, but good for different reasons.
Table 11: Multiple intelligences according to Howard Gardner
Form of intelligence Examples of activities using the intelligence
Linguistic: verbal skill; ability to use language well • verbal persuasion
• writing a term paper skillfully
Musical: ability to create and understand music • singing, playing a musical instrument
• composing a tune
Logical: Mathematical: logical skill; ability to reason,
often using mathematics
• solving mathematical problems easily and
accurately
• developing and testing hypotheses
Spatial: ability to imagine and manipulate the
arrangement of objects in the environment
• completing a difficult jigsaw puzzle
• assembling a complex appliance (e.g. a bicycle)
Bodily: kinesthetic: sense of balance; coordination in
use of one's body
• dancing
• gymnastics
Interpersonal: ability to discern others' nonverbal
feelings and thoughts
• sensing when to be tactful
• sensing a “subtext” or implied message in a
person's statements
Intrapersonal: sensitivity to one's own thoughts and
feelings
• noticing complex of ambivalent feelings in
oneself
• identifying true motives for an action in oneself
Naturalist: sensitivity to subtle differences and
patterns found in the natural environment
• identifying examples of species of plants or
animals
• noticing relationships among species and
natural processes in the environment
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Source: Gardner, 1983, 2003
As evidence for the possibility of multiple intelligences, Gardner cites descriptions of individuals with
exceptional talent in one form of intelligence (for example, in playing the piano) but who are neither above nor
below average in other areas. He also cites descriptions of individuals with brain damage, some of whom lose one
particular form of intelligence (like the ability to talk) but retain other forms. In the opinion of many psychologists,
however, the evidence for multiple intelligences is not strong enough to give up the “classical” view of general
intelligence. Part of the problem is that the evidence for multiple intelligences relies primarily on anecdotes—
examples or descriptions of particular individuals who illustrate the model—rather than on more widespread
information or data (Eisner, 2004).
Nonetheless, whatever the status of the research evidence, the model itself can be useful as a way for teachers to
think about their work. Multiple intelligences suggest the importance of diversifying instruction in order to honor
and to respond to diversity in students’ talents and abilities. Viewed like this, whether Gardner’s classification
scheme is actually accurate is probably less important than the fact there is (or may be) more than one way to be
“smart”. In the end, as with cognitive and learning styles, it may not be important to label students’ talents or
intellectual strengths. It may be more important simply to provide important learning and knowledge in several
modes or styles, ways that draw on more than one possible form of intelligence or skill. A good example of this
principle is your own development in learning to teach. It is well and good to read books about teaching (like this
one, perhaps), but it is even better to read books and talk with classmates and educators about teaching and getting
actual experience in classrooms. The combination both invites and requires a wide range of your talents and usually
proves more effective than any single type of activity, whatever your profile of cognitive styles or intellectual
abilities happens to be.
Gifted and talented students
The idea of multiple intelligences leads to new ways of thinking about students who have special gifts and
talents. Traditionally, the term gifted referred only to students with unusually high verbal skills. Their skills were
demonstrated especially well, for example, on standardized tests of general ability or of school achievement, like
those described in Chapter 12 (“Standardized and other formal assessments”). More recently, however, the meaning
of gifted has broadened to include unusual talents in a range of activities, such as music, creative writing, or the arts
(G. Davis & Rimm, 2004). To indicate the change, educators often use the dual term gifted and talented.
Qualities of the gifted and talented
What are students who are gifted and talented like? Generally they show some combination of the following
qualities:
• They learn more quickly and independently than most students their own age.
• They often have well-developed vocabulary, as well as advanced reading and writing skills.
• They are very motivated, especially on tasks that are challenging or difficult.
• They hold themselves to higher than usual standards of achievement.
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4. Student diversity
Contrary to a common impression, students who are gifted or talented are not necessarily awkward socially, less
healthy, or narrow in their interests—in fact, quite the contrary (Steiner & Carr, 2003). They also come from all
economic and cultural groups.
Ironically, in spite of their obvious strengths as learners, such students often languish in school unless teachers
can provide them with more than the challenges of the usual curriculum. A kindergarten child who is precociously
advanced in reading, for example, may make little further progress at reading if her teachers do not recognize and
develop her skill; her talent may effectively disappear from view as her peers gradually catch up to her initial level.
Without accommodation to their unusual level of skill or knowledge, students who are gifted or talented can
become bored by school, and eventually the boredom can even turn into behavior problems.
Partly for these reasons, students who are gifted or talented have sometimes been regarded as the responsibility
of special education, along with students with other sorts of disabilities. Often their needs are discussed, for
example, in textbooks about special education, alongside discussions of students with intellectual disabilities,
physical impairments, or major behavior disorders (Friend, 2008). There is some logic to this way of thinking
about their needs; after all, they are quite exceptional, and they do require modifications of the usual school
programs in order to reach their full potential. But it is also misleading to ignore obvious differences between
exceptional giftedness and exceptional disabilities of other kinds. The key difference is in students' potential. By
definition, students with gifts or talents are capable of creative, committed work at levels that often approach
talented adults. Other students—including students with disabilities—may reach these levels, but not as soon and
not as frequently. Many educators therefore think of the gifted and talented not as examples of students with
disabilities, but as examples of diversity. As such they are not so much the responsibility of special education
specialists, as the responsibility of all teachers to differentiate their instruction.
Supporting students who are gifted and talented
Supporting the gifted and talented usually involves a mixture of acceleration and enrichment of the usual
curriculum (Schiever & Maker, 2003). Acceleration involves either a child's skipping a grade, or else the teacher's
redesigning the curriculum within a particular grade or classroom so that more material is covered faster. Either
strategy works, but only up to a point: children who have skipped a grade usually function well in the higher grade,
both academically and socially. Unfortunately skipping grades cannot happen repeatedly unless teacher, parents,
and the students themselves are prepared to live with large age and maturity differences within single classrooms.
In itself, too, there is no guarantee that instruction in the new, higher-grade classroom will be any more stimulating
than it was in the former, lower-grade classroom. Redesigning the curriculum is also beneficial to the student, but
impractical to do on a widespread basis; even if teachers had the time to redesign their programs, many non-gifted
students would be left behind as a result.
Enrichment involves providing additional or different instruction added on to the usual curriculum goals and
activities. Instead of books at more advanced reading levels, for example, a student might read a wider variety of
types of literature at the student's current reading level, or try writing additional types of literature himself. Instead
of moving ahead to more difficult kinds of math programs, the student might work on unusual logic problems not
assigned to the rest of the class. Like acceleration, enrichment works well up to a point. Enrichment curricula exist
to help classroom teachers working with gifted students (and save teachers the time and work of creating
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enrichment materials themselves). Since enrichment is not part of the normal, officially sanctioned curriculum,
however, there is a risk that it will be perceived as busywork rather than as intellectual stimulation, particularly if
the teacher herself is not familiar with the enrichment material or is otherwise unable to involve herself in the
material fully.
Obviously acceleration and enrichment can sometimes be combined. A student can skip a grade and also be
introduced to interesting “extra” material at the new grade level. A teacher can move a student to the next unit of
study faster than she moves the rest of the class, while at the same time offering additional activities not related to
the unit of study directly. For a teacher with a student who is gifted or talented, however, the real challenge is not
simply to choose between acceleration and enrichment, but to observe the student, get to know him or her as a
unique individual, and offer activities and supports based on that knowledge. This is essentially the challenge of
differentiating instruction, something needed not just by the gifted and talented, but by students of all sorts. As you
might suspect, differentiating instruction poses challenges about managing instruction; we discuss it again in more
detail in Chapter 9 (“Facilitating complex thinking”) and Chapter 10 (“Instructional planning”).
Gender differences in the classroom
Gender roles are the patterns of behaviors, attitudes, and expectations associated with a particular sex—with
being either male or female. For clarity, psychologists sometimes distinguish gender differences, which are related
to social roles, from sex differences, which are related only to physiology and anatomy. Using this terminology,
gender matters in teaching more than sex (in spite of any jokes told about the latter!).
Although there are many exceptions, boys and girls do differ on average in ways that parallel conventional
gender stereotypes and that affect how the sexes behave at school and in class. The differences have to do with
physical behaviors, styles of social interaction, academic motivations, behaviors, and choices. They have a variety of
sources—primarily parents, peers, and the media. Teachers are certainly not the primary cause of gender role
differences, but sometimes teachers influence them by their responses to and choices made on behalf of students.
Physical differences in gender roles
Physically, boys tend to be more active than girls, and by the same token more restless if they have to sit for long
periods. They are also more prone than girls to rely on physical aggression if they are frustrated (Espelage &
Swearer, 2004). Both tendencies are inconsistent with the usual demands of classroom life, of course, and make it a
little more likely that school will be a difficult experience for boys, even for boys who never actually get in trouble
for being restless or aggressive.
During the first two or three years of elementary school, gross motor skills develop at almost the same average
rate for boys and girls. As a group, both sexes can run, jump, throw a ball, and the like with about equal ease,
though there are of course wide significant differences among individuals of both sexes. Toward the end of
elementary school, however, boys pull ahead of girls at these skills even though neither sex has begun yet to
experience puberty. The most likely reason is that boys participate more actively in formal and informal sports
because of expectations and support from parents, peers, and society (Braddock, Sokol-Katz, Greene, & Basinger-
Fleischman, 2005; Messner, Duncan, & Cooky, 2003). Puberty eventually adds to this advantage by making boys
taller and stronger than girls, on average, and therefore more suited at least for sports that rely on height and
strength.
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4. Student diversity
In thinking about these differences, keep in mind that they refer to average trends and that there are numerous
individual exceptions. Every teacher knows of individual boys who are not athletic, for example, or of particular
girls who are especially restless in class. The individual differences mean, among other things, that it is hard to
justify providing different levels of support or resources to boys than to girls for sports, athletics, or physical
education. The differences also suggest, though, that individual students who contradict gender stereotypes about
physical abilities may benefit from emotional support or affirmation from teachers, simply because they may be less
likely than usual to get such affirmation from elsewhere.
Social differences in gender roles
When relaxing socially, boys more often gravitate to large groups. Whether on the playground, in a school
hallway, or on the street, boys’ social groups tend literally to fill up a lot of space, and often include significant
amounts of roughhousing as well as organized and “semi-organized” competitive games or sports (Maccoby, 2002).
Girls, for their part, are more likely to seek and maintain one or two close friends and to share more intimate
information and feelings with these individuals. To the extent that these gender differences occur, they can make
girls less visible or noticeable than boys, at least in leisure play situations where children or youth choose their
companions freely. As with physical differences, however, keep in mind that differences in social interactions do
not occur uniformly for all boys and girls. There are boys with close friends, contradicting the general trend, and
girls who play primarily in large groups.
Differences in social interaction styles happen in the classroom as well. Boys, on average, are more likely to
speak up during a class discussion—sometimes even if not called on, or even if they do not know as much about the
topic as others in the class (Sadker, 2002). When working on a project in a small co-ed group, furthermore they
have a tendency to ignore girls’ comments and contributions to the group. In this respect co-ed student groups
parallel interaction patterns in many parts of society, where men also have a tendency to ignore women’s comments
and contributions (Tannen, 2001).
Academic and cognitive differences in gender
On average, girls are more motivated than boys to perform well in school, at least during elementary school. By
the time girls reach high school, however, some may try to down play their own academic ability in order make
themselves more likeable by both sexes (Davies, 2005). Even if this occurs, though, it does not affect their grades:
from kindergarten through twelfth grade, girls earn slightly higher average grades than boys (Freeman, 2004). This
fact does not lead to similar achievement, however, because as youngsters move into high school, they tend to
choose courses or subjects conventionally associated with their gender—math and science for boys, in particular,
and literature and the arts for girls. By the end of high school, this difference in course selection makes a
measurable difference in boys’ and girls’ academic performance in these subjects.
But again, consider my caution about stereotyping: there are individuals of both sexes whose behaviors and
choices run counter to the group trends. (I have made this point as well in “Preparing for Licensure: Interpreting
Gender-Related Behavior” by deliberately concealing the gender of a student described.) Differences within each
gender group generally are far larger than any differences between the groups. A good example is the “difference” in
cognitive ability of boys and girls. Many studies have found none at all. A few others have found small differences,
with boys slightly better at math and girls slightly better at reading and literature. Still other studies have found the
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differences not only are small, but have been getting smaller in recent years compared to earlier studies.
Collectively the findings about cognitive abilities are virtually “non-findings”, and it is worth asking why gender
differences have therefore been studied and discussed so much for so many years (Hyde, 2005). How teachers
influence gender roles?
Teachers often intend to interact with both sexes equally, and frequently succeed at doing so. Research has
found, though, that they do sometimes respond to boys and girls differently, perhaps without realizing it. Three
kinds of differences have been noticed. The first is the overall amount of attention paid to each sex; the second is
the visibility or “publicity” of conversations; and the third is the type of behavior that prompts teachers to support
or criticize students.
Attention paid
In general, teachers interact with boys more often than with girls by a margin of 10 to 30 percent, depending on
the grade level of the students and the personality of the teacher (Measor & Sykes, 1992). One possible reason for
the difference is related to the greater assertiveness of boys that I already noted; if boys are speaking up more
frequently in discussions or at other times, then a teacher may be “forced” to pay more attention to them. Another
possibility is that some teachers may feel that boys are especially prone to getting into mischief, so they may
interact with them more frequently to keep them focused on the task at hand (Erden & Wolfgang, 2004). Still
another possibility is that boys, compared to girls, may interact in a wider variety of styles and situations, so there
may simply be richer opportunities to interact with them. This last possibility is partially supported by another
gender difference in classroom interaction, the amount of public versus private talk.
Public talk versus private talk
Teachers have a tendency to talk to boys from a greater physical distance than when they talk to girls (Wilkinson
& Marrett, 1985). The difference may be both a cause and an effect of general gender expectations, expressive
nurturing is expected more often of girls and women, and a businesslike task orientation is expected more often of
boys and men, particularly in mixed-sex groups (Basow & Rubenfeld, 2003; Myaskovsky, Unikel, & Dew, 2005).
Whatever the reason, the effect is to give interactions with boys more “publicity”. When two people converse with
each other from across the classroom, many others can overhear them; when they are at each other’s elbows,
though, few others can overhear.
Distributing praise and criticism
In spite of most teachers’ desire to be fair to all students, it turns out that they sometimes distribute praise and
criticism differently to boys and girls. The differences are summarized in Table 4.2. The tendency is to praise boys
more than girls for displaying knowledge correctly, but to criticize girls more than boys for displaying knowledge
incorrectly (Golombok & Fivush, 1994; Delamont, 1996). Another way of stating this difference is by what teachers
tend to overlook: with boys, they tend to overlook wrong answers, but with girls, they tend to overlook right
answers. The result (which is probably unintended) is a tendency to make boys’ knowledge seem more important
and boys themselves more competent. A second result is the other side of this coin: a tendency to make girls’
knowledge less visible and girls themselves less competent.
Table 12: Gender differences in how teachers praise and criticize students
Type of response from Boys Girls
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4. Student diversity
teacher
Praises Correct knowledge “Good” or compliant behavior
Overlooks or ignores “Good” or compliant behavior;
incorrect knowledge
Misbehavior; correct knowledge
Criticizes Misbehavior Incorrect knowledge
Source: Golobuk & Fivush, 1994
Gender differences also occur in the realm of classroom behavior. Teachers tend to praise girls for “good”
behavior, regardless of its relevance to content or to the lesson at hand, and tend to criticize boys for “bad” or
inappropriate behavior (Golombok & Fivush, 1994). This difference can also be stated in terms of what teachers
overlook: with girls, they tend to overlook behavior that is not appropriate, but with boys they tend to overlook
behavior that is appropriate. The net result in this case is to make girls’ seem more good than they may really be,
and also to make their “goodness” seem more important than their academic competence. By the same token, the
teacher’s patterns of response imply that boys are more “bad” than they may really be.
At first glance, the gender differences in interaction can seem discouraging and critical of teachers because they
imply that teachers as a group are biased about gender. But this conclusion is too simplistic for a couple of reasons.
One is that like all differences between groups, interaction patterns are trends, and as such they hide a lot of
variation within them. The other is that the trends suggest what often tends in fact to happen, not what can in fact
happen if a teacher consciously sets about to avoid interaction patterns like the ones I have described. Fortunately
for us all, teaching does not need to be unthinking; we have choices that we can make, even during a busy class!
Differences in cultural expectations and styles
A culture is the system of attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that constitute the distinctive way of life of a people.
Although sometimes the term is also used to refer specifically to the artistic, intellectual and other “high-brow”
aspects of life, I use it here more broadly to refer to everything that characterizes a way of life—baseball games as
well as symphony concerts, and McDonald’s as well as expensive restaurants. In this broad sense culture is nearly
synonymous with ethnicity, which refers to the common language, history, and future experienced by a group
within society. Culture has elements that are obvious, like unique holidays or customs, but also features that are
subtle or easy for outsiders to overlook, like beliefs about the nature of intelligence or about the proper way to tell a
story. When a classroom draws students from many cultures or ethnic groups, therefore, the students bring to it
considerable diversity. Teachers need to understand that diversity—understand how students’ habitual attitudes,
beliefs, and behaviors differ from each other, and especially how they differ from the teacher’s.
But this kind of understanding can get complicated. To organize the topic, therefore, I will discuss aspects of
cultural diversity according to how directly they relate to language differences compared to differences in other
social and psychological features of culture. The distinction is convenient, but it is also a bit arbitrary because, as
you will see, the features of a culture overlap and influence each other.
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Bilingualism: language differences in the classroom
Although monolingual speakers often do not realize it, the majority of children around the world are bilingual,
meaning that they understand and use two languages (Meyers-Scotton, 2005). Even in the United States, which is a
relatively monolingual society, more than 47 million people speak a language other than English at home, and
about 10 million of these people were children or youths in public schools (United States Department of Commerce,
2003). The large majority of bilingual students (75 per cent) are Hispanic, but the rest represent more than a
hundred different language groups from around the world. In larger communities throughout the United States, it
is therefore common for a single classroom to contain students from several language backgrounds at once.
In classrooms as in other social settings, bilingualism exists in different forms and degrees. At one extreme are
students who speak both English and another language fluently; at the other extreme are those who speak only
limited versions of both languages. In between are students who speak their home (or heritage) language much
better than English, as well as others who have partially lost their heritage language in the process of learning
English (Tse, 2001). Commonly, too, a student may speak a language satisfactorily, but be challenged by reading or
writing it—though even this pattern has individual exceptions. Whatever the case, each bilingual student poses
unique challenges to teachers.
Balanced or fluent bilingualism
The student who speaks both languages fluently has a definite cognitive advantage. As you might suspect and as
research has confirmed, a fully fluent bilingual student is in a better position than usual to express concepts or
ideas in more than one way, and to be aware of doing so (Jimenez, et al. 1995; Francis, 2006). The question: “What
if a dog were called a cat?” is less likely to confuse even a very young bilingual child. Nor will the follow-up
question: “Could the ‘cat’ meow?” confuse them. Such skill in reflecting on language is a form of metacognition,
which I discussed in Chapter 2 and defined as using language as an object of thought. Metacognition can be helpful
for a variety of academic purposes, such as writing stories and essays, or interpreting complex text materials.
Unbalanced bilingualism
Unfortunately, the bilingualism of many students is “unbalanced” in the sense that they are either still learning
English, or else they have lost some earlier ability to use their original, heritage language—or occasionally a bit of
both. The first sort of student—sometimes called an English language learner (ELL) or limited English learner
(LEL)—has received the greatest attention and concern from educators, since English is the dominant language of
instruction and skill and obviously helps prepare a student for life in American society. ELL students essentially
present teachers with this dilemma: how to respect the original language and culture of the student while also
helping the student to join more fully in the mainstream—i.e. English-speaking—culture? Programs to address this
question have ranged from total immersion in English from a young age (the “sink or swim” approach) to phasing
in English over a period of several years (sometimes called an additive approach to bilingual education). In general,
evaluations of bilingual programs have favored the more additive approaches (Beykont, 2002). Both languages are
developed and supported, and students ideally become able to use either language permanently, though often for
different situations or purposes. A student may end up using English in the classroom or at work, for example, but
continue using Spanish at home or with friends, even though he or she is perfectly capable of speaking English with
them.
Educational Psychology 76 A Global Text
4. Student diversity
Language loss
What about the other kind of imbalance, in which a student is acquiring English but losing ability with the
student’s home or heritage language? This sort of bilingualism is quite common in the United States and other
nations with immigrant populations (Tse, 2001). Imagine this situation: First-generation immigrants arrive, and
they soon learn just enough English to manage their work and daily needs, but continue using their original
language at home with family and friends from their former country. Their children, however, experience strong
expectations and pressure to learn and use English, and this circumstance dilutes the children’s experience with the
heritage language. By the time the children become adults, they are likely to speak and write English better than
their heritage language, and may even be unable or unwilling to use the heritage language with their own children
(the grandchildren of the original immigrants).
This situation might not at first seem like a problem for which we, as teachers, need to take responsibility, since
the children immigrants, as students, are acquiring the dominant language of instruction. In fact, however, things
are not that simple. Research finds that language loss limits students’ ability to learn English as well or as quickly as
they otherwise can do. Having a large vocabulary in a first language, for example, has been shown to save time in
learning vocabulary in a second language (Hansen, Umeda & McKinney, 2002). But students can only realize the
savings if their first language is preserved. Preserving the first language is also important if a student has impaired
skill in all languages and therefore needs intervention or help from a speech-language specialist. Research has
found, in such cases, that the specialist can be more effective if the specialist speaks and uses the first language as
well as English (Kohnert, et al., 2005). Generally, though also more indirectly, minimizing language loss helps all
bilingual students’ education because preservation tends to enrich students’ and parents’ ability to communicate
with each other. With two languages to work with, parents can stay “in the loop” better about their children’s
educations and support the teacher’s work—for example, by assisting more effectively with homework (Ebert,
2005).
Note that in the early years of schooling, language loss can be minimized to some extent by the additive or
parallel-track bilingual programs that I mentioned above. For a few years, though not forever, young students are
encouraged to use both of their languages. In high school, in addition, some conventional foreign language classes—
notably in Spanish—can be adjusted to include and support students who are already native speakers of the
language alongside students who are learning it for the first time (Tse, 2001). But for heritage languages not
normally offered as “foreign” languages in school, of course, this approach will not work. Such languages are
especially at risk for being lost.
Cultural differences in language use
Cultures and ethnic groups differ not only in languages, but also in how languages are used. Since some of the
patterns differ from those typical of modern classrooms, they can create misunderstandings between teachers and
students (Cazden, 2001; Rogers, et al., 2005). Consider these examples: In some cultures, it is considered polite or
even intelligent not to speak unless you have something truly important to say. “Chitchat”, or talk that simply
affirms a personal tie between people, is considered immature or intrusive (Minami, 2002). In a classroom, this
habit can make it easier for a child to learn not to interrupt others, but it can also make the child seem unfriendly.
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• Eye contact varies by culture. In many African American and Latin American communities, it is considered
appropriate and respectful for a child not to look directly at an adult who is speaking to them (Torres-
Guzman, 1998). In classrooms, however, teachers often expect a lot of eye contact (as in “I want all eyes on
me!”) and may be tempted to construe lack of eye contact as a sign of indifference or disrespect.
• Social distance varies by culture. In some cultures, it is common to stand relatively close when having a
conversation; in others, it is more customary to stand relatively far apart (Beaulieu, 2004). Problems may
happen when a teacher and a student prefer different social distances. A student who expects a closer
distance than does the teacher may seem overly familiar or intrusive, whereas one who expects a longer
distance may seem overly formal or hesitant.
• Wait time varies by culture. Wait time is the gap between the end of one person’s comment or question and
the next person’s reply or answer. In some cultures wait time is relatively long—as long as three or four
seconds (Tharp & Gallimore, 1989). In others it is a “negative” gap, meaning that it is acceptable, even
expected, for a person to interrupt before the end of the previous comment. In classrooms the wait time is
customarily about one second; after that, the teacher is likely to move on to another question or to another
student. A student who habitually expects a wait time long than one second may seem hesitant, and not be
given many chances to speak. A student who expects a “negative” wait time, on the other hand, may seem
overeager or even rude.
• In most non-Anglo cultures, questions are intended to gain information, and it is assumed that a person
asking the question truly does not have the information requested (Rogoff, 2003). In most classrooms,
however, teachers regularly ask test questions, which are questions to which the teacher already knows the
answer and that simply assess whether a student knows the answer as well (Macbeth, 2003). The question:
“How much is 2 + 2?” for example, is a test question. If the student is not aware of this purpose, he or she
may become confused, or think that the teacher is surprisingly ignorant! Worse yet, the student may feel
that the teacher is trying deliberately to shame the student by revealing the student’s ignorance or
incompetence to others.
Cultural differences in attitudes and beliefs
In addition to differences in language and in practices related to language, cultural groups differ in a variety of
other attitudes and beliefs. Complete descriptions of the details of the differences have filled entire books of
encyclopedias (see, for example, Birx, 2005). For teachers, however, the most important ones center on beliefs
about identity, or the sense of self, or of “who you are”. A number of other cultural beliefs and practices can be
understood as resulting from how members of a culture think about personal identity.
In white, middle-class American culture, the self is usually thought of as unique and independent—a unitary,
living source of decisions, choices, and actions that stands (or should eventually stand) by itself (Greenfield, et al.,
2003; Rogoff, 2003). This view of the self is well entrenched in schools, as for example when students are expected
to take responsibility for their own successes or failures and when they are tested and evaluated individually rather
than as a group or team. As teachers, furthermore, most of us subscribe to the idea that all students are unique,
even if we cannot implement this idea fully in teaching because of the constraints of large classes. Whatever the
circumstances, teachers tend to believe in an independent self.
Educational Psychology 78 A Global Text
4. Student diversity
To a greater or lesser extent, however, the majority of non-white cultures and ethnic groups believe in something
closer to an interdependent self, or a belief that it is your relationships and responsibilities, and not uniqueness
and autonomy, that defines a person (Greenfield, 1994; Greenfield, et al., 2003). In these cultures, the most worthy
person is not the one who is unusual or who stands out in a crowd. Such a person might actually be regarded as
lonely or isolated. The worthy person is instead the one who gets along well with family and friends, and who meets
obligations to them reliably and skillfully. At some level, of course, we all value interpersonal skill and to this extent
think of ourselves as interdependent. The difference between individual and interdependent self is one of emphasis,
with many non-white cultures emphasizing interdependence significantly more than white middle-class society in
general and more than schools in particular.
There can be consequences of the difference in how the students respond to school. Here are some of the
possibilities—though keep in mind that there are also differences among students as individuals, whatever their
cultural background. I am talking about tendencies, not straightforward predictions.
• Preference for activities that are cooperative rather than competitive: Many activities in school are
competitive, even when teachers try to de-emphasize the competition. Once past the first year or second
year of school, students often become attentive to who receives the highest marks on an assignment, for
example, or who is the best athlete at various sports or whose contributions to class discussion the most
verbal recognition from the teacher (Johnson & Johnson, 1998). Suppose, in addition, that a teacher
deliberately organizes important activities or assignments competitively (as in “Let’s see who finishes the
math sheet first.”). Classroom life can then become explicitly competitive, and the competitive atmosphere
can interfere with cultivating supportive relationships among students or between students and the teacher
(Cohen, 2004). For students who give priority to these relationships, competition can seem confusing at
best and threatening at worst. What sort of sharing or helping with answers, the student may ask, is truly
legitimate? If the teacher answers this question more narrowly than does the student, then what the
student views as cooperative sharing may be seen by the teacher as laziness, “freeloading”, or even cheating.
• Avoidance of standing out publicly: Even when we, as teachers, avoid obvious forms of competition, we
may still interact frequently with students one at a time while allowing or inviting many others to observe
the conversation. An especially common pattern for such conversations is sometimes called the IRE cycle,
an abbreviation for the teacher initiating, a student responding, and the teacher then evaluating the
response (Mehan, 1979). What is sometimes taken for granted is how often IRE cycles are witnessed
publicly, and how much the publicity can be stressful or embarrassing for students who do not value
standing out in a group but who do value belonging to the group. The embarrassment can be especially
acute if they feel unsure about whether they have correct knowledge or skill to display. To keep such
students from “clamming up” completely, therefore, teachers should consider limiting IRE cycles to times
when they are truly productive. IRE conversations may often work best when talking with a student
privately, or when confirming knowledge that the student is likely to be able to display competently already,
or when “choral” speaking (responding together in unison) is appropriate.
• Interpersonal time versus clock time: In order to function, all schools rely on fairly precise units of time as
measured on clocks. Teachers typically allot a fixed number of minutes to one lesson or class, another fixed
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number of minutes for the next, another for recess or lunch time, and so on. In more ways than one,
therefore, being on time becomes especially valued in schools, as it is in many parts of society. Punctuality
is not always conducive, however, to strong personal relationships, which develop best when individuals do
not end joint activities unilaterally or arbitrarily, but allow activities to “finish themselves”, so to speak—to
finish naturally. If personal relationships are a broad, important priority for a student, therefore, it may
take effort and practice by the student to learn the extent to which schools and teachers expect punctuality.
Punctuality includes the obvious, like showing up for school when school is actually scheduled to begin. But
it also includes subtleties, like starting and finishing tasks when the teacher tells students to do so, or
answering a question promptly at the time it is asked rather than sometime later when discussion has
already moved on.
Accommodating diversity in practice
Hopefully I have persuaded you—if you did need persuading—that students are indeed diverse. The important
question that follows from this point is what to do about the diversity. I have begun answering that question by
including a number of suggestions in the sections and paragraphs of this chapter. But there is obviously more to be
said about accommodating diversity—about actually working with students’ diversity and turning it into a resource
rather than a burden or challenge. In the rest of this book therefore I offer more suggestions not only about
knowing how different one student can be from another, but also about diversifying teaching to acknowledge this
fact. Differences among students remain a challenge during all phases of teaching, from planning instruction, to
implementing lessons and activities, to assessing students’ learning after lessons or activities are all finished. In the
next chapter, I illustrate this reality by describing how students with disabilities can be included in classroom life—
one of the more telling examples of accommodating to diversity.
Chapter summary
Students differ in a multitude of ways, both individually and as groups. Individually, for example, students have
a preferred learning style as well as preferred cognitive or thinking styles. They also have unique profiles or
intelligence or competence that affect how and what they learn most successfully.
In addition to individual diversity, students tend to differ according to their gender, although there are
numerous individual exceptions. Motor abilities as well as motivation and experience with athletics gradually
differentiate boys and girls, especially when they reach and begin high school. Socially, boys tend to adopt
relationships that are more active and wide-ranging than do girls. Academically, girls tend to be a bit more
motivated to receive slightly higher marks in school. Teachers sometimes contribute to gender role differences—
perhaps without intending—by paying attention to boys more frequently and more publicly in class, and by
distributing praise and criticism in ways differentiated by sex.
Students also differ according to cultures, language, and ethnic groups of their families. Many students are
bilingual, with educational consequences that depend on their fluency in each of their two languages. If they have
more difficulty with English, then programs that add their first language together with English have proved to be
helpful. If they have more difficulty with their first language, they are risk for language loss, and the consequences
are also negative even if more hidden from teachers’ views.
Educational Psychology 80 A Global Text
4. Student diversity
In addition to language differences as such, students differ according to culture in how language is used or
practiced—in taking turns at speaking, in eye contact, social distance, wait time, and the use of questions. Some of
these differences in practice stem from cultural differences in attitudes about self-identity, with non-Anglo
culturally tending to support a more interdependent view of the self than Anglo culture or the schools. Differences
in attitudes and in use of language have several consequences for teachers. In particular—where appropriate—they
should consider using cooperative activities, avoid highlighting individuals’ accomplishments or failures, and be
patient about students’ learning to be punctual.
On the Internet
both English Language Learners and their teachers. The website offers a variety of information, free of charge,
about all aspects of bilingual education, including introductory summaries of the field, position papers released to
the government and the press, and research articles from their journals.
Education, which as its name implies advocates for all-girl and all-boy classes and schools. The website contains
thoughtful summaries of the advantages to both boys and girls if they are educated separately and in public schools.
Whether you agree with their point of view or not, their point of view is worth considering; though keep in mind
that their supporting information tends to come from media sources (e.g. newspapers) instead of full-fledged
research studies.
Key termsAfrican-American English
Balanced bilingualismBilingual
Cognitive stylesCulture
Dialect Ebonics
English language learner (ELL)Ethnicity
Eye contactField dependence
Field independenceGender roles
Group differencesIdentity
Impulsivity
Independent selfIndividual differences
Interdependent selfIRE cycle
Language lossLearning styles
Limited English learner (LEL)Metacognition
Multiple intelligencesReflectivity
Social distanceTest questions
Unbalanced bilingualismWait time
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Educational Psychology 84 A Global Text
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5. Students with special educational needs
Three people on the margins
The first person: In 1761 a six-year-old girl was captured from West Africa, given the name Phillis
Wheatley, and sold into slavery in the City of Boston in Colonial America. By the time she was 17,
Phillis had taught herself to read and write and had developed a special love and talent for poetry. Her
owner was a wealthy businessman and sought to improve his reputation by publishing an anthology of
her poems. Unfortunately he encountered stiff resistance from publishers because few people at that
time believed Africans to be capable of the thought and imagination needed to write poetry. People
who heard of her poetry were skeptical and inclined to think that it was faked. Eventually, to save his
own reputation, the owner assembled a tribunal of 18 prominent judges—including the governor of
Massachusetts and John Hancock, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence—to assess the
young woman’s mental capacity. After cross-examining her, the judges finally decided that Ms
Wheatley was, after all, capable of writing poetry (Robinson, 1982).
The second person: A century later, a child named Helen Keller lost her sight and hearing as a
result of illness during infancy. In spite of this misfortune, though, Helen devised a language of
gestural signs for communicating with a tutor, and was soon also using Braille to study both French
and Latin. At ten, she wrote and published a short story. Yet like Ms Wheatley, Ms Keller also faced
substantial, chronic skepticism about her capacities. Prominent educators accused her of plagiarizing
others’ writings and merely “parroting” others’ ideas without understanding them (Keller, 1954;
Bogdan, 2006). Eventually, as with Wheatley, a panel was assembled—though this time the members
were professional experts about disabilities—to determine whether Ms Keller was in fact capable of
writing what she published. The panel decided that she was indeed capable, though only by a slim
margin (five judges vs four).
The third person: In 1978, Sue Rubin was born with a disability that limited her speech to
disordered bursts of sound and occasionally echoing phrases of other people. She was labeled autistic
because of her symptoms, and assumed to be profoundly retarded. With support and encouragement
from her mother and others, however, Sue eventually learned to type on a keyboard without assistance.
She learned to communicate effectively when she was about 13 and was able to go to school. Since then
she has made many presentations about autism at conferences and recently co-edited a book about
autism, titled Autism: The Myth of the Person Alone (Bogdan, et al., 2005).
One of these individuals experienced racial discrimination and the other two experienced physical disabilities,
but notice something important: that all three were defined by society as disabled intellectually. Initially, their
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5. Students with special educational needs
achievements were dismissed because of widespread assumptions—whether about race or disability—of their
inherent incompetence. All three had to work harder than usual, not only to acquire literacy itself, but also to prove
that their literacy was genuine and worthy of respect.
Since the time of Phillis Wheatley, North American society has eliminated slavery and made some progress at
reducing certain forms of racism, though much remains to be done. In 1954, for example, the United States
Supreme Court ruled that public schools could not be segregated by race, and in doing so recognized, at least
legally, the intellectual competence of African-Americans as well as the moral obligation of society to provide all
citizens with the best possible education. It has taken longer to recognize legally the rights and competence of
persons with disabilities, but events and trends beginning in the 1970s have begun to make it happen. This chapter
begins by explaining some of these and how they have altered the work of teachers.
Growing support for people with disabilities: legislation and its effects
Since the 1970s political and social attitudes have moved increasingly toward including people with disabilities
into a wide variety of “regular” activities. In the United States, the shift is illustrated clearly in the Federal
legislation that was enacted during this time. The legislation partly stimulated the change in attitudes, but at the
same time they partly resulted from the change. Three major laws were passed that guaranteed the rights of
persons with disabilities, and of children and students with disabilities in particular. Although the first two affected
teachers’ work in the classroom, the third has had the biggest impact on education.
Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Section 504
This law—the first of its kind—required that individuals with disabilities be accommodated in any program or
activity that receives Federal funding (PL 93-112, 1973). Although this law was not intended specifically for
education, in practice it has protected students’ rights in some extra-curricular activities (for older students) and in
some child care or after-school care programs (for younger students). If those programs receive Federal funding of
any kind, the programs are not allowed to exclude children or youths with disabilities, and they have to find
reasonable ways to accommodate the individuals’ disabilities.
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (or ADA).
This legislation also prohibited discrimination on the basis of disability, just as Section 504 of the Rehabilitation
Act had done (PL 101-336, 1990). Although the ADA also applies to all people (not just to students), its provisions
are more specific and “stronger” than those of Section 504. In particular, ADA extends to all employment and jobs,
not just those receiving Federal funding. It also specifically requires accommodations to be made in public facilities
such as with buses, restrooms, and telephones. ADA legislation is therefore responsible for some of the “minor”
renovations in schools that you may have noticed in recent years, like wheelchair-accessible doors, ramps, and
restrooms, and public telephones with volume controls.
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (or IDEA)
As its name implied this legislation was more focused on education than either Section 504 or ADA. It was first
passed in 1975 and has been amended several times since, including most recently in 2004 (PL 108-446, 2004). In
its current form, the law guarantees the following rights related to education for anyone with a disability from birth
to age 21. The first two influence schooling in general, but the last three affect the work of classroom teachers rather
directly:
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• Free, appropriate education: An individual or an individual’s family should not have to pay for education
simply because the individual has a disability, and the educational program should be truly educational (i.e.
not merely care-taking or “babysitting” of the person).
• Due process: In case of disagreements between an individual with a disability and the schools or other
professionals, there must be procedures for resolving the disagreements that are fair and accessible to all
parties—including the person himself or herself or the person’s representative.
• Fair evaluation of performance in spite of disability: Tests or other evaluations should not assume test-
taking skills that a person with a disability cannot reasonably be expected to have, such as holding a pencil,
hearing or seeing questions, working quickly, or understanding and speaking orally. Evaluation procedures
should be modified to allow for these differences. This provision of the law applies both to evaluations made
by teachers and to school-wide or “high-stakes” testing programs.
• Education in the “least restrictive environment”: Education for someone with a disability should provide as
many educational opportunities and options for the person as possible, both in the short term and in the
long term. In practice this requirement has meant including students in regular classrooms and school
activities as much as possible, though often not totally.
• An individualized educational program: Given that every disability is unique, instructional planning for a
person with a disability should be unique or individualized as well. In practice this provision has led to
classroom teachers planning individualized programs jointly with other professionals (like reading
specialists, psychologists, or medical personnel) as part of a team.
Considered together, these provisions are both a cause and an effect of basic democratic philosophy. The
legislation says, in effect, that all individuals should have access to society in general and to education in particular.
Although teachers certainly support this philosophy in broad terms, and many have welcomed the IDEA legislation,
others have found the prospect of applying it in classrooms leads to a number of questions and concerns. Some ask,
for example, whether a student with a disability will disrupt the class; others, whether the student will interfere
with covering the curriculum; still others, whether the student might be teased by classmates. Since these are
legitimate concerns, I will return to them at the end of this chapter. First, however, let me clarify exactly how the
IDEA legislation affects the work of teachers, and then describe in more detail the major disabilities that you are
likely to encounter in students.
Responsibilities of teachers for students with disabilities
The IDEA legislation has affected the work of teachers by creating three new expectations. The first expectation
is to provide alternative methods of assessment for students with disabilities; the second is to arrange a learning
environment that is as normal or as “least restrictive” as possible; and the third is to participate in creating
individual educational plans for students with disabilities.
Alternative assessments
In the context of students with disabilities, assessment refers to gathering information about a student in
order both to identify the strengths of the student, and to decide what special educational support, if any, the
student needs. In principle, of course, these are tasks that teachers have for all students: assessment is a major
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5. Students with special educational needs
reason why we give tests and assignments, for example, and why we listen carefully to the quality of students’
comments during class discussions. For students with disabilities, however, such traditional or conventional
strategies of assessment often seriously underestimate the students’ competence (Koretz & Barton, 2003/2004;
Pullin, 2005). Depending on the disability, a student may have trouble with (a) holding a pencil, (b) hearing a
question clearly, (c) focusing on a picture, (d) marking an answer in time even when he or she knows the answer,
(e) concentrating on a task in the presence of other people, or (f) answering a question at the pace needed by the
rest of the class. Traditionally, teachers have assumed that all students either have these skills or can learn them
with just modest amounts of coaching, encouragement, and will power. For many other students, for example, it
may be enough to say something like: “Remember to listen to the question carefully!” For students with disabilities,
however, a comment like this may not work and may even be insensitive. A student with visual impairment does
not need be reminded to “look closely at what I am writing on the board”; doing so will not cause the student to see
the chalkboard more clearly—though the reminder might increase the student’s anxiety and self-consciousness.
There are a number of strategies for modifying assessments in ways that attempt to be fair and that at the same
time recognize how busy teachers usually are. One is to consider supplementing conventional assignments or tests
with portfolios, which are collections of a student’s work that demonstrate a student’s development over time, and
which usually include some sort of reflective or evaluative comments from the student, the teacher, or both
(Carothers & Taylor, 2003; Wesson & King, 1996). Another is to devise a system for observing the student regularly,
even if briefly, and informally recording notes about the observations for later consideration and assessment. A
third strategy is to recruit help from teacher assistants, who are sometimes present to help a student with a
disability; an assistant can often conduct a brief test or activity with the student, and later report on and discuss the
results with you.
If you reflect on these strategies, you may realize that they may sometimes create issues about fairness. If a
student with a disability demonstrates competence one way but other students demonstrate it another, should they
be given similar credit? On the other hand, is it fair for one student to get a lower mark because the student lacks an
ability—such as normal hearing—that teachers cannot, in principle, ever teach? These ethical issues are legitimate
and important, and I therefore return to them in Chapters 11 and 12, which discuss assessment in much more
detail.
Least restrictive environment
The IDEA legislation calls for placing students with disabilities in the least restrictive environment (or
LRE), defined as the combination of settings that involve the student with regular classrooms and school programs
as much as possible. The precise combination is determined by the circumstances of a particular school and of the
student. A kindergarten child with a mild cognitive disability, for example, may spend the majority of time in a
regular kindergarten class, working alongside and playing with non-disabled classmates and relying on a teacher
assistant for help where needed. An individual with a similar disability in high school, however, might be assigned
primarily to classes specially intended for slow learners, but nonetheless participate in some school-wide activities
alongside non-disabled students. The difference in LREs might reflect teachers’ perceptions of how difficult it is to
modify the curriculum in each case; rightly or wrongly, teachers are apt to regard adaptation as more challenging at
“higher” grade levels. By the same token, a student with a disability that is strictly physical might spend virtually all
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his or her time in regular classes throughout the student’s school career; in this case, adjustment of the curriculum
would not be an issue.
For you, the policy favoring the least restrictive environment means that if you continue teaching long enough,
you will very likely encounter a student with a disability in one or more of your classes, or at least have one in a
school-related activity for which you are responsible. It also means that the special educational needs of these
students will most often be the “mildest”. Statistically, the most frequent forms of special needs are learning
disabilities, which are impairments in specific aspects of learning, and especially of reading. Learning disabilities
account for about half of all special educational needs—as much as all other types put together. Somewhat less
common are speech and language disorders, cognitive disabilities, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorders
(or ADHD). Because of their frequency and of the likelihood that you will meet students for whom these labels have
been considered, I describe them more fully later in this chapter, along with other disability conditions that you will
encounter much less frequently.
Individual educational plan
The third way that IDEA legislation and current educational approaches affect teachers is by requiring teachers
and other professional staff to develop an annual individual educational plan (or IEP) for each student with a
disability. The plan is created by a team of individuals who know the student’s strengths and needs; at a minimum
it includes one or more classroom teachers, a “resource” or special education teacher, and the student’s parents or
guardians. Sometimes, too, the team includes a school administrator (like a vice-principal) or other professionals
from outside the school (like a psychologist or physician), depending on the nature of the child’s disability. An IEP
can take many forms, but it always describes a student’s current social and academic strengths as well as the
student’s social or academic needs. It also specifies educational goals or objectives for the coming year, lists special
services to be provided, and describes how progress toward the goals will be assessed at the end of the year. Exhibit
6 shows a simple, imaginary IEP. (But keep in mind that the actual visual formats of IEP plans vary widely among
states, provinces, and school jurisdictions.) This particular plan is for a student named Sean, a boy having
difficulties with reading. IEPs, like the one in the figure, originally served mainly students in the younger grades,
but more recently they have been extended and modified to serve transition planning for adolescents with
disabilities who are approaching the end of their public schooling (West, et al., 1999). For these students, the goals
of the plan often include activities (like finding employment) to extend beyond schooling. See below.
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5. Students with special educational needs
Student: Sean Cortinez Birth Date: 26 May 2002 Period Covered by IEP:
September 20xx – July 20xy
Address: Phone:
School: Grant Park Middle
School
Grade Level: 3 Teacher(s): G. Eidse
Support Team
List specialists (educational, medical, or other) involved in assisting the student:
Resource teacher, instructional aide (part time):
Special Curriculum Needs to be Addressed:
List general needs here; use separate sheet(s) for specific, short-term objectives as appropriate:
Sean can read short, familiar words singly, but cannot read connected text even when familiar. Needs help
especially with decoding and other “word attack” skills. Some trouble focusing on reading tasks. Sean speaks
clearly and often listens well when the topic interests him.
Special Materials or Equipment Needed:
Modified test procedures and reading materials as required.
Signatures:
Parent or guardian: K. Cortinez
Teacher(s): G. Eidse
Principal: L. Stauffer
Date of IEP Meeting: 26 October 20xx
Exhibit 6: A sample individual educational plan. (Note that actual visual formats of IEP plans vary.)
If you have a student with an IEP, you can expect two consequences for teaching. The first is that you should
expect to make definite, clear plans for the student, and to put the plans in writing. This consequence does not, of
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course, prevent you from taking advantage of unexpected or spontaneous classroom events as well in order to
enrich the curriculum. But it does mean that an educational program for a student with a disability cannot consist
only of the unexpected or spontaneous. The second consequence is that you should not expect to construct an
educational plan alone, as is commonly done when planning regular classroom programs. When it comes to
students with disabilities, expect instead to plan as part of a team. Working with others ensures that everyone who
is concerned about the student has a voice. It also makes it possible to improve the quality of IEPs by pooling ideas
from many sources—even if, as you might suspect, it also challenges professionals to communicate clearly and
cooperate respectfully with team members in order to serve a student as well as possible.
Categories of disabilities—and their ambiguities
So far I have said a lot about why inclusion has come to be important for teachers, but not much about the actual
nature of students’ disabilities. Part of the reason for delaying was because, to put it simply, disabilities are
inherently ambiguous. Naming and describing “types” of them implies that disabilities are relatively fixed, stable,
and distinct, like different kinds of fruit or vegetables. As many teachers discover, though, the reality is somewhat
different. The behavior and qualities of a particular student with a disability can be hard to categorize. The student
may be challenged not only by the disability, but also by experiences common to all students, disabled or not. Any
particular disability, furthermore, poses problems more in some situations than in others. A student with a reading
difficulty may have trouble in a language arts class, for example, but not in a physical education class; a student
with a hearing impairment may have more trouble “hearing” a topic that he dislikes compared to one that he likes.
Because official descriptions of types or categories of disabilities overlook these complexities, they risk stereotyping
the real, live people to whom they are applied (Green, et al., 2005). Even the simplifications might not be a serious
problem if the resulting stereotypes were complimentary—most of us would not mind being called a “genius”, for
example, even if the description is not always true. Stereotypes about disabilities, however, are usually stigmatizing,
not complimentary.
Still, categories of disabilities do serve useful purposes by giving teachers, parents, and other professionals a
language or frame of reference for talking about disabilities. They also can help educators when arranging special
support services for students, since a student has to “have” an identifiable, nameable need if professionals are to
provide help. Educational authorities have therefore continued to use categories (or “labels”) to classify disabilities
in spite of expressing continuing concern about whether the practice hurts students’ self-esteem or standing in the
eyes of peers (Biklen & Kliewer, 2006). For classroom teachers, the best strategy may be simply to understand how
categories of disabilities are defined, while also keeping their limitations in mind and being ready to explain their
limitations (tactfully, of course) to parents or others who use the labels inappropriately.
That said, what in fact are the major types of disabilities encountered by teachers? Let us take them one at a
time, beginning with the more common ones.
Learning disabilities
A learning disability (or LD) is a specific impairment of academic learning that interferes with a specific
aspect of schoolwork and that reduces a student’s academic performance significantly. An LD shows itself as a
major discrepancy between a student’s ability and some feature of achievement: the student may be delayed in
reading, writing, listening, speaking, or doing mathematics, but not in all of these at once. A learning problem is not
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5. Students with special educational needs
considered a learning disability if it stems from physical, sensory, or motor handicaps, or from generalized
intellectual impairment (or mental retardation). It is also not an LD if the learning problem really reflects the
challenges of learning English as a second language. Genuine LDs are the learning problems left over after these
other possibilities are accounted for or excluded. Typically, a student with an LD has not been helped by teachers’
ordinary efforts to assist the student when he or she falls behind academically—though what counts as an “ordinary
effort”, of course, differs among teachers, schools, and students. Most importantly, though, an LD relates to a fairly
specific area of academic learning. A student may be able to read and compute well enough, for example, but not be
able to write.
LDs are by far the most common form of special educational need, accounting for half of all students with
special needs in the United States and anywhere from 5 to 20 per cent of all students, depending on how the
numbers are estimated (United States Department of Education, 2005; Ysseldyke & Bielinski, 2002). Students with
LDs are so common, in fact, that most teachers regularly encounter at least one per class in any given school year,
regardless of the grade level they teach.
Defining learning disabilities clearly
With so many students defined as having learning disabilities, it is not surprising that the term itself becomes
ambiguous in the truest sense of “having many meanings”. Specific features of LDs vary considerably. Any of the
following students, for example, qualify as having a learning disability, assuming that they have no other disease,
condition, or circumstance to account for their behavior:
• Albert, an eighth-grader, has trouble solving word problems that he reads, but can solve them easily if he
hears them orally.
• Bill, also in eighth grade, has the reverse problem: he can solve word problems only when he can read them,
not when he hears them.
• Carole, a fifth-grader, constantly makes errors when she reads textual material aloud, either leaving out
words, adding words, or substituting her own words for the printed text.
• Emily, in seventh grade, has terrible handwriting; her letters vary in size and wobble all over the page,
much like a first- or second-grader.
• Denny reads very slowly, even though he is in fourth grade. His comprehension suffers as a result, because
he sometimes forgets what he read at the beginning of a sentence by the time he reaches the end.
• Garnet’s spelling would have to be called “inventive”, even though he has practiced conventionally correct
spelling more than other students. Garnet is in sixth grade.
• Harmin, a ninth-grader has particular trouble decoding individual words and letters if they are unfamiliar;
he reads conceal as “concol” and alternate as “alfoonite”.
• Irma, a tenth-grader, adds multiple-digit numbers as if they were single-digit numbers stuck together: 42 +
59 equals 911 rather than 101, though 23 + 54 correctly equals 77.
With so many expressions of LDs, it is not surprising that educators sometimes disagree about their nature and
about the kind of help students need as a consequence. Such controversy may be inevitable because LDs by
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definition are learning problems with no obvious origin. There is good news, however, from this state of affairs, in
that it opens the way to try a variety of solutions for helping students with learning disabilities.
Assisting students with learning disabilities
There are various ways to assist students with learning disabilities, depending not only on the nature of the
disability, of course, but also on the concepts or theory of learning guiding you. Take Irma, the girl mentioned above
who adds two-digit numbers as if they were one digit numbers. Stated more formally, Irma adds two-digit numbers
without carrying digits forward from the ones column to the tens column, or from the tens to the hundreds column.
Exhibit 7 shows the effect that her strategy has on one of her homework papers. What is going on here and how
could a teacher help Irma?
Directions: Add the following numbers.
42 23 11 47 97 41
+ 59 + 54 + 48 + 23 + 64 + 27
911 77 59 610 1511 68
Three out of the six problems are done correctly, even though Irma seems to use an incorrect
strategy systematically on all six problems.
Exhibit 7: Irma’s math homework about two-digit addition
Behaviorism: reinforcement for wrong strategies
One possible approach comes from the behaviorist theory discussed in Chapter 2. Irma may persist with the
single-digit strategy because it has been reinforced a lot in the past. Maybe she was rewarded so much for adding
single-digit numbers (3+5, 7+8 etc.) correctly that she generalized this skill to two-digit problems—in fact over
generalized it. This explanation is plausible because she would still get many two-digit problems right, as you can
confirm by looking at it. In behaviorist terms, her incorrect strategy would still be reinforced, but now only on a
“partial schedule of reinforcement”. As I pointed out in Chapter 2, partial schedules are especially slow to
extinguish, so Irma persists seemingly indefinitely with treating two-digit problems as if they were single-digit
problems.
From the point of view of behaviorism, changing Irma’s behavior is tricky since the desired behavior (borrowing
correctly) rarely happens and therefore cannot be reinforced very often. It might therefore help for the teacher to
reward behaviors that compete directly with Irma’s inappropriate strategy. The teacher might reduce credit for
simply finding the correct answer, for example, and increase credit for a student showing her work—including the
work of carrying digits forward correctly. Or the teacher might make a point of discussing Irma’s math work with
Irma frequently, so as to create more occasions when she can praise Irma for working problems correctly.
Metacognition and responding reflectively
Part of Irma’s problem may be that she is thoughtless about doing her math: the minute she sees numbers on a
worksheet, she stuffs them into the first arithmetic procedure that comes to mind. Her learning style, that is, seems
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5. Students with special educational needs
too impulsive and not reflective enough, as discussed in Chapter 4. Her style also suggests a failure of
metacognition (remember that idea from Chapter 2?), which is her self-monitoring of her own thinking and its
effectiveness. As a solution, the teacher could encourage Irma to think out loud when she completes two-digit
problems—literally get her to “talk her way through” each problem. If participating in these conversations was
sometimes impractical, the teacher might also arrange for a skilled classmate to take her place some of the time.
Cooperation between Irma and the classmate might help the classmate as well, or even improve overall social
relationships in the classroom.
Constructivism, mentoring, and the zone of proximal development
Perhaps Irma has in fact learned how to carry digits forward, but not learned the procedure well enough to use it
reliably on her own; so she constantly falls back on the earlier, better-learned strategy of single-digit addition. In
that case her problem can be seen in the constructivist terms, like those that I discussed in Chapter 2. In essence,
Irma has lacked appropriate mentoring from someone more expert than herself, someone who can create a “zone of
proximal development” in which she can display and consolidate her skills more successfully. She still needs
mentoring or “assisted coaching” more than independent practice. The teacher can arrange some of this in much
the way she encourages to be more reflective, either by working with Irma herself or by arranging for a classmate or
even a parent volunteer to do so. In this case, however, whoever serves as mentor should not only listen, but also
actively offer Irma help. The help has to be just enough to insure that Irma completes two-digit problems correctly
—neither more nor less. Too much help may prevent Irma from taking responsibility for learning the new strategy,
but too little may cause her to take the responsibility prematurely.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (or ADHD) is a problem with sustaining attention and controlling
impulses. As students, almost all of us have these problems at one time or another, but a student with ADHD shows
them much more frequently than usual, and often at home as well as at school. In the classroom, the student with
ADHD may fidget and squirm a lot, or have trouble remaining seated, or continually get distracted and off task, or
have trouble waiting for a turn, or blurt out answers and comments. The student may shift continually from one
activity to another, or have trouble playing quietly, or talk excessively without listening to others. Or the student
may misplace things and seem generally disorganized, or be inclined to try risky activities without enough thought
to the consequences. Although the list of problem behaviors is obviously quite extensive, keep in mind that the
student will not do all of these things. It is just that over time, the student with ADHD is likely to do several of them
chronically or repeatedly, and in more than one setting (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). In the classroom,
of course, the behaviors may annoy classmates and frustrate teachers.
Differences in perceptions: ADHD versus high activity
It is important to note that classrooms are places that make heavy demands on not showing ADHD-like
behaviors: students are often supposed to sit for long periods, avoid interrupting others, finish tasks after beginning
them, and keep their minds (and materials) organized. Ironically, therefore, classroom life may sometimes
aggravate ADHD without the teacher intending for it to do so. A student with only a mild or occasional tendency to
be restless, for example, may fit in well outdoors playing soccer, but feel unusually restless indoors during class. It
also should not be surprising that teachers sometimes mistake a student who is merely rather active for a student
with ADHD, since any tendency to be physically active may contribute to problems with classroom management.
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The tendency to “over-diagnose” is more likely for boys than for girls (Maniadaki, et al., 2003), presumably because
gender role expectations cause teachers to be especially alert to high activity in boys. Over-diagnosis is also
especially likely for students who are culturally or linguistically non-Anglo (Chamberlain, 2005), presumably
because cultural and language differences may sometimes lead teachers to misinterpret students’ behavior. To
avoid making such mistakes, it is important to keep in mind that in true ADHD, restlessness, activity, and
distractibility are widespread and sustained. A student who shows such problems at school but never at home, for
example, may not have ADHD; he may simply not be getting along with his teacher or classmates.
Causes of ADHD
Most psychologists and medical specialists agree that true ADHD, as opposed to “mere” intermittent
distractibility or high activity, reflects a problem in how the nervous system functions, but they do not know the
exact nature or causes of the problem (Rutter, 2004, 2005). Research shows that ADHD tends to run in families,
with children—especially boys—of parents who had ADHD somewhat more likely than usual to experience the
condition themselves. The association does not necessarily mean, though, that ADHD is inborn or genetic. Why? It
is because it is possible that parents who formerly had ADHD may raise their children more strictly in an effort to
prevent their own condition in their children; yet their strictness, ironically, may trigger a bit more tendency, rather
than less, toward the restless distractibility characteristic of ADHD. On the other hand (or is it “on the third
hand”?), the parents’ strictness may also be a result, as well as a cause of, a child’s restlessness. The bottom line for
teachers: sorting out causes from effects is confusing, if not impossible, and in any case may not help much to
determine actual teaching strategies to help the students learn more effectively.
Teaching students with ADHD
Research also shows that ADHD can be reduced for many students if they take certain medications, of which the
most common is methylphenidate, commonly known by the name Ritalin (Wilens, 2005; Olfson, 2003). This drug
and others like it act by stimulating the nervous system, which reduces symptoms by helping a student pay better
attention to the choices he or she makes and to the impact of actions on others. Unfortunately the medications do
not work on all students with ADHD, especially after they reach adolescence, and in any case has certain practical
problems. Drugs cost money, for one thing, which is a problem for a family without much money to begin with, or
for a family lacking medical insurance that pays for medications—a particularly common situation in the United
States. For another thing, drugs must be taken regularly in order to be effective, including on weekends. Keeping a
regular schedule can be difficult if parents’ own schedules are irregular or simply differ from the child’s, for
example because of night shifts at work or because parents are separated and share custody of the child.
In any case, since teachers are not doctors and medications are not under teachers’ control, it may be more
important simply to provide an environment where a student with ADHD can organize choices and actions easily
and successfully. Clear rules and procedures, for example, can reduce the “noise” or chaotic quality in the child’s
classroom life significantly. The rules and procedures can be generated jointly with the child; they do not have to be
imposed arbitrarily, as if the student were incapable of thinking about them reasonably. Sometimes a classmate can
be enlisted to model slower, more reflective styles of working, but in ways that do not imply undue criticism of the
student with ADHD. The more reflective student can complete a set of math problems, for example, while
explaining what he or she is thinking about while doing the work. Sometimes the teacher can help by making lists of
tasks or of steps in long tasks. It can help to divide focused work into small, short sessions rather than grouping it
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5. Students with special educational needs
into single, longer sessions. Whatever the strategies that you use, they should be consistent, predictable, and
generated by the student as much as possible. By having these qualities, the strategies can strengthen the student’s
self-direction and ability to screen out the distractions of classroom life. The goal for teachers, in essence, is to build
the student’s metacognitive capacity, while at the same time, of course, treating the student with respect.
Intellectual disabilities
An intellectual disability is a significant limitation in a student’s cognitive functioning and daily adaptive
behaviors (Schalock & Luckasson, 2004; American Association on Mental Retardation, 2002). The student may
have limited language or impaired speech and may not perform well academically. Compared to students with
learning disabilities discussed earlier, students with intellectual disabilities have impairments to learning that are
broader and more significant. They score poorly on standardized tests of intelligence (like the ones discussed later,
in Chapter 12). Everyday tasks that most people take for granted, like getting dressed or eating a meal, may be
possible, but they may also take more time and effort than usual. Health and safety can sometimes be a concern (for
example, knowing whether it is safe to cross a street). For older individuals, finding and keeping a job may require
help from supportive others. The exact combination of challenges varies from one person to another, but it always
(by definition) involves limitations in both intellectual and daily functioning.
As a teacher, you may hear more than one term for describing students with intellectual disabilities. If the
disability is mild, teachers sometimes refer to a student with the disability simply as a slow learner, particularly if
the student has no formal, special supports for the disability, such as a teaching assistant hired specifically to assist
the student. If the disability is more marked, then the student is more likely to be referred to either as having an
intellectual disability or as having mental retardation. In this chapter I primarily use the term intellectual
disability, because it has fewer negative connotations while still describing one key educational aspect of the
disability, cognitive impairment. Keep in mind, however, that actual intellectual disabilities are always more than
cognitive: they also involve challenges about adapting to everyday living.
Levels of support for individuals with intellectual disabilities
Intellectual disabilities happen in different degrees or amounts, though most often are relatively mild.
Traditionally the intensity or “amount” of the disability was defined by scores on a standardized test of scholastic
aptitude (or “IQ test”), with lower scores indicating more severe disability. (More about these tests in Chapter 12.)
Because of the insensitivity of such tests to individuals’ daily social functioning, however, current trends are toward
defining intensities by the amount of support needed by the individual. Table 13 summarizes the most commonly
used scheme for this purpose, one created by the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental
Disabilities (AAMR, 2002). Levels of support range from intermittent (just occasional or “as needed” for specific
activities) to pervasive (continuous in all realms of living).
Table 13: Levels and areas of support for intellectual disabilities
Level of
support
Duration of
support
Frequency of
support
Setting of
support
Amount of
professional
assistance
Intermittent Only as needed Occasional or Usually only one Occasional
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infrequent or two (e.g. 1-2
classes or activities)
consultation or
monitoring by
professional
Limited As needed, but
sometimes continuing
Regular, but
frequency varies
Several settings,
but not usually all
Occasional or
regular contact with
professionals
Extensive Usually continuing Regular, but
frequency varies
Several settings,
but not usually all
Regular contact
with professionals at
least once a week
Pervasive May be lifelong Frequent or
continuous
Nearly all settings Continuous
contact and
monitoring by
professionals
Source: American Association on Mental Retardation, 2002: Schalock & Luckassen, 2004.
As a classroom teacher, the intellectual disabilities that you are most likely to see are the ones requiring the least
support in your classroom. A student requiring only intermittent support may require special help with some
learning activities or classroom routines, but not others; he or she might need help with reading or putting on
winter clothes, for example, but primarily on occasions when there is pressure to do these things relatively quickly.
Students requiring somewhat more support are likely to spend somewhat less time in your classroom and more
time receiving special help from other professionals, such as a special education teacher, a speech and language
specialist, or an assistant to these professionals. These circumstances have distinct implications for ways of
teaching these students.
Teaching students with intellectual disabilities
There are many specific techniques that can help in teaching students with mild or moderate intellectual
disabilities, but most can be summarized into three more general strategies. The first is to give more time and
practice than usual; the second is to embed activities into the context of daily life or functioning where possible; and
the third is to include the child both in social and in academic activities, rather than just one or the other. Let us
look briefly at each of these ideas.
Giving more time and practice than usual
If a student has only a mild intellectual disability, he or she can probably learn important fundamentals of the
academic curriculum—basic arithmetic, for example, and basic reading. Because of the disability, though, the
student may need more time or practice than most other students. He or she may be able to read many words by
sight (day, night, morning, afternoon, etc.), but need longer than other students to recognize and say them. Or the
student may know that 2 + 3 = 5, but need help applying this math fact to real objects; you (or a helper) might need
to show the student that two pencils plus three pencils make five pencils.
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Giving extra help takes time and perseverance, and can try the patience of the student (and of you, too). To deal
with this problem, it may help to reward the student frequently for effort and successes with well-timed praise,
especially if it is focused on specific, actual achievements; “You added that one correctly”, may be more helpful than
“You’re a hard worker”, even if both comments are true. Giving appropriate praise is in turn easier if you set
reasonable, “do-able” goals by breaking skills or tasks into steps that the student is likely to learn without becoming
overly discouraged. At the same time, it is important not to insult the student with goals or activities that are too
easy or by using curriculum materials clearly intended for children who are much younger. Setting expectations too
low actually deprives a student with an intellectual disability of rightful opportunities to learn—a serious ethical and
professional mistake (Bogdan, 2006). In many curriculum areas, fortunately, there already existing materials that
are simplified, yet also appropriate for older students (Snell, et al., 2005). Special education teacher-specialists can
often help in finding them and in devising effective ways of using them.
Adaptive and functional skills
Students with intellectual disabilities present especially clear examples of a universal dilemma of teaching: since
there is not enough time to teach everything, how do we choose what to teach? One basis for selecting activities is to
relate learning goals to students’ everyday lives and activities, just as you would with all students. This strategy
addresses the other defining feature of mental retardation, the student’s difficulties with adapting to and
functioning in everyday living. In teaching addition and subtraction, for example, you can create examples about
the purchasing of common familiar objects (e.g. food) and about the need to make or receive change for the
purchases. Similar considerations apply to learning new reading or oral language vocabulary. Instead of simply
learning words in a “basic reading” series (or reading textbook), try encouraging the student to learn words that are
especially useful to the student’s own life. Often the student, not you yourself, is the best person to decide what
these words actually are.
An adaptive, functional approach can help in nonacademic areas as well. In learning to read or “tell time” on a
clock, for example, try focusing initially on telling the times important to the student, such as when he or she gets
up in the morning or when schools starts. As you add additional times that are personally meaningful to the
student, he or she works gradually towards full knowledge of how to read the hands on a clock. Even if the full
knowledge proves slow to develop, however, the student will at least have learned the most useful clock knowledge
first.
Include the student deliberately in group activities
The key word here is inclusion: the student should participate in and contribute to the life of the class as much
as possible. This means that wherever possible, the student attends special events (assemblies, field days) with the
class; that if the class plays a group game, then the student with the disability is part of the game; that if classmates
do an assignment as a group, then if at all possible the student is assigned to one of the groups. The changes
resulting from these inclusions are real, but can be positive for everyone. On the one hand, they foster acceptance
and helpfulness toward the child with the disability; classmates learn that school is partly about providing
opportunities for everyone, and not just about evaluating or comparing individuals’ skills. On the other hand, the
changes caused by inclusion stimulate the student with the disability to learn as much as possible from classmates,
socially and academically. Among other benefits, group activities can give the student chances to practice
“belonging” skills—how to greet classmates appropriately, or when and how to ask the teacher a question. These are
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skills, I might add, that are beneficial for everyone to learn, disabled or not. (I discuss group work more thoroughly
in Chapter 9, “Facilitating complex thinking”)
Behavioral disorders
Behavioral disorders are a diverse group of conditions in which a student chronically performs highly
inappropriate behaviors. A student with this condition might seek attention, for example, by acting out disruptively
in class. Other students with the condition might behave aggressively, be distractible and overly active, seem
anxious or withdrawn, or seem disconnected from everyday reality. As with learning disabilities, the sheer range of
signs and symptoms defies concise description. But the problematic behaviors do have several general features in
common (Kauffman, 2005; Hallahan & Kauffman, 2006):
• they tend to be extreme
• they persist for extended periods of time
• they tend to be socially unacceptable (e.g. unwanted sexual advances or vandalism against school property)
• they affect school work
• they have no other obvious explanation (e.g. a health problem or temporary disruption in the family)
The variety among behavioral disorders means that estimates of their frequency also tend to vary among states,
cities, and provinces. It also means that in some cases, a student with a behavioral disorder may be classified as
having a different condition, such as ADHD or a learning disability. In other cases, a behavioral problem shown in
one school setting may seem serious enough to be labeled as a behavioral disorder, even though a similar problem
occurring in another school may be perceived as serious, but not serious enough to deserve the label. In any case,
available statistics suggest that only about one to two per cent of students, or perhaps less, have true behavioral
disorders—a figure that is only about one half or one third of the frequency for intellectual disabilities (Kauffman,
2005). Because of the potentially disruptive effects of behavioral disorders, however, students with this condition
are of special concern to teachers. Just one student who is highly aggressive or disruptive can interfere with the
functioning of an entire class, and challenge even the best teacher’s management skills and patience.
Strategies for teaching students with behavioral disorders
The most common challenges of teaching students with behavioral disorders have to do with classroom
management—a topic discussed more thoroughly in Chapter 7 (“Classroom management”). Three important ideas
discussed there, however, also deserve special emphasis here: (1) identifying circumstances that trigger
inappropriate behaviors, (2) teaching of interpersonal skills explicitly, and (3) disciplining a student fairly.
Identifying circumstances that trigger inappropriate behaviors
Dealing with a disruption is more effective if you can identify the specific circumstances or event that triggers it,
rather than focusing on the personality of the student doing the disrupting. A wide variety of factors can trigger
inappropriate behavior (Heineman, Dunlap, & Kincaid, 2005):
• physiological effects—including illness, fatigue, hunger, or side-effects from medications
• physical features of the classroom—such as the classroom being too warm or too cold, the chairs being
exceptionally uncomfortable for sitting, or seating patterns that interfere with hearing or seeing
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• instructional choices or strategies that frustrate learning—including restricting students’ choices unduly,
giving instructions that are unclear, choosing activities that are too difficult or too long, or preventing
students from asking questions when they need help
By identifying the specific variables often associated with disruptive behaviors, it is easier to devise ways to
prevent the behaviors, either by avoiding the triggers if this is possible, or by teaching the student alternative but
quite specific ways of responding to the triggering circumstance.
Teaching interpersonal skills explicitly
Because of their history and behavior, some students with behavior disorders have had little opportunity to learn
appropriate social skills. Simple courtesies (like remembering to say please or thanks) may not be totally unknown,
but may be unpracticed and seem unimportant to the student, as might body language (like eye contact or sitting up
to listen to a teacher rather than slouching and looking away). These skills can be taught in ways that do not make
them part of punishment, make them seem “preachy”, or put a student to shame in front of classmates. Depending
on the age or grade-level of the class, one way is by reading or assigning books and stories in which the characters
model good social skills. Another is through games that require courteous language to succeed; one that I recall
from my own school days, for example, was called “Mother, May I?” (Sullivan & Strang, 2002). Still another is
through programs that link an older student or adult from the community as a partner to the student at risk for
behavior problems; a prominent example of such a program in the United States is Big Brothers Big Sisters of
America, which arranges for older individuals to act as mentors for younger boys and girls (Tierney, Grossman, &
Resch, 1995; Newburn & Shiner, 2006).
In addition, strategies based on behaviorist theory have proved effective for many students, especially if the
student needs opportunities simply to practice social skills that he has learned only recently and may still feel
awkward or self-conscious in using (Algozzine & Ysseldyke, 2006). Several behaviorist techniques were discussed in
Chapter 2, including the use of positive reinforcement, extinction, generalization, and the like. In addition to these,
teachers can arrange for contingency contracts, which are agreements between the teacher and a student about
exactly what work the student will do, how it will be rewarded, and what the consequences will be if the agreement
is not fulfilled (Wilkinson, 2003). An advantage of all such behaviorist techniques is their precision and clarity:
there is little room for misunderstanding about just what your expectations are as the teacher. The precision and
clarity in turn makes it less tempting or necessary for you, as teacher, to become angry about infractions of rules or
a student’s failure to fulfill contracts or agreements, since the consequences tend already to be relatively obvious
and clear. “Keeping your cool” can be especially helpful when dealing with behavior that is by nature annoying or
disrupting.
Fairness in disciplining
Many strategies for helping a student with a behavior disorder may be spelled out in the student’s individual
educational plan, such as discussed earlier in this chapter. The plan can (and indeed is supposed to) serve as a
guide in devising daily activities and approaches with the student. Keep in mind, however, that since an IEP is akin
to a legal agreement among a teacher, other professionals, a student and the student’s parents, departures from it
should be made only cautiously and carefully, if ever. Although such departures may seem unlikely, a student with a
behavior disorder may sometimes be exasperating enough to make it tempting to use stronger or more sweeping
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punishments than usual (for example, isolating a student for extended times). In case you are tempted in this
direction, remember that every IEP also guarantees the student and the student’s parents due process before an
IEP can be changed. In practice this means consulting with everyone involved in the case—especially parents, other
specialists, and the student himself—and reaching an agreement before adopting new strategies that differ
significantly from the past.
Instead of “increasing the volume” of punishments, a better approach is to keep careful records of the student’s
behavior and of your own responses to it, documenting the reasonableness of your rules or responses to any major
disruptions. By having the records, collaboration with parents and other professionals can be more productive and
fair-minded, and increase others’ confidence in your judgments about what the student needs in order to fit in more
comfortably with the class. In the long term, more effective collaboration leads both to better support and to more
learning for the student (as well as to better support for you as teacher!).
Physical disabilities and sensory impairments
A few students have serious physical, medical, or sensory challenges that interfere with their learning. Usually,
the physical and medical challenges are medical conditions or diseases that require ongoing medical care. The
sensory challenges are usually a loss either in hearing or in vision, or more rarely in both. Whatever the specific
problem, it is serious enough to interfere with activities in regular classroom programs and to qualify the student
for special educational services or programs.
Physical challenges that are this serious are relatively infrequent compared to some of the other special needs
discussed in this chapter, though they are of course important in the lives of the students and their families, as well
as important for teachers to accommodate. Only about one per cent of US students have a hearing loss serious
enough to be served by special programs for such students (United States Department of Education, 2005). Only
about half that number have visual impairments that lead them to be served by special programs. For two reasons,
though, these figures are a bit misleading. One reason is that many more students have vision or hearing problems
that are too mild (such as wearing eyeglasses for “ordinary” nearsightedness). Another is that some students with
serious sensory impairments may also have other disabilities and therefore not be counted in statistics about
sensory impairments.
Hearing loss
A child can acquire a hearing loss for a variety of reasons, ranging from disease early in childhood, to difficulties
during childbirth, to reactions to toxic drugs. In the classroom, however, the cause of the loss is virtually irrelevant
because it makes little difference in how to accommodate a student’s educational needs. More important than the
cause of the loss is its extent. Students with only mild or moderate loss of hearing are sometimes called hearing
impaired or hard of hearing; only those with nearly complete loss are called deaf. As with other sorts of
disabilities, the milder the hearing loss, the more likely you are to encounter the student in a regular classroom, at
least for part of the day.
Signs of hearing loss
Although determining whether a student has a hearing loss may seem straightforward (“Just give a hearing
test!”), the assessment is often not clear cut if it takes the student’s daily experiences into account. A serious or
profound hearing loss tends to be noticed relatively quickly and therefore often receive special help (or at least
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5. Students with special educational needs
receives additional diagnosis) sooner. Mild or moderate hearing loss is much more common, however, and is more
likely to be overlooked or mistaken for some other sort of learning problem (Sherer, 2004). Students with a mild
hearing loss sometimes have somewhat depressed (or lowered) language and literacy skills—though not always, and
in any case so do some students without any loss. They may also seem not to listen or attend to a speaker because of
trouble in locating the source of sounds—but then again, sometimes students without loss also fail to listen, though
for entirely different reasons. Students with hearing loss may frequently give incorrect answers to questions—but so
do certain other students with normal hearing. In addition, partial hearing loss can be hidden if the student teaches
himself or herself to lip read, for example, or is careful in choosing which questions to answer in a class discussion.
And so on. Systematic hearing tests given by medical or hearing specialists can resolve some of these ambiguities.
But even they can give a misleading impression, since students’ true ability to manage in class depends on how well
they combine cues and information from the entire context of classroom life.
In identifying a student who may have a hearing loss, therefore, teachers need to observe the student over an
extended period of time and in as many situations as possible. In particular, look for a persistent combination of
some of the following, but look for them over repeated or numerous occasions (Luckner & Carter, 2001):
• delayed language or literacy skills, both written and oral
• some ability (usually partial) to read lips
• less worldly knowledge than usual because of lack of involvement with oral dialogue and/or delayed literacy
• occasionally, tendency to social isolation because of awkwardness in communication
Teaching students with hearing loss
In principle, adjustments in teaching students with hearing loss are relatively easy to make though they do
require deliberate actions or choices by the teacher and by fellow students. Interestingly, many of the strategies
make good advice for teaching all students!
• Take advantage of the student’s residual hearing. Seat the student close to you if you are doing the talking,
or close to key classmates if the students are in a work group. Keep competing noise, such as unnecessary
talking or whispering, to a minimum (because such noise is especially distracting to someone with a
hearing loss). Keep instructions concise and to-the-point. Ask the student occasionally whether he or she is
understanding.
• Use visual cues liberally. Make charts and diagrams wherever appropriate to illustrate what you are saying.
Look directly at the student when you are speaking to him or her (to facilitate lip reading). Gesture and
point to key words or objects—but within reason, not excessively. Provide handouts or readings to review
visually the points that you make orally.
• Include the student in the community of the classroom. Recruit one or more classmates to assist in
“translating” oral comments that the student may have missed. If the student uses American Sign Language
(ASL) at home or elsewhere, then learn a few basic, important signs of ASL yourself (“Hello” “thank you”
“How are you?”). Teach them to classmates as well.
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Visual impairment
Students with visual impairments have difficulty seeing even with corrective lenses. Most commonly the
difficulty has to do with refraction (the ability to focus), but some students may also experience a limited field of
view (called tunnel vision) or be overly sensitive to light in general. As with hearing loss, labels for visual
impairment depend somewhat on the extent and nature of the problem. Legal blindness means that the person has
significant tunnel vision or else visual acuity (sharpness of vision) of 20/200 or less, which means that he or she
must be 20 feet away from an object that a person with normal eyesight can see at 200 feet. Low vision means that
a person has some vision usable for reading, but often needs a special optical device such as a magnifying lens for
doing so. As with hearing loss, the milder the impairment, the more likely that a student with a vision problem will
spend some or even all the time in a regular class.
Signs of visual impairment
Students with visual impairments often show some of the same signs as students with simple, common
nearsightedness. The students may rub their eyes a lot, for example, blink more than usual, or hold books very close
to read them. They may complain of itchiness in their eyes, or of headaches, dizziness, or even nausea after doing a
lot of close eye work. The difference between the students with visual impairment and those with “ordinary”
nearsightedness is primarily a matter of degree: the ones with impairment show the signs more often and more
obviously. If the impairment is serious enough or has roots in certain physical conditions or disease, they may also
have additional symptoms, such as crossed eyes or swollen eyelids. As with hearing loss, the milder forms ironically
can be the most subtle to observe and therefore the most prone to being overlooked at first. For classroom teachers,
the best strategy may be to keep track of a student whose physical signs happen in combination with learning
difficulties, and for whom the combination persists for many weeks.
Teaching students with visual impairment
In general, advice for teaching students with mild or moderate visual impairment parallels the advice for
teaching students with hearing loss, though with obvious differences because of the nature of the students’
disabilities.
• Take advantage of the student’s residual vision. If the student still has some useful vision, place him or her
where he can easily see the most important parts of the classroom—whether that is you, the chalkboard, a
video screen, or particular fellow students. Make sure that the classroom, or at least the student’s part of it,
is well lit (because good lighting makes reading easier with low vision). Make sure that handouts, books and
other reading materials have good, sharp contrast (also helpful with a visual impairment).
• Use non-visual information liberally. Remember not to expect a student with visual impairment to learn
information that is by nature only visual, such as the layout of the classroom, the appearance of
photographs in a textbook or of story lines in a video. Explain these to the student somehow. Use hands-on
materials wherever they will work, such as maps printed in three-dimensional relief or with different
textures. If the student knows how to read Braille (an alphabet for the blind using patterns of small bumps
on a page), allow him to do so.
• Include the student in the community of the classroom. Make sure that the student is accepted as well as
possible into the social life of the class. Recruit classmates to help explain visual material when necessary.
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5. Students with special educational needs
Learn a bit of basic Braille and encourage classmates to do the same, even if none of you ever become as
skilled with it as the student himself or herself.
The value of including students with special needs
I have hinted at it already in this chapter, but it is worth saying again: including students with disabilities in
regular classrooms is valuable for everyone concerned. The students with disabilities themselves tend to experience
a richer educational environment, both socially and academically. Just as with racial segregation, separate
education is not equal education, or at least cannot be counted on to be equal. But classmates of students with
disabilities also experience a richer educational environment; they potentially meet a wider range of classmates and
to see a wider range of educational purposes in operation. Teachers also experience these benefits, but their
programs often benefit in other ways as well. The most notable additional benefit is that many teaching strategies
that are good for students with disabilities also turn out to benefit all students—benefits like careful planning of
objectives, attention to individual differences among students, and establishment of a positive social atmosphere in
the classroom. Later (in Chapters 9 and 10) we will return to these topics because of their importance for high-
quality teaching. But at that point we will frame the topics around the needs of all students, whatever their
individual qualities.
Chapter summary
Since the 1970s support for people with disabilities has grown significantly, as reflected in the United States by
three key pieces of legislation: the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The support has led to new educational practices, including
alternative assessments for students with disabilities, placement in the least restrictive environment, and individual
educational plans.
There are many ways of classifying people with disabilities, all of which carry risks of stereotyping and
oversimplifying individuals’ strengths and needs. For the purposes of education, the most frequent category is
learning disabilities, which are difficulties with specific aspects of academic work. The high prevalence of learning
disabilities makes this category especially ambiguous as a description of particular students. Assistance for students
with learning disabilities can be framed in terms of behaviorist reinforcement, metacognitive strategies, or
constructivist mentoring.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a problem in sustaining attention and controlling impulses.
It can often be controlled with medications, but usually it is also important for teachers to provide a structured
environment for the student as well.
Intellectual disabilities (or mental retardation) are general limitations in cognitive functioning as well as in the
tasks of daily living. Contemporary experts tend to classify individuals with these disabilities according to the
amount and frequency of support they need from others. Teachers can assist these students by giving more time
and practice than usual, by including adaptive and functional skills in what they teach, and by making sure that the
student is included in the daily life of the classroom.
Behavioral disorders are conditions in which students chronically perform highly inappropriate behaviors.
Students with these problems present challenges for classroom management, which teachers can meet by
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identifying circumstances that trigger inappropriate behaviors, by teaching interpersonal skills explicitly, and by
making sure that punishments or disciplinary actions are fair and have been previously agreed upon.
Physical and sensory disabilities are significant limitations in health, hearing, or vision. The signs both of
hearing loss and of vision loss can be subtle, but can sometimes be observed over a period of time. Teaching
students with either a hearing loss or a vision loss primarily involves making use of the students’ residual sensory
abilities and insuring that the student is included in and supported by the class as well as possible.
Key termsAlternative assessment
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
Behavioral disordersContingency contracts
Hearing lossIndividuals with Disabilities Education Act
Individual educational plan (IEP)Intellectual disabilities
Least restrictive environment (LRE)
Learning disabilitiesMental retardation
Portfolio assessmentRehabilitation Act of 1973
Sensory impairmentTransition planning
Visual impairment
On the Internet
Each of the following websites represents an organization focused on the needs of people with one particular
type of disability. Each includes free access to archives of non-current journals and other publications, as well as
information about conferences, professional training events, and political news relevant to persons with disabilities.
(Note that the sponsoring organizations about hearing loss and about intellectual disabilities changed their names
recently, though not their purposes, so their websites may eventually change names as well.)
for this disability, ADD (no “H”) for attention deficit disorder (with the term hyperactivity).
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6. Student motivationNot so long ago, a teacher named Barbara Fuller taught general science to elementary years
students, and one of her units was about insects and spiders. As part of the unit she had students
search for insects and spiders around their own homes or apartments. They brought the creatures to
school (safely in jars), answered a number of questions about them in their journals, and eventually
gave brief oral reports about their findings to the class. The assignment seemed straightforward, but
Barbara found that students responded to it in very different ways. Looking back, here is how
Barbara described their responses:
“I remember Jose couldn’t wait to get started, and couldn’t bear to end the assignment either! Every
day he brought more bugs or spiders—eventually 25 different kinds. Every day he drew pictures of
them in his journal and wrote copious notes about them. At the end he gave the best oral
presentation I’ve ever seen from a third-grader; he called it ‘They Have Us Outnumbered!’ I wish I
had filmed it, he was so poised and so enthusiastic.
“Then there was Lindsey—the one who was always wanted to be the best in everything, regardless of
whether it interested her. She started off the work rather slowly—just brought in a few bugs and only
one spider. But she kept an eye on what everyone else was bringing, and how much. When she saw
how much Jose was doing, though, she picked up her pace, like she was trying to match his level.
Except that instead of bringing a diversity of creatures as Jose was doing, she just brought more and
more of the same ones—almost twenty dead house flies, as I recall! Her presentation was OK—I
really could not give her a bad mark for it—but it wasn’t as creative or insightful as Jose’s. I think she
was more concerned about her mark than about the material.
“And there was Tobias—discouraging old Tobias. He did the work, but just barely. I noticed him
looking a lot at other students’ insect collections and at their journal entries. He wasn’t cheating, I
believe, just figuring out what the basic level of work was for the assignment—what he needed to do
simply to avoid failing it. He brought in fewer bugs than most others, though still a number that was
acceptable. He also wrote shorter answers in his journal and gave one of the shortest oral reports. It
was all acceptable, but not much more than that.
“And Zoey: she was quite a case! I never knew whether to laugh or cry about her. She didn’t exactly
resist doing the assignment, but she certainly liked to chat with other students. So she was easily
distracted, and that cut down on getting her work done, especially about her journal entries. What
really saved her—what kept her work at a reasonably high level of quality—were the two girls she
ended up chatting with. The other two were already pretty motivated to do a lot with the assignment
—create fine looking bug collections, write good journal entries, and make interesting oral
presentations. So when Zoey attempted chitchat with them, the conversations often ended up
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6. Student motivation
focusing on the assignment anyway! She had them to thank for keeping her mind on the work. I don’t
know what Zoey would have done without them.”
As Barbara Fuller’s recollections suggest, students assign various meanings and attitudes to academic activities
—personal meanings and attitudes that arouse and direct their energies in different ways. We call these and their
associated energizing and directing effects by the term motivation, or sometimes motivation to learn. As you
will see, differences in motivation are an important source of diversity in classrooms, comparable in importance to
differences in prior knowledge, ability, or developmental readiness. When it comes to school learning, furthermore,
students’ motivations take on special importance because students’ mere presence in class is (of course) no
guarantee that students really want to learn. It is only a sign that students live in a society requiring young people to
attend school. Since modern education is compulsory, teachers cannot take students’ motivation for granted, and
they have a responsibility to insure students’ motivation to learn. Somehow or other, teachers must persuade
students to want to do what students have to do anyway. This task—understanding and therefore influencing
students’ motivations to learn—is the focus of this chapter. Fortunately, as you will see, there are ways of
accomplishing this task that respect students’ choices, desires, and attitudes.
Like motivation itself, theories of it are full of diversity. For convenience in navigating through the diversity, we
have organized the chapter around six major theories or perspectives about motives and their sources. We call the
topics (1) motives as behavior change, (2) motives as goals, (3) motives as interests, (4) motives as attributions
about success, (5) motives as beliefs about self-efficacy, and (6) motives as self-determination. We end with a
perspective called expectancy-value theory which integrates ideas from some of the other six theories, and partly as
a result implies some additional suggestions for influencing students’ motivations to learn in positive ways.
Motives as behavior
Sometimes it is useful to think of motivation not as something “inside” a student driving the student’s behavior,
but as equivalent to the student’s outward behaviors. This is the perspective of behaviorism, which we discussed in
Chapter 1 (“Student learning”) as a way to think about the learning process. In its most thorough-going form,
behaviorism focuses almost completely on what can be directly seen or heard about a person’s behavior, and has
relatively few comments about what may lie behind (or “underneath” or “inside”) the behavior. When it comes to
motivation, this perspective means minimizing or even ignoring the distinction between the inner drive or energy of
students, and the outward behaviors that express the drive or energy. The two are considered the same, or nearly
so.
Equating the inner and the outward might seem to violate common sense. How can a student do something
without some sort of feeling or thought to make the action happen? As we will explain, this very question has led to
alternative models of motivation that are based on cognitive rather than behaviorist theories of learning. We will
explain some of these later in this chapter. Before getting to them, however, we encourage you to consider the
advantages of a behaviorist perspective on motivation.
Sometimes the circumstances of teaching limit teachers’ opportunities to distinguish between inner motivation
and outward behavior. Certainly teachers see plenty of student behaviors—signs of motivation of some sort. But the
multiple demands of teaching can limit the time needed to determine what the behaviors mean. If a student asks a
lot of questions during discussions, for example, is he or she curious about the material itself, or just wanting to
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look intelligent in front of classmates and the teacher? In a class with many students and a busy agenda, there may
not be a lot of time for a teacher to decide between these possibilities. In other cases, the problem may not be
limited time as much as communication difficulties with a student. Consider a student who is still learning English,
or who belongs to a cultural community that uses patterns of conversation that are unfamiliar to the teacher, or
who has a disability that limits the student’s general language skill. In these cases discerning the student’s inner
motivations may take more time and effort. It is important to invest the extra time and effort for such students, but
while a teacher is doing so, it is also important for her to guide and influence the students’ behavior in constructive
directions. That is where behaviorist approaches to motivation can help.
Operant conditioning as a way of motivating
The most common version of the behavioral perspective on motivation is the theory of operant conditioning
associated with B. F. Skinner (1938, 1957), which we discussed in Chapter 1 (“Learning process”). The description in
that chapter focused on behavioral learning, but the same operant model can be transformed into an account of
motivation. In the operant model, you may recall, a behavior being learned (the “operant”) increases in frequency
or likelihood because performing it makes a reinforcement available. To understand this model in terms of
motivation, think of the likelihood of response as the motivation and the reinforcement as the motivator. Imagine,
for example, that a student learns by operant conditioning to answer questions during class discussions: each time
the student answers a question (the operant), the teacher praises (reinforces) this behavior. In addition to thinking
of this situation as behavioral learning, however, you can also think of it in terms of motivation: the likelihood of
the student answering questions (the motivation) is increasing because of the teacher’s praise (the motivator).
Many concepts from operant conditioning, in fact, can be understood in motivational terms. Another one, for
example, is the concept of extinction, which we defined in Chapter 1 as the tendency for learned behaviors to
become less likely when reinforcement no longer occurs—a sort of “unlearning”, or at least a decrease in
performance of previously learned. The decrease in performance frequency can be thought of as a loss of
motivation, and removal of the reinforcement can be thought of as removal of the motivator. Table 14 summarizes
this way of reframing operant conditioning in terms of motivation, both for the concepts discussed in Chapter 1 and
for other additional concepts.
Table 14: Operant conditioning as learning and as motivation
Concept Definition phrased
in terms of learning
Definition phrased
in terms of motivation
Classroom example
Operant Behavior that becomes
more likely because of
reinforcement
Behavior that suggests
an increase in motivation
Student listens to
teacher’s comments during
lecture or discussion
Reinforcement Stimulus that increases
likelihood of a behavior
Stimulus that motivates Teacher praises student
for listening
Positive reinforcement Stimulus that increases
likelihood of a behavior by
being introduced or added
Stimulus that motivates
by its presence; an
“incentive”
Teacher makes
encouraging remarks
about student’s homework
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6. Student motivation
to a situation
Negative reinforcement Stimulus that increases
the likelihood of a behavior
by being removed or taken
away from a situation
Stimulus that motivates
by its absence or
avoidance
Teacher stops nagging
student about late
homework
Punishment Stimulus that
decreases the likelihood of
a behavior by being
introduced or added to a
situation
Stimulus that
decreases motivation by its
presence
Teacher deducts points
for late homework
Extinction Removal of
reinforcement for a
behavior
Removal of motivating
stimulus that leads to
decrease in motivation
Teacher stops
commenting altogether
about student’s homework
Shaping successive
approximations
Reinforcements for
behaviors that gradually
resemble (approximate) a
final goal behavior
Stimuli that gradually
shift motivation toward a
final goal motivation
Teacher praises student
for returning homework a
bit closer to the deadline;
gradually she praises for
actually being on time
Continuous
reinforcement
Reinforcement that
occurs each time that an
operant behavior occurs
Motivator that occurs
each time that a behavioral
sign of motivation occurs
Teacher praises highly
active student for every
time he works for five
minutes without
interruption
Intermittent
reinforcement
Reinforcement that
sometimes occurs
following an operant
behavior, but not on every
occasion
Motivator that occurs
sometimes when a
behavioral sign of
motivation occurs, but not
on every occasion
Teacher praises highly
active student sometimes
when he works without
interruption, but not every
time
Cautions about behavioral perspectives on motivation
As we mentioned, behaviorist perspectives about motivation do reflect a classroom reality: that teachers
sometimes lack time and therefore must focus simply on students’ appropriate outward behavior. But there are
nonetheless cautions about adopting this view. An obvious one is the ambiguity of students’ specific behaviors;
what looks like a sign of one motive to the teacher may in fact be a sign of some other motive to the student
(DeGrandpre, 2000). If a student looks at the teacher intently while she is speaking, does it mean the student is
motivated to learn, or only that the student is daydreaming? If a student invariably looks away while the teacher is
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speaking, does it mean that the student is disrespectful of the teacher, or that student comes from a family or
cultural group where avoiding eye contact actually shows more respect for a speaker than direct eye contact?
Another concern about behaviorist perspectives, including operant conditioning, is that it leads teachers to
ignore students’ choices and preferences, and to “play God” by making choices on their behalf (Kohn, 1996).
According to this criticism, the distinction between “inner” motives and expressions of motives in outward behavior
does not disappear just because a teacher (or a psychological theory) chooses to treat a motive and the behavioral
expression of a motive as equivalent. Students usually do know what they want or desire, and their wants or desires
may not always correspond to what a teacher chooses to reinforce or ignore. This, in a new guise, is once again the
issue of intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation that we discussed in Chapter 1. Approaches that are exclusively
behavioral, it is argued, are not sensitive enough to students’ intrinsic, self-sustaining motivations.
As we pointed out in Chapter 1, there is truth to this allegation if a teacher actually does rely on rewarding
behaviors that she alone has chosen, or even if she persists in reinforcing behaviors that students already find
motivating without external reinforcement. In those cases reinforcements can backfire: instead of serving as an
incentive to desired behavior, reinforcement can become a reminder of the teacher’s power and of students’ lack of
control over their own actions. A classic research study of intrinsic motivation illustrated the problem nicely. In the
study, researchers rewarded university students for two activities—solving puzzles and writing newspaper headlines
—that they already found interesting. Some of the students, however, were paid to do these activities, whereas
others were not. Under these conditions, the students who were paid were less likely to engage in the activities
following the experiment than were the students who were not paid, even though both groups had been equally
interested in the activities to begin with (Deci, 1971). The extrinsic reward of payment, it seemed, interfered with
the intrinsic reward of working the puzzles.
Later studies confirmed this effect in numerous situations, though they have also found certain conditions where
extrinsic rewards do not reduce intrinsic rewards. Extrinsic rewards are not as harmful, for example, if a person is
paid “by the hour” (i.e. by a flat rate) rather than piecemeal (by the number of items completed) (Cameron & Pierce,
1994; Eisenberger & Cameron, 1996). They also are less harmful if the task itself is relatively well-defined (like
working math problems or playing solitaire) and high-quality performance is expected at all times. So there are still
times and ways when externally determined reinforcements are useful and effective. In general, however, extrinsic
rewards do seem to undermine intrinsic motivation often enough that they need to be used selectively and
thoughtfully (Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 2001). As it happens, help with being selective and thoughtful can be found in
the other, more cognitively oriented theories of motivation. These use the goals, interests, and beliefs of students as
ways of explaining differences in students’ motives and in how the motives affect engagement with school. We turn
to these cognitively oriented theories next, beginning with those focused on students’ goals.
Motives as goals
One way motives vary is by the kind of goals that students set for themselves, and by how the goals support
students’ academic achievement. As you might suspect, some goals encourage academic achievement more than
others, but even motives that do not concern academics explicitly tend to affect learning indirectly.
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6. Student motivation
Goals that contribute to achievement
What kinds of achievement goals do students hold? Imagine three individuals, Maria, Sara, and Lindsay, who
are taking algebra together. Maria’s main concern is to learn the material as well as possible because she finds it
interesting and because she believes it will be useful to her in later courses, perhaps at university. Hers is a mastery
goal because she wants primarily to learn or master the material. Sara, however, is concerned less about algebra
than about getting top marks on the exams and in the course. Hers is a performance goal because she is focused
primarily on looking successful; learning algebra is merely a vehicle for performing well in the eyes of peers and
teachers. Lindsay, for her part, is primarily concerned about avoiding a poor or failing mark. Hers is a performance-
avoidance goal or failure-avoidance goal because she is not really as concerned about learning algebra, as Maria is,
or about competitive success, as Sara is; she is simply intending to avoid failure.
As you might imagine, mastery, performance, and performance-avoidance goals often are not experienced in
pure form, but in combinations. If you play the clarinet in the school band, you might want to improve your
technique simply because you enjoy playing as well as possible—essentially a mastery orientation. But you might
also want to look talented in the eyes of classmates—a performance orientation. Another part of what you may wish,
at least privately, is to avoid looking like a complete failure at playing the clarinet. One of these motives may
predominate over the others, but they all may be present.
Mastery goals tend to be associated with enjoyment of learning the material at hand, and in this sense represent
an outcome that teachers often seek for students. By definition therefore they are a form of intrinsic motivation. As
such mastery goals have been found to be better than performance goals at sustaining students’ interest in a
subject. In one review of research about learning goals, for example, students with primarily mastery orientations
toward a course they were taking not only tended to express greater interest in the course, but also continued to
express interest well beyond the official end of the course, and to enroll in further courses in the same subject
(Harackiewicz, et al., 2002; Wolters, 2004).
Performance goals, on the other hand, imply extrinsic motivation, and tend to show the mixed effects of this
orientation. A positive effect is that students with a performance orientation do tend to get higher grades than those
who express primarily a mastery orientation. The advantage in grades occurs both in the short term (with
individual assignments) and in the long term (with overall grade point average when graduating). But there is
evidence that performance oriented students do not actually learn material as deeply or permanently as students
who are more mastery oriented (Midgley, Kaplan, & Middleton, 2001). A possible reason is that measures of
performance—such as test scores—often reward relatively shallow memorization of information and therefore guide
performance-oriented students away from processing the information thoughtfully or deeply. Another possible
reason is that a performance orientation, by focusing on gaining recognition as the best among peers, encourages
competition among peers. Giving and receiving help from classmates is thus not in the self-interest of a
performance-oriented student, and the resulting isolation limits the student’s learning.
Goals that affect achievement indirectlyFailure-avoidant goals
As we mentioned, failure-avoidant goals by nature undermine academic achievement. Often they are a negative
byproduct of the competitiveness of performance goals (Urdan, 2004). If a teacher (and sometimes also fellow
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students) put too much emphasis on being the best in the class, and if interest in learning the material as such
therefore suffers, then some students may decide that success is beyond their reach or may not be desirable in any
case. The alternative—simply avoiding failure—may seem wiser as well as more feasible. Once a student adopts this
attitude, he or she may underachieve more or less deliberately, doing only the minimum work necessary to avoid
looking foolish or to avoid serious conflict with the teacher. Avoiding failure in this way is an example of self-
handicapping—deliberate actions and choices that the reduce chances of success. Students may self-handicap in a
number of ways; in addition to not working hard, they may procrastinate about completing assignments, for
example, or set goals that are unrealistically high.
Social goals
Most students need and value relationships, both with classmates and with teachers, and often (though not
always) they get a good deal of positive support from the relationships. But the effects of social relationships are
complex, and at times can work both for and against academic achievement. If a relationship with the teacher is
important and reasonably positive, then the student is likely to try pleasing the teacher by working hard on
assignments (Dowson & McInerney, 2003). Note, though, that this effect is closer to performance than mastery; the
student is primarily concerned about looking good to someone else. If, on the other hand, a student is especially
concerned about relationships with peers, the effects on achievement depend on the student’s motives for the
relationship, as well as on peers’ attitudes. Desiring to be close to peers personally may lead a student to ask for
help from, and give help to peers—a behavior that may support higher achievement, at least up to a point. But
desiring to impress peers with skills and knowledge may lead to the opposite: as we already mentioned, the
competitive edge of such a performance orientation may keep the student from collaborating, and in this indirect
way reduce a student’s opportunities to learn. The abilities and achievement motivation of peers themselves can
also make a difference, but once again the effects vary depending on the context. Low achievement and motivation
by peers affects an individual’s academic motivation more in elementary school than in high school, more in
learning mathematics than learning to read, and more if their is a wide range of abilities in a classroom than if
there is a more narrow range (Burke & Sass, 2006).
In spite of these complexities, social relationships are valued so highly by most students that teachers should
generally facilitate them, though also keep an eye on their nature and their consequent effects on achievement. As
we explain further, many assignments can be accomplished productively in groups, for example, as long as the
groups are formed thoughtfully; in that chapter we discuss some ways of insuring that such groups are successful,
such as by choosing group tasks wisely and recognizing all members’ contributions are fully as possible.
Relationships can also be supported with activities that involve students or adults from another class or from
outside the school, as often happens with school or community service projects. These can provide considerable
social satisfaction and can sometimes be connected to current curriculum needs (Butin, 2005). But the majority of
students’ social contacts are likely always to come from students’ own initiatives with each other in simply taking
time to talk and interact. The teacher’s job is to encourage these informal contacts, especially when they happen at
times that support rather than interfere with learning.
Encouraging mastery goals
Even though a degree of performance orientation may be inevitable in school because of the mere presence of
classmates, it does not have to take over students’ academic motivation completely. Teachers can encourage
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6. Student motivation
mastery goals in various ways, and should in fact do so because a mastery orientation leads to more sustained,
thoughtful learning, at least in classrooms, where classmates may sometimes debate and disagree with each other
(Darnon, Butera, & Harackiewicz, 2006).
How can teachers do so? One way is to allow students to choose specific tasks or assignments for themselves,
where possible, because their choices are more likely than usual to reflect prior personal interests, and hence be
motivated more intrinsically than usual. The limitation of this strategy, of course, is that students may not see some
of the connections between their prior interests and the curriculum topics at hand. In that case it also helps for the
teacher to look for and point out the relevance of current topics or skills to students’ personal interests and goals.
Suppose, for example, that a student enjoys the latest styles of music. This interest may actually have connections
with a wide range of school curriculum, such as:
• biology (because of the physiology of the ear and of hearing)
• physics or general science (because of the nature of musical acoustics)
• history (because of changes in musical styles over time)
• English (because of relationships of musical lyrics and themes with literary themes)
• foreign languages (because of comparisons of music and songs among cultures)
Still another way to encourage mastery orientation is to focus on students’ individual effort and improvement as
much as possible, rather than on comparing students’ successes to each other. You can encourage this orientation
by giving students detailed feedback about how they can improve performance, or by arranging for students to
collaborate on specific tasks and projects rather than to compete about them, and in general by showing your own
enthusiasm for the subject at hand.
Motives as interests
In addition to holding different kinds of goals—with consequent differences in academic motivation—students
show obvious differences in levels of interest in the topics and tasks of the classroom. Suppose that two high school
classmates, Frank and Jason, both are taking chemistry, and specifically learning how to balance chemical
equations. Frank finds the material boring and has to force himself to study it; as a result he spends only the time
needed to learn the basic material and to complete the assignments at a basic level. Jason, on the other hand,
enjoys the challenges of balancing chemical equations. He thinks of the task as an intriguing puzzle; he not only
solves each of them, but also compares the problems to each other as he goes through them.
Frank’s learning is based on effort compared to Jason’s, whose learning is based more fully on interest. As the
example implies, when students learn from interest they tend to devote more attention to the topic than if they
learn from effort (Hidi & Renninger, 2006). The finding is not surprising since interest is another aspect of
intrinsic motivation—energy or drive that comes from within. A distinction between effort and interest is often
artificial, however, because the two motives often get blended or combined in students’ personal experiences. Most
of us can remember times when we worked at a skill that we enjoyed and found interesting, but that also required
effort to learn. The challenge for teachers is therefore to draw on and encourage students’ interest as much as
possible, and thus keep the required effort within reasonable bounds—neither too hard nor too easy.
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Situational interest versus personal interest
Students’ interests vary in how deeply or permanently they are located within students. Situational interests
are ones that are triggered temporarily by features of the immediate situation. Unusual sights, sounds, or words can
stimulate situational interest. A teacher might show an interesting image on the overhead projector, or play a brief
bit of music, or make a surprising comment in passing. At a more abstract level, unusual or surprising topics of
discussion can also arouse interest when they are first introduced. Personal interests are relatively permanent
preferences of the student, and are usually expressed in a variety of situations. In the classroom, a student may (or
may not) have a personal interest in particular topics, activities, or subject matter. Outside class, though, he or she
usually has additional personal interests in particular non-academic activities (e.g. sports, music) or even in
particular people (a celebrity, a friend who lives nearby). The non-academic personal interests may sometimes
conflict with academic interest; it may be more interesting to go to the shopping mall with a friend than to study
even your most favorite subject.
Benefits of personal interest
In general, personal interest in an academic topic or activity tends to correlate with achievement related to the
topic or activity. As you might suppose, a student who is truly interested is more likely to focus on the topic or
activity more fully, to work at it for longer periods, to use more thoughtful strategies in learning—and to enjoy
doing so (Hidi, 2001; Hidi & Renninger, 2006). Small wonder that the student achieves more! Note, though, a
persistent ambiguity about this benefit: it is often not clear whether personal interest leads to higher achievement,
or higher achievement leads to stronger interest. Either possibility seems plausible. Research to sort them out,
however, has suggested that at least some of the influence goes in the direction from interest to achievement; when
elementary students were given books from which to learn about a new topic, for example, they tended to learn
more from books which they chose themselves than from books that were simply assigned (Reynolds & Symons,
2001). So interest seemed to lead to learning. But this conclusion does not rule out its converse, that achievement
may stimulate interest as well. As Joe learns more about history, he steadily finds history more interesting; as
McKenzie learns more about biology, she gradually wants to learn more of it.
Stimulating situational interests
If a student has little prior personal interest in a topic or activity, the teacher is faced with stimulating initial,
situational interest, in hopes that the initial interest will gradually become more permanent and personal. There are
a number of strategies for meeting this challenge:
• It helps to include surprises in your comments and in classroom activities from time to time: tell students
facts that are true but counter-intuitive, for example, or demonstrate a science experiment that turns out
differently than students expect (Guthrie, Wigfield, & Humenick, 2006).
• It also helps to relate new material to students’ prior experiences even if their experiences are not related to
academics or to school directly. The concepts of gravitation and acceleration, for example, operate every
time a ball is hit or thrown in a softball game. If this connection is pointed out to a student who enjoys
playing a lot of softball, the concepts can make concepts more interesting.
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6. Student motivation
• It helps to encourage students to respond to new material actively. By having students talk about the
material together, for example, students can begin making their own connections to prior personal
interests, and the social interaction itself helps to link the material to their personal, social interests as well.
A caution: seductive details
Even though it is important to stimulate interest in new material somehow, it is also possible to mislead or
distract students accidentally by adding inappropriate, but stimulating features to new material (Garner, et al.,
1992; Harp & Mayer, 1998). Distractions happen a number of ways, such as any of these among others:
• deliberately telling jokes in class
• using colorful illustrations or pictures
• adding interesting bits of information to a written or verbal explanation
When well chosen, all of these moves can indeed arouse students’ interest in a new topic. But if they do not
really relate to the topic at hand, they may simply create misunderstandings or prevent students from focusing on
key material. As with most other learning processes, however, there are individual differences among students in
distractability, students who are struggling, and are more prone to distraction and misunderstanding than students
who are already learning more successfully (Sanchez & Wiley, 2006). On balance the best advice is probably
therefore to use strategies to arouse situational interest, but to assess students’ responses to them continually and
as honestly as possible. The key issue is whether students seem to learn because of stimulating strategies that you
provide, or in spite of them.
Motives related to attributions
Attributions are perceptions about the causes of success and failure. Suppose that you get a low mark on a test
and are wondering what caused the low mark. You can construct various explanations for—make various
attributions about—this failure. Maybe you did not study very hard; maybe the test itself was difficult; maybe you
were unlucky; maybe you just are not smart enough. Each explanation attributes the failure to a different factor.
The explanations that you settle upon may reflect the truth accurately—or then again, they may not. What is
important about attributions is that they reflect personal beliefs about the sources or causes of success and failure.
As such, they tend to affect motivation in various ways, depending on the nature of the attribution (Weiner, 2005).
Locus, stability, and controllability
Attributions vary in three underlying ways: locus, stability, and controllability. Locus of an attribution is the
location (figuratively speaking) of the source of success or failure. If you attribute a top mark on a test to your
ability, then the locus is internal; if you attribute the mark to the test’s having easy questions, then the locus is
external. The stability of an attribution is its relative permanence. If you attribute the mark to your ability, then
the source of success is relatively stable—by definition, ability is a relatively lasting quality. If you attribute a top
mark to the effort you put in to studying, then the source of success is unstable—effort can vary and has to be
renewed on each occasion or else it disappears. The controllability of an attribution is the extent to which the
individual can influence it. If you attribute a top mark to your effort at studying, then the source of success is
relatively controllable—you can influence effort simply by deciding how much to study. But if you attribute the
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mark to simple luck, then the source of the success is uncontrollable—there is nothing that can influence random
chance.
As you might suspect, the way that these attributions combine affects students’ academic motivations in major
ways. It usually helps both motivation and achievement if a student attributes academic successes and failures to
factors that are internal and controllable, such as effort or a choice to use particular learning strategies (Dweck,
2000). Attributing successes to factors that are internal but stable or controllable (like ability), on the other hand, is
both a blessing and a curse: sometimes it can create optimism about prospects for future success (“I always do
well”), but it can also lead to indifference about correcting mistakes (Dweck, 2006), or even create pessimism if a
student happens not to perform at the accustomed level (“Maybe I’m not as smart as I thought”). Worst of all for
academic motivation are attributions, whether stable or not, related to external factors. Believing that performance
depends simply on luck (“The teacher was in a bad mood when marking”) or on excessive difficulty of material
removes incentive for a student to invest in learning. All in all, then, it seems important for teachers to encourage
internal, stable attributions about success.
Influencing students’ attributions
How can they do so? One way or another, the effective strategies involve framing teachers’ own explanations of
success and failure around internal, controllable factors. Instead of telling a student: “Good work! You’re smart!”,
try saying: “Good work! Your effort really made a difference, didn’t it?” If a student fails, instead of saying,“Too
bad! This material is just too hard for you,” try saying, “Let’s find a strategy for practicing this more, and then you
can try again.” In both cases the first option emphasizes uncontrollable factors (effort, difficulty level), and the
second option emphasizes internal, controllable factors (effort, use of specific strategies).
Such attributions will only be convincing, however, if teachers provide appropriate conditions for students to
learn—conditions in which students’ efforts really do pay off. There are three conditions that have to be in place in
particular. First, academic tasks and materials actually have to be at about the right level of difficulty. If you give
problems in advanced calculus to a first-grade student, the student will not only fail them but also be justified in
attributing the failure to an external factor, task difficulty. If assignments are assessed in ways that produce highly
variable, unreliable marks, then students will rightly attribute their performance to an external, unstable source:
luck. Both circumstances will interfere with motivation.
Second, teachers also need to be ready to give help to individuals who need it—even if they believe that an
assignment is easy enough or clear enough that students should not need individual help. Readiness to help is
always essential because it is often hard to know in advance exactly how hard a task will prove to be for particular
students. Without assistance, a task that proves difficult initially may remain difficult indefinitely, and the student
will be tempted to make unproductive, though correct, attributions about his or her failure (“I will never
understand this”, “I’m not smart enough”, or “It doesn’t matter how hard I study”).
Third, teachers need to remember that ability—usually considered a relatively stable factor—often actually
changes incrementally over the long term. Recognizing this fact is one of the best ways to bring about actual
increases in students’ abilities (Blackwell, Trzniewski, & Dweck, 2007; Schunk, Pintrich, & Meese, 2008). A middle-
years student might play the trumpet in the school band at a high level of ability, but this ability actually reflects a
lot of previous effort and a gradual increase in ability. A second grade student who reads fluently, in this sense may
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6. Student motivation
have high current ability to read; but at some point in the distant past that same student could not read as well, and
even further back he may not have been able to read at all. The increases in ability have happened at least in part
because of effort. While these ideas may seem obvious, they can easily be forgotten in the classroom because effort
and ability evolve according to very different time frames. Effort and its results appear relatively immediately; a
student expends effort this week, this day, or even at this very moment, and the effort (if not the results) are visible
right away. But ability may take longer to show itself; a student often develops it only over many weeks, months, or
years.
Motivation as self-efficacy
In addition to being influenced by their goals, interests, and attributions, students’ motives are affected by
specific beliefs about the student’s personal capacities. In self-efficacy theory the beliefs become a primary,
explicit explanation for motivation (Bandura, 1977, 1986, 1997). Self-efficacy is the belief that you are capable of
carrying out a specific task or of reaching a specific goal. Note that the belief and the action or goal are specific. Self-
efficacy is a belief that you can write an acceptable term paper, for example, or repair an automobile, or make
friends with the new student in class. These are relatively specific beliefs and tasks. Self-efficacy is not about
whether you believe that you are intelligent in general, whether you always like working with mechanical things, or
think that you are generally a likeable person. These more general judgments are better regarded as various
mixtures of self-concepts (beliefs about general personal identity) or of self-esteem (evaluations of identity). They
are important in their own right, and sometimes influence motivation, but only indirectly (Bong & Skaalvik, 2004).
Self-efficacy beliefs, furthermore, are not the same as “true” or documented skill or ability. They are self-
constructed, meaning that they are personally developed perceptions. There can sometimes therefore be
discrepancies between a person’s self-efficacy beliefs and the person’s abilities. You can believe that you can write a
good term paper, for example, without actually being able to do so, and vice versa: you can believe yourself
incapable of writing a paper, but discover that you are in fact able to do so. In this way self-efficacy is like the
everyday idea of confidence, except that it is defined more precisely. And as with confidence, it is possible to have
either too much or too little self-efficacy. The optimum level seems to be either at or slightly above true capacity
(Bandura, 1997). As we indicate below, large discrepancies between self-efficacy and ability can create motivational
problems for the individual.
Effects of self-efficacy on students’ behavior
Self-efficacy may sound like a uniformly desirable quality, but research as well as teachers’ experience suggests
that its effects are a bit more complicated than they first appear. Self-efficacy has three main effects, each of which
has both a “dark” or undesirable side and a positive or desirable side.
Choice of tasks
The first effect is that self-efficacy makes students more willing to choose tasks where they already feel confident
of succeeding. This effect is almost inevitable, given the definition of the concept of self-efficacy, it has also been
supported by research on self-efficacy beliefs (Pajares & Schunk, 2001). For teachers, the effect on choice can be
either welcome or not, depending on circumstances. If a student believes that he or she can solve mathematical
problems, then the student is more likely to attempt the mathematics homework that the teacher assigns.
Unfortunately the converse is also true. If a student believes that he or she is incapable of math, then the student is
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less likely to attempt the math homework (perhaps telling himself, “What’s the use of trying?”), regardless of the
student’s actual ability in math.
Since self-efficacy is self-constructed, furthermore, it is also possible for students to miscalculate or misperceive
their true skill, and the misperceptions themselves can have complex effects on students’ motivations. From a
teacher’s point of view, all is well even if students overestimate their capacity but actually do succeed at a relevant
task anyway, or if they underestimate their capacity, yet discover that they can succeed and raise their self-efficacy
beliefs as a result. All may not be well, though, if students do not believe that they can succeed and therefore do not
even try, or if students overestimate their capacity by a wide margin, but are disappointed unexpectedly by failure
and lower their self-efficacy beliefs.
Persistence at tasks
A second effect of high self-efficacy is to increase a persistence at relevant tasks. If you believe that you can solve
crossword puzzles, but encounter one that takes longer than usual, then you are more likely to work longer at the
puzzle until you (hopefully) really do solve it. This is probably a desirable behavior in many situations, unless the
persistence happens to interfere with other, more important tasks (what if you should be doing homework instead
of working on crossword puzzles?). If you happen to have low self-efficacy for crosswords, on the other hand, then
you are more likely to give up early on a difficult puzzle. Giving up early may often be undesirable because it
deprives you of a chance to improve your skill by persisting. Then again (on the third hand?), the consequent lack of
success because of giving up may provide a useful incentive to improve your crossword skills. And again,
misperceptions of capacity make a difference. Overestimating your capacity by a lot (excessively high self-efficacy)
might lead you not to prepare for or focus on a task properly, and thereby impair your performance. So as with
choosing tasks, the effects of self-efficacy vary from one individual to another and one situation to another. The
teacher’s task is therefore two-fold: first, to discern the variations, and second, to encourage the positive self-
efficacy beliefs. Table 15 offers some additional advice about how to do this.
Table 15: Ways of encouraging self-efficacy beliefs
Strategy Example of what the teacher might say
1. Set goals with students, and get a commitment
from them to reach the goals.
“By the end of the month, I want you to know all of
the times table up to 25 x 25. Can I count on you to do
that?”
2. Encourage students to compare their performance
with their own previous performance, not with other
students.
“Compare that drawing against the one that you
made last semester. I think you’ll find improvements!”
3. Point out links between effort and improvement. “I saw you studying for this test more this week. No
wonder you did better this time!”
4. In giving feedback about performance, focus on
information, not evaluative judgments.
“Part 1 of the lab write-up was very detailed, just as
the assignment asked. Part 2 has a lot of good ideas in
it, but it needs to be more detailed and stated more
explicitly.”
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6. Student motivation
5. Point out that increases in knowledge or skill
happen gradually by sustained effort, not because of
inborn ability.
“Every time I read another one of your essays, I see
more good ideas than the last time. They are so much
more complete than when you started the year.”
Response to failure
High self-efficacy for a task not only increases a person’s persistence at the task, but also improves their ability
to cope with stressful conditions and to recover their motivation following outright failures. Suppose that you have
two assignments—an essay and a science lab report—due on the same day, and this circumstance promises to make
your life hectic as you approach the deadline. You will cope better with the stress of multiple assignments if you
already believe yourself capable of doing both of the tasks, than if you believe yourself capable of doing just one of
them or (especially) of doing neither. You will also recover better in the unfortunate event that you end up with a
poor grade on one or even both of the tasks.
That is the good news. The bad news, at least from a teacher’s point of view, is that the same resilience can
sometimes also serve non-academic and non-school purposes. How so? Suppose, instead of two school assignments
due on the same day, a student has only one school assignment due, but also holds a part-time evening job as a
server in a local restaurant. Suppose, further, that the student has high self-efficacy for both of these tasks; he
believes, in other words, that he is capable of completing the assignment as well as continuing to work at the job.
The result of such resilient beliefs can easily be a student who devotes less attention to school work than ideal, and
who even ends up with a lower grade on the assignment than he or she is capable of.
Learned helplessness and self-efficacy
If a person’s sense of self-efficacy is very low, he or she can develop learned helplessness, a perception of
complete lack of control in mastering a task. The attitude is similar to depression, a pervasive feeling of apathy and
a belief that effort makes no difference and does not lead to success. Learned helplessness was originally studied
from the behaviorist perspective of classical and operant conditioning by the psychologist Martin Seligman (1995).
The studies used a somewhat “gloomy” experimental procedure in which an animal, such as a rat or a dog, was
repeatedly shocked in a cage in a way that prevented the animal from escaping the shocks. In a later phase of the
procedure, conditions were changed so that the animal could avoid the shocks by merely moving from one side of
the cage to the other. Yet frequently they did not bother to do so! Seligman called this behavior learned
helplessness.
In people, learned helplessness leads to characteristic ways of dealing with problems. They tend to attribute the
source of a problem to themselves, to generalize the problem to many aspects of life, and to see the problem as
lasting or permanent. More optimistic individuals, in contrast, are more likely to attribute a problem to outside
sources, to see it as specific to a particular situation or activity, and to see it as temporary or time-limited. Consider,
for example, two students who each fail a test. The one with a lot of learned helplessness is more likely to explain
the failure by saying something like: “I’m stupid; I never perform well on any schoolwork, and I never will perform
well at it.” The other, more optimistic student is more likely to say something like: “The teacher made the test too
hard this time, so the test doesn’t prove anything about how I will do next time or in other subjects.”
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What is noteworthy about these differences in perception is how much the more optimistic of these perspectives
resembles high self-efficacy and how much learned helplessness seems to contradict or differ from it. As already
noted, high self-efficacy is a strong belief in one’s capacity to carry out a specific task successfully. By definition
therefore self-efficacy focuses attention on a temporary or time-limited activity (the task), even though the cause of
successful completion (oneself) is “internal”. Teachers can minimize learned helplessness in students, therefore, by
encouraging their self-efficacy beliefs. There are several ways of doing this, as we explain next.
Sources of self-efficacy beliefs
Psychologists who study self-efficacy have identified four major sources of self-efficacy beliefs (Pajares &
Schunk, 2001, 2002). In order of importance they are (1) prior experiences of mastering tasks, (2) watching others’
mastering tasks, (3) messages or “persuasion” from others, and (4) emotions related to stress and discomfort.
Fortunately the first three can be influenced by teachers directly, and even the fourth can sometimes be influenced
indirectly by appropriate interpretive comments from the teacher or others.
Prior experiences of mastery
Not surprisingly, past successes at a task increase students’ beliefs that they will succeed again in the future. The
implication of this basic fact means that teachers need to help students build a history of successes. Whether they
are math problems, reading assignments, or athletic activities, tasks have to end with success more often than with
failure. Note, though, that the successes have to represent mastery that is genuine or competence that is truly
authentic. Success at tasks that are trivial or irrelevant do not improve self-efficacy beliefs, nor does praise for
successes that a student has not really had (Erikson, 1968/1994).
As a practical matter, creating a genuine history of success is most convincing if teachers also work to broaden a
student’s vision of “the past”. Younger students (elementary-age) in particular have relatively short or limited ideas
of what counts as “past experience”; they may go back only a few occasions when forming impressions of whether
they can succeed again in the future (Eccles, et al., 1998). Older students (secondary school) gradually develop
longer views of their personal “pasts”, both because of improvements in memory and because of accumulating a
personal history that is truly longer. The challenge for working with any age, however, is to insure that students
base self-efficacy beliefs on all relevant experiences from their pasts, not just on selected or recent experiences.
Watching others’ experiences of mastery
A second source of efficacy beliefs comes from vicarious experience of mastery, or observing others’ successes
(Schunk & Zimmerman, 1997). Simply seeing someone else succeed at a task, in other words, can contribute to
believing that you, too, can succeed. The effect is stronger when the observer lacks experience with the task and
therefore may be unsure of his or her own ability. It is also stronger when the model is someone respected by the
observer, such as a student’s teacher, or a peer with generally comparable ability. Even under these conditions,
though, vicarious experience is not as influential as direct experience. The reasons are not hard to imagine.
Suppose, for example, you witness both your teacher and a respected friend succeed at singing a favorite tune, but
you are unsure whether you personally can sing. In that case you may feel encouraged about your own potential,
but are likely still to feel somewhat uncertain of your own efficacy. If on the other hand you do not witness others’
singing, but you have a history of singing well yourself, it is a different story. In that case you are likely to believe in
your efficacy, regardless of how others perform.
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6. Student motivation
All of which suggests that to a modest extent, teachers may be able to enhance students’ self-efficacy by
modeling success at a task or by pointing out classmates who are successful. These strategies can work because they
not only show how to do a task, but also communicate a more fundamental message, the fact that the task can in
fact be done. If students are learning a difficult arithmetic procedure, for example, you can help by demonstrating
the procedure, or by pointing out classmates who are doing it. Note, though, that vicarious mastery is helpful only if
backed up with real successes performed by the students themselves. It is also helpful only if the “model
classmates” are perceived as truly comparable in ability. Overuse of vicarious models, especially in the absence of
real success by learners, can cause learners to disqualify a model’s success; students may simply decide that the
model is “out of their league” in skills and is therefore irrelevant to judging their own potential.
Social messages and persuasion
A third source of efficacy beliefs are encouragements, both implied and stated, that persuade a person of his or
her capacity to do a task. Persuasion does not create high efficacy by itself, but it often increases or supports it when
coupled with either direct or vicarious experience, especially when the persuasion comes from more than one
person (Goddard, Hoy, & Hoy, 2004).
For teachers, this suggests two things. The first, of course, is that encouragement can motivate students,
especially when it is focused on achievable, specific tasks. It can be motivating to say things like: “I think you can do
it” or “I’ve seen you do this before, so I know that you can do it again”. But the second implication is that teachers
should arrange wherever possible to support their encouragement by designing tasks at hand that are in fact
achievable by the student. Striking a balance of encouragement and task difficulty may seem straightforward, but
sometimes it can be challenging because students can sometimes perceive teachers’ comments and tasks quite
differently from how teachers intend. Giving excessive amounts of detailed help, for example, may be intended as
support for a student, but be taken as a lack of confidence in the student’s ability to do the task independently.
Emotions related to success, stress or discomfort
The previous three sources of efficacy beliefs are all rather cognitive or “thinking oriented”, but emotions also
influence expectations of success or failure. Feeling nervous or anxious just before speaking to a large group
(sometimes even just a class full of students!) can function like a message that says “I’m not going to succeed at
doing this”, even if there is in fact good reason to expect success. But positive feelings can also raise beliefs about
efficacy. When recalling the excitement of succeeding at a previous, unrelated task, people may overestimate their
chances of success at a new task with which they have no previous experience, and are therefore in no position to
predict their efficacy.
For teachers, the most important implication is that students’ motivation can be affected when they generalize
from past experience which they believe, rightly or wrongly, to be relevant. By simply announcing a test, for
example, a teacher can make some students anxious even before the students find out anything about the test—
whether it is easy or difficult, or even comparable in any way to other experiences called “tests” in their pasts.
Conversely, it can be misleading to encourage students on the basis of their success at past academic tasks if the
earlier tasks were not really relevant to requirements of the new tasks at hand. Suppose, for example, that a middle-
years student has previously written only brief opinion-based papers, and never written a research-based paper. In
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that case boosting the student’s confidence by telling him that “it is just like the papers you wrote before” may not
be helpful or even honest.
A caution: motivation as content versus motivation as process
A caution about self-efficacy theory is its heavy emphasis on just the process of motivation, at the expense of the
content of motivation. The basic self-efficacy model has much to say about how beliefs affect behavior, but
relatively little to say about which beliefs and tasks are especially satisfying or lead to the greatest well-being in
students. The answer to this question is important to know, since teachers might then select tasks as much as
possible that are intrinsically satisfying, and not merely achievable.
Another way of posing this concern is by asking: “Is it possible to feel high self-efficacy about a task that you do
not enjoy?” It does seem quite possible for such a gap to exist. As a youth, for example, one of us (Kelvin Seifert)
had considerable success with solving mathematics problems in high school algebra, and expended considerable
effort doing algebra assignments as homework. Before long, he had developed high self-efficacy with regard to
solving such problems. But Kelvin never really enjoyed solving the algebra problems, and later even turned away
permanently from math or science as a career (much to the disappointment of his teachers and family). In this case
self-efficacy theory nicely explained the process of his motivation—Kelvin’s belief in his capacity led to persistence
at the tasks. But it did not explain the content of his motivation—his growing dislike of the tasks. Accounting for
such a gap requires a different theory of motivation, one that includes not only specific beliefs, but “deeper”
personal needs as well. An example of this approach is self-determination theory, where we turn next.
Motivation as self-determination
Common sense suggests that human motivations originate from some sort of inner “need”. We all think of
ourselves as having various “needs”, a need for food, for example, or a need for companionship—that influences our
choices and activities. This same idea also forms part of some theoretical accounts of motivation, though the
theories differ in the needs that they emphasize or recognize. In Chapter 2, for example, we talked about Maslow’s
hierarchy of needs as an example of motivations that function like needs that influence long-term personal
development. According to Maslow, individuals must satisfy physical survival needs before they seek to satisfy
needs of belonging, they satisfy belonging needs before esteem needs, and so on. In theory, too, people have both
deficit needs and growth needs, and the deficit needs must be satisfied before growth needs can influence behavior
(Maslow, 1970). In Maslow’s theory, as in others that use the concept, a need is a relatively lasting condition or
feeling that requires relief or satisfaction and that tends to influence action over the long term. Some needs may
decrease when satisfied (like hunger), but others may not (like curiosity). Either way, needs differ from the self-
efficacy beliefs discussed earlier, which are relatively specific and cognitive, and affect particular tasks and
behaviors fairly directly.
A recent theory of motivation based on the idea of needs is self-determination theory, proposed by the
psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan (2000), among others. The theory proposes that understanding
motivation requires taking into account three basic human needs:
• autonomy—the need to feel free of external constraints on behavior
• competence—the need to feel capable or skilled
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6. Student motivation
• relatedness—the need to feel connected or involved with others
Note that these needs are all psychological, not physical; hunger and sex, for example, are not on the list. They
are also about personal growth or development, not about deficits that a person tries to reduce or eliminate. Unlike
food (in behaviorism) or safety (in Maslow’s hierarchy), you can never get enough of autonomy, competence, or
relatedness. You (and your students) will seek to enhance these continually throughout life.
The key idea of self-determination theory is that when persons (such as you or one of your students) feel that
these basic needs are reasonably well met, they tend to perceive their actions and choices to be intrinsically
motivated or “self-determined”. In that case they can turn their attention to a variety of activities that they find
attractive or important, but that do not relate directly to their basic needs. Among your students, for example, some
individuals might read books that you have suggested, and others might listen attentively when you explain key
concepts from the unit that you happen to be teaching. If one or more basic needs are not met well, however, people
will tend to feel coerced by outside pressures or external incentives. They may become preoccupied, in fact, with
satisfying whatever need has not been met and thus exclude or avoid activities that might otherwise be interesting,
educational, or important. If the persons are students, their learning will suffer.
Self-determination and intrinsic motivation
In proposing the importance of needs, then, self-determination theory is asserting the importance of intrinsic
motivation, an idea that has come up before in this book (see especially Chapter 1, about learning theory), and that
will come again later (see especially Chapter 9, about planning instruction). The self-determination version of
intrinsic motivation, however, emphasizes a person’s perception of freedom, rather than the presence or absence of
“real” constraints on action. Self-determination means a person feels free, even if the person is also operating
within certain external constraints. In principle, a student can experience self-determination even if the student
must, for example, live within externally imposed rules of appropriate classroom behavior. To achieve a feeling of
self-determination, however, the student’s basic needs must be met—needs for autonomy, competence, and
relatedness. In motivating students, then, the bottom line is that teachers have an interest in helping students to
meet their basic needs, and in not letting school rules or the teachers’ own leadership styles interfere with or block
satisfaction of students’ basic needs.
“Pure” self-determination may be the ideal for most teachers and students, of course, but the reality is usually
different. For a variety of reasons, teachers in most classrooms cannot be expected to meet all students’ basic needs
at all times. One reason is the sheer number of students, which makes it impossible to attend to every student
perfectly at all times. Another reason is teachers’ responsibility for a curriculum, which can require creating
expectations for students’ activities that sometimes conflict with students’ autonomy or makes them feel
(temporarily) less than fully competent. Still another reason is students’ personal histories, ranging from divorce to
poverty, which may create needs in some individuals which are beyond the power of teachers to remedy.
The result from students’ point of view is usually only a partial perception of self-determination, and therefore a
simultaneous mix of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Self-determination theory recognizes this reality by
suggesting that the “intrinsic-ness” of motivation is really a matter of degree, extending from highly extrinsic,
through various mixtures of intrinsic and extrinsic, to highly intrinsic (Koestner & Losier, 2004). At the extrinsic
end of the scale is learning that is regulated primarily by external rewards and constraints, whereas at the intrinsic
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end is learning regulated primarily by learners themselves. Table 16 summarizes and gives examples of the various
levels and their effects on motivation. By assuming that motivation is often a mix of the intrinsic and extrinsic, the
job of the teacher becomes more realistic; the job is not to expect purely intrinsic motivation from students all the
time, but simply to arrange and encourage motivations that are as intrinsic as possible. To do this, the teacher
needs to support students’ basic needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
Table 16: Combinations of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
Source of regulation of
action
Description Example
“Pure” extrinsic motivation Person lacks the intention to take
any action, regardless of pressures
or incentives
Student completes no work even
when pressured or when incentives
are offered
Very external to person Actions regulated only by outside
pressures and incentives, and
controls
Student completes assignment
only if reminded explicitly of the
incentive of grades and/or negative
consequences of failing
Somewhat external Specific actions regulated
internally, but without reflection or
connection to personal needs
Student completes assignment
independently, but only because of
fear of shaming self or because of
guilt about consequences of not
completing assignment
Somewhat internal Actions recognized by individual
as important or as valuable as a
means to a more valued goal
Student generally completes
school work independently, but only
because of its value in gaining
admission to college
Very internal Actions adopted by individual as
integral to self-concept and to
person’s major personal values
Student generally completes
school work independently, because
being well educated is part of the
student’s concept of himself
“Pure” intrinsic regulation Actions practiced solely because
they are enjoyable and valued for
their own sake
Student enjoys every topic,
concept, and assignment that every
teacher ever assigns, and completes
school work solely because of his
enjoyment
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6. Student motivation
Using self-determination theory in the classroom
What are some teaching strategies for supporting students’ needs? Educational researchers have studied this
question from a variety of directions, and their resulting recommendations converge and overlap in a number of
ways. For convenience, the recommendations can be grouped according to the basic need that they address,
beginning with the need for autonomy.
Supporting autonomy in learners
A major part of supporting autonomy is to give students choices wherever possible (Ryan & Lynch, 2003). The
choices that encourage the greatest feelings of self-control, obviously, are ones that are about relatively major issues
or that have relatively significant consequences for students, such as whom to choose as partners for a major group
project. But choices also encourage some feeling of self-control even when they are about relatively minor issues,
such as how to organize your desk or what kind of folder to use for storing your papers at school. It is important,
furthermore, to offer choices to all students, including students needing explicit directions in order to work
successfully; avoid reserving choices for only the best students or giving up offering choices altogether to students
who fall behind or who need extra help. All students will feel more self-determined and therefore more motivated if
they have choices of some sort.
Teachers can also support students’ autonomy more directly by minimizing external rewards (like grades) and
comparisons among students’ performance, and by orienting and responding themselves to students’ expressed
goals and interests. In teaching elementary students about climate change, for example, you can support autonomy
by exploring which aspects of this topic have already come to students’ attention and aroused their concern. The
point of the discussion would not be to find out “who knows the most” about this topic, but to build and enhance
students’ intrinsic motivations as much as possible. In reality, of course, it may not be possible to succeed at this
goal fully—some students may simply have no interest in the topic, for example, or you may be constrained by time
or resources from individualizing certain activities fully. But any degree of attention to students’ individuality, as
well as any degree of choice, will support students’ autonomy.
Supporting the need for competence
The most obvious way to make students feel competent is by selecting activities which are challenging but
nonetheless achievable with reasonable effort and assistance (Elliott, McGregor, & Thrash, 2004). Although few
teachers would disagree with this idea, there are times when it is hard to put into practice, such as when you first
meet a class at the start of a school year and therefore are unfamiliar with their backgrounds and interests. But
there are some strategies that are generally effective even if you are not yet in a position to know the students well.
One is to emphasize activities that require active response from students. Sometimes this simply means selecting
projects, experiments, discussions and the like that require students to do more than simply listen. Other times it
means expecting active responses in all interactions with students, such as by asking questions that call for
“divergent” (multiple or elaborated) answers. In a social studies class, for example, try asking “What are some ways
we could find out more about our community?” instead of “Tell me the three best ways to find out about our
community.” The first question invites more divergent, elaborate answers than the second.
Another generally effective way to support competence is to respond and give feedback as immediately as
possible. Tests and term papers help subsequent learning more if returned, with comments, sooner rather than
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later. Discussions teach more if you include your own ideas in them, while still encouraging students’ input. Small
group and independent activities are more effective if you provide a convenient way for students to consult
authoritative sources for guidance when needed, whether the source is you personally, a teaching assistant, a
specially selected reading, or even a computer program. In addition, you can sometimes devise tasks that create a
feeling of competence because they have a “natural” solution or ending point. Assembling a jigsaw puzzle of the
community, for example, has this quality, and so does creating a jigsaw puzzle of the community if the students
need a greater challenge.
Supporting the need to relate to others
The main way of support students’ need to relate to others is to arrange activities in which students work
together in ways that are mutually supportive, that recognize students’ diversity, and minimize competition among
individuals. We will have more to say about this strategy in Chapter 8 (“Instructional strategies”), where we
describe several varieties of cooperative learning, as well as some of their pitfalls to be avoided. For now, simply
note that having students work together can happen in many ways. You can, for example, deliberately arrange
projects that require a variety of talents; some educators call such activities “rich group work” (Cohen, 1994; Cohen,
Brody, & Sapon-Shevin, 2004). In studying in small groups about medieval society, for example, one student can
contribute his drawing skills, another can contribute his writing skills, and still another can contribute his dramatic
skills. The result can be a multi-faceted presentation—written, visual, and oral. The groups needed for rich group
work provide for students’ relationships with each other, whether they contain six individuals or only two.
There are other ways to encourage relationships among students. In the jigsaw classroom (Aronson & Patnoe,
1997), for example, students work together in two phases. In the first phase, groups of “experts” work together to
find information on a specialized topic. In a second phase the expert groups split up and reform into “generalist”
groups containing one representative from each former expert group. In studying the animals of Africa, for
example, each expert group might find information about a different particular category of animal or plant; one
group might focus on mammal, another on bird, a third on reptiles, and so on. In the second phase of the jigsaw,
the generalist groups would pool information from the experts to get a more well-rounded view of the topic. The
generalist groups would each have an expert about mammals, for example, but also an expert about birds and about
reptiles.
As a teacher, you can add to these organizational strategies by encouraging the development of your own
relationships with class members. Your goal, as teacher, is to demonstrate caring and interest in your students not
just as students, but as people. The goal also involves behaving as if good relationships between and among class
members are not only possible, but ready to develop and perhaps even already developing. A simple tactic, for
example, is to speak of “we” and “us” as much as possible, rather than speaking of “you students”. Another tactic is
to present cooperative activities and assignments without apology, as if they are in the best interests not just of
students, but of “us all” in the classroom, yourself included.
Keeping self-determination in perspective
In certain ways self-determination theory provides a sensible way to think about students’ intrinsic motivation
and therefore to think about how to get them to manage their own learning. A particular strength of the theory is
that it recognizes degrees of self-determination and bases many ideas on this reality. Most people recognize
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6. Student motivation
combinations of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation guiding particular activities in their own lives. We might enjoy
teaching, for example, but also do this job partly to receive a paycheck. To its credit, self-determination theory also
relies on a list of basic human needs—autonomy, competence, and relatedness—that relate comfortably with some
of the larger purposes of education.
Although these are positive features for understanding and influencing students’ classroom motivation, some
educators and psychologists nonetheless have lingering questions about the limitations of self-determination
theory. One is whether merely providing choices actually improves students’ learning, or simply improves their
satisfaction with learning. There is evidence supporting both possibilities (Flowerday & Schraw, 2003; Deci &
Ryan, 2003), and it is likely that there are teachers whose classroom experience supports both possibilities as well.
Another question is whether it is possible to overdo attention to students’ needs—and again there is evidence for
both favoring and contradicting this possibility. Too many choices can actually make anyone (not just a student)
frustrated and dissatisfied with a choice the person actually does make (Schwartz, 2004). Furthermore,
differentiating activities to students’ competence levels may be impractical if students are functioning at extremely
diverse levels within a single class, as sometimes happens. Differentiating may be inappropriate, too, if it holds a
teacher back from covering key curriculum objectives which students need and which at least some students are
able to learn. These are serious concerns, though in our opinion not serious enough to give up offering choices to
students or to stop differentiating instruction altogether. In Chapter 7 (“Classroom management and the learning
environment”), therefore, we explain the practical basis for this opinion, by describing workable ways for offering
choices and recognizing students’ diversity.
Expectancy x value: effects on students’ motivation
As we have explained in this chapter, motivation is affected by several factors, including reinforcement for
behavior, but especially also students’ goals, interests, and sense of self-efficacy and self-determination. The factors
combine to create two general sources of motivation: students’ expectation of success and the value that students
place on a goal. Viewing motivation in this way is often called the expectancy-value model of motivation (Wigfield &
Eccles, 2002; Wigfield, Tonk, & Eccles, 2004), and sometimes written with a multiplicative formula: expectancy x
value = motivation. The relationship between expectation and value is “multiplicative” rather than additive because
in order to be motivated, it is necessary for a person to have at least a modest expectation of success and to assign a
task at least some positive value. If you have high expectations of success but do not value a task at all (mentally
assign it a “0” value), then you will not feel motivated at all. Likewise, if you value a task highly but have no
expectation of success about completing it (assign it a “0” expectancy), then you also will not feel motivated at all.
Expectancies are the result of various factors, but particularly the goals held by a student, and the student’s self-
efficacy, which we discussed earlier in this chapter. A student with mastery goals and strong self-efficacy for a task,
for example, is likely to hold high expectations for success—almost by definition. Values are also the result of
various factors, but especially students’ interests and feelings of self-determination. A student who has a lasting
personal interest in a task or topic and is allowed to choose it freely is especially likely to value the task—and
therefore to feel motivated.
Ideally both expectancies and values are high in students on any key learning task. The reality, however, is that
students sometimes do not expect success, nor do they necessarily value it when success is possible. How can a
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teacher respond to low expectations and low valuing? We have offered a number of suggestions to meet this
challenge throughout this chapter. In brief, raising low expectations depends on adjusting task difficulty so that
success becomes a reasonable prospect: a teacher must make tasks neither too hard nor too easy. Reaching this
general goal depends in turn on thoughtful, appropriate planning—selecting reasonable objectives, adjusting them
on the basis of experience, finding supportive materials, and providing students with help when needed.
Raising the value of academic tasks is equally important, but the general strategies for doing so are different
than for raising expectations. Increasing value requires linking the task to students’ personal interests and prior
knowledge, showing the utility of the task to students’ future goals, and showing that the task is valuable to other
people whom students’ respect. Some of these strategies were discussed earlier in this chapter, but others (e.g.
linking new learning with prior knowledge) are discussed in Chapter 2, which is called “The learning process”.
TARGET: a model for integrating ideas about motivationA model of motivation that integrates many ideas about motivation, including those in this chapter, has been
developed by Carole Ames (1990, 1992). The acronym or abbreviated name for the program is TARGET, which
stands for six elements of effective motivation:
• Task
• Authority
• Recognition
• Grouping
• Evaluating
• Time
Each of the elements contributes to students' motivation either directly or indirectly.
Task
As explained earlier, students experience tasks in terms of their value, their expectation of success, and their
authenticity. The value of a task is assessed by its importance, interest to the student, usefulness or utility, and the
cost in terms of effort and time to achieve it. Expectation of success is assessed by a student's perception of the
difficulty of a task. Generally a middling level of difficulty is optimal for students; too easy, and the task seems
trivial (not valuable or meaningful), and too hard, and the task seems unlikely to succeed and in this sense useless.
Authenticity refers to how much a task relates to real-life experiences of students; the more it does so, the more it
can build on students' interests and goals, and the more meaningful and motivating it becomes.
Autonomy
Motivation is enhanced if students feel a degree of autonomy or responsibility for a learning task. Autonomy
strengthens self-efficacy and self-determination—two valued and motivating attitudes described earlier in this
chapter. Where possible, teachers can enhance autonomy by offering students' choices about assignments and by
encouraging them to take initiative about their own learning.
Recognition
Teachers can support students' motivation by recognizing their achievements appropriately. Much depends,
however, on how this is done; as discussed earlier, praise sometimes undermines performance. It is not especially
effective if praise is very general and lacking in detailed reasons for the praise; or if praise is for qualities which a
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6. Student motivation
student cannot influence (like intelligence instead of effort); or if praise is offered so widely that it loses meaning or
even becomes a signal that performance has been substandard. Many of these paradoxical effects are described by
self-determination and self-efficacy theory (and were explained earlier in this chapter).
Grouping
Motivation is affected by how students are grouped together for their work—a topic discussed in more detail in
Chapter 8 (“Instructional Strategies”). There are many ways to group students, but they tend to fall into three types:
cooperative, competitive, and individualistic (Johnson & Johnson, 1999). In cooperative learning, a set of students
work together to achieve a common goal (for example, producing a group presentation for the class); often they
receive a final grade, or part of a final grade, in common. In competitive learning, students work individually, and
their grades reflect comparisons among the students (for example, their performances are ranked relative to each
other, or they are “graded on a curve”). In individualistic learning, students work by themselves, but their grades
are unrelated to the performance of classmates. Research that compares these three forms of grouping tends to
favor cooperative learning groups, which apparently supports students' need for belonging—an idea important in
self-determination theory discussed earlier in this chapter.
Evaluation
Grouping structures obviously affect how students' efforts are evaluated. A focus on comparing students, as
happens with competitive structures, can distract students from thinking about the material to be learned, and to
focus instead on how they appear to external authorities; the question shifts from “What am I learning?” to “What
will the teacher think about my performance?” A focus on cooperative learning, on the other hand, can have double-
edged effects: students are encouraged to help their group mates, but may also be tempted to rely excessively on
others' efforts or alternatively to ignore each other's contributions and overspecialize their own contributions. Some
compromise between cooperative and individualistic structures seems to create optimal motivation for learning
(Slavin, 1995).
Time
As every teacher knows, students vary in the amount of time needed to learn almost any material or task.
Accommodating the differences can be challenging, but also important for maximizing students' motivation. School
days are often filled with interruptions and fixed intervals of time devoted to non-academic activities—facts that
make it difficult to be flexible about granting individuals different amounts of time to complete academic tasks.
Nonetheless a degree of flexibility is usually possible: larger blocks of time can sometimes be created for important
activities (for example, writing an essay), and sometimes enrichment activities can be arranged for some students
while others receive extra attention from the teacher on core or basic tasks. More about such strategies is discussed
in Chapter 8 (“Instructional Strategies”).
The bottom line about motivation: sustaining focus on learning
Sooner or later when you teach, there will be situations appropriate for each perspective about motivation
described in this chapter. There will be times when focusing exclusively on students’ appropriate behavior (or lack
thereof) will be both necessary and sufficient evidence of motivation. But there will be other times when it is
important to encourage students’ beliefs that they can accomplish specific tasks, and still other times when
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providing for students’ underlying needs for competence or social connection is important. Think of these
perspectives as alternatives to be used either singly or in combination when the time is right.
Because of your own values, attitudes, or beliefs, you may find one perspective more personally compatible than
another. Even if you settle on favorite ways of motivating students, though, we encourage you to keep the other, less
favored approaches in reserve anyway, and to experiment with them. We believe that an eclectic approach to
motivation will enrich your teaching the most, and enrich your students’ motivation and learning as well. If there is
a single lesson from the concepts about motivation outlined in this chapter, it is this: academic motivation has no
single source, and teachers motivate students the best when they assume motivation is complex. The next two
chapters look at ways of realizing such “broad-mindedness” in practice, first when you prepare activities and classes
and later when you actually teach them.
Chapter summary
Motivation—the energy or drive that gives behavior direction and focus—can be understood in a variety of ways,
each of which has implications for teaching. One perspective on motivation comes from behaviorism, and equates
underlying drives or motives with their outward, visible expression in behavior. Most others, however, come from
cognitive theories of learning and development. Motives are affected by the kind of goals set by students—whether
they are oriented to mastery, performance, failure-avoidance, or social contact. They are also affected by students’
interests, both personal and situational. And they are affected by students’ attributions about the causes of success
and failure—whether they perceive the causes are due to ability, effort, task difficulty, or luck.
A major current perspective about motivation is based on self-efficacy theory, which focuses on a person’s belief
that he or she is capable of carrying out or mastering a task. High self-efficacy affects students’ choice of tasks, their
persistence at tasks, and their resilience in the face of failure. It helps to prevent learned helplessness, a perception
of complete lack of control over mastery or success. Teachers can encourage high self-efficacy beliefs by providing
students with experiences of mastery and opportunities to see others’ experiences of mastery, by offering well-
timed messages persuading them of their capacity for success, and by interpreting students’ emotional reactions to
success, failure and stress.
An extension of self-efficacy theory is self-determination theory, which is based on the idea that everyone has
basic needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness to others. According to the theory, students will be
motivated more intrinsically if these three needs are met as much as possible. A variety of strategies can assist
teachers in doing so. As a practical matter, the strategies can encourage motivation that is more intrinsic to
students, but usually not completely intrinsic.
On the Internet
aspects of self-efficacy theory. The site gives access to a number of published articles on the subject as well as to
extensive “lecture” notes by Frank Pajares, who publishes and teaches about self-efficacy theory.
the University of Rochester by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, two psychologists who have published extensively
about self-determination theory. The site is especially thorough in reviewing evidence contrary to the theory and in
offering many of the actual research questionnaires which have been used to study self-determination.
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6. Student motivation
motivation in education. It is not limited to any one theory, perspective, or concept about this topic. Many of the
references are to citations from the ERIC database (also available at
bibliographies on additional topics about education.
Key termsAlbert Bandura
Attributions of success or failureAutonomy, need for
Behaviorist perspective on motivationCompetence, need for
Failure-avoidant goalsIntrinsic motivation
Jigsaw classroomLearned helplessness
Mastery goals
MotivationNeed for relatedness
Performance goalsPersonal interests
Self-determination theorySelf-efficacy
Situational interestsTARGET
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7. Classroom management and the learning environment
This is an excerpt from a professional journal kept by one of us (Kelvin Seifert) when he was teaching
kindergarten:
20xx-11-14: Today my student Carol sat in the circle, watching others while we all played Duck,
Duck, Goose (in this game, one student is outside the circle, tags another student who then chases the
first person around the circle). Carol’s turn had already passed. Apparently she was bored, because
she flopped on her back, smiling broadly, rolling around luxuriously on the floor in the path of the
other runners. Several classmates noticed her, smiled or giggled, began flopping down as well. One
chaser tripped over a “flopper”.
“Sit up, Carol”, said I, the ever-vigilant teacher. “You’re in the way.” But no result. I repeated this
twice, firmly; then moved to pick her up.
Instantly Carol ran to the far side of the gym, still smiling broadly. Then her best friend ran off with
her. Now a whole new game was launched, or really two games: “Run-from-the-teacher” and
“Enjoy-being-watched-by-everybody”. A lot more exciting, unfortunately, than Duck, Duck, Goose!
An excerpt from Kelvin’s same journal several years later, when he was teaching math in high school:
20xx-3-4: The same four students sat in the back again today, as usual. They seem to look in every
direction except at me, even when I’m explaining material that they need to know. The way they
smile and whisper to each other, it seems almost like they are “in love” with each other, though I can’t
be sure who loves whom the most.
Others—students not part of the foursome—seem to react variously. Some seem annoyed, turn the
other way, avoid talking with the group, and so on. But others seem almost envious—as if they want
to be part of the “in” group, too, and were impressed with the foursome’s ability to get away with
being inattentive and almost rude. Either way, I think a lot of other students are being distracted.
Twice during the period today, I happened to notice members of the group passing a note, and then
giggling and looking at me. By the end, I had had enough of this sort of thing, so I kept them in
briefly after class and asked one of them to read the note. They looked a bit embarrassed and
hesitant, but eventually one of them opened the note and read it out loud. “Choose one”, it said. “Mr
Seifert looks (1) old ____, (2) stupid____, or (3) clueless____.”
Kelvin's experiences in managing these very different classrooms taught him what every teacher knows or else
quickly learns: management matters a lot. But his experiences also taught him that management is about more
than correcting the misbehaviors of individuals, more than just discipline. Classroom management is also
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7. Classroom management and the learning environment
about orchestrating or coordinating entire sets or sequences of learning activities so that everyone, misbehaving or
not, learns as easily and productively as possible. Educators sometimes therefore describe good management as the
creation of a positive learning environment, because the term calls attention to the totality of activities and
people in a classroom, as well as to their goals and expectations about learning (Jones & Jones, 2007). When one of
us (Kelvin) was teaching, he used both terms almost interchangeably, though in speaking of management he more
often was referring to individual students’ behavior and learning, and in speaking of the learning environment he
more often meant the overall “feel” of the class as a whole.
Why classroom management matters
Managing the learning environment is both a major responsibility and an on-going concern for all teachers, even
those with years of experience (Good & Brophy, 2002). There are several reasons. In the first place, a lot goes on in
classrooms simultaneously, even when students seem to be doing only one task in common. Twenty-five students
may all seem to be working on a sheet of math problems. But look more closely: several may be stuck on a
particular problem, each for different reasons. A few others have worked only the first problem or two and are now
chatting quietly with each other instead of continuing. Still others have finished and are wondering what to do next.
At any one moment each student needs something different—different information, different hints, different kinds
of encouragement. Such diversity increases even more if the teacher deliberately assigns multiple activities to
different groups or individuals (for example, if some students do a reading assignment while others do the math
problems).
Another reason that managing the environment is challenging is because a teacher can not predict everything
that will happen in a class. A well-planned lesson may fall flat on its face, or take less time than expected, and you
find yourself improvising to fill class time. On the other hand an unplanned moment may become a wonderful,
sustained exchange among students, and prompt you to drop previous plans and follow the flow of discussion.
Interruptions happen continually: a fire drill, a drop-in visit from another teacher or the principal, a call on the
intercom from the office. An activity may indeed turn out well, but also rather differently than you intended; you
therefore have to decide how, if at all, to adjust the next day's lesson to allow for this surprise.
A third reason for the importance of management is that students form opinions and perceptions about your
teaching that are inconsistent with your own. What you intend as encouragement for a shy student may seem to the
student herself like “forced participation”. An eager, outgoing classmate watching your effort to encourage the shy
student, moreover, may not see you as either encouraging or coercing, but as overlooking or ignoring other students
who already want to participate. The variety of perceptions can lead to surprises in students’ responses—most often
small ones, but occasionally major.
At the broadest, society-wide level, classroom management challenges teachers because public schooling is not
voluntary, and students’ presence in a classroom is therefore not a sign, in and of itself, that they wish to learn.
Instead, students’ presence is just a sign that an opportunity exists for teachers to motivate students to learn. Some
students, of course, do enjoy learning and being in school, almost regardless of what teachers do! Others do enjoy
school, but only because teachers have worked hard to make classroom life pleasant and interesting. Those students
become motivated because you have successfully created a positive learning environment and have sustained it
through skillful management.
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Fortunately it is possible to earn this sort of commitment from many students, and this chapter describes ways
of doing so. We begin with ways of preventing management problems from happening by increasing students’ focus
on learning. The methods include ideas about arranging classroom space, about establishing procedures, routines,
and rules, and about communicating the importance of learning to students and parents. After these prevention
oriented discussions, we look at ways of refocusing students when and if their minds or actions stray from the tasks
at hand. As you probably know from being a student, bringing students back on task can happen in many ways, and
the ways vary widely in the energy and persistence required of the teacher. We try to indicate some of these
variations, but because of space limitations and because of the richness of classroom life, we cannot describe them
all.
Preventing management problems by focusing students on learning
The easiest management problems to solve are ones that do not happen in the first place! Even before the school
year begins, you can minimize behavior problems by arranging classroom furniture and materials in ways that
encourage a focus on learning as much as possible. Later, once school begins, you can establish procedures and
rules that support a focus on learning even more.
Arranging classroom space
Viewed broadly, classrooms may seem to be arranged in similar ways, but there are actually important
alternative arrangements to consider. Variations exist because of grade level, the subjects taught, the teacher’s
philosophy of education, and of course the size of the room and the furniture available. Whatever the arrangement
that you choose, it should help students to focus on learning tasks as much as possible and minimize the chances of
distractions. Beyond these basic principles, however, the “best” arrangement depends on what your students need
and on the kind of teaching that you prefer and feel able to provide (Boyner, 2003; Nations & Boyett, 2002). The
next sections describe some of the options. In considering them (and before moving too much furniture around
your room!), you might want to try experimenting with spatial arrangements “virtually” by using one of the
computer programs available on the Internet (see: http://teacher.scholastic.com/tools/class_setup/).
Displays and wall space
All classrooms have walls, of course, and how you fill them can affect the mood or feeling of a classroom. Ample
displays make a room interesting and can be used to reinforce curriculum goals and display (and hence publicly
recognize) students’ work. But too many displays can also make a room seem “busy” or distracting as well as
physically smaller. They can also be more work to maintain. If you are starting a new school year, then, a good
strategy is to decorate some of the wall or bulletin board space, but not to fill it all immediately. Leaving some space
open leaves flexibility to respond to ideas and curriculum needs that emerge after the year is underway. The same
advice applies especially for displays that are high maintenance, such as aquariums, pets, and plants. These can
serve wonderfully as learning aids, but do not have to be in place on the first day of school. Not only the students,
but also you yourself, may already have enough to cope with at that time.
Computers in the classroom
If you are like the majority of teachers, you will have only one computer in your room, or at most just a few, and
their placement may be pre-determined by the location of power and cable outlets. If so, you need to think about
computer placement early in the process of setting up a room. Once the location of computers is set, locations for
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7. Classroom management and the learning environment
desks, high-usage shelves, and other moveable items can be chosen more sensibly—in general, as already
mentioned, so as to minimize distractions to students and to avoid unnecessary traffic congestion.
Visibility of and interactions with students
Learning is facilitated if the furniture and space allow you to see all students and to interact with them from a
comfortable distance. Usually this means that the main, central part of the room—where desks and tables are
usually located—needs to be as open and as spacious as possible. While this idea may seem obvious, enacting it can
be challenging in practice if the room itself is small or shaped unusually. In classrooms with young students
(kindergarten), furthermore, open spaces tend to allow, if not invite, physical movement of children—a feature that
you may consider either constructive or annoying, depending on your educational goals and the actual level of
activity that occurs.
Spatial arrangements unique to grade levels or subjects
The best room arrangement sometimes depends on the grade level or subject area of the class. If you teach in
elementary school, for example, you may need to think especially about where students can keep their daily
belongings, such as coats and lunches. In some schools, these can be kept outside the classroom—but not
necessarily. Some subjects and grade levels, furthermore, lend themselves especially well to small group
interaction, in which case you might prefer not to seat students in rows, but instead around small-group tables or
work areas. The latter arrangement is sometimes preferred by elementary teachers, but is also useful in high
schools wherever students need lots of counter space, as in some shops or art courses, or where they need to
interact, as in English as a Second Language courses (McCafferty, Jacobs, & Iddings, 2006). The key issue in
deciding between tables and rows, however, is not grade level or subject as such, but the amount of small group
interaction you want to encourage, compared to the amount of whole-group instruction. As a rule, tables make
working with peers easier, and rows make listening to the teacher more likely and group work slightly more
awkward physically.
Ironically, some teachers also experience challenges about room arrangement because they do not actually have
a classroom of their own, because they must move each day among other teachers’ rooms. “Floating” is especially
likely for specialized teachers (e.g. music teachers in elementary schools, who move from class to class) and in
schools have an overall shortage of classrooms. Floating can sometimes be annoying to the teacher, though it
actually also has advantages, such as not having to take responsibility for how other teachers’ rooms are arranged.
If you find yourself floating, it helps to consider a few key strategies, such as:
• consider using a permanent cart to move crucial supplies from room to room
• make sure that every one of your rooms has an overhead projector (do not count on using chalkboards or
computers in other teachers’ rooms)
• talk to the other teachers about having at least one shelf or corner in each room designated for your
exclusive use
Establishing daily procedures and routines
Procedures or routines are specific ways of doing common, repeated classroom tasks or activities. Examples
include checking daily attendance, dealing with students who arrive late, or granting permission to leave the
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classroom for an errand. Academically related procedures include ways of turning in daily homework (e.g. putting it
on a designated shelf at a particular time), of gaining the teacher’s attention during quiet seat work (e.g. raising
your hand and waiting), and of starting a “free choice” activity after completing a classroom assignment.
Procedures serve the largely practical purpose of making activities and tasks flow smoothly—a valuable and
necessary purpose in classrooms, where the actions of many people have to be coordinated within limited time and
space. As such, procedures are more like social conventions than like moral expectations. They are only indirectly
about what is ethically right or ethically desirable to do (Turiel, 2006). Most procedures or routines can be
accomplished in more than one way, with only minor differences in outcomes. There is more than one way, for
example, for the procedure of taking attendance: the teacher could call the role, delegate a student to call the role,
or note students’ presence on a seating chart. Each variation accomplishes essentially the same task, and the choice
may be less important than the fact that the class coordinates its actions somehow, by committing to some sort of
choice.
For teachers, of course, an initial management task is to establish procedures and routines as promptly as
possible. Because of the conventional quality of procedures, some teachers find that it works well simply to
announce and explain key procedures without inviting much discussion from students (“Here is how we will choose
partners for the group work”). Other teachers prefer to invite input from students when creating procedures (asking
the class, “What do you feel is the best way for students to get my attention during a quiet reading time?”). Both
approaches have advantages as well as disadvantages. Simply announcing key procedures saves time and insures
consistency in case you teach more than one class (as you would in high school). But it puts more responsibility on
the teacher to choose procedures that are truly reasonable and practical. Inviting students’ input, on the other
hand, can help students to become aware of and committed to procedures, but at the cost of requiring more time to
settle on them. It also risks creating confusion if you teach multiple classes, each of which adopts different
procedures. Whatever approach you choose, of course, they have to take into account any procedures or rules
imposed by the school or school district as a whole. A school may have a uniform policy about how to record daily
attendance, for example, and that policy may determine, either partly or completely, how you take attendance with
your particular students.
Establishing classroom rules
Unlike procedures or routines, rules express standards of behavior for which individual students need to take
responsibility. Although they are like procedures in that they sometimes help in insuring the efficiency of classroom
tasks, they are really about encouraging students to be responsible for learning and showing respect for each other.
Exhibit 8 lists a typical set of classroom rules.
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7. Classroom management and the learning environment
Exhibit 8: Sample set of classroom rules
Note three things about the examples in Exhibit 8. One is that the rules are not numerous; the table lists only
five. Most educational experts recommend keeping the number of rules to a minimum in order to make them easier
to remember (Thorson, 2003; Brophy, 2004). A second feature is that they are stated in positive terms (“Do X…”)
rather than negative terms (“Do not do Y…”), a strategy that emphasizes and clarifies what students should do
rather than what they should avoid. A third feature is that each rule actually covers a collection of more specific
behaviors. The rule “Bring all materials to class”, for example, covers bringing pencils, paper, textbooks, homework
papers, and permission slips—depending on the situation. As a result of their generality, rules often have a degree
of ambiguity that sometimes requires interpretation. Infractions may occur that are marginal or “in a grey area”,
rather than clear cut. A student may bring a pen, for example, but the pen may not work properly. You may
therefore wonder whether this incident is really a failure to follow the rule, or just an unfortunate (and in this case
minor) fault of the pen manufacturer.
As with classroom procedures, rules can be planned either by the teacher alone, or by the teacher with advice
from students. The arguments for each approach are similar to the arguments for procedures: rules “laid on” by the
teacher may be more efficient and consistent, and in this sense more fair, but rules influenced by the students may
be supported more fully by the students. Because rules focus strongly on personal responsibility, however, there is a
stronger case for involving students in making them than in making classroom procedures (Brookfield, 2006;
Kohn, 2006). In any case the question of who plans classroom rules is not necessarily an either/or choice. It is
possible in principle to impose certain rules on students (for example, “Always be polite to each other”) but let the
students determine the consequences for violations of certain rules (for example, “If a student is discourteous to a
classmate, he/she must apologize to the student in writing”). Some mixture of influences is probably inevitable, in
fact, if only because the class needs to take into account your own moral commitments as the teacher as well as any
imposed by the school (like “No smoking in the school” or “Always walk in the hallways”).
Pacing and structuring lessons and activities
One of the best ways to prevent management problems is by pacing and structuring lessons or activities as
smoothly and continuously as possible. This goal depends on three major strategies:
• selecting tasks or activities at an appropriate level of difficulty for your students
• providing a moderate level of structure or clarity to students about what they are supposed to do, especially
during transitions between activities
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• Treat others with courtesy and politeness.
• Make sure to bring required materials to class and to activities.
• Be on time for class and other activities.
• Listen to the teacher and to others when they are speaking.
• Follow all school rules.
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• keeping alert to the flow and interplay of behaviors for the class as a whole and for individuals within it.
Each strategy presents special challenges to teachers, but also opportunities for helping students to learn.
Choosing tasks at an appropriate level of difficulty
As experienced teachers know and as research has confirmed, students are most likely to engage with learning
when tasks are of moderate difficulty, neither too easy nor too hard and therefore neither boring nor frustrating
(Britt, 2005). Finding the right level of difficulty, however, can be a challenge if you have little experience teaching a
particular grade level or curriculum, or even if students are simply new to you and their abilities unknown. Whether
familiar or not, members of any class are likely to have diverse skills and readiness–a fact that makes it challenging
to determine what level of difficulty is appropriate. A common strategy for dealing with these challenges is to begin
units, lessons, or projects with tasks that are relatively easy and familiar. Then, introduce more difficult material or
tasks gradually until students seem challenged, but not overwhelmed. Following this strategy gives the teacher a
chance to observe and diagnose students’ learning needs before adjusting content, and it gives students a chance to
orient themselves to the teacher’s expectations, teaching style, and topic of study without becoming frustrated
prematurely. Later in a unit, lesson, or project, students seem better able to deal with more difficult tasks or content
(Van Merrionboer, 2003). The principle seems to help as well with “authentic” learning tasks—ones that resemble
real-world activities, such as learning to drive an automobile or to cook a meal, and that present a variety of
complex tasks simultaneously. Even in those cases it helps to isolate and focus on the simplest subtasks first (such
as “put the key in the ignition”) and move to harder tasks only later (such as parallel parking).
Sequencing instruction is only a partial solution to finding the best “level” of difficulty, however, because it does
not deal with enduring individual differences among students. The fundamental challenge to teachers is to
individualize or differentiate instruction fully: to tailor it not only to the class as a group, but to the lasting
differences among members of the class. One way to approach this sort of diversity, obviously, is to plan different
content or activities for different students or groups of students. While one group works on Task A, another group
works on Task B; one group works on relatively easy math problems, for example, while another works on harder
ones. Differentiating instruction in this way complicates a teacher’s job, but it can be done, and has in fact been
done by many teachers (it also makes teaching more interesting!). In the next chapter, we describe some classroom
management strategies that help with such multi-tasking.
Providing moderate amounts of structure and detail
Chances are that at some point in your educational career you have wished that a teacher would clarify or
explain an assignment more fully, and perhaps give it a clearer structure or organization. Students’ desire for clarity
is especially common with assignments that are by nature open-ended, such as long essays, large projects, or
creative works. Simply being told to “write an essay critiquing the novel”, for example, leaves more room for
uncertainty (and worry) than being given guidelines about what questions the essay should address, what topics or
parts it should have, and what its length or style should be (Chesebro, 2003). As you might suspect, some students
desire clarity more than others, and improve their performance especially much when provided with plenty of
structure and clarity. Students with certain kinds of learning difficulties, in particular, often learn effectively and
stay on task only if provided with somewhat explicit, detailed instructions about the tasks expected of them (Marks,
et al., 2003).
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7. Classroom management and the learning environment
As a teacher, the challenge is to accommodate students’ need for clarity without making guidance so specific or
detailed that students do little thinking for themselves. As a (ridiculously extreme) example, consider a teacher
gives “clear” instructions for an essay by announcing not only exactly which articles to read and cite in the essay and
which topics or issues to cover, but even requires specific wording of sentences in their essays. This much specificity
may reduce students’ uncertainties and make the teacher’s task of evaluating the essays relatively straightforward
and easy. But it also reduces or even eliminates the educational value of the assignment—assuming, of course, that
its purpose is to get students to think for themselves.
Ideally, then, structure should be moderate rather than extreme. There should be just enough to give students
some sense of direction and to stimulate more accomplishment than if they worked with less structure or guidance.
This ideal is an application of Vygotsky’s idea of the zone of proximal development that we discussed in Chapter 2: a
place (figuratively speaking) where students get more done with help than without it. The ideal amount of guidance
—the “location” of the zone of proximal development—varies with the assignment and the student, and it
(hopefully) decreases over time for all students. One student may need more guidance to do his or her best in math,
but less guidance in order to write her or his best essay. Another student may need the reverse. But if all goes well,
both students may need less at the end of the year than at the beginning.
Managing transitions
Transitions between activities is often full of distractions and “lost” time, and is a time when inappropriate
behaviors are especially likely to occur. Part of the problem is intrinsic to transitions: students may have to wait
before a new activity actually begins, and therefore get bored at the very moment when the teacher is preoccupied
with arranging materials for the new activity. From the point of view of the students, transitions may seem
essentially like unsupervised group time, when seemingly any behavior is tolerated.
Minimizing such problems requires two strategies, one of which is easier to implement than the other. The
easier strategy is for you, as teacher, to organize materials as well as possible ahead of time, so that you minimize
the time needed to begin a new activity. The advice sounds simple, and mostly is, but it sometimes takes a bit of
practice to implement smoothly. When one of us (Kelvin) first began teaching university, for example, particular
papers or overhead transparencies sometimes got lost in the wrong folder in spite of Kelvin's efforts to keep them
where they were easy to find. The resulting delays about finding them slowed the pace of class and caused
frustrations.
A second, more complex strategy is to teach students ways to manage their own behavior during transitions
(Marzano & Marzano, 2004). If students talk too loudly at these times, for example, then discuss with them what
constitutes appropriate levels or amounts of talk, and discuss the need for them to monitor their own sound level.
Or if students stop work early in anticipation of ending an activity, then talk about—or even practice—waiting for a
signal from yourself to indicate the true ending point for an activity. If certain students continue working beyond
the end of an activity. On the other hand, try giving them warning of the impending end in advance, and remind
them about to take responsibility for actually finishing work once they hear the advance warning, and so on. The
point of these tactics is to encourage responsibility for behavior during transitions, and thereby reduce your own
need to monitor students at that crucial time.
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None of these ideas, of course, mean that you, as teacher, should give up monitoring students’ behavior entirely.
Chances are that you still will need to notice if and when someone talks too loudly, finishes too early, or continues
too long, and you will still need to give some students appropriate reminders. But the amount of reminding will be
less to the extent that students can remind and monitor themselves—a welcome trend at any time, but especially
during transitions.
Maintaining the flow of activities
A lot of classroom management is really about keeping activities flowing smoothly, both during individual
lessons and across the school day. The trouble is that there is never just “one” event happening at a time, even if
only one activity has been formally planned and is supposed to be occurring. Imagine, for example, that everyone is
supposed to be attending a single whole-class discussion on a topic; yet individual students will be having different
experiences at any one moment. Several students may be listening and contributing comments, for example, but a
few others may be planning what they want to say next and ignoring the current speakers, still others may be
ruminating about what a previous speaker said, and still others may be thinking about unrelated matters–the
restroom, food, or sex. Things get even more complicated if the teacher deliberately plans multiple activities: in that
case some students may interact with the teacher, for example, while others do work in an unsupervised group or
work independently in a different part of the room. How is a teacher to keep activities flowing smoothly in the face
of such variety?
A common mistake of beginning teachers in multi-faceted settings like these is to pay too much attention to any
one activity, student, or small group, at the expense of noticing and responding to all the others. If you are helping a
student on one side of the room when someone on the other side disturbs classmates with off-task conversation, it
can be less effective either to finish with the student you are helping before attending to the disruption, or to
interrupt yourself to solve the disruption on the other side of the room. Although one of these responses may be
necessary, either one involves disruption somewhere. There is a risk that either the student’s chatting may spread
to others, or the interrupted student may become bored with waiting for the teacher’s attention and wander off-task
herself.
A better solution, though one that at first may seem challenging, is to attend to both events at once—a strategy
that was named withitness in a series of now-classic research studies several decades ago (Kounin, 1970).
Withitness does not mean that you focus on all simultaneous activities with equal care, but only that you remain
aware of multiple activities, behaviors, and events to some degree. At a particular moment, for example, you may be
focusing on helping a student, but in some corner of your mind you also notice when chatting begins on the other
side of the room. You have, as the saying goes, “eyes in the back of your head”. Research has found that experienced
teachers are much more likely to show withitness than inexperienced teachers, and that these qualities are
associated with managing classrooms successfully (Emmer & Stough, 2001).
Simultaneous awareness—withitness—makes possible responses to the multiple events that are immediate and
nearly simultaneous—what educators sometimes called overlapping. The teacher’s responses to each event or
behavior need not take equal time, nor even be equally noticeable to all students. If you are helping one student
with seat work at the precise moment when another student begins chatting off-task, for example, a quick glance to
the second student may be enough to bring the second one back to the work at hand, and may scarcely interrupt
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7. Classroom management and the learning environment
your conversation with the first student, or be noticed by others who are not even involved. The result is a smoother
flow to activities overall.
As a new teacher, you may find that withitness and overlapping develop more easily in some situations than in
others. It may be easier to keep an eye (or ear) on multiple activities during familiar routines, such as taking
attendance, but harder to do the same during activities that are unfamiliar or complex, such as introducing a new
topic or unit that you have never taught before. But skill at broadening your attention does increase with time and
practice. It helps to keep trying. Merely demonstrating to students that you are “withit”, in fact, even without
making deliberate overlapping responses, can sometimes deter students from off-task behavior. Someone who is
tempted to pass notes in class, for example, might not do so because she believes that you will probably notice her
doing it anyway, whether or not you are able to notice in fact.
Communicating the importance of learning and of positive behavior
Altogether, the factors we have discussed—arranging space, procedures, and rules, and developing withitness—
help communicate an important message: that in the classroom learning and positive social behavior are priorities.
In addition, teachers can convey this message by offering timely feedback to students about performance, by
keeping accurate records of the performance, and by deliberately communicating with parents or caregivers about
their children and about class activities.
Communicating effectively is so important for all aspects of teaching, in fact, that we discuss it more fully later in
this book (see Chapter 8,“The nature of classroom communication”). Here we focus on only one of its important
aspects: how communication contributes to a smoothly functioning classroom and in this way helps prevent
behavior problems.
Giving timely feedback
The term feedback, when used by educators, refers to responses to students about their behavior or
performance. Feedback is essential if students are to learn and if they are to develop classroom behavior that is
socially skilled and “mature”. But feedback can only be fully effective if offered as soon as possible, when it is still
relevant to the task or activity at hand (Reynolds, 1992). A score on a test is more informative immediately after a
test than after a six-month delay, when students may have forgotten much of the content of the test. A teacher’s
comment to a student about an inappropriate, off-task behavior may not be especially welcome at the moment the
behavior occurs, but it can be more influential and informative then; later, both teacher and student will have
trouble remembering the details of the off-task behavior, and in this sense may literally “not know what they are
talking about”. The same is true for comments about a positive behavior by a student: hearing a compliment right
away makes it easier to the comment with the behavior, and allows the compliment to influence the student more
strongly. There are of course practical limits to how fast feedback can be given, but the general principle is clear:
feedback tends to work better when it is timely.
The principle of timely feedback is consistent, incidentally, with a central principle of operant conditioning
discussed in Chapter 2: reinforcement works best when it follows a to-be-learned operant behavior closely (Skinner,
1957). In this case a teacher’s feedback serves as a form of reinforcement. The analogy is easiest to understand when
the feedback takes the form of praise; in operant conditioning terms, the reinforcing praise then functions like a
“reward”. When feedback is negative, it functions as an “aversive stimulus” (in operant terms), shutting down the
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behavior criticized. At other times, though, criticism can also function as an unintended reinforcement. This
happens, for example, if a student experiences criticism as a reduction in isolation and therefore as in increase in
his importance in the class—a relatively desirable change. So the inappropriate behavior continues, or even
increases, contrary to the teacher's intentions. Exhibit 9 diagrams this sequence of events.
Example of Unintended Negative Reinforcement in the Classroom:
Student is isolated socially → Student publiclymisbehaves → Student gains others'
attention
Reinforcement can happen in class if an undesirable behavior, leads to a less aversive state for a student.
Social isolation can be reduced by public misbehavior, which stimulates attention that is reinforcing.
Ironically, the effort to end misbehavior ends up stimulating the misbehavior.
Exhibit 9: Attracting attention as negative reinforcement
Maintaining accurate records
Although timeliness in responding to students can sometimes happen naturally during class, there are also
situations where promptness depends on having organized key information ahead of time. Obvious examples are
the scores, marks, and grades returned to students for their work. A short quiz (such as a weekly spelling test) may
be possible to return quite soon after the quiz—sometimes you or even the students themselves can mark it during
class. More often, though, assignments and tests require longer processing times: you have to read, score, or add
comments to each paper individually. Excessive time to evaluate students' work can reduce the usefulness of a
teacher’s evaluations to students when she finally does return the work (Black, et al., 2004). During the days or
weeks waiting for a test or assignment to be returned, students are left without information about the quality or
nature of their performance; at the extreme they may even have to complete another test or do another assignment
before getting information about an earlier one. (Perhaps you yourself have experienced this particular problem!)
Delays in providing feedback about academic performance can never be eliminated entirely, but they can be
reduced by keeping accurate, well-organized records of students’ work. A number of computer programs are
available to help with this challenge; if your school does not already have one in use, then there are several
downloadable either free or at low cost from the Internet (e.g.
the scope of this book. For now we simply emphasize that grading systems benefit students’ learning the most when
they provide feedback as quickly and frequently as possible (McMillan, 2001), precisely the reason why accurate,
well-organized record-keeping is important to keep.
Accurate records are helpful not only for scores on tests, quizzes, or assignments, but also for developing
descriptive summaries of the nature of students’ academic skills or progress. A common way to develop a
description is the student portfolio, which is a compilation of the student’s work and on-going assessments of it
created by the teacher or in some cases by the student (Moritz & Christie, 2005; White, 2005). To know how a
student’s science project evolved from its beginning, for example, a teacher and student can keep a portfolio of lab
notes, logs, preliminary data, and the like. To know how a student’s writing skills developed, they could keep a
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7. Classroom management and the learning environment
portfolio of early drafts on various writing assignments. As the work accumulates, the student can discuss it with
the teacher, and write brief reflections on its strengths thus far or on the steps needed to improve the work further.
By providing a way to respond to work as it evolves, and by including students in making the assessments,
portfolios provide relatively prompt feedback, and in any case provide it sooner than by waiting for the teacher to
review work that is complete or final.
Communicating with parents and caregivers
Since parents and caregivers in a sense “donate” their children to schools (at least figuratively speaking),
teachers are responsible for keeping them informed and involved to whatever extent is practical. Virtually all
parents understand and assume that schools are generally intended for learning. Detailed communication can
enrich parents' understanding, of how learning is addressed with their particular child’s classroom, and show them
more precisely what their particular child is doing. The better such understanding in turn encourages parents and
caregivers to support their child’s learning more confidently and “intelligently”. In this sense it contributes
indirectly to a positive learning environment in their child’s class.
There are various ways to communicate with parents, each with advantages and limitations. Here are three
common examples:
• A regular classroom newsletter: A newsletter establishes a link with parents or caregivers with
comparatively little effort on the part of the teacher. At the beginning of the year, for example, a newsletter
can tell about special materials that students will need, important dates to remember (like professional
development days when there is no school), or about curriculum plans for the next few weeks. But
newsletters also have limitations. They can seem impersonal, and they may get lost on the way home and
never reach parents or caregivers. They can also be impractical for teachers with multiple classes, as in high
school or in specialist subjects (like music or physical education), where each class follows a different
program or curriculum.
• Telephone calls: The main advantage of phoning is its immediacy and individuality. Teacher and parent or
caregiver can talk about a particular student, behavior, or concern, and do it now. By the same token,
however, phone calls are not an efficient way for informing parents about events or activities that affect
everyone in common. The individuality of phoning may explain why teachers often use this method when a
student has a problem that is urgent or unusual—as when he has failed a test, missed classes, or
misbehaved seriously. Rightly or wrongly, a student’s successes tend not to prompt phone calls to the
student’s home (though in fairness students may be more likely to tell parents about their successes
themselves, making it less essential for the teacher to do so).
• Parent-teacher conferences: Most schools schedule periodic times—often a day or evening per term—when
teachers meet briefly with parents or caregivers who wish to meet. Under good conditions, the conferences
have the individuality of phone calls, but also the richness of communication possible only in face-to-face
meetings. Since conferences are available to all parents, they need not focus on behavior or academic
problems, but often simply help to build rapport and understanding between parents or caregivers and the
teacher. Sometimes too, particularly at younger grade levels, teachers involve students in leading their own
conferences; the students display and explain their own work using a portfolio or other archive of
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accumulated materials (Benson & Barnett, 2005; Stiggins & Chappuis, 2005). In spite of all of these
advantages, though, parent-teacher conferences have limitations. Some parents cannot get to conferences
because of work schedules, child care, or transportation problems. Others may feel intimated by any school-
sponsored event because they speak limited English or because they remember painful experiences from
their own school days.
Even if you make several efforts to communicate, some parents may remain out of contact. In these cases it is
important to remember that the parents may not be indifferent to their child or to the value of education. Other
possibilities exist, as some of our comments above imply: parents may have difficulties with child care, for example,
have inconvenient work schedules, or feel self-conscious about their own communication skills (Stevens &
Tollafield, 2003). Even so, there are ways to encourage parents who may be shy, hesitant, or busy. One is to think
about how they can assist the school even from home—for example, by making materials to be used in class or (if
they are comfortable using English) phoning other parents about class events. A second way is to have a specific
task for the parents in mind—one with clear structure, such as photocopying materials to be used by students later.
A third is to remember to encourage, support, and respect the parents’ presence and contributions when they do
show up at school functions. Keep in mind that parents are experts about their own particular children, and without
them, you would have no students to teach!
Responding to student misbehavior
So far we have focused on preventing behaviors that are inappropriate or annoying. The advice has all been pro-
active or forward-looking: plan classroom space thoughtfully, create reasonable procedures and rules, pace lessons
and activities appropriately, and communicate the importance of learning clearly. Although we consider these ideas
important, it would be naïve to imply they are enough to prevent all behavior problems. For various reasons,
students sometimes still do things that disrupt other students or interrupt the flow of activities. At such moments
the challenge is not about long-term planning but about making appropriate, but prompt responses. Misbehaviors
left alone can be contagious, a process educators sometimes call the ripple effect (Kounin, 1970). Chatting
between two students, for example, can gradually spread to six students; rudeness by one can eventually become
rudeness by several; and so on. Because of this tendency, delaying a response to inappropriate behavior can make
the job of getting students back on track harder than responding to it as immediately as possible.
There are many ways to respond to inappropriate behaviors, of course, and they vary in how much they focus on
the immediate behavior compared to longer-term features or patterns of a student’s behavior. There are so many
ways to respond, in fact, that we can describe only a sample of the possibilities here. None are effective all of the
time, though all do work at least some of the time. We start with a response that may not seem on the surface like a
remedy at all—simply ignoring misbehaviors.
Ignoring misbehaviors
A lot of misbehaviors are not important or frequent enough to deserve any response at all. They are likely to
disappear (or extinguish, in behaviorist terms) simply if left alone. If a student who is usually quiet during class
happens to whisper to a neighbor once in awhile, it is probably less disruptive and just as effective to ignore the
infraction than to respond to it. Some misbehaviors may not be worth a response even if they are frequent, as long
as they do not seem to bother others. Suppose, for example, that a certain student has a habit of choosing quiet
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7. Classroom management and the learning environment
seat-work times to sharpen her pencil. She is continually out of her seat to go to the sharpener. Yet this behavior is
not really noticed by others. Is it then really a problem, however unnecessary or ill-timed it may be? In both
examples ignoring the behavior may be wise because there is little danger of the behavior disrupting other students
or of becoming more frequent. Interrupting your activities—or the students’—might cause more disruption than
simply ignoring the problem.
That said, there can still be problems in deciding whether a particular misbehavior is truly minor, infrequent, or
unnoticed by others. Unlike in our example above, students may whisper to each other more than “rarely” but less
than “often”: in that case, when do you decide that the whispering is in fact too frequent and needs a more active
response from you? Or the student who sharpens her pencil, mentioned above, may not bother most others, but she
may nonetheless bother a few. In that case how many bothered classmates are “too many”? Five, three, just one,
or…? In these ambiguous cases, you may need more active ways of dealing with an inappropriate behavior, like the
ones described in the next sections.
Gesturing nonverbally
Sometimes it works to communicate using gestures, eye contact, or “body language” that involve little or no
speaking. Nonverbal cues are often appropriate if a misbehavior is just a bit too serious or frequent to ignore, but
not serious or frequent enough to merit taking the time deliberately to speak to or talk with the student. If two
students are chatting off-task for a relatively extended time, for example, sometimes a glance in their direction, a
frown, or even just moving closer to the students is enough of a reminder to get them back on task. Even if these
responses prove not to be enough, they may help to keep the off-task behavior from spreading to other students.
A risk of relying on nonverbal cues, however, is that some students may not understand their meaning, or may
even fail to notice them. If the two chatting students mentioned above are engrossed in their talking, for example,
they may not see you glance or frown at them. Or they might notice but not interpret your cue as a reminder to get
back on task. Misinterpretation of nonverbal gestures and cues is more likely with young children, who are still
learning the subtleties of adults’ nonverbal “language” (Guerrero & Floyd, 2005; Heimann, et al., 2006). It is also
more likely with students who speak limited English or whose cultural background differs significantly from your
own. These students may have learned different nonverbal gestures from your own as part of their participation in
their original culture (Marsh, Elfenbein, & Ambady, 2003).
Natural and logical consequences
Consequences are the outcomes or results of an action. When managing a classroom, two kinds of consequences
are especially effective for influencing students' behavior: natural consequences and logical consequences. As the
term implies, natural consequences happen “naturally”, without deliberate intention by anyone. If a student is
late for class, for example, a natural consequence is that he misses information or material that needed to do an
assignment. Logical consequences are ones that happen because of the responses of or decisions by others, but
that also have an obvious or “logical” relationship to the original action. If one student steals another’s lunch, for
example, a logical consequence might be for the thief to reimburse the victim for the cost of the lunch. Natural and
logical consequences are often woven together and thus hard to distinguish: if one student picks a fight with
another student, a natural consequence might be injury not only to the victim, but also to the aggressor (an
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inherent byproduct of fighting), but a logical consequence might be to lose friends (the response of others to
fighting). In practice both may occur.
In general research has found that both natural and logical consequences can be effective for minimizing
undesirable behaviors, provided they are applied in appropriate situations (Weinstein, Tomlinson-Clarke, &
Curran, 2004). Consider a student who runs impulsively down school hallways. The student is likely to have “traffic
accidents”, and thus (hopefully) to see that running is not safe and to reduce the frequency of running. Or consider
a student who chronically talks during class instead of working on an assigned task. The student may have to make
up the assignment later, possibly as homework. Because the behavior and the consequence are connected logically,
the student is relatively likely to see the drawback of choosing to talk, and to reduce how much he or she talks on
subsequent occasions. In either case, whether natural or logical, the key features that make consequences work are
(a) that they are appropriate to the misbehavior and (b) that the student understands the connection between the
consequences and the original behavior.
Notice, though, that natural and logical consequences do not always work; if they did, there would be no further
need for management strategies! One limitation is that misbehaviors can sometimes be so serious that no natural or
logical consequence seems sufficient or appropriate. Suppose, for example, that one student deliberately breaks
another student’s eyeglasses. There may be a natural consequence for the victim (he or she will not be able to see
easily), but not for the student who broke the glasses. There may also be no consequences for the aggressor that are
both logical and fully satisfactory: the aggressor student will not be able to repair the broken glasses himself, and
may not be able to pay for new glasses either.
Another limitation of natural and logical consequences is that their success depends on the motives of the
misbehaving student. If the student is seeking attention or acceptance by others, then consequences often work
well. Bullying in order to impress others, for example, is more likely to lose friends than to win them—so bullying
motivated in this way is self-limiting. If a student is seeking power over others, on the other hand, then the
consequences of bullying may not reduce the behavior. Bullying in order to control others’ actions by definition
actually achieves its own goal, and its “natural” result (losing friends) would be irrelevant. Of course, a bully might
also act from a combination of motives, so that natural and logical consequences limit bullying behavior, but only
partially.
A third problem with natural and logical consequences is that they can easily be confused with deliberate
punishment (Kohn, 2006). The difference is important. Consequences are focused on repairing damage and
restoring relationships, and in this sense they focus on the future. Punishments highlight a mistake or wrongdoing
and in this sense focus on the past. Consequences tend to be more solution focused. Punishments tend to highlight
the person who committed the action, and they often shame or humiliate the wrong doer. (Table 17 summarizes
these and other differences.)
Table 17: Differences between consequences and punishments
Focused on future solutions Focused on past mistakes
Focused on individual’s actions Focused on character of student or child
Focused on repairing mistakes Focused on establishing blame
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7. Classroom management and the learning environment
Focused on restoring positive relationships Focused on isolating wrong-doer
Tend to reduce emotional pain and conflict Tend to impose emotional pain or conflict
Classroom examples of the differences between consequences and punishment are plentiful. If a student fails to
listen to the teacher's instructions, then a consequence is that he or she misses important information, but a
punishment may be that the teacher criticizes or reprimands the student. If a student speaks rudely to the teacher, a
consequence may be that the teacher does not respond to the comment, or simply reminds the student to speak
courteously. A punishment may be that the teacher scolds the student in the presence of others , or even imposes a
detention (“Stay after school for 15 minutes”).
Conflict resolution and problem solving
When a student misbehaves persistently and disruptively, you will need strategies that are more active and
assertive than the ones discussed so far, and that focus on conflict resolution—the reduction of disagreements
that persist over time. Conflict resolution strategies that educators and teachers tend to use usually have two parts
(Jones, 2004). First, they involve ways of identifying what “the” problem is precisely. Second, they remind the
student of classroom expectations and rules with simple clarity and assertiveness, but without apology or
harshness. When used together, the two strategies not only reduce conflicts between a teacher and an individual
student, but also provide a model for other students to follow when they have disagreements of their own. The next
sections discuss the nature of assertion and clarification for conflict resolution in more detail.
Step 1: clarifying and focusing: problem ownership
Classrooms can be emotional places even though their primary purpose is to promote thinking rather than
expression of feelings. The emotions can be quite desirable: they can give teachers and students “passion” for
learning and a sense of care among members of the class. But feelings can also cause trouble if students misbehave:
at those moments negative feelings—annoyance, anger, discomfort—can interfere with understanding exactly what
is wrong and how to set things right again. Gaining a bit of distance from the negative feelings is exactly what those
moments need, especially on the part of the teacher, the person with (presumably) the greatest maturity.
In a widely cited approach to conflict resolution called Teacher Effectiveness Training, the educator Thomas
Gordon describes this challenge as an issue of problem ownership, or deciding whose problem a behavior or
conflict it really is (Gordon, 2003). The “owner” of the problem is the primary person who is troubled or bothered
by it. The owner can be the student committing the behavior, the teacher, or another student who merely happens
to see the behavior. Since the owner of a problem needs to take primary responsibility for solving it, identifying
ownership makes a difference in how to deal with the behavior or problem effectively.
Suppose, for example, that a student named David makes a remark that the teacher finds offensive (like “Sean is
fat”). Is this remark the student's problem or the teacher's? If David made the comment privately to the teacher and
is unlikely to repeat it, then maybe it is only the teacher's problem. If he is likely to repeat it to other students or to
Sean himself, however, then maybe the problem is really David's. On the other hand, suppose that a different
student, Sarah, complains repeatedly that classmates refuse to let her into group projects. This is less likely to be
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the teacher’s problem rather than Sarah's: her difficulty may affect her ability to do her own work, but not really
affect the teacher or classmates directly. As you might suspect, too, a problem may sometimes affect several people
at once. David, who criticized Sean, may discover that he offended not only the teacher, but also classmates, who
therefore avoid working with him. At that point the whole class begins to share in some aspect of “the” problem: not
only is David prevented from working with others comfortably, but also classmates and the teacher begin dealing
with bad feelings about David.
Step 2: active, empathetic listening
Diagnosing accurately who really has a problem with a behavior—who “owns” it—is helped by a number of
strategies. One is active listening—attending carefully to all aspects of what a student says and attempting to
understand or empathize as fully as possible, even if you do not agree with what is being said (Cooper & Simonds,
2003). Active listening involves asking questions in order continually to check your understanding. It also involves
encouraging the student to elaborate on his or her remarks, and paraphrasing and summarizing what the student
says in order to check your perceptions of what is said. It is important not to move too fast toward solving the
problem with advice, instructions, or scolding, even if these are responses that you might, as a teacher, feel
responsible for making. Responding too soon with solutions can shut down communication prematurely, and leave
you with inaccurate impressions of the source or nature of the problem.
Step 3: assertive discipline and I-messages
Once you have listened well to the student’s point of view, it helps to frame your responses and comments in
terms of how the student’s behavior affects you in particular, especially in your role as the teacher. The comments
should have several features:
• They should be assertive—neither passive and apologetic, nor unnecessarily hostile and aggressive (Cantor,
1996). State the problem as matter-of-factly as possible: “Joe, you are talking while I’m explaining
something”, instead of either “Joe, do you think you could be quiet now?” or “Joe, be quiet!”
• The comments should emphasize I-messages (Gordon, 1981), which are comments that focus on how the
problem behavior is affecting the teacher’s ability to teach, as well as how the behavior makes the teacher
feel. They are distinct from you-messages, which focus on evaluating the mistake or problem which the
student has created. An I-message might be, “Your talking is making it hard for me to remember what I’m
trying to say.” A you-message might be, “Your talking is rude.”
• The comments should encourage the student to think about the effects of his or her actions on others—a
strategy that in effect encourages the student to consider the ethical implications of the actions (Gibbs,
2003). Instead of simply saying: “When you cut in line ahead of the other kids, that was not fair to them”,
you can try saying, “How do you think the other kids feel when you cut in line ahead of them?”
Step 4: negotiation
The first three steps describe ways of interacting that are desirable, but also fairly specific in scope and limited in
duration. But in themselves, they may not be enough when conflict persists over time and develops a number of
complications or confusing features. A student may persist in being late for class, for example, in spite of efforts by
the teacher to modify this behavior. Or two students may repeatedly speak rudely to each other, even though the
teacher has mediated this conflict in the past. Or a student may fail to complete homework, time after time. Because
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7. Classroom management and the learning environment
these problems develop over time, and because they may involve repeated disagreements, they can eventually
become stressful for the teacher, the student, and any classmates who may be affected. Their persistence can tempt
a teacher simply to dictate a resolution—a decision that can leave everyone feeling defeated, including the teacher.
Often in these situations it is better to negotiate a solution, which means systematically discussing options and
compromising on one if possible. Although negotiation always requires time and effort, it is often less time or effort
than continuing to cope with the original problem, and the results can be beneficial to everyone. A number of
experts on conflict resolution have suggested strategies for negotiating with students about persistent problems
(Davidson & Wood, 2004). The suggestions vary in detail, but usually include some combination of the steps we
have already discussed above, along with a few others:
• Decide as accurately as possible what the problem is. Usually this step involves a lot of the active listening
described above.
• Brainstorm possible solutions, and then consider their effectiveness. Remember to include students in
this step; otherwise you end up simply imposing a solution on others, which is not what negotiation is
supposed to achieve.
• If possible, choose a solution by consensus. Complete agreement on the choice may not be possible, but
strive for it as best you can. Remember that taking a vote may be a democratic, acceptable way to settle
differences in some situations, but if feelings are running high, voting does not work as well. In that case
voting may simply allow the majority to impose its will on the minority, leaving the underlying conflict
unresolved.
• Pay attention to how well the solution works after it is underway. For many reasons, things may not work
out the way you or students hope or expect. You may need to renegotiate the solution at a later time.
Keeping management issues in perspective
There are two primary messages from this chapter. One is that management issues are important, complex, and
deserving of serious attention. The other is that strategies exist that can reduce, if not eliminate, management
problems when and if they occur. We have explained some of those strategies—including some intended to prevent
problems and others intended to remedy problems.
But there is an underlying assumption about management that this chapter emphasized fully: that good
classroom management is not an end in itself, but a means for creating a classroom where learning happens and
students are motivated. Amidst the stresses of handling a problem behavior, there is a risk of losing sight of this
idea. Telling a student to be quiet is never a goal in itself, for example; it is desirable only because (or when) it
allows all students to hear the teacher’s instructions or classmates’ spoken comments, or because it allows students
to concentrate on their work. There may actually be moments when students' keeping quiet is not appropriate, such
as during a “free choice” time in an elementary classroom or during a group work task in a middle school
classroom. As teachers, we need to keep this perspective firmly in mind. Classroom management should serve
students’ learning, and not the other way around. The next chapter is based on this idea, because it discusses ways
not just to set the stage for learning, as this chapter has done, but ways to plan directly for students' learning.
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Chapter summary
Classroom management is the coordination of lessons and activities to make learning as productive as possible.
It is important because classrooms are complex and somewhat unpredictable, because students respond to
teachers’ actions in diverse ways, and because society requires that students attend school. There are two major
features of management: preventing problems before they occur and responding to them after they occur. Many
management problems can be prevented by attending to how classroom space is used, by establishing daily
procedures, routines, and rules, by pacing and structuring activities appropriately, and by communicating the
importance of learning and of positive behavior to students and parents. There are several ways of dealing with a
management problem after it occurs, and the choice depends on the nature of the problem. A teacher can simply
ignore a misbehavior, gesture or cue students nonverbally, rely on natural and logical consequences, or engage
conflict resolution strategies. Whatever tactics the teacher uses, it is important to keep in mind their ultimate
purpose: to make learning possible and effective.
On the Internet
containing resources of all kinds. This section—about classroom management—has several articles with very “nuts
and bolts” tips about management. You may also find their page of resources for substitute teachers useful.
“Power Tools” has dozens of brief articles about various aspects of classroom management.
Key termsActive listeningClassroom management
Conflict resolutionI-messages
Learning environmentLogical consequences
Natural consequencesNegotiation
OverlappingPortfolio
Problem ownershipProcedures
Ripple effectRules
Withitness
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Black, P., Harrison, C., Lee C., Marshall, B., & Wiliam, D. (2004). Working inside the black box: Assessment
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Britt, T. (2005). Effects of identity-relevance and task difficulty on task motivation, stress, and performance.
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Brophy, J. (2004). Motivating students to learn, 2nd edition. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
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Brown, D. (2004). Urban teachers’ professed classroom management strategies: Reflections of culturally
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8. The nature of classroom communication
“Be sincere; be brief; be seated.”
(Franklin Delano Roosevelt)
Franklin Roosevelt was a former president of the United States, and he advised being brief and sincere when
communicating. In advising to be seated, he was being somewhat more indirect; perhaps he was suggesting that
conversation and dialog would be improved by reducing the power differences between individuals. If so, he was
giving good advice, though perhaps it was also a bit misleading in its simplicity. As teachers, we face almost
continual talk at school, supplemented by ample amounts of nonverbal communication—gestures, facial
expressions, and other “body language”. Often the talk involves many people at once, or even an entire class, and
individuals have to take turns speaking while also listening to others having their turns, or sometimes ignoring the
others if a conversation does not concern them. As the teacher, therefore, you find yourself playing an assortment of
roles when communicating in classrooms: Master of Ceremonies, referee—and of course source of new knowledge.
Your challenge is to sort the roles out so that you are playing the right ones in the right combinations at the right
times. As you learn to do this, interestingly, much of your communication with students will indeed acquire the
qualities recommended by Franklin Roosevelt. Often, you will indeed be more sincere and brief, and you will find
that minimizing power differences between you and students is a good idea.
In this chapter we look at how you might begin to move toward these goals. We describe briefly several major
features of classroom communication that distinguish it from communication in other familiar situations. Then we
explain several techniques, both verbal and nonverbal, that contribute to effective communication, and describe
how these manifest themselves in several common activity settings, which we call structures of participation. As
you will see, how an activity is organized—its structure of participation—has a major effect on how students
communicate with each other and with the teacher.
Communication in classrooms vs communication elsewhere
Classroom events are often so complex that just talking with students can become confusing. It helps to think of
the challenge as a problem in communication—or as one expert put it, of “who says what to whom, and with
what effect” (Lasswell, 1964). In classrooms, things often do not happen at an even pace or in a logical order, or
with just the teacher and one student interacting while others listen or wait patiently. While such moments do
occur, events may sometimes instead be more like a kaleidoscope of overlapping interactions, disruptions, and
decision—even when activities are generally going well. One student finishes a task while another is still only half-
way done. A third student looks like she is reading, but she may really be dreaming. You begin to bring her back on
task by speaking to her, only to be interrupted by a fourth student with a question about an assignment. While you
answer the fourth student, a fifth walks in with a message from the office requiring a response; so the bored (third)
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8. The nature of classroom communication
student is overlooked awhile longer. Meanwhile, the first student—the one who finished the current task—now
begins telling a joke to a sixth student, just to pass the time. You wonder, “Should I speak now to the bored, quiet
reader or to the joke-telling student? Or should I move on with the lesson?” While you are wondering this, a
seventh student raises his hand with a question, and so on.
One way to manage situations like these is to understand and become comfortable with the key features of
communication that are characteristic of classrooms. One set of features has to do with the functions or purposes of
communication, especially the balance among talk related to content, to procedures, and to controlling behavior.
Another feature has to do with the nature of nonverbal communication—how it supplements and sometimes even
contradicts what is said verbally. A third feature has to do with the unwritten expectations held by students and
teachers about how to participate in particular kinds of class activities—what we will later call the structure of
participation.
Functions of talk: content, procedures, and behavior control
Classrooms are different from many other group situations in that communication serves a unique combination
of three purposes at once: content, procedures, or behavior control (Wells, 2006). Content talk focuses on what is
being learned; it happens when a teacher or student states or asks about an idea or concept, for example, or when
someone explains or elaborates on some bit of new knowledge (Burns & Myhill, 2004). Usually content talk relates
in some obvious way to the curriculum or to current learning objectives, as when a teacher tells a high school
history class, “As the text explains, there were several major causes of the American Civil War.” But content talk can
also digress from the current learning objectives; a first-grade student might unexpectedly bring a caterpillar to
school and ask about how it transforms into a butterfly.
Procedural talk, as its name implies, is about administrative rules or routines needed to accomplish tasks in a
classroom. It happens, for example, when the teacher says, “When you are done with your spelling books, put them
in the bins at the side of the room”, or when a student asks, “Do you want us to print our names at the top of page?”
Procedural talk provides information that students need to coordinate their activities in what can be a relatively
crowded space—the classroom—and under conditions in which time may be relatively short or tightly scheduled. It
generally keeps activities organized and flowing smoothly. Procedural talk is not primarily about removing or
correcting unwanted behavior, although certain administrative procedures might sometimes annoy a particular
student, or students might sometimes forget to follow a procedure. Instead it is intended to provide the guidance
that students need to coordinate with each other and with the teacher.
Control talk is about preventing or correcting misbehaviors when they occur, particularly when the
misbehaviors are not because of ignorance of procedures. It happens, for example, when a teacher says, “Jill, you
were talking when you should have been listening”, or “Jason, you need to work on your math instead of doodling.”
Most control talk originates with the teacher, but students sometimes engage in it with each other, if not with the
teacher. One student may look at a nearby classmate who is whispering out of turn and quietly say, “Shhh!” in an
attempt to silence the behavior. Or a student may respond to being teased by a classmate by saying simply, “Stop
it!” Whether originating from the teacher or a student, control talk may not always be fully effective. But its purpose
is, by definition, to influence or control inappropriate behavior. Since control talk is obviously important for
managing class effectively, we discussed it at length in Chapter 7.
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What can make classroom discourse confusing is that two of its functions—content and procedures—often
become combined with the third, control talk, in the same remark or interaction. A teacher may ask a content-
related question, for example, as a form of control talk. She may, for example, ask, “Jeremy, what did you think of
the film we just saw?” The question is apparently about content, but the teacher may also be trying to end Jeremy’s
daydreaming and to get him back on task—an example of control talk. Or a teacher may state a rule: “When one
person is talking, others need to be listening.” The rule is procedural in that it helps to coordinate classroom
dialogue, but it may also control inattentive behavior. Double functions like these can sometimes confuse students
because of their ambiguity, and lead to misunderstandings between certain students and teachers. A student may
hear only the content or procedural function of a teacher’s comment, and miss an implied request or command to
change inappropriate behavior (Collins & Michaels, 2006). But double functions can also help lessons to flow
smoothly by minimizing the disruption of attending to a minor behavior problem and by allowing more continuous
attention to content or procedures.
Verbal, nonverbal, and unintended communication
Another way to understand classroom communication is to distinguish verbal from nonverbal communication,
and intended both unintended forms of communication. As the name suggests, verbal communication is a
message or information expressed in words, either orally or in writing. Classrooms obviously have lots of verbal
communication; it happens every time a teacher explains a bit of content, asks a question, or writes information or
instructions on the chalkboard. Non-verbal communications are gestures or behaviors that convey
information, often simultaneously with spoken words (Guerrero, 2006). It happens, for example, when a teacher
looks directly at students to emphasize a point or to assert her authority, or when the teacher raises her eyebrows to
convey disapproval or disagreement. Nonverbal behaviors are just as plentiful as verbal communications, and while
they usually add to a current verbal message, they sometimes can also contradict it. A teacher can state verbally,
“This math lesson will be fun”, and a nonverbal twinkle in the eye can send the confirm message nonverbally. But a
simultaneous nonverbal sigh or slouch may send the opposite message—that the lesson will not, in fact be fun, in
spite of the teacher’s verbal claim.
Whether verbal or nonverbal, however, classroom communications often convey more meaning than is
intended. Unintended communications are the excess meanings of utterances; they are the messages received
by students without the teacher’s awareness or desire. A teacher may say, “This section of the text won’t be on the
test, but read it anyway for background.” But a student may instead hear the message, “Do not read this section of
the text.” What is heard is not what the teacher intended to be heard.
Like many public settings that involve a diversity of people, classrooms tend to rely heavily on explicit, verbal
communication, while at the same time recognizing and allowing nonverbal communications to occur (Neill, 1991).
This priority accounts for the characteristically businesslike style of teacher talk—a style that we discuss in detail in
the next chapter. A major reason for relying on an explicit, businesslike verbal style is that diversity among
individuals increases the chances of their misinterpreting each other. Because of differences in background, the
partners may differ in how they expect to structure conversation as well as other kinds of dialog.
Misunderstandings may result—sometimes without the partners being able to pinpoint the cause. Later in this
chapter we suggest how to minimize these problems.
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8. The nature of classroom communication
Effective verbal communication
Communicating effectively requires using all forms of classroom talk in combinations appropriate for particular
utterances and interactions. In various places earlier in this book, we have suggested ways of doing so, though in
those places we usually did not frame the discussion around the term communication as such.
Effective content talk
In Chapter 8, for example, we suggested ways of talking about content so that it is most likely to be understood
clearly, but in that chapter we described these as instructional strategies. In explaining ideas, for example, whether
briefly or as a extended lecture, we pointed out that it helps to offer, in advance, organizing ideas, to relate new
content to prior knowledge, and to organize and elaborate on new information. In the same chapter, we also
suggested strategies about content talk intended for students, so that students understand their own thinking as
well as possible. We especially highlighted two ways of learning: inquiry learning and cooperative learning. Table
18summarizes instructional strategies both for students and for teachers, and indicates how they contribute to
effective verbal communication about content.
Table 18: Strategies for supporting content talk
Content talk by teachers
Strategy Definition How it helps communication
Using advance organizers Statements or ideas that give a
concise overview of new material
Orients students’ attention to
new ideas about to be learned;
assists in understanding and
remembering new material
Relating new material to prior
knowledge
Explicit connections of new ideas
to students’ existing knowledge
Facilitates discussion of new
material by making it more
meaningful to students
Elaborating and extending new
information
Explanations of new ideas in full,
complete terms
Avoids ambiguities and
misunderstandings about new ideas
or concepts
Organizing new information Providing and following a clear
structure when explaining new
material
Assists in understanding and
remembering new material
Content talk by students
Inquiry learning Students pursue problems that
they help to formulate for
themselves
To formulate and and investigate
a problem, students need to express
clearly what they wish to find out.
Cooperative learning Students work in small groups to To work together, students need
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solve a common problem or task to explain ideas and questions to
fellow students clearly.
Table 19: Major strategies of effective procedural and control talk
These strategies are also discussed in Chapter 7 as features of classroom management, rather than of
communication. Note, too, that the difference between procedural and content talk is arbitrary to some extent; in
many situations one kind of talk serves the needs of the other kind.
Strategy for procedural talk Strategy for control talk
Creating and discussing procedures for daily routines Creating and discussing classroom rules of
appropriate behavior
Announcing transitions between activities Clarifying problem ownership
Providing clear instructions and guidance for
activities
Listening actively and empathetically
Reminding students periodically of procedures for
completing a task
Using I-messages
Effective procedural and control talk
In addition to communicating about content, teachers need to communicate procedures and expectations about
appropriate classroom behavior. In Chapter 7 we described quite a few ways to communicate with students about
these matters, though, in that chapter we did not refer to them as methods of communication, but as methods of
classroom management, of creating a positive learning environment, and of resolving conflicts in the class. Table 19
summarizes several of the major strategies described in that chapter.) By framing communication in these ways, we
called attention to their importance as forms of communication. As we pointed out, procedural talk and control talk
matter are used in teaching simply because clear procedures and appropriate classroom behavior are necessary
students are to learn.
Effective nonverbal communication
In spite of their importance, words are not the only way that teachers and students communicate. Gestures and
behaviors convey information as well, often supporting a teacher’s words, but sometimes also contradicting them.
Students and teachers express themselves nonverbally in all conversations, so freely and automatically in fact that
this form of communication can easily be overlooked.
Eye contact
One important nonverbal behavior is eye contact, which is the extent and timing of when a speaker looks
directly at the eyes of the listener. In conversations between friends of equal status, for example, most native
speakers of English tend to look directly at the speaker when listening, but to avert their gaze when speaking
(Kleinke, 1986). Re-engaging eye contact, in fact, often signals that a speaker is about to finish a turn and is inviting
a response from the listener.
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8. The nature of classroom communication
But conversations follow different rules if they involve someone of greater authority talking with someone of
lesser authority, such as between a teacher and a student. In that case, the person in authority signals greater status
by gazing directly at the listener almost continuously, whether listening or speaking. This alternate pattern can
sometimes prove awkward if either party is not expecting it. For students unused to continuous eye contact, it can
feel like the teacher is staring excessively, intrusively, or inappropriately; an ironic effect can be for the student to
feel more self-conscious rather than more engaged, as intended. For similar reasons, inexperienced or first-time
teachers can also feel uncomfortable with gazing at students continuously. Nevertheless research about the effects
of eye contact suggests that it may help anyone, whether a student or teacher, to remember what they are seeing
and hearing (Mason, Hood, & Macrae, 2004).
Communication problems result less from eye contact as such than from differences in expectations about eye
contact. If students’ expectations differ very much from the teacher’s, one party may misinterpret the other party’s
motivations. Among some non-white ethnic groups, for example, eye contact follows a pattern that reverses the
conventional white, English-language pattern: they tend to look more intently at a partner when talking, and avert
gaze when listening (Razack, 1998). The alternative pattern works perfectly well as long as both parties expect it
and use it. As you might imagine, though, there are problems if the two partners use opposite patterns of eye
contact. In that case one person may interpret a direct gaze as an invitation to start talking, when really it is an
invitation to stop talking. Eventually the conversational partner may find himself interrupting too much, or simply
talking too long at a turn. The converse can also happen: if the first person looks away, the partner may take the
gesture as inviting the partner to keep listening, when really the first person is inviting the partner to start talking.
Awkward gaps between comments may result. In either case, if the conversational partners are a teacher and
student, rapport may deteriorate gradually. In the first case, the teacher may even conclude, wrongly, that the
student is socially inept because the student interrupts so much. In the second case, the teacher may conclude—also
wrongly—that the student is very shy or even lacking in language skill.
To avoid such misunderstandings, a teacher needs to note and remember students’ preferred gaze patterns at
times when students are free to look wherever and at whomever they please. Traditional seats-in-a-row desk
arrangements do not work well for this purpose; as you might suppose, and as research confirms, sitting in rows
makes students more likely to look either at the teacher or to look at nothing in particular (Rosenfeld, Lambert, &
Black, 1985; Razack, 1998). Almost any other seating arrangement, such as sitting in clusters or in a circle,
encourages freer patterns of eye contact. More comfortable eye contact, in turn, makes for verbal communication
that is more comfortable and productive.
Wait time
Another important nonverbal behavior is wait time, which is the pause between conversational turns. Wait
time marks when a conversational turn begins or ends. If a teacher asks a question, for example, the wait time both
allows and prompts students to formulate an appropriate response. Studies on classroom interaction generally
show that wait times in most classes are remarkably short—less than one second (Good & Brophy, 2002).
Unfortunately wait times this short can actually interfere with most students’ thinking; in one second, most
students either cannot decide what to say or can only recall a simple, automatic fact (Tobin, 1987). Increasing wait
times to several seconds has several desirable effects: students give longer, more elaborate responses, they express
more complex ideas, and a wider range of students participate in discussion. For many teachers, however, learning
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to increase wait time this much takes conscious effort, and may feel uncomfortable at first. (A trick, if you are trying
to wait longer, is to count silently to five before calling on anyone.) After a few weeks of practice, discomfort with
longer wait times usually subsides, and the academic benefits of waiting become more evident.
As with eye contact, preferred wait times vary both among individuals and among groups of students, and the
differences in expected wait times can sometimes lead to awkward conversations. Though there are many
exceptions, girls tend to prefer longer wait times than boys—perhaps contributing to an impression that girls are
unnecessarily shy or that boys are self-centered or impulsive. Students from some ethnic and cultural groups tend
to prefer a much longer wait time than is typically available in a classroom, especially when English is the student’s
second language (Toth, 2004). When a teacher converses with a member of such a group, therefore, what feels to
the student like a respectful pause may seem like hesitation or resistance to the teacher. Yet other cultural groups
actually prefer overlapping comments—a sort of negative wait time. In these situations, one conversational partner
will begin at exactly the same instant as the previous speaker, or even before the speaker has finished (Chami-
Sather & Kretschmer, 2005). The negative wait time is meant to signal lively interest in the conversation. A teacher
who is used to a one-second gap between comments, however, may regard overlapping comments as rude
interruptions, and may also have trouble getting chances to speak.
Even though longer wait times are often preferable, they do not always work well with certain individuals or
groups. For teachers, the most widely useful advice is to match wait time to the students’ preferences as closely as
possible, regardless of whether these are slower or faster than what the teacher normally prefers. To the extent that
a teacher and students can match each other’s pace, they will communicate more comfortably and fully, and a larger
proportion of students will participate in discussions and activities. As with eye contact, observing students’
preferred wait times is easier in situations that give students some degree of freedom about when and how to
participate, such as open-ended discussions or informal conversations throughout the day.
Social distance
When two people interact, the physical space or distance between them—their social distance—often indicates
something about how intimate or personal their relationship is (Noller, 2006). Social distance also affects how
people describe others and their actions; someone who habitually is more distant physically is apt to be described in
more general, abstract terms than someone who often approaches more closely (Fujita, et al., 2006). In white
American society, a distance of approximately half a meter to a meter is what most people prefer when talking face-
to-face with a personal friend. The closer end of this range is more common if the individuals turn sideways to each
other, as when riding on an elevator; but usually the closest distances are reserved for truly intimate friendships,
such as between spouses. If the relationship is more businesslike, individuals are more likely to situate themselves
in the range of approximately one meter to a three meters. This is a common distance, for example, for a teacher
talking with a student or talking with a small group of students. For still more formal interactions, individuals tend
to allow more than three meters; this distance is typical, for example, when a teacher speaks to an entire class.
Just as with eye contact and wait time, however, individuals differ in the distances they prefer for these different
levels of intimacy, and complications happen if two people expect different distances for the same kind of
relationship. A student who prefers a shorter social distance than her partner can seem pushy or overly familiar to
the partner. The latter, in turn, can seem aloof or unfriendly—literally “distant”. The sources of these effects are
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8. The nature of classroom communication
easy to overlook since by definition the partners never discuss social distance verbally, but they are real. The best
remedy, again, is for teachers to observe students’ naturally occurring preferences as closely as possible, and to
respect them as much as possible: students who need to be closer should be allowed to be closer, at least within
reasonable limits, and those who need to be more distant should be allowed to be more distant.
Structures of participation: effects on communication
Many class activities take on patterns that guide communication in ways that class members learn to expect,
often without even being reminded. Each pattern is a participation structure, a set of rights and responsibilities
expected from students and teacher during an activity. Sometimes the teacher announces or explains the rights and
responsibilities explicitly, though often they are just implied by the actions of class members, and individual
students learn them simply by watching others. A lecture, for example, has a particular participation structure:
students are responsible for listening, for raising a hand to speak, and for keeping comments brief and relevant if
called on. The teacher, on the other hand, has the right to talk at length, but also the responsibility to keep the talk
relevant and comprehensible.
In principle, a host of participation structures are possible, but just a handful account for most class activities
(Cazden, 2001). Here are some of the most common:
• Lecturing—the teacher talks and students listen. Maybe students take notes, but maybe not.
• Questions and answers—the teacher asks a series of questions, calling on one student at a time to answer
each of them. Students raise their hands to be recognized and give answers that are brief and “correct”. In
earlier times this participation structure was sometimes called recitation.
• Discussion—the teacher briefly describes a topic or problem and invites students to comment on it.
Students say something relevant about the topic, but also are supposed to respond to previous speakers if
possible.
• Group work—the teacher assigns a general task, and a small group of students work out the details of
implementing it. The teacher may check on the group’s progress before they finish, but not necessarily.
Each of these structures influences how communication among teachers and students tends to occur; in fact
each is itself sort of an implied message about how, when, and with whom to interact. To see how this influence
works, look in the next sections at how the participation structures affected classroom communication for one of us
authors (Kelvin Seifert) as he taught one particular topic—children’s play—over a twenty-year period. The topic was
part of a university-level course for future teachers. During this time, Kelvin’s goals about the topic remained the
same: to stimulate students’ thinking about the nature and purposes of play. But over time he tried several different
structures of participation, and students’ ways of communicating changed as a result.
Lecture
The first time Kelvin taught about children’s play, he lectured about it. He used this structure of participation
not because he believed on principle that it was the best, but because it was convenient and used widely by his
fellow university teachers. An excerpt from Kelvin’s lecture notes is shown in Table 20, and gives a sense of what he
covered at that time.
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In some ways the lecture proved effective: Kelvin covered the material efficiently (in about 20 minutes), related
the topic to other ones in the course, defined and explained all key terms clearly, and did his best to relate the
material to what he thought were students’ own interests. These were all marks of good lecturing (Christensen,
2006). Students were mostly quiet during the lecture, but since only about one-third of them took notes, Kelvin had
to assume that the rest had committed the material to memory while listening. The students quietness bothered
him a little, but as a newcomer to university teaching, Kelvin was relieved simply to get through the class without
embarrassment or active resistance from the students.
But there were also some negative signs. In spite of their courtesy, few students lingered after class to talk about
children’s play or to ask questions. Worse yet, few students chose children’s play as a term paper topic, even though
it might have made a highly interesting and enjoyable one. On the final exam few seemed able to relate concepts
about play to their own experiences as teachers or leaders of recreational activities.
There was an even more subtle problem. The lecture about play focused overtly on a topic (play) that praised
action, intrinsic motivation, and self-choice. But by presenting these ideas as a lecture, Kelvin also implied an
opposite message unintentionally: that learning is something done passively, and that it follows an intellectual path
set only by the teacher. Even the physical layout of the classroom sent this message—desks faced forward, as if to
remind students to look only at the person lecturing. These are features of lecturing, as Kelvin later discovered, that
are widely criticized in educational research (McKeachie & Svinicki, 2005; Benedict & Hoag, 2004). To some
students the lecture format might even have implied that learning is equivalent to daydreaming, since both
activities require sitting quietly and showing little expression. An obvious solution might have been to invite
students to comment from time to time during the lecture, relating the topic to experiences and knowledge of their
own. But during Kelvin’s first year of teaching about play, he did little of this. The lecture medium, ironically,
contradicted the lecture message, or at least it assumed that students would think actively about the material
without ever speaking.
Questions and answers
Because of these problems, Kelvin modified his approach after a few years of teaching to include more asking of
questions which students were invited to answer. This turned the lecture on children’s play into something more
like a series of explanations of key ideas, interrupted by asking students to express their beliefs, knowledge, or
experience about children’s play. Kelvin’s preparation notes changes in appearance as a result (see Table 21).
Asking questions and inviting brief responses was reassuring because it gave indications of whether students were
listening and understanding the material. Questions served both to motivate students to listen and to assess how
much and how well they knew the material. In this regard Kelvin was using a form of communication that was and
continues to be very popular with many teachers (Cazden, 2001).
But there were also new challenges and problems. For one thing the topic of children’s play took longer to cover
than before, since Kelvin now had to allow time for students to respond to questions. This fact forced him to leave
out a few points that he used to include. More serious, though, was his impression that students often did not listen
to each other’s responses; they only listened carefully to Kelvin, the teacher. The interactions often become simply
two-way exchanges between the teacher and one student at a time: Kelvin asked, one student responded, Kelvin
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8. The nature of classroom communication
acknowledged or (sometimes) evaluated. (Mehan, 1979; Richards, 2006). Some of the exchanges could in principle
have happened just as easily without any classmates present.
In general students still had little control over the course of discussion. Kelvin wondered if he was controlling
participation too much—in fact whether the question-and-answer strategy attempted the impossible task of
controlling students’ very thought processes. By asking most of the questions himself and allowing students only
brief responses, was Kelvin trying to insure e that students thought about children’s play in the “right” way, his
way? To give students more influence in discussion, it seemed that Kelvin would have to become less concerned
about precisely what ideas about children’s play he covered.
Classroom discussion
After several more years of teaching, Kelvin quit lectures altogether, even ones interspersed with questions and
answers. He began simply leading general discussions about children’s play. The change again affected his planning
for this topic. Instead of outlining detailed content, he now just made concise notes that listed issues about
children’s play that students needed to consider (some of the notes are shown in Table 23). The shift in
participation structure led to several major changes in communication between teacher and students as well as
among students. Since students spoke more freely than before, it became easier to see whether they cared about the
topic. Now, too, more students seemed motivated to think and learn about children’s play; quite a few selected this
topic, for example, for their term projects. Needless to say, these changes were all to the good.
But there were also changes that limited the effectiveness of classroom communication, even though students
were nominally freer to speak than ever. Kelvin found, for example, that certain students spoke more than their
share of the time—almost too freely, in fact, in effect preventing more hesitant students from speaking. Sometimes,
too, it seemed as if certain students did not listen to others’ comments, but instead just passed the time waiting for
their turn to speak, their hands propped permanently in the air. Meanwhile there were still others who passed the
time apparently hoping not to speak; they were busy doodling or staring out the window. Since the precise focus of
discussion was no longer under Kelvin’s control, furthermore, discussions often did not cover all of the ideas about
children’s play that Kelvin considered important. On one occasion, for example, he meant for students to discuss
whether play is always motivated intrinsically, but instead they ended up talking about whether play can really be
used to teach every possible subject area. In itself the shift in focus was not bad, but it did make Kelvin wonder
whether he was covering the material adequately. In having these misgivings, as it happened, he was supported by
other educators who have studied the effects of class discussions on learning (McKeatchie & Svinciki, 2005).
Group work
By the time he had taught about children’s play for twenty years, Kelvin had developed enough concerns about
discussion as a communication strategy that he shifted approach again. This time he began using a form of
collaborative group work: small teams of students carrying out projects on aspects of children’s play that
interested them, making observations of children at play, reporting on their results to the class, and writing a
common report about their work. (Kelvin’s work guidelines given to the groups are shown in Table 22.) Kelvin
hoped that by giving students a common focus, communication among them would improve. Conversations would
deal with the tasks at hand, students would necessarily listen to each other, and no one could afford either to
dominate talk excessively or to fall silent.
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In some ways these benefits did take place. With a bit of encouragement from Kelvin, students listened to each
other more of the time than before. They also diversified their tasks and responsibilities within each group, and
they seemed to learn from each other in the course of preparing projects. Participation in the unit about children’s
play reached an all-time high in Kelvin’s twenty years of teaching at university. Yet even still there were problems.
Some groups seemed much more productive than others, and observing them closely suggested that differences
were related to ease of communication within groups. In some groups, one or two people dominated conversations
unduly. If they listened to others at all, they seemed immediately to forget that they had done so and proceeded to
implement their own ideas. In other groups, members all worked hard, but they did not often share ideas or news
about each other’s progress; essentially they worked independently in spite of belonging to the group. Here, too,
Kelvin’s experience corroborated other, more systematic observations of communication within classroom work
groups (Slavin, 1995). When all groups were planning at the same time, furthermore, communication broke down
for a very practical reason: the volume of sound in the classroom got so high that even simple conversation became
difficult, let alone the expression of subtle or complex ideas.
Communication styles in the classroom
Teachers and students have identifiable styles of talking to each other that linguists call a register. A register is
a pattern of vocabulary, grammar, and expressions or comments that people associate with a social role. A familiar
example is the “baby-talk” register often used to speak to an infant. Its features—simple repeated words and
nonsense syllables, and exaggerated changes in pitch—mark the speaker as an adult and mark the listener as an
infant. The classroom language register works the same way; it helps indicate who the teacher is and who the
student is. Teachers and students use the register more in some situations than in others, but its use is common
enough that most people in our society have no trouble recognizing it when they hear it (Cazden, 2001). In the
following scene, for example, the speakers are labeled only with letters of the alphabet; yet figuring out who is the
teacher and who are the students is not difficult:
A: All right now, I want your eyes up here. All eyes on me, please. B, are you ready to work? We are
going to try a new kind of math problem today. It’s called long division. Does anyone know what
long division is? C, what do you think it is?
C: Division with bigger numbers?
A: Any other ideas? D?
E (not D): Division by two digits.
A: …I only call on people who raise their hands. D, can you help with the answer?
D: Division with remainders.
A: Close. Actually you’re both partly right.
In this scene Person A must surely be the teacher because he or she uses a lot of procedural and control talk, and
because he or she introduces a new curriculum topic, long division. The other Persons (B, C, D, and E) must be
students because they only respond to questions, and because they individually say relatively little compared to
Person A.
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8. The nature of classroom communication
In general, effective classroom communication depends on understanding how features of the classroom talk
register like these operate during actual class times. In the following sections therefore we describe details of
classroom talk, and then follow with suggestions about how to use the register as effectively as possible. In both of
these sections we assume that the better the communication, the better the learning and thinking displayed by
students. For convenience we divide classroom talk into two parts, teacher talk and student talk.
How teachers talk
Although teacher talk varies somewhat with the tasks or purposes at hand, it also has uniformities that occur
across a range of situations. Using detailed observations of discourse in science activities, for example, Jay Lemke
identified all of the following strategies from observations of teachers’ classroom talk (1990). Each strategy
simultaneously influences the course of discussion and focuses students’ attention, and in these ways also helps
indirectly to insure appropriate classroom behavior:
• Nominating, terminating, and interrupting speakers: Teachers often choose who gets to speak. (“Jose,
what do you think about X?”). On the other hand, they often bring an end to a student’s turn at speaking or
even interrupt the student before he or she finishes. (“Thanks; we need to move on now.”)
• Marking importance or irrelevance: Teachers sometimes indicate that an idea is important (“That’s a good
idea, Lyla.”). On the other hand, they sometimes also indicate that an idea is not crucial or important
(“Your right, but that’s not quite the answer I was looking for.”), or fully relevant (“We’re talking about the
book Wuthering Heights, not the movie that you may have seen.”). Marking importance and relevance
obviously helps a teacher to reinforce key content. But the strategy can also serve to improve relationships
among students if the teacher deliberately marks or highlights an idea offered by a quiet or shy student
(O’Connor & Michaels, 1996; Cohen, et al., 2004). In that case marking importance can build both a
student’s confidence and the student’s status in the eyes of classmates.
• Signaling boundaries between activities: Teachers declare when an activity is over and a new one is
starting—an example of the procedural talk that we discussed earlier. (“We need to move on. Put away your
spelling and find your math books.”) In addition to clarifying procedures, though, signaling boundaries can
also insure appropriate classroom behavior. Ending an activity can sometimes help restore order among
students who have become overly energetic, and shifting to a new activity can sometimes restore motivation
to students who have become bored or tired.
• Asking “test” questions and evaluating students’ responses: Teachers often ask test questions—questions to
which they already know the answer. Then they evaluate the quality or correctness of the students’ answers
(Teacher: “How much is 6 x 7 ?” Student: “42.” Teacher: “That’s right.”). Test questions obviously help
teachers to assess students’ learning, but they also mark the teacher as the expert in the classroom, and
therefore as a person entitled to control the flow of discourse.
There are additional features of teacher-talk that are not unique to teachers. These primarily function to make
teachers’ comments more comprehensible, especially when spoken to a group, but they also help to mark a person
who uses them as a teacher (Cazden, 2001; Black, 2004):
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• Exaggerated changes in pitch: When busy teaching, teachers tend to exaggerate changes in the pitch of
their voice—reminiscent of the “sing-song” style of adults when directing speech to infants. Exaggerated
pitch changes are especially characteristic of teachers of young students, but they happen at all grade levels.
• Careful enunciation: In class teachers tend to speak more slowly, clearly, and carefully than when
conversing with a friend. The style makes a speaker sound somewhat formal, especially when combined
with formal vocabulary and grammar, mentioned next.
• Formal vocabulary and grammar: Teachers tend to use vocabulary and grammar that is more formally
polite and correct, and that uses relatively few slang or casual expressions. (Instead of saying “Get out your
stuff”, they more likely say, “Please get out your materials.”) The formality creates a businesslike distance
between teachers and students—hopefully one conducive to getting work done, rather than one that seems
simply cold or uncaring. The touch of formality also makes teachers sound a bit more intelligent or
intellectual than in casual conversation, and in this way reinforces their authority in the classroom.
How students talk
Children and youth also use a characteristic speech register when they are in a classroom and playing the role of
students in the presence of a teacher. Their register—student talk—differs somewhat from the teacher’s because of
their obvious differences in responsibilities, levels of knowledge, and relationships with each other and with the
teacher. Student-talk and teacher-talk are similar in that both involve language strategies that guide content and
procedures, and that sometimes seek to limit the inappropriate behavior of others. Compared to teachers’, though,
students’ language strategies often pursue these goals a bit more indirectly.
• Agenda enforcement: Sometimes students interrupt a discussion to ask about or remind others, and
especially the teacher, of an agreed-on agenda. If the teacher tells students to open their text to an incorrect
page, for example, a student may raise her hand to correct the teacher—or even do so without raising a
hand. This communication strategy is one of more public, direct ways that students influence activities in
the classroom, but its power is limited, since it does not create new activities, but simply returns the class to
activities agreed on previously.
• Digression attempts: During a discussion or activity, a student asks a question or makes a statement that is
not relevant to the task at hand. While the teacher is leading students in a discussion of a story that they
read, for example, a student raises his hand and asks, “Mr X, when does recess begin?”
• Side talk: One student talks to another student, either to be sociable (“Did you see that movie last week?”)
or to get information needed for the current assigned task (“What page are we on?”). Sometimes side talk
also serves to control or limit fellow students’ behavior, and in this way functions like control-talk by
teachers (as when a student whispers, “Shhh! I’m trying to listen” or “Go ahead and ask her!”). The ability
of such talk to influence classmates’ behavior is real, but limited, since students generally do not have as
much authority as teachers.
• Calling out: A student speaks out of turn without being recognized by the teacher. The student’s comment
may or may not be relevant to the ongoing task or topic, and the teacher may or may not acknowledge or
respond to it. Whether ignored or not, however, calling out may change the direction of a discussion by
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8. The nature of classroom communication
influencing fellow students’ thinking or behavior, or by triggering procedural and control talk by the
teacher. (“Jason, it’s not your turn; I only call on students who raise their hands.”)
• Answering a question with a question: Instead of answering a teacher’s “test” question directly, the
student responds with a question of her own, either for clarification or as a stalling tactic (“Do you mean
X?”). Either way, the effect is to shift the discussion or questioning to content or topics that are safer and
more familiar.
• Silence: The student says nothing in response to a speaker’s comments or to an invitation to speak. The
speaker could be either the teacher or a fellow student. The silence makes the speaker less likely to continue
the current topic, and more likely to seek a new one.
• Eye contact, gaze aversion, and posture: The student looks directly at the teacher while the teacher is
speaking, or else deliberately averts gaze. The student may also adopt any variety of postures while sitting
(sit up straight vs slouching). As we discussed earlier in this chapter, the timing of eye gaze depends partly
on cultural expectations that the student brings to school. But it may also represent a deliberate choice by
the student—a message to the teacher and to classmates. The same can be said about sitting posture. In
classroom situations, listening is conventionally indicated by looking directly at the teacher, and either
sitting up straight or leaning slightly forward. Although these behaviors can be faked, they tend to indicate,
and to be taken as, a show of interest in and acceptance of what a speaker is saying. By engaging in or
avoiding these behaviors, therefore, students can sometimes influence the length and direction of a
discussion or activity.
Using classroom talk to stimulate students’ thinking
The various features of classroom talk characterize the communication of most teachers and students, at least
when they are in a classroom and “doing school”. (Communication outside of school is a different matter: then
teachers as well as students may speak, listen, and behave quite differently!) As you might suppose, the extent and
balance among the features varies depending on grade level, curriculum area, and personalities of students or
teachers. But failing to use a classroom register at all can easily create communication problems. Suppose, for
example, that a teacher never asks informal test questions. In that case the teacher will learn much less than
otherwise about her students’ knowledge of the current material. Then also suppose that a student does not
understand teachers’ questions as test questions. That student may easily respond in ways that seem disrespectful
(Teacher: “How much is 23 x 42?” Student: “I don’t know; how much do you think it is?”) (Bloome, et al., 2005).
The classroom talk register, then, constrains how communication between teachers and students can take place,
but it also gives teachers and students a “language” for talking about teaching and learning. Given this double-
edged reality, how can teachers use the classroom talk register to good advantage? How, in particular, can teachers
communicate in ways that stimulate more and better thinking and discussion? In the next, final section of the
chapter, we offer some suggestions for answering these questions. As you will see, the suggestions often reinforce
each other. They are more like a network of ideas, not a list of priorities to be considered or followed in sequence.
Probing for learner understanding
How do you know whether a student understands what you are saying? One clue, of course, is by whether the
student is looking at and concentrating on you and your comments. But this clue is not foolproof; we have all had
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moments of staring at a speaker while daydreaming, only to realize later that we have not heard anything that the
speaker said. It is sometimes important, therefore, to probe more actively how much students are actually
understanding during lessons or other activities.
Strategies for probing understanding generally involve mixing instruction with conversation (Renshaw, 2004).
In explaining a new topic, for example, you can check for understanding by asking preliminary questions
connecting the topic to students’ prior experiences and knowledge about the topic. Note that this strategy combines
qualities of both instruction and conversation, in the sense that it involves combining “test” questions, to which you
already know the answer, with real questions, to which you do not. When introducing a science lesson about density
to kindergarten children, for example, the teacher might reasonably ask both of the following:
Teacher: Which of these objects that I have do you expect will sink and which ones will float? (A test
question—the teacher already will know the answer.)
Teacher: What other things have you seen that float? Or that sink? (A real question—the teacher is
asking about their experience and does not know the answer.)
By asking both kinds of questions, the teacher scaffolds the children’s learning, or creates a zone of proximal
development, which we described in Chapter 2 as part of Vygotsky’s theory of learning. Note that this zone has two
important features, both of which contribute to children’s thinking. One is that it stimulates students’ thinking (by
asking them questions), and the other is that it creates a supportive and caring atmosphere (by honoring their
personal experiences with real questions). The resulting mix of warmth and challenge can be especially motivating
(Goldstein, 1999).
When warmth and challenge are both present in a discussion, it sometimes even becomes possible to do what
may at first seem risky: calling on individual students randomly without the students’ volunteering to speak. In a
study of “cold calling” as a technique in university class discussions, the researchers found that students did not
find the practice especially stressful or punitive, as the teachers feared they might, and that spontaneous
participation in discussion actually improved as a result (Dallimore, et al., 2006). The benefit was most likely to
happen, however, when combined with gestures of respect for students, such as warning individuals ahead of class
that they might be called on, or allowing students to formulate ideas in small groups before beginning to call on
individuals.
Helping students to articulate their ideas and thinking
The classroom talk register is well designed to help students articulate ideas and thoughts, particularly when
used in the context of discussion. In addition to the conversational probes, like the ones we described in the
previous section, there are other ways to support students in expressing their ideas fully and clearly. One way is for
the teacher to check repeatedly on her own understanding of students’ contributions as a discussion unfolds.
Consider this exchange:
Student (during a class discussion): It seems to me that we all need to learn more climate change.
Teacher: What do you mean by “learn more”? It’s a big topic; what parts of it are you thinking
about?
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8. The nature of classroom communication
Still another strategy for helping students to articulate their ideas is to increase the wait time between when the
teacher asks a question and when the teacher expects a student to answer. As we pointed out earlier, wait times that
are longer than average—longer than one second, that is—give students more time to formulate ideas and therefore
to express themselves more completely and precisely (Good & Brophy, 2002). In addition, longer wait times have
the added advantage of indirection: instead of telling a student to say more, the teacher needs only to wait for the
student to say more.
In general any communication strategy will help students become more articulate if it both allows and invites
further comment and elaboration on their ideas. Taken together, the invitations closely resemble a description of
class discussion, though they can actually be used singly at any time during teaching. Consider these possible
conversational moves:
• The teacher asks the student to explain his initial idea more completely.
• The teacher rephrases a comment made by a student.
• The teacher compares the student’s idea to another, related idea, and asks the student to comment.
• The teacher asks for evidence supporting the student’s idea.
• The teacher asks the student how confident he is in his idea.
• The teacher asks another student to comment on the first student’s idea.
Promoting academic risk-taking and problem-solving
In Chapter 8 we described major features of problem solving, as well as three techniques that assist in solving
problems—problem analysis, working backwards from the beginning, and analogical thinking. While all of the
techniques are helpful, they do not work if a student will not take the risk of attempting a solution to a problem in
the first place. For various reasons students may sometimes avoid such risks, especially if he or she has sometimes
failed at a task in the past, and is therefore concerned about negative evaluations again (Hope & Oliver, 2005).
What can a teacher say or do to counteract such hesitation? There are several strategies, all of which involve
focusing attention on the process of doing an activity rather than on its outcome or evaluation.
• Where possible, call attention to the intrinsic interest or satisfaction of an activity. Consider, for example,
an elementary-level activity of writing a Japanese haiku—a poem with exactly seventeen syllables. This
activity can be satisfying in itself, regardless of how it is evaluated. Casually reminding individuals of this
fact can contribute to students’ sense of ease about writing the haiku and encourage them indirectly to do
better work.
• Minimize the importance of grades where possible. This strategy supports the one above; by giving
students less to worry about, they become freer to experience the intrinsic satisfactions of an activity. In
writing that haiku mentioned above, for example, you can try saying something like: “Don’t worry too much
about your grade; just do the best you can and you will come out well enough in the end.”
• Make sure students know that they have ample time to complete an activity. If students need to rush—or
merely just thinks they do—then they are more likely to choose the safest, most familiar responses possible.
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In writing an amusing story from their early childhood, for example, middle years students may need time
to consider and choose among story possibilities. Then they may need additional time to experiment with
ways of expressing the story in writing. In this case, to make sure students know that they have such time,
try saying something like: “Writing a good story will take time, and you may have to return to it repeatedly.
So we will start working on it today, but do not expect to finish today. We’ll be coming back to it several
times in the next couple of weeks.”
• Show that you value unusual ideas and elegant solutions to problems. When a student does something out
of the ordinary, show your enthusiasm for it. A visually appealing drawing, a well-crafted essay, a different
solution to a math problem than the one you expected—all of these deserve an explicit compliment.
Expressing your interest and respect does more than support the specific achievement. It also expresses a
more general, underlying message that in your classroom, it is safe and rewarding to find and share the
unusual and elegant.
Note that these communication strategies support problem-solving and the related skills of creativity that we
discussed in Chapter 8. In describing creativity in that chapter, in particular, we called attention to the difference
and importance of divergent (open-ended) thinking. As with problem-solving, though, divergent thinking may
seem risky to some students unless they are encouraged to do so explicitly. The strategies for boosting academic
risk-taking can help to communicate this encouragement—that process matters more than product, that there will
be time enough to work, and that you, as teacher, indeed value their efforts.
Promoting a caring community
A caring community is one in which all members have a respected place, in which diversity among
individuals is expected, and in which individuals assist each other with their work or activities wherever
appropriate. Classrooms and even entire schools can be caring communities, though moving them in this direction
takes work on the part of teachers and other school staff (Noddings, 1992, 2004). The key work in promoting a
caring community involves arranging for students to work together on tasks, while at the same time communicating
the teacher’s commitment to mutual respect among students and between students and teachers. Many of the
instructional strategies discussed earlier in this book, such as cooperative learning and inquiry learning (in Chapter
8), therefore contribute to community in the classroom.
More specifically, you can, as a teacher, encourage community by doing any or all of the following:
• Tell students that you value mutual respect, and describe some of the ways that students can show respect
for each other and for school staff. Better yet, invite students themselves to describe how they might show
respect.
• Look for ways to sustain relationships among students and teachers for extended times. These ways may be
easier to find in elementary school, where a teacher and class normally remain together for an entire year,
than in middle and secondary school, where students learn from many teachers and teachers teach many
students. But still there are ways. Participating in extra-curricular activities (like sports teams or drama
club), for example, can sometimes provide settings where relationships develop for relatively long periods
of time—even more than a single school year.
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8. The nature of classroom communication
• Ask for input from students about what they want to learn, how they want to learn it, and what kind of
evaluation they consider fair. Although using their ideas may feel at first as if you are giving up your
responsibility as the teacher, asking for students’ input indicates respect for students. It is likely that many
of their suggestions need clarification or revision to become workable, especially if the class must also cover
a particular curriculum during a set time. But even just the asking for input shows respect, and can
contribute to community in the classroom.
• If conflicts arise between students or between a student and teacher, encourage respectful communication
as explicitly as you can. Some communication strategies about conflict resolution were described in Chapter
7 and are helpful in this regard: identifying true problem ownership, listening actively, assertive (not
aggressive) I-messages, and negotiation.
• Find times and ways for the class to experience itself as a community. This suggestion may look a bit vague
at first glance, but in practice it is actually quite concrete. Any action builds community if it is carried out by
the group as a whole, especially if it is done regularly and repeatedly and if it truly includes every member
of the class. Such actions become rituals, not in the negative sense of empty or mindless repetitions, but in
the positive sense of confirmations by group members of their commitment to each other (Ehrenreich,
2007). In the elementary grades, an obvious example of a ritual is reciting the Pledge of Allegiance (or its
equivalent in classrooms outside the United States). But there are many other examples of classroom
routines that gradually acquire the (positive) qualities of ritual or community-affirmation, often without
deliberate intention or effort. A daily, regular time to work through homework problems together in class,
for example, may serve obvious academic purposes. But it may also gradually contribute to a classroom’s
identity as a class. With time and familiarity the group homework time may eventually come to represent
“who we are” and of “what we do here” for that class.
The bottom line: messages sent, messages reconstructed
As we have explained in this chapter, teachers and students communicate in multiple, overlapping ways.
Communications may often be expressed in words—but not necessarily and not completely. They may be organized
into lectures, questions, discussions, or group projects. They tend to be expressed in particular language registers
that we have called simply teacher talk and student talk. All things considered, communication obviously serves a
wide range of teaching and learning tasks and activities, from stimulating students’ thinking, to orchestrating
classroom routines, to managing inappropriate behaviors. It is an intrinsic part of the parts of teaching that involve
interaction among class members.
Note, though, that teaching consists of more than interaction among class members. There are times when
teachers prepare lessons or activities, for example, without talking to students or anyone else. There are also times
when they develop their own skills as teachers—for example, by reading and reflecting, or by attending professional
development seminars or workshops—which may involve communication, but not in the sense discussed in this
chapter. It is to these other parts of teaching that we turn in the next chapter.
Table 20: Year one: Kelvin’s lecture notes
Nature and Purposes of Children’s Play
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1. Introduction to topic: What do we mean by play?
• excess energy
• seeking stimulation—relieve boredom
• escape from work
2. Six qualities defining play
• intrinsic motivation
• attention to the process, not the product
• non-literal behavior—make-believe
• no external rules
• self-governed
• active engagement
3. Implications for teaching
• devise activities with play-like qualities
• learn by watching children playing
Table 21: Year three: Kelvin’s question-and-answer notes
Nature and Purposes of Children’s Play
1. Introduction to topic: What do we mean by play? [First ask 1-2 students for their own answers to question.]
• excess energy [Ask: What evidence is there for this?]
• seeking stimulation—relieve boredom […or for this?]
• escape from work
2. Six qualities of children’s play [Invite students’ definitions, but keep them brief.]
• intrinsic motivation
• attention to the process, not the product
• nonliteral behavior—make-believe
• no external rules
• self-governed
• active engagement
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8. The nature of classroom communication
[Can you think of examples and/or counterexamples of each quality?]
3. Implications for teaching
• devise activities with playlike qualities [What activities have you already seen as a student teacher?]
• learn by watching children playing [How could you do this? Invite suggested strategies from students.]
Table 22: Year eight: Kelvin’s discussion notes
Nature and Purposes of Children’s Play
• Discuss possible explanations for play—what do students think are its true purposes? (10 minutes?)
• Can we define play? Brainstorm defining qualities, with examples. (30 minutes)
• Important question for all defining qualities: Are there exceptions—examples of play that do not show
certain defining qualities, but are still play? (15 minutes)
• What is important about play for teaching? (10 minutes +)
• …for the welfare of children? (10 minutes +)
• Etc. (anything else brought up by students)
Table 23: Year twenty: Kelvin’s guidelines for group work
Nature and Purposes of Children’s Play
• Make sure you listen to everyone, and not just to the people you agree with the most. Part of the
challenge of this project is to include all team members.
• You do not have to be best friends with someone in order to be partners. But you do have to get the work
done.
• Remember that it takes many skills and abilities to do this project well. Among other things, you need to:
1) find and understand research and other publications about children’s play,
2) observe children skillfully when they are playing,
3) have confidence in describing what you learn to group mates,
4) write about what you learn, and 5) be tactful and respectful when listening and talking with
partners.
Chapter summary
Because communication in classrooms is more complex and unpredictable than in many other situations, it is
important for teachers to understand its unique features and functions. It is helpful to think of classroom
communication as serving a mixture of three purposes at once: content talk, procedural talk, and behavior control
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talk. It is also helpful to recognize that classroom communication has elements that are not only verbal, but also
nonverbal and unintended.
To be effective in using verbal communication, teachers need to use appropriate instructional strategies related
to content, such as using advance organizers, relating new information to prior knowledge, and organizing new
information on behalf of students. It includes strategies that assist students to communicate, such as inquiry
learning and cooperative learning. To communicate well about procedures and about the behaviors expected of
students, teachers need a variety of management techniques, such as those discussed in Chapter 7 and summarized
again in Table 19. To be effective in using nonverbal communication, teachers need to use appropriate eye contact,
allow ample wait time between speaking turns, and be aware of the effects of social distance on students.
Structures of participation influence communication by facilitating particular patterns of speaking and listening,
while at the same time making other patterns less convenient or disapproved. Four common participation
structures are lectures, questions-and-answers, classroom discussions, and group work.
Key termsCaring communityClass discussions
Collaborative group workCommunication
Content talkControl talk
Eye contactLecture
Nonverbal communicationParticipation structures
Procedural talkQuestions-and-answer
RegisterSocial distance
Student talk registerTeacher talk register
Unintended communicationVerbal communication
Wait time
On the Internet
enhancing classroom communication. It is organized around ten basic topics (e.g. “Organizing Effective
Discussions”) and focuses primarily on verbal communication. It is part of the more general website for Union
University of Jackson, Tennessee.
variety of topics, including many related to enhancing communication, but also some related to classroom
organization and management in general. Some of the papers refer to college or university teaching, but many are
quite relevant to public school teaching.
website contains a thorough discussion of nonverbal communication—more detailed than possible in this chapter,
and with photos and drawings to illustrate key points.
which are articles about classroom management and communication, including nonverbal communication. It is
intended strictly for public school teachers. Once you get to the homepage, click on their “Newsletter” for the
articles.
Educational Psychology 179 A Global Text
8. The nature of classroom communication
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9. Facilitating complex thinking
A few years ago one of us (Kelvin) had the privilege of co-teaching with an experienced first grade
teacher, Carolyn Eaton. As part of a research project, Ms Eaton allowed some of her reading lessons
to be observed. Here is what Kelvin saw when Ms Eaton was having a conference with Joey. They
are reading a book “together”, except that Ms Eaton wants Joey to do as much reading as possible
himself. Joey’s comments are capitalized, and Ms Eaton’s are in lowercase.
JOEY: FIRST YOU READ—THEN ME. THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO. I READ AFTER YOU,
OK?
Ms Eaton: OK. [Ms Eaton begins.] “In the great green room there was a telephone, a red balloon,
and a picture of…” Are you going to read, or what?
YES.
“In the great green room there was…” Are you ready yet? Ready to read?
OK. “IN THE GREAT GREEN ROOM…”
“…there was…”
“THERE WAS A…” [pauses, looking at Ms Eaton rather than at the words]
“…a telephone…”
YES, THAT’S IT, A TELEPHONE! “IN THE GREAT GREEN ROOM THERE WAS A TELEPHONE, A
RED BALLOON…”
“and a picture of…”
“AND A PICTURE OF” [pauses, staring at the wall]…A COW JUMPING?”
“a cow jumping over the moon”.
“OVER MOON” [smiles from both Joey and Ms Eaton].
Joey, what does this say? [She points to the word telephone.]
“THERE WAS A TELEPHONE”.
How about here? [She points to next page, which reads “And there were three little bears, sitting on
chairs”.]
“THERE WERE BEARS, THREE BEARS, AND THEY SAT ON CHAIRS”.
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9. Facilitating complex thinking
Can you read the whole book?
SURE!
OK, then you start this time.
[Joey looks at first page, alternately at the picture and at the words.]
“IN THE GREAT GREEN ROOM THERE WAS A TELEPHONE”.
[Actual text: “In the great green room, there was a telephone”,]
“AND THERE WAS A RED BALLOON”,
[Actual text: “…and a red balloon”,]
“AND A PICTURE OF THE COW JUMPING OVER THE MOON”.
[Actual text: “…and a picture of the cow jumping over the moon”.]
“AND THERE WERE…” THREE BEARS?… “LITTLE BEARS SITTING ON CHAIRS”.
[Actual text: “And there were three little bears, sitting on chairs,…”]
Could you read this book with you eyes closed?
SURE; WANT TO SEE ME DO IT?!
Well, not right now; maybe another time. Could you read it without the pictures, just looking at the
words? That’s how I do best—when I see the words instead of the pictures.
[Joey pauses to consider this.] MAYBE, BUT NOT QUITE SO WELL.
Let’s try it. [Ms Eaton proceeds to copy the words on a large sheet for Joey to “read” later.]
As Carolyn Eaton’s behavior suggests, there are decisions to make “on the fly”, even during the very act of
teaching. Ms Eaton wonders when to challenge Joey, and when to support him. She also wonders when to pause
and ask Joey to take stock of what he has read, and when to move him on ahead—when to consolidate a student’s
learning, and when to nudge the student forward. These are questions about instructional strategies which
facilitate complex learning, either directly or indirectly. In this chapter we review as many strategies as space
allows, in order to give a sense of the major instructional options and of their effects. We concentrate especially on
two broad categories of instruction, which we call direct instruction and student-centered instruction. As we hope
that you will see, each approach to teaching is useful for certain purposes. We begin, though, by looking at the ways
students think, or at least how teachers would like students to think. What does it mean for students to think
critically (astutely or logically)? Or to think creatively? Or to be skillful problem solvers? Forms of thinking lead to
choices among instructional strategies.
Forms of thinking associated with classroom learning
Although instructional strategies differ in their details, they each encourage particular forms of learning and
thinking. The forms have distinctive educational purposes, even though they sometimes overlap, in the sense that
one form may contribute to success with another form. Consider three somewhat complex forms of thinking that
are commonly pursued in classroom learning: (1) critical thinking, (2) creative thinking, and (3) problem-solving.
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Critical thinking
Critical thinking requires skill at analyzing the reliability and validity of information, as well as the attitude or
disposition to do so. The skill and attitude may be displayed with regard to a particular subject matter or topic, but
in principle it can occur in any realm of knowledge (Halpern, 2003; Williams, Oliver, & Stockade, 2004). A critical
thinker does not necessarily have a negative attitude in the everyday sense of constantly criticizing someone or
something. Instead, he or she can be thought of as astute: the critical thinker asks key questions, evaluates the
evidence for ideas, reasons for problems both logically and objectively, and expresses ideas and conclusions clearly
and precisely. Last (but not least), the critical thinker can apply these habits of mind in more than one realm of life
or knowledge.
With such a broad definition, it is not surprising that educators have suggested a variety of specific cognitive
skills as contributing to critical thinking. In one study, for example, the researcher found how critical thinking can
be reflected in regard to a published article was stimulated by annotation—writing questions and comments in the
margins of the article (Liu, 2006). In this study, students were initially instructed in ways of annotating reading
materials. Later, when the students completed additional readings for assignments, it was found that some students
in fact used their annotation skills much more than others—some simply underlined passages, for example, with a
highlighting pen. When essays written about the readings were later analyzed, the ones written by the annotators
were found to be more well reasoned—more critically astute—than the essays written by the other students.
In another study, on the other hand, a researcher found that critical thinking can also involve oral discussion of
personal issues or dilemmas (Hawkins, 2006). In this study, students were asked to verbally describe a recent,
personal incident that disturbed them. Classmates then discussed the incident together in order to identify the
precise reasons why the incident was disturbing, as well as the assumptions that the student made in describing the
incident. The original student—the one who had first told the story—then used the results of the group discussion to
frame a topic for a research essay. In one story of a troubling incident, a student told of a time when a store clerk
has snubbed or rejected the student during a recent shopping errand. Through discussion, classmates decided that
an assumption underlying the student’s disturbance was her suspicion that she had been a victim of racial profiling
based on her skin color. The student then used this idea as the basis for a research essay on the topic of “racial
profiling in retail stores”. The oral discussion thus stimulated critical thinking in the student and the classmates,
but it also relied on their prior critical thinking skills at the same time.
Notice that in both of these research studies, as in others like them, what made the thinking “critical” was
students’ use of metacognition—strategies for thinking about thinking and for monitoring the success and quality
of one’s own thinking. This concept was discussed in Chapter 2 as a feature of constructivist views about learning.
There we pointed out that when students acquire experience in building their own knowledge, they also become
skilled both at knowing how they learn, and at knowing whether they have learned something well. These are two
defining qualities of metacognition, but they are part of critical thinking as well. In fostering critical thinking, a
teacher is really fostering a student’s ability to construct or control his or her own thinking and to avoid being
controlled by ideas unreflectively.
How best to teach critical thinking remains a matter of debate. One issue is whether to infuse critical skills into
existing courses or to teach them through separate, free-standing units or courses. The first approach has the
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9. Facilitating complex thinking
potential advantage of integrating critical thinking into students’ entire educations. But it risks diluting students’
understanding and use of critical thinking simply because critical thinking takes on a different form in each
learning context. Its details and appearance vary among courses and teachers. The free-standing approach has the
opposite qualities: it stands a better chance of being understood clearly and coherently, but at the cost of obscuring
how it is related to other courses, tasks, and activities. This dilemma is the issue—again—of transfer, discussed in
Chapter 2. Unfortunately, research to compare the different strategies for teaching critical thinking does not settle
the matter. The research suggests simply that either infusion or free-standing approaches can work as long as it is
implemented thoroughly and teachers are committed to the value of critical thinking (Halpern, 2003).
A related issue about teaching critical thinking is about deciding who needs to learn critical thinking skills the
most. Should it be all students, or only some of them? Teaching all students seems the more democratic alternative
and thus appropriate for educators. Surveys have found, however, that teachers sometimes favor teaching of critical
thinking only to high-advantage students—the ones who already achieve well, who come from relatively high-
income families, or (for high school students) who take courses intended for university entrance (Warburton &
Torff, 2005). Presumably the rationale for this bias is that high-advantage students can benefit and/or understand
and use critical thinking better than other students. Yet, there is little research evidence to support this idea, even if
it were not ethically questionable. The study by Hawkins (2006) described above, for example, is that critical
thinking was fostered even with students considered low-advantage.
Creative thinking
Creativity is the ability to make or do something new that is also useful or valued by others (Gardner, 1993).
The “something” can be an object (like an essay or painting), a skill (like playing an instrument), or an action (like
using a familiar tool in a new way). To be creative, the object, skill, or action cannot simply be bizarre or strange; it
cannot be new without also being useful or valued, and not simply be the result of accident. If a person types letters
at random that form a poem by chance, the result may be beautiful, but it would not be creative by the definition
above. Viewed this way, creativity includes a wide range of human experience that many people, if not everyone,
have had at some time or other (Kaufman & Baer, 2006). The experience is not restricted to a few geniuses, nor
exclusive to specific fields or activities like art or the composing of music.
Especially important for teachers are two facts. The first is that an important form of creativity is creative
thinking, the generation of ideas that are new as well as useful, productive, and appropriate. The second is that
creative thinking can be stimulated by teachers’ efforts. Teachers can, for example, encourage students’ divergent
thinking—ideas that are open-ended and that lead in many directions (Torrance, 1992; Kim, 2006). Divergent
thinking is stimulated by open-ended questions—questions with many possible answers, such as the following:
• How many uses can you think of for a cup?
• Draw a picture that somehow incorporates all of these words: cat, fire engine, and banana.
• What is the most unusual use you can think of for a shoe?
Note that answering these questions creatively depends partly on having already acquired knowledge about the
objects to which the questions refer. In this sense divergent thinking depends partly on its converse, convergent
thinking, which is focused, logical reasoning about ideas and experiences that lead to specific answers. Up to a
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point, then, developing students’ convergent thinking—as schoolwork often does by emphasizing mastery of
content—facilitates students’ divergent thinking indirectly, and hence also their creativity (Sternberg, 2003; Runco,
2004; Cropley, 2006). But carried to extremes, excessive emphasis on convergent thinking may discourage
creativity.
Whether in school or out, creativity seems to flourish best when the creative activity is its own intrinsic reward,
and a person is relatively unconcerned with what others think of the results. Whatever the activity—composing a
song, writing an essay, organizing a party, or whatever—it is more likely to be creative if the creator focuses on and
enjoys the activity in itself, and thinks relatively little about how others may evaluate the activity (Brophy, 2004).
Unfortunately, encouraging students to ignore others' responses can sometimes pose a challenge for teachers. Not
only is it the teachers' job to evaluate students’ learning of particular ideas or skills, but also they have to do so
within restricted time limits of a course or a school year. In spite of these constraints, though, creativity still can be
encouraged in classrooms at least some of the time (Claxton, Edwards, & Scale-Constantinou, 2006). Suppose, for
example, that students have to be assessed on their understanding and use of particular vocabulary. Testing their
understanding may limit creative thinking; students will understandably focus their energies on learning “right”
answers for the tests. But assessment does not have to happen constantly. There can also be times to encourage
experimentation with vocabulary through writing poems, making word games, or in other thought-provoking ways.
These activities are all potentially creative. To some extent, therefore, learning content and experimenting or
playing with content can both find a place—in fact one of these activities can often support the other. We return to
this point later in this chapter, when we discuss student-centered strategies of instruction, such as cooperative
learning and play as a learning medium.
Problem-solving
Somewhat less open-ended than creative thinking is problem solving, the analysis and solution of tasks or
situations that are complex or ambiguous and that pose difficulties or obstacles of some kind (Mayer & Wittrock,
2006). Problem solving is needed, for example, when a physician analyzes a chest X-ray: a photograph of the chest
is far from clear and requires skill, experience, and resourcefulness to decide which foggy-looking blobs to ignore,
and which to interpret as real physical structures (and therefore real medical concerns). Problem solving is also
needed when a grocery store manager has to decide how to improve the sales of a product: should she put it on sale
at a lower price, or increase publicity for it, or both? Will these actions actually increase sales enough to pay for
their costs?
Problem solving in the classroom
Problem solving happens in classrooms when teachers present tasks or challenges that are deliberately complex
and for which finding a solution is not straightforward or obvious. The responses of students to such problems, as
well as the strategies for assisting them, show the key features of problem solving. Consider this example, and
students’ responses to it. We have numbered and named the paragraphs to make it easier to comment about them
individually:
Scene #1: a problem to be solved
A teacher gave these instructions: “Can you connect all of the dots below using only four straight
lines?” She drew the following display on the chalkboard:
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9. Facilitating complex thinking
Exhibit 10: The teacher gave these
instructions: “Can you connect these dots with
only four lines
The problem itself and the procedure for solving it seemed very clear: simply experiment with
different arrangements of four lines. But two volunteers tried doing it at the board, but were
unsuccessful. Several others worked at it at their seats, but also without success.
Scene #2: coaxing students to re-frame the problem
When no one seemed to be getting it, the teacher asked, “Think about how you’ve set up the problem
in your mind—about what you believe the problem is about. For instance, have you made any
assumptions about how long the lines ought to be? Don’t stay stuck on one approach if it’s not
working!”
Scene #3: Alicia abandons a fixed response
After the teacher said this, Alicia indeed continued to think about how she saw the problem. “The
lines need to be no longer than the distance across the square,” she said to herself. So she tried
several more solutions, but none of them worked either.
The teacher walked by Alicia’s desk and saw what Alicia was doing. She repeated her earlier
comment: “Have you assumed anything about how long the lines ought to be?”
Alicia stared at the teacher blankly, but then smiled and said, “Hmm! You didn’t actually say that
the lines could be no longer than the matrix! Why not make them longer?” So she experimented again
using oversized lines and soon discovered a solution:
Exhibit 11: Alicia's solution
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Scene #4: Willem’s and Rachel's alternative strategies
Meanwhile, Willem worked on the problem. As it happened, Willem loved puzzles of all kinds, and
had ample experience with them. He had not, however, seen this particular problem. “It must be a
trick,” he said to himself, because he knew from experience that problems posed in this way often
were not what they first appeared to be. He mused to himself: “Think outside the box, they always
tell you…” And that was just the hint he needed: he drew lines outside the box by making them
longer than the matrix and soon came up with this solution:
Exhibit 12: Willem's and
Rachel's solution
When Rachel went to work, she took one look at the problem and knew the answer immediately: she
had seen this problem before, though she could not remember where. She had also seen other
drawing-related puzzles, and knew that their solution always depended on making the lines longer,
shorter, or differently angled than first expected. After staring at the dots briefly, she drew a solution
faster than Alicia or even Willem. Her solution looked exactly like Willem's.
This story illustrates two common features of problem solving: the effect of degree of structure or constraint on
problem solving, and the effect of mental obstacles to solving problems. The next sections discuss each of these
features, and then looks at common techniques for solving problems.
The effect of constraints: well-structured versus ill-structured problems
Problems vary in how much information they provide for solving a problem, as well as in how many rules or
procedures are needed for a solution. A well-structured problem provides much of the information needed and
can in principle be solved using relatively few clearly understood rules. Classic examples are the word problems
often taught in math lessons or classes: everything you need to know is contained within the stated problem and the
solution procedures are relatively clear and precise. An ill-structured problem has the converse qualities: the
information is not necessarily within the problem, solution procedures are potentially quite numerous, and a
multiple solutions are likely (Voss, 2006). Extreme examples are problems like “How can the world achieve lasting
peace?” or “How can teachers insure that students learn?”
By these definitions, the nine-dot problem is relatively well-structured—though not completely. Most of the
information needed for a solution is provided in Scene #1: there are nine dots shown and instructions given to draw
four lines. But not all necessary information was given: students needed to consider lines that were longer than
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9. Facilitating complex thinking
implied in the original statement of the problem. Students had to “think outside the box”, as Willem said—in this
case, literally.
When a problem is well-structured, so are its solution procedures likely to be as well. A well-defined procedure
for solving a particular kind of problem is often called an algorithm; examples are the procedures for multiplying
or dividing two numbers or the instructions for using a computer (Leiserson, et al., 2001). Algorithms are only
effective when a problem is very well-structured and there is no question about whether the algorithm is an
appropriate choice for the problem. In that situation it pretty much guarantees a correct solution. They do not work
well, however, with ill-structured problems, where they are ambiguities and questions about how to proceed or even
about precisely what the problem is about. In those cases it is more effective to use heuristics, which are general
strategies—“rules of thumb”, so to speak—that do not always work, but often do, or that provide at least partial
solutions. When beginning research for a term paper, for example, a useful heuristic is to scan the library catalogue
for titles that look relevant. There is no guarantee that this strategy will yield the books most needed for the paper,
but the strategy works enough of the time to make it worth trying.
In the nine-dot problem, most students began in Scene #1 with a simple algorithm that can be stated like this:
“Draw one line, then draw another, and another, and another”. Unfortunately this simple procedure did not
produce a solution, so they had to find other strategies for a solution. Three alternatives are described in Scenes #3
(for Alicia) and 4 (for Willem and Rachel). Of these, Willem’s response resembled a heuristic the most: he knew
from experience that a good general strategy that often worked for such problems was to suspect a deception or
trick in how the problem was originally stated. So he set out to question what the teacher had meant by the word
line, and came up with an acceptable solution as a result.
Common obstacles to solving problems
The example also illustrates two common problems that sometimes happen during problem solving. One of
these is functional fixedness: a tendency to regard the functions of objects and ideas as fixed (German & Barrett,
2005). Over time, we get so used to one particular purpose for an object that we overlook other uses. We may think
of a dictionary, for example, as necessarily something to verify spellings and definitions, but it also can function as a
gift, a doorstop, or a footstool. For students working on the nine-dot matrix described in the last section, the notion
of “drawing” a line was also initially fixed; they assumed it to be connecting dots but not extending lines beyond the
dots. Functional fixedness sometimes is also called response set, the tendency for a person to frame or think
about each problem in a series in the same way as the previous problem, even when doing so is not appropriate to
later problems. In the example of the nine-dot matrix described above, students often tried one solution after
another, but each solution was constrained by a set response not to extend any line beyond the matrix.
Functional fixedness and the response set are obstacles in problem representation, the way that a person
understands and organizes information provided in a problem. If information is misunderstood or used
inappropriately, then mistakes are likely—if indeed the problem can be solved at all. With the nine-dot matrix
problem, for example, construing the instruction to draw four lines as meaning “draw four lines entirely within the
matrix” means that the problem simply could not be solved. For another, consider this problem: “The number of
water lilies on a lake doubles each day. Each water lily covers exactly one square foot. If it takes 100 days for the
lilies to cover the lake exactly, how many days does it take for the lilies to cover exactly half of the lake?” If you
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think that the size of the lilies affects the solution to this problem, you have not represented the problem correctly.
Information about lily size is not relevant to the solution, and only serves to distract from the truly crucial
information, the fact that the lilies double their coverage each day. (The answer, incidentally, is that the lake is half
covered in 99 days; can you think why?)
Strategies to assist problem solving
Just as there are cognitive obstacles to problem solving, there are also general strategies that help the process be
successful, regardless of the specific content of a problem (Thagard, 2005). One helpful strategy is problem
analysis—identifying the parts of the problem and working on each part separately. Analysis is especially useful
when a problem is ill-structured. Consider this problem, for example: “Devise a plan to improve bicycle
transportation in the city.” Solving this problem is easier if you identify its parts or component subproblems, such
as (1) installing bicycle lanes on busy streets, (2) educating cyclists and motorists to ride safely, (3) fixing potholes
on streets used by cyclists, and (4) revising traffic laws that interfere with cycling. Each separate subproblem is
more manageable than the original, general problem. The solution of each subproblem contributes the solution of
the whole, though of course is not equivalent to a whole solution.
Another helpful strategy is working backward from a final solution to the originally stated problem. This
approach is especially helpful when a problem is well-structured but also has elements that are distracting or
misleading when approached in a forward, normal direction. The water lily problem described above is a good
example: starting with the day when all the lake is covered (Day 100), ask what day would it therefore be half
covered (by the terms of the problem, it would have to be the day before, or Day 99). Working backward in this case
encourages reframing the extra information in the problem (i. e. the size of each water lily) as merely distracting,
not as crucial to a solution.
A third helpful strategy is analogical thinking—using knowledge or experiences with similar features or
structures to help solve the problem at hand (Bassok, 2003). In devising a plan to improve bicycling in the city, for
example, an analogy of cars with bicycles is helpful in thinking of solutions: improving conditions for both vehicles
requires many of the same measures (improving the roadways, educating drivers). Even solving simpler, more basic
problems is helped by considering analogies. A first grade student can partially decode unfamiliar printed words by
analogy to words he or she has learned already. If the child cannot yet read the word screen, for example, he can
note that part of this word looks similar to words he may already know, such as seen or green, and from this
observation derive a clue about how to read the word screen. Teachers can assist this process, as you might expect,
by suggesting reasonable, helpful analogies for students to consider.
Broad instructional strategies that stimulate complex thinking
Because the forms of thinking just described—critical thinking, creativity and problem solving—are broad and
important educationally, it is not surprising that educators have identified strategies to encourage their
development. Some of the possibilities are shown in Table 24 and group several instructional strategies along two
dimensions: how much the strategy is student-centered and how much a strategy depends on group interaction. It
should be emphasized that the two-way classification in Table 24 is not very precise, but it gives a useful framework
for understanding the options available for planning and implementing instruction. The more important of the two
dimensions in the table is the first one—the extent to which an instructional strategy is either directed by the
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9. Facilitating complex thinking
teacher or initiated by students. We take a closer look at this dimension in the next part of this chapter, followed by
discussion of group-oriented teaching strategies.
Table 24: Major instructional strategies grouped by level of teacher direction and student focus
Directed by student(s) more
Emphasizes groups
somewhat more
Cooperative learning
Inquiry
Discovery learning
Self-reflection
Independent study
Concept maps
Lectures
Direct instruction
Madeline Hunter's
“Effective Teaching”
Mastery learning
Textbook readings
Advance organizers
Outlining
Recalling, relating, and
elaborating
Emphasizes
individuals somewhat
more
Directed by teacher more
Definitions of Terms in Table 8.1
Lecture Telling or explaining previously organized information—usually to a group
Assigned reading Reading, usually individually, of previously organized information
Advance organizers Brief overview, either verbally or graphically, of material about to be covered in a
lecture or text
Outlining Writing important points of a lecture or reading, usually in a hierarchical format
Taking notes Writing important points of a lecture or reading, often organized according to the
learning needs of an individual student
Concept maps Graphic depiction of relationships among a set of concepts, terms, or ideas;
usually organized by the student, but not always
Madeline Hunter’s
“Effective Teaching”
A set of strategies that emphasizes clear presentation of goals, the explanation
and modeling of tasks to students and careful monitoring of students’ progress
toward the goals
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Teacher-directed instruction
As the name implies, teacher-directed instruction includes any strategies initiated and guided primarily by the
teacher. A classic example is exposition or lecturing (simply telling or explaining important information to
students) combined with assigning reading from texts. But teacher-directed instruction also includes strategies that
involve more active response from students, such as encouraging students to elaborate on new knowledge or to
explain how new information relates to prior knowledge. Whatever their form, teacher-directed instructional
methods normally include the organizing of information on behalf of students, even if teachers also expect students
to organize it further on their own. Sometimes, therefore, teacher-directed methods are thought of as transmitting
knowledge from teacher to student as clearly and efficiently as possible, even if they also require mental work on
the part of the student.
Lectures and readings
Lectures and readings are traditional staples of educators, particularly with older students (including university
students). At their best, they pre-organize information so that (at least in theory) the student only has to remember
what was said in the lecture or written in the text in order to begin understanding it (Exley & Dennick, 2004). Their
limitation is the ambiguity of the responses they require: listening and reading are by nature quiet and stationary,
and do not in themselves indicate whether a student is comprehending or even attending to the material. Educators
sometimes complain that “students are too passive” during lectures or when reading. But physical quietness is
intrinsic to these activities, not to the students who do them. A book just sits still, after all, unless a student makes
an effort to read it, and a lecture may not be heard unless a student makes the effort to listen to it.
Advance organizers
In spite of these problems, there are strategies for making lectures and readings effective. A teacher can be
especially careful about organizing information for students, and she can turn part of the mental work over to
students themselves. An example of the first approach is the use of advance organizers—brief overviews or
introductions to new material before the material itself is presented (Ausubel, 1978). Textbook authors (including
ourselves) often try deliberately to insert periodic advance organizers to introduce new sections or chapters in the
text. When used in a lecture, advance organizers are usually statements in the form of brief introductory remarks,
though sometimes diagrams showing relationships among key ideas can also serve the same purpose (Robinson, et
al., 2003). Whatever their form, advance organizers partially organize the material on behalf of the students, so that
they know where to put it all, so to speak, as they learn them in more detail.
Recalling and relating prior knowledge
Another strategy for improving teacher-directed instruction is to encourage students to relate the new material
to prior familiar knowledge. When one of us (Kelvin) first learned a foreign language (in his case French), for
example, he often noticed similarities between French and English vocabulary. A French word for picture, for
example, was image, spelled exactly as it is in English. The French word for splendid was splendide, spelled almost
the same as in English, though not quite. Relating the French vocabulary to English vocabulary helped in learning
and remembering the French.
As children and youth become more experienced in their academics, they tend to relate new information to
previously learned information more frequently and automatically (Goodwin, 1999; Oakhill, Hartt, & Samols,
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9. Facilitating complex thinking
2005). But teachers can also facilitate students’ use of this strategy. When presenting new concepts or ideas, the
teacher can relate them to previously learned ideas deliberately—essentially modeling a memory strategy that
students learn to use for themselves. In a science class, for example, she can say, “This is another example of…,
which we studied before”; in social studies she can say, “Remember what we found out last time about the growth of
the railroads? We saw that…”
If students are relatively young or are struggling academically, it is especially important to remind them of their
prior knowledge. Teachers can periodically ask questions like “What do you already know about this topic?” or
“How will your new knowledge about this topic change what you know already?” Whatever the age of students,
connecting new with prior knowledge is easier with help from someone more knowledgeable, such as the teacher.
When learning algorithms for multiplication, for example, students may not at first see how multiplication is
related to addition processes which they probably learned previously (Burns, 2001). But if a teacher takes time to
explain the relationship and to give students time to explore it, then the new skill of multiplication may be learned
more easily.
Elaborating information
Elaborating new information means asking questions about the new material, inferring ideas and relationships
among the new concepts. Such strategies are closely related to the strategy of recalling prior knowledge as discussed
above: elaboration enriches the new information and connects it to other knowledge. In this sense elaboration
makes the new learning more meaningful and less arbitrary.
A teacher can help students use elaboration by modeling this behavior. The teacher can interrupt his or her
explanation of an idea, for example, by asking how it relates to other ideas, or by speculating about where the new
concept or idea may lead. He or she can also encourage students to do the same, and even give students questions
to guide their thinking. When giving examples of a concept, for example, a teacher can hold back from offering all of
the examples, and instead ask students to think of additional examples themselves. The same tactic can work with
assigned readings; if the reading includes examples, the teacher can instruct students to find or make up additional
examples of their own.
Organizing new information
There are many ways to organize new information that are especially well-suited to teacher-directed instruction.
A common way is simply to ask students to outline information read in a text or heard in a lecture. Outlining
works especially well when the information is already organized somewhat hierarchically into a series of main
topics, each with supporting subtopics or subpoints. Outlining is basically a form of the more general strategy of
taking notes, or writing down key ideas and terms from a reading or lecture. Research studies find that that the
precise style or content of notes is less important that the quantity of notes taken: more detail is usually better than
less (Ward & Tatsukawa, 2003). Written notes insure that a student thinks about the material not only while
writing it down, but also when reading the notes later. These benefits are especially helpful when students are
relatively inexperienced at school learning in general (as in the earlier grade levels), or relatively inexperienced
about a specific topic or content in particular. Not surprisingly, such students may also need more guidance than
usual about what and how to write notes. It can be helpful for the teacher to provide a note-taking guide, like the
ones shown in Exhibit 11.
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Notes on Science Experiment
1. Purpose of the experiment (in one sentence):
2. Equipment needed (list each item and define
any special terms):
1)
2)
3)
4)
3. Procedure used (be specific!):
4.
4. Results (include each measurement, rounded to
the nearest integer):
Observation #1
Observation #2
Observation #3
Observation #4
Average
measurement, #1-4:
Guide to Notes About Tale of Two Cities:
1. Main characters (list and describe in just a few
words):
a)
b)
c)
d)
2. Setting of the story (time and place):
3. Unfamiliar vocabulary in the story (list and
define):
a)
b)
c)
d)
4. Plot (write down only the main events):
a)
b)
c)
d)
5. Theme (or underlying “message”) of the story:
Exhibit 13: Two note taking guides
In learning expository material, another helpful strategy—one that is more visually oriented—is to make
concept maps, or diagrams of the connections among concepts or ideas. Exhibit 10 shows concept maps made by
two individuals that graphically depict how a key idea, child development, relates to learning and education. One of
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9. Facilitating complex thinking
the maps was drawn by a classroom teacher and the other by a university professor of psychology (Seifert, 1991).
They suggest possible differences in how the two individuals think about children and their development. Not
surprisingly, the teacher gave more prominence to practical concerns (for example, classroom learning and child
abuse), and the professor gave more prominence to theoretical ones (for example, Erik Erikson and Piaget). The
differences suggest that these two people may have something different in mind when they use the same term, child
development. The differences have the potential to create misunderstandings between them (Seifert, 1999; Super &
Harkness, 2003). By the same token, the two maps also suggest what each person might need to learn in order to
achieve better understanding of the other person’s thinking and ideas.
Exhibit 14: Maps of personal definitions of “child development”
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Mastery learning
This term refers to an instructional approach in which all students learn material to an identically high level,
even if some students require more time than others to do so (Gentile, 2004). In mastery learning, the teacher
directs learning, though sometimes only in the sense of finding, writing, and orchestrating specific modules or units
for students to learn. In one typical mastery learning program, the teacher introduces a few new concepts or topics
through a brief lecture or teacher-led demonstration. Then she gives an ungraded assignment or test immediately
in order to assess how well students have learned the material, and which ones still need help. The students who
have already learned the unit are given enrichment activities. Those needing more help are provided individual
tutoring or additional self-guiding materials that clarify the initial content; they work until they have in fact
mastered the content (hence the name mastery learning). At that point students take another test or do another
assignment to show that they have in fact learned the material to the expected high standard. When the system is
working well, all students end up with high scores or grades, although usually some take longer to do so than
others.
As you might suspect, mastery learning poses two challenges. The first is ethical: is it really fair to give
enrichment only to faster students and remediation only to slower students? This practice could deteriorate into
continually providing the fast with an interesting education, while continually providing the slow only with boring,
repetitious material. In using the approach, therefore, it is important to make all materials interesting, whether
enrichment or remedial. It is also important to make sure that the basic learning goals of each unit are truly
important—even crucial—for everyone to learn, so that even slower individuals spend their time well.
The other challenge of mastery learning is more practical: the approach makes strong demands for detailed,
highly organized curriculum. If the approach is to work, the teacher must either locate such a curriculum, write one
herself, or assemble a suitable mixture of published and self-authored materials. However the curriculum is
created, the end result has to be a program filled with small units of study as well as ample enrichment and
remedial materials. Sometimes providing these practical requirements can be challenging. But not always: some
subjects (like mathematics) lend themselves to detailed, sequential organization especially well. In many cases, too,
commercial publishers have produced curricula already organized for use in mastery learning programs (Fox,
2004).
Direct instruction
Although the term direct instruction is sometimes a synonym for teacher-directed instruction, more often it
refers to a version of mastery learning that is highly scripted, meaning that it not only organizes the curriculum into
small modules or units as described above, but also dictates how teachers should teach and sometimes even the
words they should speak (Adams & Engelmann, 1996; Magliaro, Lockee, & Burton, 2005). Direct instruction
programs are usually based on a mix of ideas from behaviorism and cognitive theories of learning. In keeping with
behaviorism, the teacher is supposed to praise students immediately and explicitly when they give a correct answer.
In keeping with cognitive theory, she is supposed to state learning objectives in advance of teaching them
(providing a sort of mini-advance organizer), provide frequent reviews of materials, and check deliberately on how
well students are learning. Direct instruction usually also introduces material in small, logical steps, and calls for
plenty of time for students to practice.
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9. Facilitating complex thinking
Direct instruction programs share one of the challenges of other mastery learning approaches: because they hold
all students to the same high standard of achievement, they must deal with differences in how long students require
to reach the standard. But direct instruction has an additional challenge, in that they often rely on small-group
interaction more heavily than other mastery learning programs, and use self-guiding materials less. This difference
has the benefit that direct instruction works especially well with younger students (especially kindergarten through
third grade), who may have limited skills at working alone for extended periods. The challenge is that reliance on
small-group interaction can make it impractical to use direct instruction with an entire class or for an entire school
day. In spite of these limits, however, research has found direct instruction to be very effective in teaching basic
skills such as early reading and arithmetic (Adams & Engelmann, 1996).
Madeline Hunter’s effective teaching model
A number of direct instruction strategies have been combined by Madeline Hunter into a single, relatively
comprehensive approach that she calls mastery teaching (not to be confused with the related term mastery
learning) or the effective teaching model (M. Hunter, 1982; R. Hunter, 2004). Important features of the model
are summarized in Table 25. As you can see, the features span all phases of contact with students—before, during,
and after lessons.
Table 25: Madeline Hunter's “Effective Teaching Model”
Prepare students to learn.
• Make good use of time at the beginning of a lesson or activity, when attention is best
• Direct students' attention to what lies ahead in a lesson—for example, by offering “advance organizers”
• Explain lesson objectives explicitly
Present information clearly and explicitly.
• Set a basic structure to the lesson and stay with it throughout
• Use familiar terms and examples
• Be concise
Check for understanding and give guided practice.
• Ask questions that everyone responds to—for example, “Raise your hand if you think the answer is X”
• Invite choral responses—for example, “Is this a correct answer or not?”
• Sample individuals' understanding—for example, “Barry, what's your example of X?”
Provide for independent practice.
• Work through the first few exercises or problems together
• Keep independent practice periods brief and intersperse with discussions that offer feedback
Source: R. Hunter, 2004
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What happens even before a lesson begins? Like many forms of teacher-directed instruction, the effective
teaching model requires curricula and learning goals that are tightly organized and divisible into small parts, ideas,
or skills. In teaching about photosynthesis, for example, the teacher (or at least her curriculum) needs to identify
the basic elements that contribute to this process, and how they relate to each other. With photosynthesis, the
elements include the sun, plants, animals, chlorophyll, oxygen produced by plants and consumed by animals, and
carbon dioxide that produced by animals and consumed by plants. The roles of these elements need to be identified
and expressed at a level appropriate for the students. With advanced science students, oxygen, chlorophyll, and
carbon dioxide may be expressed as part of complex chemical reactions; with first-grade students, though, they may
be expressed simply as parts of a process akin to breathing or respiration.
Once this analysis of the curriculum has been done, the Hunter's effective teaching model requires making the
most of the lesson time by creating an anticipatory set, which is an activity that focuses or orients the attention of
students to the upcoming content. Creating an anticipatory set may consist, for example, of posing one or more
questions about students’ everyday knowledge or knowledge of prior lessons. In teaching about differences between
fruits and vegetables, the teacher could start by asking: “If you are making a salad strictly of fruit, which of these
would be OK to use: apple, tomato, cucumber, or orange?” As the lesson proceeds, information needs to be offered
in short, logical pieces, using language as familiar as possible to the students. Examples should be plentiful and
varied: if the purpose is to define and distinguish fruits and vegetables, for example, then features defining each
group should be presented singularly or at most just a few at a time, with clear-cut examples presented of each
feature. Sometimes models or analogies also help to explain examples. A teacher can say: “Think of a fruit as a sort
of ‘decoration’ on the plant, because if you pick it, the plant will go on living.” But models can also mislead students
if they are not used thoughtfully, since they may contain features that differ from the original concepts. In likening
a fruit to a decoration, for example, students may overlook the essential role of fruit in plant reproduction, or think
that lettuce qualifies as a fruit, since picking a few lettuce leaves does not usually kill a lettuce plant.
Throughout a lesson, the teacher repeatedly checks for understanding by asking questions that call for
active thinking on the part of students. One way is to require all students to respond somehow, either with an actual
choral response (speaking in unison together), another way with a non-verbal signal like raising hands to indicate
answers to questions. In teaching about fruits and vegetables, for example, a teacher can ask, “Here’s a list of fruits
and vegetables. As I point to each one, raise your hand if it’s a fruit, but not if it’s a vegetable.” Or she can ask:
“Here’s a list of fruits and vegetables. Say together what each on is as I point to it; you say ‘fruit’ or ‘vegetable’,
whichever applies.” Even though some students may hide their ignorance by letting more knowledgeable
classmates do the responding, the general level or quality of response can still give a rough idea of how well
students are understanding. These checks can be supplemented, of course, with questions addressed to individuals,
or with questions to which individuals must respond briefly in writing. A teacher can ask everyone, “Give me an
example of one fruit and one vegetable”, and then call on individuals to answer. She can also say: “I want everyone
to make a list with two columns, one listing all the fruits you can think of and the other listing all the vegetables you
can think of.”
As a lesson draws to a close, the teacher arranges for students to have further independent practice. The
point of the practice is not to explore new material or ideas, but to consolidate or strengthen the recent learning. At
the end of a lesson about long division, for example, the teacher can make a transition to independent practice by
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9. Facilitating complex thinking
providing a set of additional problems similar to the ones she explained during the lesson. After working one or two
with students, she can turn the rest of the task over to the students to practice on their own. But note that even
though the practice is supposedly “independent”, students’ understanding still has be checked frequently. A long set
of practice problems therefore needs to be broken up into small subsets of problems, and written or oral feedback
offered periodically.
What are the limits of teacher-directed instruction?
Whatever the grade level, most subjects taught in schools have at least some features, skills, or topics that
benefit from direct instruction. Even subjects usually considered “creative” can benefit from a direct approach at
times: to draw, sing, or write a poem, for example, requires skills that may be easier to learn if presented
sequentially in small units with frequent feedback from a teacher. Research supports the usefulness of teacher-
directed instruction for a variety of educational contexts when it is designed well and implemented as intended
(Rosenshine & Mesister,1995; Good & Brophy, 2004). Teachers themselves also tend to support the approach in
principle (Demant & Yates, 2003).
But there are limits to its usefulness. Some are the practical ones are pointed out above. Teacher-directed
instruction, whatever the form, requires well-organized units of instruction in advance of when students are to
learn. Such units may not always be available, and it may not be realistic to expect busy teachers to devise their
own. Other limits of direct instruction have more to do with the very nature of learning. Some critics argue that
organizing material on behalf of the students encourages students to be passive—an ironic and undesirable result if
true (Kohn, 2000, 2006). According to this criticism, the mere fact that a curriculum or unit of study is constructed
by a teacher (or other authority) makes some students think that they should not bother seeking information
actively on their own, but wait for it to arrive of its own accord. In support of this argument, critics point to the fact
that direct instruction approaches sometimes contradict their own premises by requiring students to do a bit of
cognitive organizational work of their own. This happens, for example, when a mastery learning program provides
enrichment material to faster students to work on independently; in that case the teacher may be involved in the
enrichment activities only minimally.
Criticisms like these have led to additional instructional approaches that rely more fully on students to seek and
organize their own learning. In the next section we discuss some of these options. As you will see, student-centered
models of learning do solve certain problems of teacher-directed instruction, but they also have problems of their
own.
Student-centered models of learning
Student-centered models of learning shift some of the responsibility for directing and organizing learning from
the teacher to the student. Being student-centered does not mean, however, that a teacher gives up organizational
and leadership responsibilities completely. It only means a relative shift in the teacher’s role, toward one with more
emphasis on guiding students’ self-chosen directions. As we explained earlier in this chapter, teacher-directed
strategies do not take over responsibility for students’ learning completely; no matter how much a teacher
structures or directs learning, the students still have responsibility for working and expending effort to comprehend
new material. By the same token, student-centered models of learning do not mean handing over all organizational
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work of instruction to students. The teacher is still the most knowledgeable member of the class, and still has both
the opportunity and the responsibility to guide learning in directions that are productive.
As you might suspect, therefore, teacher-directed and student-centered approaches to instruction may overlap
in practice. You can see the overlap clearly, for example, in two instructional strategies commonly thought of as
student-centered, independent study and self-reflection. In independent study, as the name implies, a student
works alone a good deal of the time, consulting with a teacher only occasionally. Independent study may be
student-centered in the sense that the student may be learning a topic or skill—an exotic foreign language, for
example—that is personally interesting. But the opposite may also be true: the student may be learning a topic or
skill that a teacher or an official school curriculum has directed the student to learn—a basic subject for which the
student is missing a credit, for example. Either way, though, the student will probably need guidance, support, and
help from a teacher. In this sense even independent study always contain elements of teacher-direction.
Similarly, self-reflection refers to thinking about beliefs and experiences in order to clarify their personal
meaning and importance. In school it can be practiced in a number of ways: for example by keeping diaries or logs
of learning or reading, or by retelling stories of important experiences or incidents in a student’s life, or by creating
concept maps like the ones described earlier in this chapter. Whatever form it takes, self-reflection by definition
happens inside a single student’s mind, and in this sense is always directed by the student. Yet most research on
self-reflection finds that self-reflection only works well when it involves and generates responses and interaction
with other students or with a teacher (Seifert, 1999; Kuit, Reay, & Freeman, 2001). To be fully self-reflective,
students need to have access to more than their existing base of knowledge and ideas—more than what they know
already. In one study about students’ self-reflections of cultural and racial prejudices (Gay & Kirkland, 2003), for
example, the researchers found that students tended to reflect on these problems in relatively shallow ways if they
worked on their own. It was not particularly effective to write about prejudice in a journal that no one read except
themselves, or to describe beliefs in a class discussion in which neither the teacher nor classmates commented or
challenged the beliefs. Much more effective in both cases was for the teacher to respond thoughtfully to students’
reflective comments. In this sense the use of self-reflection, like independent study, required elements of teacher-
direction to be successful.
How might a teacher emphasize students’ responsibility for directing and organizing their own learning? The
alternatives are numerous, as they are for teacher-directed strategies, so we can only sample some of them here. We
concentrate on ones that are relatively well known and used most widely, and especially on two: inquiry learning
and cooperative learning.
Inquiry learning
Inquiry learning stands the usual advice about expository (lecture-style) teaching on its head: instead of
presenting well-organized knowledge to students, the teacher (or sometimes fellow students) pose thoughtful
questions intended to stimulate discussion and investigation by students. The approach has been described, used,
and discussed by educators literally for decades, though sometimes under other names, including inquiry method
(Postman & Weingartner, 1969), discovery learning (Bruner, 1960/2006), or progressive education (Dewey, 1933;
Martin, 2003). For convenience, we will stay with the term inquiry learning.
Educational Psychology 201 A Global Text
9. Facilitating complex thinking
The questions that begin a cycle of inquiry learning may be posed either by the teacher or by students
themselves. Their content depends not only on the general subject area being studied, but also on the interests
which students themselves have expressed. In elementary-level science, for example, a question might be “Why do
leaves fall off trees when winter comes?” In high school social studies classes, it might be “Why do nations get into
conflict?” The teacher avoids answering such questions directly, even if asked to do so. Instead she encourages
students to investigate the questions themselves, for example by elaborating on students’ ideas and by asking
further questions based on students’ initial comments. Since students’ comments can not be predicted precisely, the
approach is by nature flexible. The initial questioning helps students to create and clarify questions which they
consider worthy of further investigation. Discussing questions about leaves falling off trees, for example, can
prompt students to observe trees in the autumn or to locate books and references that discuss or explain the biology
of tress and leaves.
But inquiry is not limited to particular grade levels or topics. If initial questions in a high school social studies
class have been about why nations get into conflict, for example, the resulting discussions can lead to investigating
the history of past wars and the history of peace-keeping efforts around the world. Whether the topic is high school
social studies or elementary school biology, the specific direction of investigations is influenced heavily by students,
but with assistance from the teacher to insure that the students’ initiatives are productive. When all goes well, the
inquiry and resulting investigations benefit students in two ways. The first is that students (perhaps obviously)
learn new knowledge from their investigations. The second is that students practice a constructive, motivating way
of learning, one applicable to a variety of problems and tasks, both in school and out.
Cooperative learning
Even though inquiry-oriented discussion and investigation benefits when it involves the teacher, it can also be
useful for students to work together somewhat independently, relying on a teacher’s guidance only indirectly.
Working with peers is a major feature of cooperative learning (sometimes also called collaborative learning). In
this approach, students work on a task in groups and often are rewarded either partially or completely for the
success of the group as a whole. Aspects of cooperative learning have been part of education for a long time; some
form of cooperation has always been necessary to participate on school sports teams, for example, or to produce a
student-run school newspaper. What is a bit newer is using cooperative or collaborative activities systematically to
facilitate the learning of a range of educational goals central to the academic curriculum (Prince, 2004).
Even though teachers usually value cooperation in students, circumstances at school can sometimes reduce
students’ incentives to show it. The traditional practice of assessing students individually, for example, can set the
stage for competition over grades, and cultural and other forms of diversity can sometimes inhibit individuals from
helping each other spontaneously. Strategies exist, however, for reducing such barriers so that students truly
benefit from each other’s presence, and are more likely to feel like sharing their skills and knowledge. Here, for
example, are several key features that make cooperative learning work well (Johnson & Johnson, 1998; Smith, et
al., 2005):
• Students need time and a place to talk and work together. This may sound obvious, but it can be
overlooked if time in class becomes crowded with other tasks and activities, or with interruptions related to
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school (like assemblies) but not to the classroom. It is never enough simply to tell students to work
together, only to leave them wondering how or when they are to do so.
• Students need skills at working together. As an adult, you may feel relatively able to work with a variety of
partners on a group task. The same assumption cannot be made, however, about younger individuals,
whether teenagers or children. Some students may get along with a variety of partners, but others may not.
Many will benefit from advice and coaching about how to focus on the tasks at hand, rather than on the
personalities of their partners.
• Assessment of activities should hold both the group and the individuals accountable for success. If a final
mark for a project goes only to the group as a whole, then freeloading is possible: some members may not
do their share of the work and may be rewarded more than they deserve. Others may be rewarded less than
they deserve. If, on the other hand, a final grade for a group project goes only to each member’s individual
contribution to a group project, then overspecialization can occur: individuals have no real incentive to
work together, and cooperative may deteriorate into a set of smaller individual projects (Slavin, 1994).
• Students need to believe in the value and necessity of cooperation. Collaboration will not occur if students
privately assume that their partners have little to contribute to their personal success. Social prejudices
from the wider society—like racial bias or gender sexism, for example—can creep into the operations of
cooperative groups, causing some members to be ignored unfairly while others are overvalued. Teachers
can help reduce these problems in two ways: first by pointing out and explaining that a diversity of talents
is necessary for success on a group project, and second by pointing out to the group how undervalued
individuals are contributing to the overall project (Cohen, Brody, & Sapon-Shevin, 2004).
As these comments imply, cooperative learning does not happen automatically, and requires monitoring and
support by the teacher. Some activities may not lend themselves to cooperative work, particularly if every member
of the group is doing essentially the same task. Giving everyone in a group the same set of arithmetic problems to
work on collaboratively, for example, is a formula for cooperative failure: either the most skilled students do the
work for others (freeloading) or else members simply divide up the problems among themselves in order to reduce
their overall work (overspecialization). A better choice for a cooperative task is one that clearly requires a diversity
of skills, what some educators call a rich group work task (Cohen, Brody, & Sapon-Shevin, 2004). Preparing a
presentation about medieval castles, for example, might require (a) writing skill to create a report, (b) dramatic skill
to put on a skit and (c) artistic talent to create a poster. Although a few students may have all of these skills, more
are likely to have only one, and they are therefore likely to need and want their fellow group members’
participation.
Examples of cooperative and collaborative learning
Although this description may make the requirements for cooperative learning sound somewhat precise, there
are actually a variety of ways to implement it in practice. Error: Reference source not found summarizes several of
them. As you can see, the strategies vary in the number of how many students they involve, the prior organization
or planning provided by the teacher, and the amount of class time they normally require.
Table 26: Strategies for encouraging cooperative learning
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9. Facilitating complex thinking
Strategy Type of groups
involved:
What the teacher
does:
What the students
do:
Think-pair-share
(Lyman, 1981)
Pairs of students,
sometimes linked to one
other pair
Teacher poses initial
problem or question.
First, students think
individually of the answer;
second, they share their
thinking with partner;
third, the partnership
shares their thinking with
another partnership.
Jigsaw classroom,
version #1
(Aronson, et al., 2001)
5-6 students per group,
and 5-6 groups overall
Teacher assigns
students to groups and
assigns one aspect of a
complex problem to each
group.
Students in each group
work together to become
experts in their particular
aspect of the problem;
later the expert groups
disband, and form new
groups containing one
student from each of the
former expert groups.
Jigsaw classroom,
version #2
(Slavin, 1994)
4-5 students per group,
and 4-5 groups overall
Teacher assigns
students to groups and
assigns each group to
study or learn about the
same entire complex
problem.
Students initially work
in groups to learn about
the entire problem; later
the groups disband and
reform as expert groups,
with each group focusing
on a selected aspect of the
general problem; still later
the expert groups disband
and the original general
groups reform to learn
what the expert students
can now add to their
general understanding.
STAD (Student-Teams-
Achievement Divisions)
(Slavin, 1994)
4-5 students per team
(or group)
Teacher presents a
lesson or unit to the entire
class, and later tests them
on it; grades individuals
based partly on
Students work together
to insure that team mates
improve their performance
as much as possible.
Students take tests as
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individuals’ and the team’s
improvement, not just on
absolute level of
performance.
individuals.
Project-Based Learning
(Katz, 2000)
Various numbers of
students, depending on the
complexity of the project,
up to and including the
entire class
Teacher or students
pose a question or problem
of interest to other
students; teacher assists
students to clarify their
interests and to make
plans to investigate the
question further.
Students work together
for extended periods to
investigate the original
question or problem;
project leads eventually to
a presentation, written
report, or other product.
Instructional strategies: an abundance of choices
Looking broadly at this chapter, you can see that choices among instructional strategies are numerous indeed,
and that deciding among them depends on the forms of thinking that you want to encourage, the extent to which
ideas or skills need to be organized by you to be understood by students, and the extent to which students need to
take responsibility for directing their own learning. Although you may have personal preferences among possible
instructional strategies, the choice will also be guided by the uniqueness of each situation of teaching—with its
particular students, grade-level, content, and purposes. If you need to develop students’ problem solving skills, for
example, there are strategies that are especially well suited for this purpose; we described some (see, “Problem
solving strategies” in this chapter). If you need to organize complex information so that students do not become
confused by it, there are effective ways of doing so. If you want the students to take as much initiative as possible in
organizing their own learning, this too can be done.
Yet having this knowledge is still not enough to teach well. What is still needed are ideas or principles for
deciding what to teach. In this chapter we have still not addressed an obvious question: How do I find or devise
goals for my teaching and for my students’ learning? And assuming that I can determine the goals, where can I find
resources that help students to meet them?
Chapter summary
Teaching involves numerous instructional strategies, which are decisions and actions designed to facilitate
learning. The choice of strategies depends partly on the forms of thinking intended for students—whether the goal
is for students to think critically, for example, or to think creatively, or to solve problems. A fundamental decision in
choosing instructional strategies is how much to emphasize teacher-directed instruction, as compared to student-
centered models of learning. Teacher-directed strategies of instruction include lectures and readings (expository
teaching), mastery learning, scripted or direct instruction, and complex teacher-directed approaches such as
Madeline Hunter’s effective teaching model. Student-centered models of learning include independent study,
student self-reflection, inquiry learning, and various forms of cooperative or collaborative learning. Although for
Educational Psychology 205 A Global Text
9. Facilitating complex thinking
some students, curriculum content and learning goals may lend themselves toward one particular type of
instruction, teaching is often a matter of combining different strategies appropriately and creatively.
On the Internet
about ten times as many as in this chapter! The strategies are arranged alphabetically and range from simple to
complex. For many strategies there are links to other web pages with more complete explanations and advice for
use. This is a good page if you have heard of a strategy but want to find out its definition quickly.
instructional strategies. It includes fewer (about 200), but they are discussed in more detail and organized
according to major categories or types of strategies—a good feature if you have a general idea of what sort of
strategy you are looking for, but are not sure of precisely which one.
Key termsAdvance organizers
Algorithms Analogical thinking
Collaborative learningConcept map
Convergent thinkingCooperative learning
Creative thinkingCritical thinking
Divergent thinkingEffective teaching model
Freeloading Functional fixedness
Heuristics Ill-structured problem
Independent study
Instructional strategiesLectures
Mastery learningOverspecialization
Problem analysisProblem representation
Problem-solvingResponse set
Self-reflectionStudent-centered models of learning
Teacher-directed instructionTransfer
Well-structured problemWorking backward
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10. Planning instruction“If you don’t know where you’re going, you could end up someplace else.”
(Casey Stengel)
Casey Stengel, a much-admired baseball coach, was talking about baseball when he made this
remark. But he could easily have been speaking of teaching as well. Almost by definition, education
has purposes, goals, and objectives, and a central task of teaching is to know what these are and to
transform the most general goals into specific objectives and tasks for students. Otherwise, as Casey
Stengel said, students may end up “someplace else” that neither they, nor the teacher, nor anyone
else intends. A lot of the clarification and specification of goals needs to happen before a cycle of
instruction actually begins, but the benefits of planning happen throughout all phases of teaching. If
students know precisely what they are supposed to learn, they can focus their attention and effort
more effectively. If the teacher knows precisely what students are supposed to learn, then the teacher
can make better use of class time and choose and design assessments of their learning that are more
fair and valid. In the long run everyone benefits.
This chapter is therefore about instructional planning, the systematic selection of educational goals and
objectives and their design for use in the classroom. We will divide this idea into four parts, and discuss them one at
a time. First is the problem of selecting general goals to teach; where can a teacher find these, and what do they look
like? Second is the problem of transforming goals into specific objectives, or statements concrete enough to guide
daily activity in class; what will students actually do or say into order to learn what a teacher wants them to learn?
Third is the problem of balancing and relating goals and objectives to each other; since we may want students to
learn numerous goals, how can we combine or integrate them so that the overall classroom program does not
become fragmented or biased? Fourth is the challenge of relating instructional goals to students’ prior experiences
and knowledge. We have discussed this challenge before from the perspective of learning theory (in Chapter 2), but
in this chapter we look at it from the more practical perspective of curriculum planning.
Selecting general learning goals
At the most general or abstract level, the goals of education include important philosophical ideas like
“developing individuals to their fullest potential” and “preparing students to be productive members of society”.
Few teachers would disagree with these ideas in principle, though they might disagree about their wording or about
their relative importance. As a practical matter, however, teachers might have trouble translating such generalities
into specific lesson plans or activities for the next day’s class. What does it mean, concretely, to “develop an
individual to his or her fullest potential”? Does it mean, for example, that a language arts teacher should ask
students to write an essay about their personal interests, or does it mean that the teacher should help students learn
to write as well as possible on any topic, even ones that are not of immediate interest? What exactly should a
teacher do, from day to day, to “prepare students to be productive members of society” as well? Answers to
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10. Planning instruction
questions like these are needed to plan instruction effectively. But the answers are not obvious simply by examining
statements of general educational goals.
National and state learning standards
Some (but not all) of the work of transforming such general purposes into more precise teaching goals and even
more precise objectives has been performed by broad US organizations that represent educators and other experts
about particular subjects or types of teaching (Riley, 2002). The groups have proposed national standards,
which are summaries of what students can reasonably be expected to learn at particular grade levels and in
particular subjects areas. In the United States, in addition, all state governments create state standards that serve
much the same purpose: they express what students in the state should (and hopefully can) learn at all grade levels
and in all subjects. Examples of organizations that provide national standards are listed in Table 27, and examples
of state standards are listed in Table 28 for one particular state, Ohio, in the area of language arts.
Table 27: Organizations with statements of US educational standards
Subject Organization
English and Language Arts Council of Teachers of English
American Council on the Teaching of Foreign
Languages
Mathematics National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
Physical Education and Health National Association for Sport and Physical
Education
American Cancer Society
Science National Academies of Science
American Association for the Advancement of
Science
Social Studies National Council for the Social Studies
Center for Civic Education
National Council on Economic Education
National Geographic Society
National Center for History in the Schools
Technology International Society for Technology in Education
Other Specialized Standards Statements:
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American Indian Content Standards Center for Educational Technology in Indian
America
Ethical Standards for School Counselors American School Counselors Association
Information Literacy Standards American Association of School Librarians
Business Education National Business Education Association
Parent Education and Involvement Parent-Teacher Association (PTA)
Source:
these standards, as well as access to the relevant web pages of the corresponding organizations, can be found at
this website. Because standards are revised continually, and because of the dynamic nature of websites, the
information may differ slightly from the above when you actually access it.
Table 28: Examples of state curriculum standards about language arts
Grade-level: Classroom example:
Kindergarten-Grade 3: Read accurately high-
frequency sight words.
Play a game: “How many words can you see around
the classroom that you can read already?”
Grade 4-7: Infer word meaning through
identification and analysis of analogies and other word
relationships.
Have students keep a journal of unfamiliar words
which they encounter and of what they think the words
mean.
Grade 8-10: Recognize the importance and function
of figurative language.
Have students write a brief essay explaining the
meaning of a common figure of speech, and speculating
on why it became common usage.
Grade 11-12: Verify meanings of words by the
author’s use of definition, restatement, example,
comparison, contrast and cause and effect.
Have students analyze an essay that includes
unfamiliar terms using clues in the essay to determine
their meaning.
Source for standards: Ohio Department of Education, 2003, p. 30-31
Because they focus on grade levels and subject areas, general statements of educational standards tend to be a
bit more specific than the broader philosophical goals we discussed above. As a rule of thumb, too, state standards
tend to be more comprehensive than national standards, both in coverage of grade levels and of subjects. The
difference reflects the broad responsibility of states in the United States for all aspects of public education; national
organizations, in contrast, usually assume responsibility only for a particular subject area or particular group of
students. Either type of standards provides a first step, however, toward transforming the grandest purposes of
schooling (like developing the individual or preparing for society) into practical classroom activities. But they
provide a first step only. Most statements of standards do not make numerous or detailed suggestions of actual
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10. Planning instruction
activities or tasks for students, though some might include brief classroom examples—enough to clarify the
meaning of a standard, but not enough to plan an actual classroom program for extended periods of time. For these
latter purposes, teachers rely on more the detailed documents, the ones often called curriculum frameworks and
curriculum guides.
Curriculum frameworks and curriculum guides
The terms curriculum framework and curriculum guide sometimes are used almost interchangeably, but for
convenience we will use them to refer to two distinct kinds of documents. The more general of the two is
curriculum framework, which is a document that explains how content standards can or should be organized
for a particular subject and at various grade levels. Sometimes this information is referred to as the scope and
sequence for a curriculum. A curriculum framework document is like a standards statement in that it does not
usually provide a lot of detailed suggestions for daily teaching. It differs from a standards statement, though, in that
it analyzes each general standard in a curriculum into more specific skills that students need to learn, often a dozen
or more per standard. The language or terminology of a framework statement also tends to be somewhat more
concrete than a standards statement, in the sense that it is more likely to name behaviors of students—things that a
teacher might see them do or hear them say. Sometimes, but not always, it may suggest ways for assessing whether
students have in fact acquired each skill listed in the document. Table 29 shows a page from a curriculum
framework published by the California State Board of Education (Curriculum Development and Supplemental
Materials Committee, 1999). In this case the framework explains the state standards for learning to read, and the
excerpt in Table 29 illustrates how one particular standard, that “students speak and write with command of
English conventions appropriate to this grade level”, is broken into nine more specific skills. Note that the excerpt
names observable behaviors of students (what they do or say); we will discuss this feature again, more fully, in the
next part of this chapter, because it is helpful in classroom planning. In spite of this feature, though, the framework
document does not lay out detailed activity plans that a teacher could use on a daily basis. (Though even so, it is
over 300 pages long!)
Table 29: An excerpt from reading/language arts framework for California public schools
Comments:
More general standards statement
More specific or concrete framework statements →
(stated as relatively specific skills or behaviors)
Written and oral English language
conventions, third grade
Students write and speak with a command of
standard English conventions appropriate to this grade
level.
Sentence Structure
1.1 Understand and be able to use complete and
correct declarative, interrogative, imperative, and
exclamatory sentences in writing and speaking.
Grammar
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1.2 Identify subjects and verbs that are in agreement
and identify and use pronouns, adjectives, compound
words, and articles correctly in writing and speaking.
1.3 Identify and use past, present, and future verb
tenses properly in writing and speaking.
1.4 Identify and use subjects and verbs correctly in
speaking and writing simple sentences.
Punctuation
1.5 Punctuate dates, city and state, and titles of
books correctly.
1.6 Use commas in dates, locations, and addresses
and for items in a series.
Capitalization
1.7 Capitalize geographical names, holidays,
historical periods, and special events correctly.
Spelling
1.8 Spell correctly one-syllable words that have
blends, contractions, compounds, orthographic patters,
and common homophones.
1.9 Arrange words in alphabetical order.
Teachers’ need for detailed activity suggestions is more likely to be met by a curriculum guide, a document
devoted to graphic descriptions of activities that foster or encourage the specific skills explained in a curriculum
framework document. The descriptions may mention or list curriculum goals served by an activity, but they are also
likely to specify materials that a teacher needs, time requirements, requirements for grouping students, drawings or
diagrams of key equipment or materials, and sometimes even suggestions for what to say to students at different
points during the activity. In these ways the descriptions may resemble lesson plans.
Since classroom activities often support more than one specific skill, activities in a curriculum guide may be
organized differently than they might be in a framework document. Instead of highlighting only one standard at a
time, as the framework document might, activities may be grouped more loosely—for example, according to the
dominant purpose or goal of an activity (“Activities that encourage the practice of math facts”) or according to a
dominant piece of equipment or material (“Ten activities with tin cans”). Table 30 shows a description of a
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10. Planning instruction
kindergarten-level activity about “autumn leaves” that might appear in a curriculum guide. Note that the activity
meets several educational objectives at once—tracing shapes, knowledge of leaves and of colors, descriptive
language skill. Each of these skills may reflect a different curriculum standard.
Table 30: Sample curriculum guide activity
Curriculum guides provide graphic descriptions of activities that can be used fairly directly in the classroom.
Although they are relevant to standards and framework statements, they often are not organized around standards
and objectives as such.
Activity: Autumn Leaves
Level: Kindergarten
Themes and Curriculum Connections: trees, autumn, color naming, color comparisons, size comparisons,
functions of leaves, growth, the life cycle. See also Standards #xx-yy.
Best time to do it: Fall (October), or whenever leaves are available
Materials needed: (1) small paper (6 x 6 inches); (2) access to leaves; (3) white glue; (4) felt pens or colored
pencils
What to do: Give one piece of the small paper to each child. Invite children to color the sheet so that the entire
sheet is decorated. Invite children to choose one leaf. Place leaf under the colored (decorated) paper and trace the
shape of the leaf lightly in pencil. Then invite children to cut out the colored paper in the shape that has been
traced of the leaf.
Cautions: (1) Some children may need individual help with tracing or cutting. (2) Try to use leaves that are still
somewhat pliable, because some very old leaves (dried out) may crumble when traced.
Things to talk about: Are some leaves bigger than others? Do they change shape as they grow, or only their
size? How do leaves benefit trees? How many different colors can real leaves be?
Formulating learning objectives
Given curriculum frameworks and guides like the ones just described, how do you choose and formulate actual
learning objectives? Basically there are two approaches: either start by selecting content or topics that what you
want students to know (the cognitive approach) or start with what you want students to do (the behavioral
approach). In effect the cognitive approach moves from the general to the specific, and the behavioral approach
does the opposite. Each approach has advocates, as well as inherent strengths and problems. In practice, teachers
often combine or alternate between them in order to give students some of the advantages of each.
From general to specific: selecting content topics
The cognitive approach assumes that teachers normally have a number of long-term, general goals for students,
and it begins with those goals. It also assumes that each student work toward long-term, general goals along
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different pathways and using different styles of learning. Because of these assumptions, it is necessary to name
indicators, which are examples of specific behaviors by which students might show success at reaching a general
learning goal. But it is neither desirable nor possible for a list of indicators to be complete—only for it to be
representative (Gronlund, 2004). Consider this example from teaching middle-school biology. For this subject you
might have a general goal like the following, with accompanying indicators:
Goal:
The student will understand the nature and purpose of photosynthesis.
Indicators:
1. explains the purpose of photosynthesis and steps in the process
2. diagrams steps in the chemical process
3. describes how plant photosynthesis affects the animal world
4. writes a plan for how to test leaves for presence of photosynthesis
5. makes an oral presentation and explains how the experiment was conducted
Using a strictly cognitive approach to planning, therefore, a teacher’s job has two parts. First she must identify,
find, or choose a manageable number of general goals—perhaps just a half dozen or so. (Sometimes these can be
taken or adapted from a curriculum framework document such as discussed earlier.) Then the teacher must think
of a handful of specific examples or behavioral indicators for each goal—just a half dozen or so of these as well. The
behavioral indicators clarify the meaning of the general goal, but are not meant to be the only way that students
might show success at learning. Then, at last, thoughtful planning for individual lessons or activities can begin. This
approach works especially well for learning goals that are relatively long-term—goals that take many lessons, days,
or weeks to reach. During such long periods of teaching, it is impossible to specify the exact, detailed behaviors that
every student can or should display to prove that he or she has reached a general goal. It is possible, however, to
specify general directions toward which all students should focus their learning and to explain the nature of the
goals with a sample of well-chosen indicators or examples (Popham, 2002).
The cognitive, general-to-specific approach is reasonable on the face of it, and in fact probably describes how
many teachers think about their instructional planning. But critics have argued that indicators used as examples
may not in fact clarify the general goal enough; students therefore end up unexpectedly—as Casey Stengel said at
the start of this chapter—“someplace else”. Given the general goal of understanding photosynthesis described
above, for example, how are we to know whether the five indicators that are listed really allow a teacher to grasp the
full meaning of the goal? Put differently, how else might a student show understanding of photosynthesis, and how
is a teacher to know that a student’s achievement is s a legitimate display of understanding? To some educators,
grasping the meaning of goals from indicators is not as obvious as it should be, and in any case is prone to
misunderstanding. The solution, they say, is not to start planning with general goals, but with specific behaviors
that identify students’ success.
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10. Planning instruction
From specific to general: behavioral objectives
Compared to the cognitive approach, the behavioral approach to instructional planning reverses the steps in
planning. Instead of starting with general goal statements accompanied by indicator examples, it starts with the
identification of specific behaviors—concrete actions or words—that students should perform or display as a result
of instruction (Mager, 2005). Collectively, the specific behaviors may describe a more general educational goal, but
unlike the indicators used in the cognitive approach, they are not a mere sampling of the possible specific outcomes.
Instead they represent all the intended specific outcomes. Consider this sampling of behavioral objectives:
Objectives: Learning to use in-line roller blade skates (beginning level)
1. Student ties boots on correctly.
2. Student puts on safety gear correctly, including helmet, knee and elbow pads.
3. Student skates 15 meters on level ground without falling.
4. Student stops on demand within a three meter distance, without falling.
The objectives listed are not merely a representative sample of how students can demonstrate success with
roller-blading. Instead they are behaviors that every student should acquire in order to meet the goal of using roller
blades as a beginner. There simply are no other ways to display learning of this goal; getting 100 per cent on a
written test about roller blading, for example, would not qualify as success with this goal, though it might show
success at some other goal, such as verbal knowledge about roller blading. Even adding other skating behaviors
(like “Student skates backwards” or “Student skates in circles”) might not qualify as success with this particular
goal, because it could reasonably be argued that the additional skating behaviors are about skating at an advanced
level, not a beginning level.
In the most commonly used version of this approach, originated by Robert Mager (1962, 2005), a good
behavioral objective should have three features. First, it should specify a behavior that can in fact be observed. In
practice this usually means identifying something that a student does or says, not something a student thinks or
feels. Compare the following examples; the one on the left names a behavior to be performed, but the one on the
right names a thinking process that cannot, in principle, be seen:
Behavioral objective
The student will make a list of animal species that
live in the water but breathe air and a separate list of
species that live in the water but do not require air to
breathe.
Not behavioral object
The student will understand the difference between
fish and mammals that live in the water.
The second feature of a good behavioral objective is that it describes conditions of performance of the
behavior. What are the special circumstances to be provided when the student performs the objective? Consider
these two examples:
Special condition of performance is specified
Given a list of 50 species, the student will circle those
that live in water but breathe air and underline those
A special condition of performance is not
specified
After three days of instruction, the student will
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that live in water but do not breathe air. identify species that live in water but breathe air, as well
as species that live in water but do not breathe air.
The objective on the left names a special condition of performance—that the student will be given a particular
kind of list to work from—which is not part of the instruction itself. The objective on the right appears to name a
condition—“three days of instruction”. But the condition really describes what the teacher will do (she will
instruct), not something specific to students’ performance.
The third feature of a good behavioral objective is that it specifies a minimum level or degree of acceptable
performance. Consider these two examples:
Specifies minimum level
Given a list of 50 species, the student will circle all of
those that live in water but breathe air and underline all
of those that live in water but do not breathe air. The
student will do so within fifteen minutes.
Does not specify minimum level
The student will circle names of species that live in
water but breathe air and underline those that live in
water but do not breathe air.
The objective on the left specifies a level of performance—100 per cent accuracy within 15 minutes. The objective
on the right leaves this information out (and incidentally it also omits the condition of performance mentioned on
the left).
Behavioral objectives have obvious advantages because of their clarity and precision. They seem especially well
suited for learning that by their nature they can be spelled out explicitly and fully, such as when a student is
learning to drive a car, to use safety equipment in a science laboratory, or install and run a particular computer
program. Most of these goals, as it happens, also tend to have relatively short learning cycles, meaning that they can
be learned as a result of just one lesson or activity, or of just a short series of them at most. Such goals tend not to
include the larger, more abstract goals of education. In practice, both kinds of goals— the general and the specific—
form a large part of education at all grade levels.
Finding the best in both approaches
When it comes to teaching and learning the large or major goals, then, behavioral objectives can seem unwieldy.
How, a teacher might ask, can you spell out all of the behaviors involved in a general goal like becoming a good
citizen? How could you name in advance the numerous conditions under which good citizenship might be
displayed, or the minimum acceptable level of good citizenship expected in each condition? Specifying these
features seems impractical at best, and at times even undesirable ethically or philosophically. (Would we really
want any students to become “minimum citizens”?) Because of these considerations, many teachers find it sensible
to compromise between the cognitive and behavioral approaches. Here are some features that are often part of a
compromise:
• When planning, think about BOTH long-term, general goals AND short-term, immediate objectives. A
thorough, balanced look at most school curricula shows that they are concerned with the general as well as
the specific. In teaching elementary math, for example, you may want students to learn general problem
solving strategies (a general goal), but you may also want them to learn specific math facts (a specific
objective). In teaching Shakespeare’s plays in high school, you may want students to be able to compare the
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10. Planning instruction
plays critically (a general goal), but doing so may require that they learn details about the characters and
plots of the major plays (a specific objective). Since general goals usually take longer to reach than specific
objectives, instructional planning has to include both time frames.
• Plan for what students do, not what the teacher does. This idea may seem obvious, but it is easy to overlook
it when devising lesson plans. Consider that example again about teaching Shakespeare. If you want
students to learn the details about Shakespeare’s plays, it is tempting to plan objectives like “Summarize the
plot of each play to students”, or “Write and hand out to students an outline of the plays”. Unfortunately
these objectives describe only what the teacher does, and makes the assumption (often unwarranted) that
students will remember what the teacher says or puts in writing for them. A better version of the same
objective should focus on the actions of students, not of teachers—for example, “Students will write a
summary, from memory, of each of the major plays of Shakespeare”. This version focuses on what students
do instead of what the teacher does. (Of course you may still have to devise activities that help students to
reach the objective, such as providing guided practice in writing summaries of plays.)
• To insure diversity of goals and objectives when planning, consider organizing goals and objectives by using
a systematic classification scheme of educational objectives. At the beginning of this section we stated that
there is a need, when devising goals and objectives, for both the specific and the general. Actually a more
accurate statement is that there is a need for goals and objectives that refer to a variety of cognitive
processes and that have varying degrees of specificity or generality. One widely used classification scheme
that does so, for example, is one proposed 50 years ago by Benjamin Bloom (1956) and revised recently by
his associates (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). We describe this system, called a taxonomy of objectives, in
the next section.
Taxonomies of educational objectives
When educators have proposed taxonomies of educational objectives, they have tended to focus on one of three
areas or domains of psychological functioning: either students’ cognition (thought), students’ feelings and emotions
(affect), or students’ physical skills (psychomotor abilities). Of these three areas, they have tended to focus the most
attention on cognition. The taxonomy originated by Benjamin Bloom, for example, deals entirely with cognitive
outcomes of instruction.
Bloom’s Taxonomy:
In its original form, Bloom’s Taxonomy of educational objectives referred to forms of cognition or thinking,
which were divided into the six levels (Bloom, et al., 1956). Table 31 summarizes the levels, and offers two kinds of
examples—simple ones based on the children’s story, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and complex ones more
typical of goals and objectives used in classrooms. The levels form a loose hierarchy from simple to complex
thinking, at least when applied to some subjects and topics. When planning for these subjects it can therefore be
helpful not only for insuring diversity among learning objectives, but also for sequencing materials. In learning
about geography, for example, it may sometimes make sense to begin with information about specific places or
societies (knowledge and comprehension), and work gradually toward comparisons and assessments among the
places or societies (analysis and synthesis).
Table 31: Bloom’s Taxonomy of objectives: cognitive domain
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Type or level of learning Simple example Classroom example
Knowledge: recall of
information, whether it is simple or
complex in nature
“Name three things that
Goldilocks did in the house of the
three bears.”
“List all of the planets of the solar
system.”
“State five key features of life in
the middle ages.”
Comprehension: grasping the
meaning of information, by
interpreting it or translating it from
one form to another
“Explain why Goldilocks
preferred the little bear’s chair.”
“Convert the following arithmetic
word problem to a mathematical
equation.”
“Describe how plants contribute
to the welfare of animal life.”
Application: using information
in new, concrete situations
“Predict some of the things
Goldilocks might have used if she
had entered your house.”
“Illustrate how positive
reinforcement might affect the
behavior of a pet dog.”
“Use examples from the plot to
illustrate the theme of novel.”
Analysis: breaking information
into its components to understand
its structure
“Select the part of Goldilocks and
the Three Bears where you think
Goldilocks felt most comfortable.”
“Compare the behavior of
domestic dogs with the behavior of
wolves.”
“Diagram the effects of weather
patterns on plant metabolism.”
Synthesis: putting parts of
information together into a coherent
whole
“Tell how the story would have
been different if it had been three
fishes.”
“Design an experiment to test the
effects of gravity on root growth.”
“Write an account of how
humans would be different if life had
originated on Mars instead of
Earth.”
Evaluation: judging the value of
information for a particular purpose
“Justify this statement:
Goldilocks was a bad girl.”
“Appraise the relevance of the
novel for modern life.”
“Assess the value of information
processing theory for planning
instruction.”
Educational Psychology 220 A Global Text
10. Planning instruction
Such a sequence does not work well, however, for all possible topics or subjects. To learn certain topics in
mathematics, for example, students may sometimes need to start with general ideas (like “What does it mean to
multiply?”) than with specific facts (like “How much is 4 x 6?”) (Egan, 2005). At other times, though, the reverse
sequence may be preferable. Whatever the case, a taxonomy of cognitive objectives, like Bloom’s, can help to
remind teachers to set a variety of objectives and to avoid relying excessively on just one level, such as simple recall
of factual knowledge (Notar, et al., 2004).
Bloom’s Taxonomy revised
A few years ago two of Benjamin Bloom’s original colleagues, Linda Anderson and David Krathwohl, revised his
taxonomy so as to clarify its terms and to make it more complete (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001; Marzano, 2006).
The resulting categories are summarized and compared to the original categories in Table 32. As the chart shows,
several categories of objectives have been renamed and a second dimension added that describes the kind of
thinking or cognitive processing that may occur. The result is a much richer taxonomy than before, since every level
of the objectives can now take four different forms. Remembering, for example, can refer to four different kinds of
memory: memory for facts, for concepts, for procedures, or for metacognitive knowledge. Table 32 gives examples
of each of these kinds of memory.
Table 32: Bloom’s Taxonomy of cognitive objectives—revised
Original term from
Bloom’s Taxonomy
(1956)
Revised term
emphasizing cognitive
processing (2001)
A new dimension
added: types of
knowledge learned
(2001)
Example of
cognitive process
remembering
combined with
possible types of
knowledge
Knowledge Remembering
Comprehension Understanding
Application Applying
Analysis Analyzing
Evaluation Evaluating
Synthesis Creating
• factual knowledge
• conceptual
knowledge
• procedural
knowledge
• metacognitive
knowledge
Memory for facts:
recalling the names of
each part of a living cell
Memory for concepts:
recalling the functions of
each part of a living cell
Memory for
procedures: recalling
how to view a cell under a
microscope
Memory for
metacognition: recalling
not the names of the parts,
but a technique for
remembering the names of
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the parts of a living cell
Caption: The revision to Bloom’s Taxonomy distinguishes between cognitive processes (left-hand column in
the table) and types of knowledge learned (right-hand column). The original version has terms similar to the
cognitive processing terms in the revised version. According to the revised version, any type of knowledge (from
the right-hand column) can, in principle, occur with any type of cognitive processing (left-hand column).
Taxonomies of affective objectives and psychomotor objectives
Although taxonomies related to affect, or the feelings and emotions of students, are used less commonly than
cognitive taxonomies for planning instruction, various educators have constructed them. One of the most widely
known was also published by colleagues of Benjamin Bloom and classifies affect according to how committed a
student feels toward what he is learning (Krathwohl, Bloom, & Masia, 1964/1999). Table 33 summarizes the
categories and gives brief examples. The lowest level, called receiving, simply involves willingness to experience
new knowledge or activities. Higher levels involve embracing or adopting experiences in ways that are increasingly
organized and that represent increasingly stable forms of commitment.
Table 33: Taxonomies of objectives: affective domain and psychomotor domain
Affective domain Psychomotor domain
Receiving Willingness to attend to
particular experience
Imitation Repeating a simple
action that has been
demonstrated
Responding Willingness to
participate actively in an
experience
Manipulation Practice of an action
that has been imitated but
only learned partially
Valuing Perception of
experience as worthwhile
Precision Quick, smooth
execution of an action that
has been practiced
Organization Coordination of valued
experiences into partially
coherent wholes
Articulation Execution of an action
not only with precision, but
also with modifications
appropriate to new
circumstances
Characterization by a Coordination of valued Naturalization Incorporation of an
Educational Psychology 222 A Global Text
10. Planning instruction
value complex experiences and of
organized sets of
experiences into a single
comprehensive value
hierarchy
action into the motor
repertoire, along with
experimentation with new
motor actions
Taxonomies related to abilities and skills that are physical, or psychomotor, have also been used less widely than
affective taxonomies, with the notable exception of one area of teaching where they are obviously relevant: physical
education. As you might expect, taxonomic categories of motor skills extend from simple, brief actions to complex,
extended action sequences that combine simpler, previously learned skills smoothly and automatically (Harrow,
1972; Simpson, 1972). One such classification scheme is shown in Table 33. An example of a very basic
psychomotor skill might be imitating the action of throwing a ball when modeled by someone else; an example of
the latter might be performing a 10 minute gymnastics routine which the student has devised for himself or herself.
Note, though, that many examples of psychomotor skills also exist outside the realm of physical education. In a
science course, for example, a student might need to learn to operate laboratory equipment that requires using
delicate, fine movements. In art classes, students might learn to draw, and in music they might learn to play an
instrument (both are partly motor skills). Most first graders are challenged by the motor skills of learning to write.
For students with certain physical disabilities, furthermore, motor skill development is an important priority for the
student’s entire education.
Students as a source of instructional goals
So far our discussion of instructional planning has described goals and objectives as if they are selected
primarily by educators and teachers, and not by students themselves. The assumption may be correct in many
cases, but there are problems with it. One problem is that choosing goals and objectives for students, rather than by
students, places a major burden on everyone involved in education—curriculum writers, teachers, and students.
The curriculum writers have to make sure that they specify standards, goals, and objectives that are truly important
for students to learn (what if it really does not matter, for example, whether a science student learns about the
periodic table of the elements?). Teachers have to make sure that students actually become motivated to learn the
specified goals and objectives, even if the students are not motivated initially. Students have to master pre-set goals
and objectives even if they might not have chosen them personally. Some critics of education have argued that these
requirements can be serious impediments to learning (Kohn, 2004). The problems are widespread and especially
noticeable in two forms of teaching. One is with the youngest students, who may especially lack patience with an
educational agenda set by others (Kohn, 1999; Seitz, 2006). The other is with culturally diverse classrooms, where
students and their families may hold a variety of legitimate, but unconventional expectations about what they
should learn (J. Banks & C. Banks, 2005).
In response to concerns like these, some educators advocate planning instruction around goals set or expressed
either by students themselves or by the cultures or communities with which students identify. Their suggestions
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vary in detail, but can be organized into two broad categories: (1) emergent curriculum and (2) multicultural and
anti-bias curriculum.
Emergent curriculum
An emergent curriculum is one that explicitly builds on interests expressed by students, rather than goals set
by curriculum writers, curriculum documents, or teachers. As you might suspect, therefore, instructional planning
for an emergent curriculum does not have the same meaning that the term has had in the chapter up to now.
Instead, since an emergent curriculum by definition unfolds spontaneously and flexibly, students’ interests may be
predictable, but usually not very far in advance (Peterson, 2002). Suppose, for example, that a first-grade teacher
plans a unit around Halloween, and that as one of the activities for this unit she reads a book about Halloween. In
listening to the book, however, the students turn out to be less interested in its Halloween content than in the fact
that one of the illustrations in the book shows a picture of a full moon partially hidden by clouds. They begin asking
about the moon: why it is full sometimes but not other times, why it rises in different places each month, and
whether the moon really moves behind clouds or whether the clouds actually do the moving. The teacher
encourages their questions and their interest in moon astronomy. Over the next days or weeks, she arranges further
activities and experiences to encourage students’ interest: she sets aside her original plans about Halloween and
finds books about the moon and about how the solar system works. She invites a local amateur astronomer to visit
the group and talk about his observations of the moon. Several children build models of the moon out of paper
maché. Some find books describing trips of the space shuttles to the moon. Others make a large mural depicting a
moonscape. And so on; the original goals about Halloween are not so much rejected, as set aside or forgotten in
favor of something more immediately interesting and motivating.
While these activities could in principle happen because of recommendations from a curriculum document, the
key point about emergent curriculum is that they happen for a very different reason: these activities happen and the
goals emerge because the children want them. A teacher’s challenge is therefore not planning activities that match
predetermined curriculum goals or objectives, but to respond flexibly and sensitively as students’ interests become
known and explicit. Teachers’ responsiveness is facilitated by two practices that are especially prominent when a
teacher adopts an emergent approach to curriculum. The first is careful, continuous observation of students. The
teacher watches and listens, and may keep informal written records of students’ comments and activities. The
information allows her to respond more effectively to the interests they express, and at the same time it provides a
type of assessment of students’ progress—information about what the students are actually learning.
A second strategy that facilitates teachers’ success is curriculum webbing, a process of brainstorming
connections among initiatives suggested by students and ideas suggested by the teacher. In some cases webs can be
created jointly with students by brainstorming with them about where their current interests may lead. In other
cases they can be created independently by the teacher’s own reflections. In still others, when a classroom has more
than one adult responsible for it, they can be created jointly with fellow teachers or teacher assistants. The latter
approach works especially well in preschool, kindergartens, or special education classrooms, which often have more
than one adult responsible for the class (Vartuli & Rohs, 2006).
To some, emergent curriculum may seem like a formula for curriculum and management disasters. But the
approach has often proved quite successful, particularly in early childhood education and the earliest grade levels of
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10. Planning instruction
elementary school (Seitz, 2006; Wurm, 2005). Something akin to emergent curriculum is quite possible, in
principle, even with older students. In Chapter 8, for example, we described a high school program in which
students began with problems and experiences that were personally relevant, and discussed the problems with
classmates to formulate research problems which they then studied more formally and systematically (Hawkins,
2006). In essence this strategy created an emergent curriculum analogous to the ones described above for young
children. What the high school students studied was not predetermined, but emerged from their own expressed
interests.
Multicultural and anti-bias education
A culture is an all-encompassing set of values, beliefs, practices and customs of a group or community—its total
way of life. Cultures may be shared widely, even by much if not all of an entire nation, or they may be shared by
relatively few, such as a small community within a large city. Sometimes the term culture is even applied to the way
of life of an individual family or of a specialized group in society; some might argue, for example, that there is a
culture of schooling shared by teachers, though not necessarily by all students.
Because culture by definition touches on all aspects of living, it is likely to affect students’ perspectives about
school, their ways of learning and their motivations to learn. The differences go beyond obvious differences in
holidays, language, or food preferences. In some cultures, for example, individuals keep good eye contact with
someone to whom they are speaking, and expect the same from others. In other cultures, such behavior is
considered intrusive or overly aggressive, and avoiding eye contact while speaking is considered more respectful. Or
another example: in some cultures it is expected that individuals will be punctual (or on time), whereas in others
punctuality is considered overly compulsive, and a more casual approach to time is the norm. Students regularly
bring differences like these to school, where they combine with expectations from teachers and other school staff,
and contribute indirectly to differences in achievement and satisfaction among students.
To be fully effective, therefore, instructional planning has to take into account the diversity in students’ cultural
backgrounds, whether the differences are observable or subtle. Planning also has to work deliberately to reduce the
social biases and prejudices that sometimes develop about cultural differences. Multicultural education and
anti-bias education are two terms referring to these purposes. Their meanings often overlap significantly,
depending on the context or on who is using the terms. Generally, though, the first term—multicultural education—
has somewhat more to do with understanding the differences among cultures. The latter term—anti-bias education
—has more to do with overcoming social prejudices and biases resulting from cultural differences. For convenience
in this chapter, we will use the single term multicultural education to refer to both understanding differences and
overcoming prejudices.
Fully effective multicultural education has several features. The most obvious and familiar one is content
integration: the curriculum uses examples and information from different cultures to illustrate various concepts
or ideas already contained in the curriculum (Vavrus, 2002). In studying holidays, for example, an elementary-
school teacher includes activities and information about Kwanzaa as well as Christmas, Hanukkah, or other
holidays happening at about the same time. In studying the US Civil War, another example, a middle-years teacher
includes material written from the perspective of African-American slaves and Southern landowners. In teaching
language arts, students learn basic vocabulary of any non-English languages spoken by some members of the class.
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But there is more to multicultural education than integrating content from diverse cultures. Among other
features, it also requires an equity pedagogy, which is an effort to allow or even encourage, a variety of learning
styles—styles at which students may have become skillful because of their cultural backgrounds (Crow, 2005; C.
Banks & J. Banks, 1995). In elementary language arts, for example, there may be more than one “best” way to tell a
story. Should a student necessarily have to tell it alone and standing in front of the whole class, or might the student
tell it jointly with a friend or in a smaller group? In learning to write a story, is legitimate variety also possible
there? Should a written story necessarily begin with a topic sentence that announces what the story is about, or can
it save a statement of topic for the ending or even it leave it out altogether in order to stimulate readers to think?
The best choice is related in part to the nature and purpose of the story, of course, but partly also to differences in
cultural expectations about story telling. Choosing a story form also points toward another feature of multicultural
education, the knowledge construction process, which is the unstated, unconscious process by which a
cultural group creates knowledge or information. The popular media, for example, often portray Hispanic-
Americans in ways that are stereotypical, either subtly or blatantly (Lester & Ross, 2003). A fully multicultural
curriculum finds way to call these images to the attention of students and to engage them in thinking about how
and why the images oversimplify reality.
Yet there is even more to a fully multicultural education. In addition to content integration, equity pedagogy,
and knowledge construction, it fosters prejudice reduction, or activities, discussions and readings that identify
students’ negative evaluations of cultural groups (Jacobson, 2003; J. Banks & C. Banks, 2004). The activities and
discussions can of course take a somewhat philosophical approach—examining how students feel in general, what
experiences they remember having involving prejudice, and the like. But the activities and discussions can also take
a more indirect and subtle form, as when a teacher periodically speaks in a student’s native language as a public
sign of respect for the student. Gestures and discussions like these are especially effective if they contribute to the
fifth element of multicultural education, empowering the school and social structure, in which all teachers
and staff members find ways to convey respect for cultural differences, including even during extra-curricular and
sports activities. A sports team or a debate club should not be limited to students from one cultural background and
exclude those from another—or more subtly, accept everyone but give the more desirable roles only to individuals
with particular social backgrounds. To the extent that cultural respect and inclusion are school-wide, teaching and
learning both become easier and more successful, and instructional planning in particular becomes more relevant
to students’ needs.
Enhancing student learning through a variety of resources
Whether instructional goals originate from curriculum documents, students’ expressed interests, or a mixture of
both, students are more likely to achieve the goals if teachers draw on a wide variety of resources. As a practical
matter, this means looking for materials and experiences that supplement—or occasionally even replace—the most
traditional forms of information, such as textbooks. Precisely what resources to use depend on factors unique to
each class, school, or community, but they might include one or more of the following.
The Internet as a learning tool
The Internet has become a fixture of modern society, and it offers a huge variety of information on virtually any
topic, including any school subject and any possible grade level from kindergarten through university. At the time
of writing this book (2007), about two-thirds of all households in the United States and Canada have at least some
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10. Planning instruction
sort of Internet access, and virtually 100 per cent of public and private schools have some access (Parsad & Jones,
2006). These circumstances make the Internet a potential major resource for teachers and students—a virtual
library many times larger than even the largest physical (or “bricks and mortar”) libraries in the world.
But the vastness of the Internet is not entirely a blessing. A major problem is that the sheer volume of
information available, which can sometimes make searching for a specific topic, article, or document overwhelming
and inefficient. The newer search engines (such as Google at
problem, though they do not solve it completely. When searching the term photosynthesis, for example, Google and
other similar search engines return over six million web pages that discuss or refer this topic in some way! If a
teacher is planning a unit about photosynthesis, or if a student is writing an essay about it, which of these web
pages will prove most helpful? Choosing among web pages is a new, somewhat specialized form of computer
literacy, one that can be learned partially by trial-and-error online, but that also benefits from assistance by a
teacher or by more experienced peers (Ragains, 2006).
Another problem with the Internet is inequity of access. Even though, as we mentioned above, virtually all
schools now have access of some sort, the access is distributed quite unevenly across communities and income
groups (Skinner, Biscope, & Poland, 2003; Parsad & Jones, 2005). For one thing, the large majority of Web pages
are posted in English, and this fact naturally poses a challenge for any students who still learning to read or write
English. For another, schools vary widely in how much Internet service they can provide. In general, well-to-do
schools and those in cities provide more access than those located in less well-off areas or in rural areas—though
there are many exceptions. A richly endowed school might have an Internet connection in every classroom as well
as multiple connections in a school library or in specialized computer rooms. Students as well as faculty would be
able to use these facilities, and one or more teachers might have special training in Internet research to help when
problems arise. At the other extreme, a school might have only a few Internet connections for the entire school, or
even just one, located in a central place like the library or the school office. Usage by students would consequently
be limited, and teachers would essentially teach themselves how to search the Internet and how to troubleshoot
technical problems when they occur.
In spite of these problems, the Internet has considerable potential for enhancing students’ learning, precisely
because of its flexibility and near universality. Some of the best recent successes involve the creation of a learning
commons (sometimes also called an information commons or teaching commons), a combination of a website
and an actual, physical place in a school or library that brings together information, students and teachers so that
both (though perhaps especially students) can learn (Haas & Robertson, 2004; Beagle, 2006). A learning commons
includes an online library catalogue and online Internet service, but it also offers other services: online information
and advice about study skills, for example, as well as access to peer tutors and support groups, either online or in
person, that can help with difficulties about writing or doing assignments. As you might suspect, using a learning
commons effectively sometimes requires reorganizing certain features of teaching and learning, chiefly toward
greater explicit collaboration among students and teachers.
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Using local experts and field trips
Two other ways of enhancing learning include bringing local experts to the classroom and taking the class on
field trips outside the classroom. Both of these strategies help to make learning more vivid, as well as more relevant
to the particular community and lives that students lead.
Local experts
Classroom visits by persons with key experience can often add a lot to many curriculum subjects and topics. In
one tenth grade science class studying environmental issues, for example, the teacher invited the city forester, the
person responsible for the health of trees planted in city parks and along city boulevards. The forester had special
knowledge of the stresses on trees in urban environments, and he was able to explain and give examples of
particular problems that had occurred and their solutions. In a second grade class with many Hispanic students, on
the other hand, a teacher aide was able to serve as an expert visitor by describing her memories of childhood in a
Spanish-speaking community in New Mexico. Later she also recruited an older Hispanic friend and relative to the
class to describe their experiences growing up in Central America. She also acted as their English-Spanish
interpreter. In all of these examples, the experts made the learning more real and immediate. Their presence
counteracted the tendency to equate school learning with book-based knowledge—a common hazard when basing
instructional planning primarily on curriculum documents.
Field trips
In addition to bringing the world to the classroom by inviting visitors, teachers can do the converse, they can
take the classroom to the world by leading students on field trips. Such trips are not confined to any particular
grade level. In the early grades of elementary school, for example, one common goal of the curriculum is to learn
about community helpers—the police, firefighters, store owners, and others who make a community safe and
livable. As indicated already, representatives of these groups can visit the class and tell about their work. But the
class can also visit the places which these people tell about: a police station, a fire hall, a local retail store, and the
like. Such trips offer a more complete picture of the context in which community professionals work than is
possible simply from hearing and reading about it. The benefits are possible for older students as well. In learning
about water-borne diseases as part of a biology class, for example, one middle-school class took a field trip to the
local water-treatment facility, where staff members explained where the town’s water came from and how the water
was cleaned to become drinkable at any tap.
From a teacher’s point of view, of course, there are certain risks about arranging classroom visitors or field trips.
One is that a visitor may turn out not to communicate well with children or young people—he or she may assume
too much prior knowledge, for example, or veer off the chosen topic. Another problem is that field trips often
require additional funds (for admission fees or to pay for a bus), and require support from additional adults—often
parents—to supervise students outside of school. Some of these problems are by-passed by arranging “virtual” field
trips and hearing from “virtual” visitors: using computer software or media to show students places and activities
which they cannot visit in person (Clark, 2006). Generally, though, a computer-based experience cannot compare
with a real trip or visitor in vividness, and the benefits of actual, in-person field trips or visitors often therefore
outweigh the challenges of arranging them.
Educational Psychology 228 A Global Text
10. Planning instruction
Service learning
Still another way to enhance learning is to incorporate service learning, which is activity that combines real
community service with analysis and reflection on the significance of the service (Johnson & O’Grady, 2006;
Thomsen, 2006). Picking up trash in an urban stream bed, for example, is a community service which students can
perform. To transform this service into service learning, students also need to note and reflect on the trash that
they find; talk and write about the ecological environment of the stream and of the community; and even make
recommendations for improving the local environment. To accomplish these objectives, service learning activities
should not be sporadic, nor used as a punishment—as when a teacher or principal assigns trash pick-up as an after-
school detention activity.
Under good conditions, service learning enhances instructional plans both morally and intellectually. Morally, it
places students in the role of creating good for the community, and counteracts students’ perception that being
“good” simply means complying with teachers’ or parents’ rules passively. Intellectually, service learning places
social and community issues in a vivid, lived context. The environment, economic inequality, or race relations, for
example, are no longer just ideas that people merely talk about, but problems that people actually act upon
(Dicklitch, 2005).
As you might suspect, though, making service learning successful is not automatic. For one thing, service
learning lends itself well only to certain curriculum areas (for example, community studies or social studies). For
another, some students may initially resist service learning, wondering whether it benefits them personally as
students (Jones, Gilbride-Brown, & Gasiorski, 2005). Also, some service projects may inadvertently be invented
only to benefit students, without adequate consultation or advice from community members. Bringing food
hampers to low-income families may seem like a good idea to middle-class students or instructors, but some
families may perceive this action less as a benefit than as an act of charity which they therefore resent. But none of
these problems are insurmountable. Evaluations generally find that service learning, when done well, increases
students’ sense of moral empowerment as well as their knowledge of social issues (Buchanan, Baldwin, & Rudisill,
2002). Like many other educational practices, insuring success with service learning requires doing it well.
Creating bridges among curriculum goals and students’ prior experiences
To succeed, then, instructional plans do require a variety of resources, like the ones discussed in the previous
section. But they also require more: they need to connect with students’ prior experiences and knowledge.
Sometimes the connections can develop as a result of using the Internet, taking field trips, or engaging in service
learning, particularly if students are already familiar with these activities and places. More often than not, though,
teachers need to find additional ways to connect curriculum with students’ experiences—ways that fit more
thoroughly and continuously into the daily work of a class. Fortunately, such techniques are readily at hand; they
simply require the teacher to develop a habit of looking for opportunities to use them. Among the possibilities are
four that deserve special mention: (1) modeling behavior and modeling representations of ideas, (2) activating
prior knowledge already familiar to students, (3) anticipating preconceptions held by students, and (4) providing
guided and independent practice, including its most traditional form, homework.
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Modeling
The term modeling can mean either a demonstration of a desired behavior or a representation of an important
theory, idea, or object. Each of these meanings can link curriculum goals with students’ prior knowledge and
experience.
Modeling as a demonstration
In the first meaning, modeling refers to performing or demonstrating a desired new behavior or skill, as when
a teacher or classmate demonstrates polite behaviors or the correct solution to a math problem. In this case we say
that the teacher or classmate models the desired behavior, either deliberately or in the course of other ongoing
activity. Students observe the modeled behavior and (hopefully) imitate it themselves. Research repeatedly shows
that modeling desired behaviors is an effective way to learn new behaviors, especially when the model is perceived
as important (like the teacher), similar to the learner (like a student’s best friend), or has a warm, positive
relationship with the learner (like the teacher or the student’s friend) (Bandura, 2002; Gibson, 2004). Modeling in
this sense is sometimes also called observational learning. It has many of the same properties as the classic
operant conditioning discussed in Chapter 2, except that reinforcement during observational learning is witnessed
in others rather than experienced by the learner directly. Watching others being reinforced is sometimes called
vicarious reinforcement. The idea is that if, for example, a student observes a classmate who behaves politely with
the teacher and then sees that classmate receive praise for the behavior (vicarious reinforcement), the student is
more likely to imitate the polite behavior that he saw. As in classic operant conditioning, furthermore, if the student
observes that politeness by classmates is ignored (extinction or no reinforcement), then the student is much less
likely to imitate the politeness. Worse yet, if the student observes that negative behaviors in others lead to positive
consequences (like attention from peers), then the student may imitate the negative behaviors (Rebellon, 2006).
Cursing and swearing, and even bullying or vandalism, can be reinforced vicariously, just as can more desired
behaviors.
Modeling—in this first sense of a demonstration—connects instructional goals to students’ experiences by
presenting real, vivid examples of behaviors or skills in a way that a student can practice directly, rather than
merely talk about. There is often little need, when imitating a model, to translate ideas or instructions from verbal
form into action. For students struggling with language and literacy, in particular, this feature can be a real
advantage.
Modeling—as simplified representation
In a second meaning of modeling, a model is a simplified representation of a phenomenon that incorporates
the important properties of the phenomenon. Models in this sense may sometimes be quite tangible, direct copies
of reality; when I was in fourth grade growing up in California, for example, we made scale models of the Spanish
missions as part of our social studies lessons about California history. But models can also be imaginary, though
still based on familiar elements. In a science curriculum, for example, the behavior of gas molecules under pressure
can be modeled by imagining the molecules as ping pong balls flying about and colliding in an empty room.
Reducing the space available to the gas by making the room smaller, causes the ping pong balls to collide more
frequently and vigorously, and thereby increases the pressure on the walls of the room. Increasing the space has the
opposite effect. Creating an actual room full of ping pong balls may be impractical, of course, but the model can still
be imagined.
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10. Planning instruction
Modeling in this second sense is not about altering students’ behavior, but about increasing their understanding
of a newly learned idea, theory, or phenomenon. The model itself uses objects or events that are already familiar to
students—simple balls and their behavior when colliding—and in this way supports students’ learning of new,
unfamiliar material. Not every new concept or idea lends itself to such modeling, but many do: students can create
models of unfamiliar animals, for example, or of medieval castles, or of ecological systems. Two-dimensional
models—essentially drawings—can also be helpful: students can illustrate literature or historical events, or make
maps of their own neighborhoods. The choice of model depends largely on the specific curriculum goals which the
teacher needs to accomplish at a particular time.
Activating prior knowledge
Another way to connect curriculum goals to students’ experience is by activating prior knowledge, a term
that refers to encouraging students to recall what they know already about new material being learned. Various
formats for activating prior knowledge are possible. When introducing a unit about how biologists classify animal
and plant species, for example, a teacher can invite students to discuss how they already classify different kinds of
plants and animals. Having highlighted this informal knowledge, the teacher can then explore how the same species
are classified by biological scientists, and compare the scientists’ classification schemes to the students’ own
schemes. The activation does not have to happen orally, as in this example; a teacher can also ask students to write
down as many distinct types of animals and plants that they can think of, and then ask students to diagram or map
their relationships—essentially creating a concept map like the ones we described in Chapter 8 (Gurlitt, et al.,
2006). Whatever the strategy used, activation helps by making students’ prior knowledge or experience conscious
and therefore easier to link to new concepts or information.
Anticipating preconceptions of students
Ironically, activating students’ prior knowledge can be a mixed blessing if some of the prior knowledge is
misleading or downright wrong. Misleading or erroneous knowledge is especially common among young students,
but it can happen at any grade level. A kindergarten child may think that the sun literally “rises” in the morning,
since she often hears adults use this expression, or that the earth is flat because it obviously looks flat. But a high
school student may mistakenly believe that large objects (a boulder) fall faster than small ones (a pebble), or that a
heavy object dropped (not thrown) from a moving car window will fall straight down instead of traveling laterally
alongside the car while it falls.
Because misconceptions are quite common among students and even among adults, teachers are more effective
if they can anticipate preconceptions of students wherever possible. The task is twofold. First the teacher
must know or at least guess students’ preconceptions as much as possible in advance, so that she can design
learning activities to counteract and revise their thinking. Some preconceptions have been well-documented by
educational research and therefore can in principle be anticipated easily—though they may still sometimes take a
teacher by surprise during a busy activity or lesson (Tanner & Allen, 2005; Chiu & Lin, 2005). Exhibit 9.8 lists a few
of these common preconceptions. Others may be unique to particular students, however, and a teacher may only by
able to learn of them through experience—by listening carefully to what students say and write and by watching
what they do. A few preconceptions may be so ingrained or tied to other, more deeply held beliefs that students may
resist giving them up, either consciously or unconsciously. It may be hard, for example, for some students to give up
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the idea that girls are less talented at math or science than are boys, even though research generally finds this is not
the case (Hyde & Linn, 2006).
Table 34: Several misconceptions about science
Misconception What to do
Stars and constellations appear in the same place in
the sky every night.
Ask students to observe carefully the locations of a
bright star once a week for several weeks.
The world is flat, circular like a pancake. Use a globe or ball to find countries located over the
horizon; use computer software (e.g. Global Earth) to
illustrate how a round Earth can look flat up close.
Dinosaurs disappeared at the same time that human
beings appeared and because of human activity.
Construct a timeline of major periods of Darwinian
evolution.
Rivers always flow from North to South. Identify rivers that flow South to North (e.g. the Red
River in North Dakota and Canada); talk about how
Southern locations are not necessarily “lower”.
Force is needed not only to start an object moving,
but to keep it moving.
Explain the concept of inertia; demonstrate inertia
using low-friction motion (e.g. with a hovercraft or dry-
ice puck).
Volume, weight, and size are identical concepts. Have students weigh objects of different sizes or
volumes, and compare the results.
Seasons happen because the Earth changes distance
from the sun.
Explain the tilt of Earth’s axis using a globe and light
as a model; demonstrate reduced heating of surfaces by
placing similar surfaces outdoors at different angles to
the sun’s rays.
Sources: Chi, 2005; D. Clark, 2006; Slotta & Chi, 2006; Owens, 2003.
The second task when anticipating preconceptions is to treat students’ existing knowledge and beliefs with
respect even when they do include misconceptions or errors. This may seem obvious in principle, but it needs
remembering when students persist with misconceptions in spite of a teacher’s efforts to teach alternative ideas or
concepts. Most of us—including most students—have reasons for holding our beliefs, even when the beliefs do not
agree with teachers, textbooks, or other authorities, and we appreciate having our beliefs treated with respect.
Students are no different from other people in this regard. In a high school biology class, for example, some
students may have personal reasons for not agreeing with the theory of evolution associated with Charles Darwin.
For religious reasons they may support explanations of the origins of life that give a more active, interventionist
role to God (Brumfiel, 2005). If their beliefs disagree with the teacher’s or the textbook, then the disagreement
needs to be acknowledged, but acknowledged respectfully. For some students (and perhaps some teachers),
expressing fundamental disagreement respectfully may feel awkward, but it needs to be done nonetheless.
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10. Planning instruction
Guided practice, independent practice, and homework
So far, we have focused on bridging the goals or content of a curriculum to events, beliefs, and ideas from
students’ lives. In studying human growth in a health class, for example, a teacher might ask students to bring
photos of themselves as a much younger child. In this case a concept from the curriculum—human growth—then is
related to a personal event, being photographed as a youngster, that the student finds meaningful.
But teachers can also create bridges between curriculum and students’ experiences in another way, by relating
the process of learning in school with the process of learning outside of school. Much of this task involves helping
students to make the transition from supervised learning to self-regulated learning—or put differently, from
practice that is relatively guided to practice that is relatively independent.
Guided practice
When students first learn a new skill or a new set of ideas, they are especially likely to encounter problems and
make mistakes that interfere with the very process of learning. In figuring out how to use a new software program,
for example, a student may unknowingly press a wrong button that prevents further functioning of the program. In
translating sentences from Spanish into English in language class, for another example, a student might
misinterpret one particular word or grammatical feature. This one mistake may cause many sentences to be
translated incorrectly, and so on. So students initially need guided practice—opportunities to work somewhat
independently, but with a teacher or other expert close at hand prevent or fix difficulties when they occur. In
general, educational research has found that guided practice helps all learners, but especially those who are
struggling (Bryan & Burstein, 2004: Woodward, 2004). A first-grade child has difficulty in decoding printed words,
for example, benefits from guidance more than one who can decode easily. But both students benefit in the initial
stages of learning, since both may make more mistakes then. Guided practice, by its nature, sends a dual message to
students: it is important to learn new material well, but it is also important to become able to use learning without
assistance, beyond the lesson where it is learned and even beyond the classroom.
Guided practice is much like the concepts of the zone of proximal development (or ZPD) and instructional
scaffolding that we discussed in Chapter 2 in connection with Vygotsky’s theory of learning. In essence, during
guided practice the teacher creates a ZPD or scaffold (or framework) in which the student can accomplish more
with partial knowledge or skill than the student could accomplish alone. But whatever its name—guided practice, a
ZPD, or a scaffold—insuring success of guidance depends on several key elements: focusing on the task at hand,
asking questions that break the task into manageable parts, reframing or restating the task so that it becomes more
understandable, and giving frequent feedback about the student’s progress (Rogoff, 2003). Combining the elements
appropriately takes sensitivity and improvisational skill—even artfulness—but these very challenges are among the
true joys of teaching.
Independent practice
As students gain facility with a new skill or new knowledge, they tend to need less guidance and more time to
consolidate (or strengthen) their new knowledge with additional practice. Since they are less likely to encounter
mistakes or problems at this point, they begin to benefit from independent practice—opportunities to review
and repeat their knowledge at their own pace and with fewer interruptions. At this point, therefore, guided practice
may feel less like help than like an interruption, even if it is well-intentioned. A student who already knows how to
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use a new computer program, for example, may be frustrated by waiting for the teacher to explain each step of the
program individually. If a student is already skillful at translating Spanish sentences into English in a language
class, it can be annoying for the teacher to “help” by pointing out minor errors that the student is likely to catch for
herself.
By definition, the purpose of independent practice is to provide more self-regulation of learning than what
comes from guided practice. It implies a different message for students than what is conveyed by guided practice, a
message that goes beyond the earlier one: that it is now time to take more complete responsibility for own learning.
When all goes well, independent practice is the eventual outcome of the zone of proximal development created
during the earlier phase of guided practice described above: the student can now do on his or her own, what
originally required assistance from someone else. Or stated differently, independent practice is a way of
encouraging self-determination about learning, in the sense that we discussed this idea in Chapter 6. In order to
work independently, a student must set his or her own direction and monitor his or her own success; by definition,
no one can do this for the student.
Homework
The chances are that you already have experienced many forms of homework in your own educational career.
The widespread practice of assigning review work to do outside of school is a way of supplementing scarce time in
class and of providing independent practice for students. Homework has generated controversy throughout most of
its history in public education, partly because it encroaches on students’ personal and family-oriented time, and
partly because research finds no consistent benefits of doing homework (Gill & Schlossman, 2004; Kohn, 2004). In
spite of these criticisms, though, parents and teachers tend to favor homework when it is used for two main
purposes. One purpose is to review and practice material that has already been introduced and practiced at school;
a sheet of arithmetic problems might be a classic example. When used for this purpose, the amount of homework is
usually minimal in the earliest grades, if any is assigned at all. One educational expert recommends only ten
minutes per day in first grade at most, and only gradual increases in amount as students get older (Cooper &
Valentine, 2001).
The second purpose for supporting homework is to convey the idea of schoolwork being the “job” of childhood
and youth. Just as on an adult job, students must complete homework tasks with minimal supervision and
sometimes even minimal training. Doing the tasks, furthermore, is a way to get ahead or further along in the work
place (for an adult) or at school (for a child). One study in which researchers interviewed children about these ideas,
in fact, found that children do indeed regard homework as work in the same way that adults think of a job (Cornu &
Xu, 2004). In the children’s minds, homework tasks were not “fun”, in spite of teachers’ frequent efforts to make
them fun. Instead they were jobs that needed doing, much like household chores. When it came to homework,
children regarded parents as the teachers’ assistants—people merely carrying out the wishes of the teacher. Like any
job, the job of doing homework varied in stressfulness; when required at an appropriate amount and level of
difficulty, and when children reported having good “bosses” (parents and teachers), the job of homework could
actually be satisfying in the way that many adults’ jobs can be satisfying when well-done.
Educational Psychology 234 A Global Text
10. Planning instruction
Planning for instruction as well as for learning
This chapter started with one premise but ended with another. It started with the idea that teachers need to
locate curriculum goals, usually from a state department of education or a publisher of a curriculum document. In
much of the chapter we described what these authorities provide for individual classroom teachers, and how their
documents can be clarified and rendered specific enough for classroom use. In the middle of the chapter, however,
the premise shifted. We began noting that instruction cannot be planned simply for students; teachers also need to
consider involving students themselves in influencing or even choosing their own goals and ways of reaching the
goals. Instructional planning, in other words, should not be just for students, but also by students, at least to some
extent. In the final parts of the chapter we described a number of ways of achieving a reasonable balance between
teachers’ and students’ influence on their learning. We suggested considering relatively strong measures, such as an
emergent or an anti-bias curriculum, but we also considered more moderate ones, like the use of the Internet, of
local experts and field trips, of service learning, and of guided and independent practice. All things considered,
then, teachers’ planning is not just about organizing teaching; it is also about facilitating learning. Its dual purpose
is evident in many features of public education, including the one we discuss in the next two chapters, the
assessment of learning.
Chapter summary
In the United States, broad educational goals for most subject areas are published by many national
professional associations and by all state departments of education. Usually the state departments of education also
publish curriculum framework or curriculum guides that offer somewhat more specific explanations of educational
goals, and how they might be taught.
Transforming the goals into specific learning objectives, however, remains a responsibility of the teacher. The
formulation can focus on curriculum topics that can analyzed into specific activities, or it can focus on specific
behaviors expected of students and assembled into general types of outcomes. Taxonomies of educational
objectives, such as the ones originated by Benjamin Bloom, are a useful tool with either approach to instructional
planning.
In addition to planning instruction on students’ behalf, many teachers organize instruction so that students
themselves can influence the choice of goals. One way to do so is through emergent curriculum; another way is
through multicultural and anti-bias curriculum.
Whatever planning strategies are used, learning is enhanced by using a wide variety of resources, including the
Internet, local experts, field trips, and service learning, among others. It is also enhanced if the teacher can build
bridges between curriculum goals and students’ experiences through judicious use of modeling, activation of prior
knowledge, anticipation of students’ preconceptions, and an appropriate blend of guided and independent practice.
Key termsAffective objectives
Anti-bias educationBloom’s taxonomy
Content integrationCurriculum framework
Curriculum guide
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Educational goalsEmergent curriculum
Equity pedagogyGuided practice
Independent practiceIndicators
Instructional planningLearning commons
Learning objectivesModeling as demonstration
Modeling as simplified representationMulticultural education
National standardsPsychomotor objectives
Scope and sequenceService learning
State standardsTaxonomy of educational objectives
On the Internet
These are two of many websites that explains what behavioral objectives are, and how to write them. They give
more detail than is possible in this chapter.
Anti-Defamation League of America, an organization dedicated to eliminating racial and ethnic bias throughout
society. This particular page explains the concept of anti-bias education, but it also has links to pages that contain
tips for teachers dealing with racial and ethnic bias.
documents written by every major state department of education and a number of national and professional
associations. It covers all of the major subjects commonly taught in public schools.
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11. Teacher-made assessment strategies
Kym teaches sixth grade students in an urban school where most of the families in the community
live below the poverty line. Each year the majority of the students in her school fail the state-wide
tests. Kym follows school district teaching guides and typically uses direct instruction in her
Language Arts and Social Studies classes. The classroom assessments are designed to mirror those
on the state-wide tests so the students become familiar with the assessment format. When Kym is in a
graduate summer course on motivation she reads an article called, “Teaching strategies that honor
and motivate inner-city African American students” (Teel, Debrin-Parecki, & Covington, 1998) and
she decides to change her instruction and assessment in fall in four ways. First, she stresses an
incremental approach to ability focusing on effort and allows students to revise their work several
times until the criteria are met. Second, she gives students choices in performance assessments (e.g.
oral presentation, art project, creative writing). Third, she encourages responsibility by asking
students to assist in classroom tasks such as setting up video equipment, handing out papers etc.
Fourth, she validates student’ cultural heritage by encouraging them to read biographies and
historical fiction from their own cultural backgrounds. Kym reports that the changes in her students’
effort and demeanor in class are dramatic: students are more enthusiastic, work harder, and
produce better products. At the end of the year twice as many of her students pass the State-wide test
than the previous year.
Afterward. Kym still teaches sixth grade in the same school district and continues to modify the
strategies described above. Even though the performance of the students she taught improved the
school was closed because, on average, the students’ performance was poor. Kym gained a Ph.D and
teaches Educational Psychology to preservice and inservice teachers in evening classes.
Kym’s story illustrates several themes related to assessment that we explore in this chapter on teacher-made
assessment strategies and in the Chapter 12 on standardized testing. First, choosing effective classroom
assessments is related to instructional practices, beliefs about motivation, and the presence of state-wide
standardized testing. Second, some teacher-made classroom assessments enhance student learning and motivation
—some do not. Third, teachers can improve their teaching through action research. This involves identifying a
problem (e.g. low motivation and achievement), learning about alternative approaches (e.g. reading the literature),
implementing the new approaches, observing the results (e.g. students’ effort and test results), and continuing to
modify the strategies based on their observations.
Best practices in assessing student learning have undergone dramatic changes in the last 20 years. When
Rosemary was a mathematics teacher in the 1970s, she did not assess students’ learning she tested them on the
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11. Teacher-made assessment strategies
mathematics knowledge and skills she taught during the previous weeks. The tests varied little format and students
always did them individually with pencil and paper. Many teachers, including mathematics teachers, now use a
wide variety of methods to determine what their students have learned and also use this assessment information to
modify their instruction. In this chapter the focus is on using classroom assessments to improve student learning
and we begin with some basic concepts.
Basic concepts
Assessment is an integrated process of gaining information about students’ learning and making value
judgments about their progress (Linn & Miller, 2005). Information about students’ progress can be obtained from
a variety of sources including projects, portfolios, performances, observations, and tests. The information about
students’ learning is often assigned specific numbers or grades and this involves measurement. Measurement
answers the question, “How much?” and is used most commonly when the teacher scores a test or product and
assigns numbers (e.g. 28 /30 on the biology test; 90/100 on the science project). Evaluation is the process of
making judgments about the assessment information (Airasian, 2005). These judgments may be about individual
students (e.g. should Jacob’s course grade take into account his significant improvement over the grading period?),
the assessment method used (e.g. is the multiple choice test a useful way to obtain information about problem
solving), or one’s own teaching (e.g. most of the students this year did much better on the essay assignment than
last year so my new teaching methods seem effective).
The primary focus in this chapter is on assessment for learning, where the priority is designing and using
assessment strategies to enhance student learning and development. Assessment for learning is often formative
assessment, i.e. it takes place during the course of instruction by providing information that teachers can use to
revise their teaching and students can use to improve their learning (Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall & Wiliam,
2004). Formative assessment includes both informal assessment involving spontaneous unsystematic
observations of students’ behaviors (e.g. during a question and answer session or while the students are working on
an assignment) and formal assessment involving pre-planned, systematic gathering of data. Assessment of
learning is formal assessment that involves assessing students in order to certify their competence and fulfill
accountability mandates and is the primary focus of the next chapter on standardized tests but is also considered in
this chapter. Assessment of learning is typically summative, that is, administered after the instruction is
completed (e.g. a final examination in an educational psychology course). Summative assessments provide
information about how well students mastered the material, whether students are ready for the next unit, and what
grades should be given (Airasian, 2005).
Assessment for learning: an overview of the process
Using assessment to advance students’ learning not just check on learning requires viewing assessment as a
process that is integral to the all phases of teaching including planning, classroom interactions and instruction,
communication with parents, and self-reflection (Stiggins, 2002). Essential steps in assessment for learning
include:
Step 1: Having clear instructional goals and communicating them to students
In the previous chapter we documented the importance of teachers thinking carefully about the purposes of each
lesson and unit. This may be hard for beginning teachers. For example, Vanessa, a middle school social studies
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teacher, might say that the goal of her next unit is: “Students will learn about the Cvil War.” Clearer goals require
that Vanessa decides what it is about the US Civil War she wants her students to learn, e.g. the dates and names of
battles, the causes of the US Civil War, the differing perspectives of those living in the North and the South, or the
day-to-day experiences of soldiers fighting in the war. Vanessa cannot devise appropriate assessments of her
students’ learning about the US Civil War until she is clear about her own purposes.
For effective teaching Vanessa also needs to communicate clearly the goals and objectives to her students so they
know what is important for them to learn. No matter how thorough a teacher’s planning has been, if students do
not know what they are supposed to learn they will not learn as much. Because communication is so important to
teachers a specific chapter is devoted to this topic (Chapter 8), and so communication is not considered in any
detail in this chapter.
Step 2: Selecting appropriate assessment techniques
Selecting and administrating assessment techniques that are appropriate for the goals of instruction as well as
the developmental level of the students are crucial components of effective assessment for learning. Teachers need
to know the characteristics of a wide variety of classroom assessment techniques and how these techniques can be
adapted for various content, skills, and student characteristics. They also should understand the role reliability,
validity, and the absence of bias should play is choosing and using assessment techniques. Much of this chapter
focuses on this information.
Step 3: Using assessment to enhance motivation and confidence
Students’ motivation and confidence is influenced by the type of assessment used as well as the feedback given
about the assessment results. Consider, Samantha a college student who takes a history class in which the
professor’s lectures and text book focus on really interesting major themes. However, the assessments are all
multiple choice tests that ask about facts and Samantha, who initially enjoys the classes and readings, becomes
angry, loses confidence she can do well, and begins to spend less time on the class material. In contrast, some
instructors have observed that that many students in educational psychology classes like the one you are now taking
will work harder on assessments that are case studies rather than more traditional exams or essays. The type of
feedback provided to students is also important and we elaborate on these ideas later in this chapter.
Step 4: Adjusting instruction based on information
An essential component of assessment for learning is that the teacher uses the information gained from
assessment to adjust instruction. These adjustments occur in the middle of a lesson when a teacher may decide that
students’ responses to questions indicate sufficient understanding to introduce a new topic, or that her observations
of students’ behavior indicates that they do not understand the assignment and so need further explanation.
Adjustments also occur when the teacher reflects on the instruction after the lesson is over and is planning for the
next day. We provide examples of adjusting instruction in this chapter and consider teacher reflection in more
detail in Appendix C..
Step 5: Communicating with parents and guardians
Students’ learning and development is enhanced when teachers communicate with parents regularly about their
children’s performance. Teachers communicate with parents in a variety of ways including newsletters, telephone
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11. Teacher-made assessment strategies
conversations, email, school district websites and parent-teachers conferences. Effective communication requires
that teachers can clearly explain the purpose and characteristics of the assessment as well as the meaning of
students’ performance. This requires a thorough knowledge of the types and purposes of teacher made and
standardized assessments (this chapter and Chapter 12) and well as clear communication skills (Chapter 8).
We now consider each step in the process of assessment for learning in more detail. In order to be able to select
and administer appropriate assessment techniques teachers need to know about the variety of techniques that can
be used as well as what factors ensure that the assessment techniques are high quality. We begin by considering
high quality assessments.
Selecting appropriate assessment techniques I: high quality assessments
For an assessment to be high quality it needs to have good validity and reliability as well as absence from bias.
Validity
Validity is the evaluation of the “adequacy and appropriateness of the interpretations and uses of assessment
results” for a given group of individuals (Linn & Miller, 2005, p. 68). For example, is it appropriate to conclude that
the results of a mathematics test on fractions given to recent immigrants accurately represents their understanding
of fractions? Is it appropriate for the teacher to conclude, based on her observations, that a kindergarten student,
Jasmine, has Attention Deficit Disorder because she does not follow the teachers oral instructions? Obviously in
each situation other interpretations are possible that the immigrant students have poor English skills rather than
mathematics skills, or that Jasmine may be hearing impaired.
It is important to understand that validity refers to the interpretation and uses made of the results of an
assessment procedure not of the assessment procedure itself. For example, making judgments about the results of
the same test on fractions may be valid if the students all understand English well. A teacher concluding from her
observations that the kindergarten student has Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) may be appropriate if the student
has been screened for hearing and other disorders (although the classification of a disorder like ADD cannot be
made by one teacher). Validity involves making an overall judgment of the degree to which the interpretations and
uses of the assessment results are justified. Validity is a matter of degree (e.g. high, moderate, or low validity)
rather than all-or none (e.g. totally valid vs invalid) (Linn & Miller, 2005).
Three sources of evidence are considered when assessing validity—content, construct and predictive. Content
validity evidence is associated with the question: How well does the assessment include the content or tasks it is
supposed to? For example, suppose your educational psychology instructor devises a mid-term test and tells you
this includes chapters one to seven in the text book. Obviously, all the items in test should be based on the content
from educational psychology, not your methods or cultural foundations classes. Also, the items in the test should
cover content from all seven chapters and not just chapters three to seven—unless the instructor tells you that these
chapters have priority.
Teachers’ have to be clear about their purposes and priorities for instruction before they can begin to gather
evidence related content validity. Content validation determines the degree that assessment tasks are relevant and
representative of the tasks judged by the teacher (or test developer) to represent their goals and objectives (Linn &
Miller, 2005). It is important for teachers to think about content validation when devising assessment tasks and
one way to help do this is to devise a Table of Specifications. An example, based on Pennsylvania’s State standards
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for grade 3 geography, is in . In the left hand column is the instructional content for a 20-item test the teacher has
decided to construct with two kinds of instructional objectives: identification and uses or locates. The second and
third columns identify the number of items for each content area and each instructional objective. Notice that the
teacher has decided that six items should be devoted to the sub area of geographic representations- more than any
other sub area. Devising a table of specifications helps teachers determine if some content areas or concepts are
over-sampled (i.e. there are too many items) and some concepts are under-sampled (i.e. there are too few items).
Table 35: Example of Table of Specifications: grade 3 basic geography literacy
Content Instructional objective
Identifies Uses or
locates
Total
number of
items
Per cent
of items
Identify geography tools and their uses
Geographic representations: e.g. maps,
globe, diagrams and photographs3 3 6 30%
Spatial information: sketch & thematic
maps 1 1 2 10%
Mental maps 1 1 2 10%
Identify and locate places and regions
Physical features (e.g. lakes, continents) 1 2 3 15%
Human features (countries, states, cities) 3 2 5 25%
Regions with unifying geographic
characteristics e.g. river basins1 1 2 10%
Number of items 10 10 20
Percentage of items 50% 50% 100%
Construct validity evidence is more complex than content validity evidence. Often we are interested in making
broader judgments about student’s performances than specific skills such as doing fractions. The focus may be on
constructs such as mathematical reasoning or reading comprehension. A construct is a characteristic of a person we
assume exists to help explain behavior. For example, we use the concept of test anxiety to explain why some
individuals when taking a test have difficulty concentrating, have physiological reactions such as sweating, and
perform poorly on tests but not in class assignments. Similarly mathematics reasoning and reading comprehension
are constructs as we use them to help explain performance on an assessment. Construct validation is the process of
determining the extent to which performance on an assessment can be interpreted in terms of the intended
constructs and is not influenced by factors irrelevant to the construct. For example, judgments about recent
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11. Teacher-made assessment strategies
immigrants’ performance on a mathematical reasoning test administered in English will have low construct validity
if the results are influenced by English language skills that are irrelevant to mathematical problem solving.
Similarly, construct validity of end-of-semester examinations is likely to be poor for those students who are highly
anxious when taking major tests but not during regular class periods or when doing assignments. Teachers can help
increase construct validity by trying to reduce factors that influence performance but are irrelevant to the construct
being assessed. These factors include anxiety, English language skills, and reading speed (Linn & Miller 2005).
A third form of validity evidence is called criterion-related validity. Selective colleges in the USA use the
ACT or SAT among other criteria to choose who will be admitted because these standardized tests help predict
freshman grades, i.e. have high criterion-related validity. Some K-12 schools give students math or reading tests in
the fall semester in order to predict which are likely to do well on the annual state tests administered in the spring
semester and which students are unlikely to pass the tests and will need additional assistance. If the tests
administered in fall do not predict students’ performances accurately then the additional assistance may be given to
the wrong students illustrating the importance of criterion-related validity.
Reliability
Reliability refers to the consistency of the measurement (Linn & Miller 2005). Suppose Mr Garcia is teaching a
unit on food chemistry in his tenth grade class and gives an assessment at the end of the unit using test items from
the teachers’ guide. Reliability is related to questions such as: How similar would the scores of the students be if
they had taken the assessment on a Friday or Monday? Would the scores have varied if Mr Garcia had selected
different test items, or if a different teacher had graded the test? An assessment provides information about
students by using a specific measure of performance at one particular time. Unless the results from the assessment
are reasonably consistent over different occasions, different raters, or different tasks (in the same content domain)
confidence in the results will be low and so cannot be useful in improving student learning.
Obviously we cannot expect perfect consistency. Students’ memory, attention, fatigue, effort, and anxiety
fluctuate and so influence performance. Even trained raters vary somewhat when grading assessment such as
essays, a science project, or an oral presentation. Also, the wording and design of specific items influence students’
performances. However, some assessments are more reliable than others and there are several strategies teachers
can use to increase reliability
First, assessments with more tasks or items typically have higher reliability. To understand this, consider two
tests one with five items and one with 50 items. Chance factors influence the shorter test more then the longer test.
If a student does not understand one of the items in the first test the total score is very highly influenced (it would
be reduced by 20 per cent). In contrast, if there was one item in the test with 50 items that were confusing, the total
score would be influenced much less (by only 2 percent). Obviously this does not mean that assessments should be
inordinately long, but, on average, enough tasks should be included to reduce the influence of chance variations.
Second, clear directions and tasks help increase reliability. If the directions or wording of specific tasks or items are
unclear, then students have to guess what they mean undermining the accuracy of their results. Third, clear scoring
criteria are crucial in ensuring high reliability (Linn & Miller, 2005). Later in this chapter we describe strategies for
developing scoring criteria for a variety of types of assessment.
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Absence of bias
Bias occurs in assessment when there are components in the assessment method or administration of the
assessment that distort the performance of the student because of their personal characteristics such as gender,
ethnicity, or social class (Popham, 2005). Two types of assessment bias are important: offensiveness and unfair
penalization. An assessment is most likely to be offensive to a subgroup of students when negative stereotypes are
included in the test. For example, the assessment in a health class could include items in which all the doctors were
men and all the nurses were women. Or, a series of questions in a social studies class could portray Latinos and
Asians as immigrants rather than native born Americans. In these examples, some female, Latino or Asian students
are likely to be offended by the stereotypes and this can distract them from performing well on the assessment.
Unfair penalization occurs when items disadvantage one group not because they may be offensive but because of
differential background experiences. For example, an item for math assessment that assumes knowledge of a
particular sport may disadvantage groups not as familiar with that sport (e.g. American football for recent
immigrants). Or an assessment on team work that asks students to model their concept of a team on a symphony
orchestra is likely to be easier for those students who have attended orchestra performances—probably students
from affluent families. Unfair penalization does not occur just because some students do poorly in class. For
example, asking questions about a specific sport in a physical education class when information on that sport had
been discussed in class is not unfair penalization as long as the questions do not require knowledge beyond that
taught in class that some groups are less likely to have.
It can be difficult for new teachers teaching in multi-ethnic classrooms to devise interesting assessments that do
not penalize any groups of students. Teachers need to think seriously about the impact of students’ differing
backgrounds on the assessment they use in class. Listening carefully to what students say is important as is learning
about the backgrounds of the students.
Selecting appropriate assessment techniques II: types of teacher-made assessments
One of the challenges for beginning teachers is to select and use appropriate assessment techniques. In this
section we summarize the wide variety of types of assessments that classroom teachers use. First we discuss the
informal techniques teachers use during instruction that typically require instantaneous decisions. Then we
consider formal assessment techniques that teachers plan before instruction and allow for reflective decisions.
Teachers’ observation, questioning, and record keeping
During teaching, teachers not only have to communicate the information they planned but also continuously
monitor students’ learning and motivation in order to determine whether modifications have to be made (Airasian,
2005). Beginning teachers find this more difficult than experienced teachers because of the complex cognitive skills
required to improvise and be responsive to students needs while simultaneously keeping in mind the goals and
plans of the lesson (Borko & Livingston, 1989). The informal assessment strategies teachers most often use during
instruction are observation and questioning.
Observation
Effective teachers observe their students from the time they enter the classroom. Some teachers greet their
students at the door not only to welcome them but also to observe their mood and motivation. Are Hannah and
Naomi still not talking to each other? Does Ethan have his materials with him? Gaining information on such
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11. Teacher-made assessment strategies
questions can help the teacher foster student learning more effectively (e.g. suggesting Ethan goes back to his locker
to get his materials before the bell rings or avoiding assigning Hannah and Naomi to the same group).
During instruction, teachers observe students’ behavior to gain information about students’ level of interest and
understanding of the material or activity. Observation includes looking at non-verbal behaviors as well as listening
to what the students are saying. For example, a teacher may observe that a number of students are looking out of
the window rather than watching the science demonstration, or a teacher may hear students making comments in
their group indicating they do not understand what they are supposed to be doing. Observations also help teachers
decide which student to call on next, whether to speed up or slow down the pace of the lesson, when more examples
are needed, whether to begin or end an activity, how well students are performing a physical activity, and if there
are potential behavior problems (Airasian, 2005). Many teachers find that moving around the classroom helps
them observe more effectively because they can see more students from a variety of perspectives. However, the fast
pace and complexity of most classrooms makes it difficult for teachers to gain as much information as they want.
Questioning
Teachers ask questions for many instructional reasons including keeping students’ attention on the lesson,
highlighting important points and ideas, promoting critical thinking, allowing students’ to learn from each others
answers, and providing information about students’ learning. Devising good appropriate questions and using
students’ responses to make effective instantaneous instructional decisions is very difficult. Some strategies to
improve questioning include planning and writing down the instructional questions that will be asked, allowing
sufficient wait time for students to respond, listening carefully to what students say rather than listening for what is
expected, varying the types of questions asked, making sure some of the questions are higher level, and asking
follow-up questions.
While the informal assessment based on spontaneous observation and questioning is essential for teaching there
are inherent problems with the validity, reliability and bias in this information (Airasian, 2005; Stiggins 2005). We
summarize these issues and some ways to reduce the problems in Table 35.
Table 36: Validity and reliability of observation and questioning
Problem Strategies to alleviate problem
Teachers lack of objectivity
about overall class
involvement and
understanding
Try to make sure you are not only seeing what you want to see. Teachers
typically want to feel good about their instruction so it is easy to look for positive
student interactions. Occasionally, teachers want to see negative student
reactions to confirm their beliefs about an individual student or class.
Tendency to focus on
process rather than learning
Remember to concentrate on student learning not just involvement. Most of
teachers’ observations focus on process—student attention, facial expressions
posture—rather than pupil learning. Students can be active and engaged but not
developing new skills.
Limited information and
selective sampling
Make sure you observe a variety of students—not just those who are typically
very good or very bad.
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Walk around the room to observe more students “up close” and view the room
from multiple perspectives.
Call on a wide variety of students—not just those with their hands up, or those
who are skilled as the subject, or those who sit in a particular place in the room.
Keep records
Fast pace of classrooms
inhibits corroborative
evidence
If you want to know if you are missing important information ask a peer to visit
your classroom and observe the students’ behaviors. Classrooms are complex and
fast paced and one teacher cannot see much of what is going on while trying to
also teach.
Cultural and individual
differences in the meaning of
verbal and non verbal
behaviors
Be cautious in the conclusions that you draw from your observations and
questions. Remember that the meaning and expectations of certain types of
questions, wait time, social distance, and role of “small talk” varies across
cultures (Chapter 4). Some students are quiet because of their personalities not
because they are uninvolved, nor keeping up with the lesson, nor depressed or
tired.
Record keeping
Keeping records of observations improves reliability and can be used to enhance understanding of one student, a
group, or the whole class' interactions. Sometimes this requires help from other teachers. For example, Alexis, a
beginning science teacher is aware of the research documenting that longer wait time enhances students’ learning
(e.g. Rowe, 2003) but is unsure of her behaviors so she asks a colleague to observe and record her wait times
during one class period. Alexis learns her wait times are very short for all students so she starts practicing silently
counting to five whenever she asks students a question.
Teachers can keep anecdotal records about students without help from peers. These records contain
descriptions of incidents of a student’s behavior, the time and place the incident takes place, and a tentative
interpretation of the incident. For example, the description of the incident might involve Joseph, a second grade
student, who fell asleep during the mathematics class on a Monday morning. A tentative interpretation could be the
student did not get enough sleep over the weekend, but alternative explanations could be the student is sick or is on
medications that make him drowsy. Obviously additional information is needed and the teacher could ask Joseph
why he is so sleepy and also observe him to see if he looks tired and sleepy over the next couple of weeks.
Anecdotal records often provide important information and are better than relying on one’s memory but they
take time to maintain and it is difficult for teachers to be objective. For example, after seeing Joseph fall asleep the
teacher may now look for any signs of Joseph’s sleepiness—ignoring the days he is not sleepy. Also, it is hard for
teachers to sample a wide enough range of data for their observations to be highly reliable.
Teachers also conduct more formal observations especially for students with special needs who have IEP’s. An
example of the importance of informal and formal observations in a preschool follows:
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11. Teacher-made assessment strategies
The class of preschoolers in a suburban neighborhood of a large city has eight special needs students
and four students—the peer models—who have been selected because of their well developed
language and social skills. Some of the special needs students have been diagnosed with delayed
language, some with behavior disorders, and several with autism. The students are sitting on the
mat with the teacher who has a box with sets of three “cool” things of varying size (e.g. toy pandas)
and the students are asked to put the things in order by size, big, medium and small. Students who
are able are also requested to point to each item in turn and say “This is the big one”, “This is the
medium one” and “This is the little one”. For some students, only two choices (big and little) are
offered because that is appropriate for their developmental level. The teacher informally observes
that one of the boys is having trouble keeping his legs still so she quietly asks the aid for a weighted
pad that she places on the boy’s legs to help him keep them still. The activity continues and the aide
carefully observes students behaviors and records on IEP progress cards whether a child meets
specific objectives such as: “When given two picture or object choices, Mark will point to the
appropriate object in 80 per cent of the opportunities.” The teacher and aides keep records of the
relevant behavior of the special needs students during the half day they are in preschool. The daily
records are summarized weekly. If there are not enough observations that have been recorded for a
specific objective, the teacher and aide focus their observations more on that child, and if necessary,
try to create specific situations that relate to that objective. At end of each month the teacher
calculates whether the special needs children are meeting their IEP objectives.
Selected response items
Common formal assessment formats used by teachers are multiple choice, matching, and true/false items. In
selected response items students have to select a response provided by the teacher or test developer rather than
constructing a response in their own words or actions. Selected response items do not require that students recall
the information but rather recognize the correct answer. Tests with these items are called objective because the
results are not influenced by scorers’ judgments or interpretations and so are often machine scored. Eliminating
potential errors in scoring increases the reliability of tests but teachers who only use objective tests are liable to
reduce the validity of their assessment because objective tests are not appropriate for all learning goals (Linn &
Miller, 2005). Effective assessment for learning as well as assessment of learning must be based on aligning the
assessment technique to the learning goals and outcomes.
For example, if the goal is for students to conduct an experiment then they should be asked to do that rather that
than being asked about conducting an experiment.
Common problems
Selected response items are easy to score but are hard to devise. Teachers often do not spend enough time
constructing items and common problems include:
1. Unclear wording in the items
• True or False: Although George Washington was born into a wealthy family, his father died when he
was only 11, he worked as a youth as a surveyor of rural lands, and later stood on the balcony of Federal
Hall in New York when he took his oath of office in 1789.
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2. Cues that are not related the content being examined.
• A common clue is that all the true statements on a true/false test or the corrective alternatives on a
multiple choice test are longer than the untrue statements or the incorrect alternatives.
3. Using negatives (or double negatives) the items.
• A poor item. “True or False: None of the steps made by the student was unnecessary.”
• A better item. True or False: “All of the steps were necessary.”
Students often do not notice the negative terms or find them confusing so avoiding them is generally
recommended (Linn & Miller 2005). However, since standardized tests often use negative items, teachers
sometimes deliberately include some negative items to give students practice in responding to that format.
4. Taking sentences directly from textbook or lecture notes.
Removing the words from their context often makes them ambiguous or can change the meaning. For
example, a statement from Chapter 3 taken out of context suggests all children are clumsy. “Similarly with
jumping, throwing and catching: the large majority of children can do these things, though often a bit
clumsily.” A fuller quotation makes it clearer that this sentence refers to 5-year-olds: For some fives, running
still looks a bit like a hurried walk, but usually it becomes more coordinated within a year or two. Similarly
with jumping, throwing and catching: the large majority of children can do these things, though often a bit
clumsily, by the time they start school, and most improve their skills noticeably during the early elementary
years.” If the abbreviated form was used as the stem in a true/false item it would obviously be misleading.
5. Avoid trivial questions
e.g. Jean Piaget was born in what year?
a) 1896
b) 1900
c) 1880
d) 1903
While it important to know approximately when Piaget made his seminal contributions to the understanding of
child development, the exact year of his birth (1880) is not important.
Strengths and weaknesses
All types of selected response items have a number of strengths and weaknesses. True/False items are
appropriate for measuring factual knowledge such as vocabulary, formulae, dates, proper names, and technical
terms. They are very efficient as they use a simple structure that students can easily understand, and take little time
to complete. They are also easier to construct than multiple choice and matching items. However, students have a
50 per cent probability of getting the answer correct through guessing so it can be difficult to interpret how much
students know from their test scores. Examples of common problems that arise when devising true/false items are
in Table 37.
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11. Teacher-made assessment strategies
Table 37: Common errors in selected response items
Type of item Common errors Example
True False The statement is not
absolutely true—typically
because it contains a
broad generalization.
T F The President of the United States is elected to that
office.
This is usually true but the US Vice President can succeed the
President.
The item is opinion
not fact .
T F Education for K-12 students is improved though policies
that support charter schools.
Some people believe this, some do not.
Two ideas are
included in item
T F George H Bush the 40th president of the US was defeated
by William Jefferson Clinton in 1992.
The 1st idea is false; the 2nd is true making it difficult for
students to decide whether to circle T or F.
Irrelevant cues T F The President of the United States is usually elected to
that office.
True items contain the words such as usually generally;
whereas false items contain the terms such as always, all, never.
Matching Columns do not
contain homogeneous
information
Directions: On the line to the US Civil War Battle write the
year or confederate general in Column B.
Column A Column B
Ft Sumter General Stonewall Jackson
2nd Battle of Bull Run General Johnson
Ft Henry 1861
1862
Column B is a mixture of generals and dates.
Too many items in
each list
Lists should be relatively short (4 – 7) in each column. More
than 10 are too confusing.
Responses are not in
logical order
In the example with Spanish and English words should be in
a logical order (they are alphabetical). If the order is not logical,
student spend too much time searching for the correct answer.
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Multiple Choice Problem (i.e. the
stem) is not clearly stated
problem
New Zealand
a) Is the worlds’ smallest continent
b) Is home to the kangaroo
c) Was settled mainly by colonists from Great Britain
d) Is a dictatorship
This is really a series of true-false items. Because the correct
answer is c) a better version with the problem in the stem is
Much of New Zealand was settled by colonists from
a) Great Britain
b) Spain
c) France
d) Holland
Some of the
alternatives are not
plausible
Who is best known for their work on the development of the
morality of justice.
1. Gerald Ford
2. Vygotsky
3. Maslow
4. Kohlberg
Obviously Gerald Ford is not a plausible alternative.
Irrelevant cues 1. Correct alternative is longer
2. Incorrect alternatives are not grammatically correct
with the stem
3. Too many correct alternatives are in position “b” or
“c” making it easier for students to guess. All the options
(e.g. a, b, c, d) should be used in approximately equal
frequently (not exact as that also provides clues).
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11. Teacher-made assessment strategies
Use of “All of above” 1. If all of the “above is used” then the other items must
be correct. This means that a student may read the 1st
response, mark it correct and move on. Alternatively, a
student may read the 1st two items and seeing they are
true does nor need to read the other alternatives to know
to circle “all of the above”. The teacher probably does
not want either of these options.
In matching items, two parallel columns containing terms, phrases, symbols, or numbers are presented and the
student is asked to match the items in the first column with those in the second column. Typically there are more
items in the second column to make the task more difficult and to ensure that if a student makes one error they do
not have to make another. Matching items most often are used to measure lower level knowledge such as persons
and their achievements, dates and historical events, terms and definitions, symbols and concepts, plants or animals
and classifications (Linn & Miller, 2005). An example with Spanish language words and their English equivalents is
below:
Directions: On the line to the left of the Spanish word in Column A, write the letter of the English word in
Column B that has the same meaning.
Column A Column B
___ 1. Casa A. Aunt
___ 2. Bebé B. Baby
___ 3. Gata C. Brother
___ 4. Perro D. Cat
___ 5. Hermano E. Dog
F. Father
G. House
While matching items may seem easy to devise it is hard to create homogenous lists. Other problems with
matching items and suggested remedies are in Table 37.
Multiple Choice items are the most commonly used type of objective test items because they have a number of
advantages over other objective test items. Most importantly they can be adapted to assess higher levels thinking
such as application as well as lower level factual knowledge. The first example below assesses knowledge of a
specific fact whereas the second example assesses application of knowledge.
Who is best known for their work on the development of the morality of justice?
a) Erikson
b) Vygotsky
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c) Maslow
d) Kohlberg
Which one of the following best illustrates the law of diminishing returns
a) A factory doubled its labor force and increased production by 50 per cent
b) The demand for an electronic product increased faster than the supply of the product
c) The population of a country increased faster than agricultural self sufficiency
d) A machine decreased in efficacy as its parts became worn out
(Adapted from Linn and Miller 2005, p, 193).
There are several other advantages of multiple choice items. Students have to recognize the correct answer not
just know the incorrect answer as they do in true/false items. Also, the opportunity for guessing is reduced because
four or five alternatives are usually provided whereas in true/false items students only have to choose between two
choices. Also, multiple choice items do not need homogeneous material as matching items do.
However, creating good multiple choice test items is difficult and students (maybe including you) often become
frustrated when taking a test with poor multiple choice items. Three steps have to be considered when constructing
a multiple choice item: formulating a clearly stated problem, identifying plausible alternatives, and removing
irrelevant clues to the answer. Common problems in each of these steps are summarized in Table 38
Constructed response items
Formal assessment also includes constructed response items in which students are asked to recall information
and create an answer—not just recognize if the answer is correct—so guessing is reduced. Constructed response
items can be used to assess a wide variety of kinds of knowledge and two major kinds are discussed: completion or
short answer (also called short response) and extended response.
Completion and short answer
Completion and short answer items can be answered in a word, phrase, number, or symbol. These types of items
are essentially the same only varying in whether the problem is presented as a statement or a question (Linn &
Miller 2005). For example:
Completion: The first traffic light in the US was invented by…………….
Short Answer: Who invented the first traffic light in the US?
These items are often used in mathematics tests, e.g.
3 + 10 = …………..?
If x = 6, what does x(x-1) =……….
Draw the line of symmetry on the following shape
A major advantage of these items is they that they are easy to construct. However, apart from their use in
mathematics they are unsuitable for measuring complex learning outcomes and are often difficult to score.
Completion and short answer tests are sometimes called objective tests as the intent is that there is only one correct
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11. Teacher-made assessment strategies
answer and so there is no variability in scoring but unless the question is phrased very carefully, there are
frequently a variety of correct answers. For example, consider the item
Where was President Lincoln born?………………..
The teacher may expect the answer “in a log cabin” but other correct answers are also “on Sinking Spring Farm”,
“in Hardin County” or “in Kentucky”. Common errors in these items are summarized in Table 38.
Table 38: Common errors in constructed response items
Type of item Common errors Example
Completion
and short answer
There is more than one
possible answer.
e.g. Where was US President Lincoln born? The answer could
be in a log cabin, in Kentucky etc.
Too many blanks are in
the completion item so it is
too difficult or doesn’t
make sense.
e.g. In ….. theory, the first stage, ….. . is when infants process
through their ……. and ….. ………
Clues are given by
length of blanks in
completion items.
e.g. Three states are contiguous to New Hampshire: . ….is to
the West, ……is to the East and ………..…. is to the South.
Extended
Response
Ambiguous questions e.g. Was the US Civil War avoidable?
Students could interpret this question in a wide variety of
ways, perhaps even stating “yes” or “no”. One student may
discuss only political causes another moral, political and
economic causes. There is no guidance in the question for
students.
Poor reliability in
grading
The teacher does not use a scoring rubric and so is
inconsistent in how he scores answers especially unexpected
responses, irrelevant information, and grammatical errors.
Perception of student
influences grading
By spring semester the teacher has developed expectations of
each student’s performance and this influences the grading
(numbers can be used instead of names).
The test consists of three constructed responses and the
teacher grades the three answers on each students’ paper before
moving to the next paper. This means that the grading of
questions 2 and 3 are influenced by the answers to question 1
(teachers should grade all the 1st question then the 2nd etc).
Choices are given on Testing experts recommend not giving choices in tests
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the test and some answers
are easier than others.
because then students are not really taking the same test creating
equity problems.
Extended response
Extended response items are used in many content areas and answers may vary in length from a paragraph to
several pages. Questions that require longer responses are often called essay questions. Extended response items
have several advantages and the most important is their adaptability for measuring complex learning outcomes—
particularly integration and application. These items also require that students write and therefore provide teachers
a way to assess writing skills. A commonly cited advantage to these items is their ease in construction; however,
carefully worded items that are related to learning outcomes and assess complex learning are hard to devise (Linn &
Miller, 2005). Well-constructed items phrase the question so the task of the student is clear. Often this involves
providing hints or planning notes. In the first example below the actual question is clear not only because of the
wording but because of the format (i.e. it is placed in a box). In the second and third examples planning notes are
provided:
Example 1: Third grade mathematics:
The owner of a bookstore gave 14 books to the school. The principal will give an equal number of books to each
of three classrooms and the remaining books to the school library. How many books could the principal give to each
student and the school?
Show all your work on the space below and on the next page. Explain in words how you found the answer. Tell
why you took the steps you did to solve the problem.
From Illinois Standards Achievement Test, 2006; (http://www.isbe.state.il.us/assessment/isat.htm)
Example 2: Fifth grade science: The grass is always greener
Jose and Maria noticed three different types of soil, black soil, sand, and clay, were found in their neighborhood.
They decided to investigate the question, “How does the type of soil (black soil, sand, and clay) under grass sod
affect the height of grass?”
Plan an investigation that could answer their new question.
In your plan, be sure to include:
• Prediction of the outcome of the investigation
• Materials needed to do the investigation
• Procedure that includes:
• logical steps to do the investigation
• one variable kept the same (controlled)
• one variable changed (manipulated)
• any variables being measure and recorded
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11. Teacher-made assessment strategies
• how often measurements are taken and recorded
(From Washington State 2004 assessment of student learning )
http://www.k12.wa.us/assessment/WASL/default.aspx)
Example 3: Grades 9-11 English:
Writing prompt
Some people think that schools should teach students how to cook. Other people think that cooking is something
that ought to be taught in the home. What do you think? Explain why you think as you do.
Planning notes
Choose One:
□ I think schools should teach students how to cook
□ I think cooking should l be taught in the home
I think cooking should be taught in ……………………………..because………
(school) or (the home)
(From Illinois Measure of Annual Growth in English http://www.isbe.state.il.us/assessment/image.htm )
A major disadvantage of extended response items is the difficulty in reliable scoring. Not only do various
teachers score the same response differently but also the same teacher may score the identical response differently
on various occasions (Linn & Miller 2005). A variety of steps can be taken to improve the reliability and validity of
scoring. First, teachers should begin by writing an outline of a model answer. This helps make it clear what students
are expected to include. Second, a sample of the answers should be read. This assists in determining what the
students can do and if there are any common misconceptions arising from the question. Third, teachers have to
decide what to do about irrelevant information that is included (e.g. is it ignored or are students penalized) and how
to evaluate mechanical errors such as grammar and spelling. Then, a point scoring or a scoring rubric should be
used.
In point scoring components of the answer are assigned points. For example, if students were asked:
What are the nature, symptoms, and risk factors of hyperthermia?
Point Scoring Guide:
Definition (natures) 2 pts
Symptoms (1 pt for each) 5 pts
Risk Factors (1 point for each) 5 pts
Writing 3 pts
This provides some guidance for evaluation and helps consistency but point scoring systems often lead the
teacher to focus on facts (e.g. naming risk factors) rather than higher level thinking that may undermine the validity
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of the assessment if the teachers’ purposes include higher level thinking. A better approach is to use a scoring rubric
that describes the quality of the answer or performance at each level.
Scoring rubrics
Scoring rubrics can be holistic or analytical. In holistic scoring rubrics, general descriptions of performance are
made and a single overall score is obtained. An example from grade 2 language arts in Los Angeles Unified School
District classifies responses into four levels: not proficient, partially proficient, proficient and advanced is on Table
39.
Table 39: Example of holistic scoring rubric: English language arts grade 2
Assignment. Write about an interesting, fun, or exciting story you have read in class this year. Some of the
things you could write about are:
What happened in the story (the plot or events)
Where the events took place (the setting)
People, animals, or things in the story ( the characters)
In your writing make sure you use facts and details from the story to describe everything clearly.
After you write about the story, explain what makes the story interesting, fun or exciting.
Scoring rubric
Advanced
Score 4
The response demonstrates well-developed reading comprehension skills.
Major story elements (plot, setting, or characters) are clearly and accurately described.
Statements about the plot, setting, or characters are arranged in a manner that makes
sense.
Ideas or judgments (why the story is interesting, fun, or exciting) are clearly supported
or explained with facts and details from the story.
Proficient
Score 3
The response demonstrates solid reading comprehension skills.
Most statements about the plot, setting, or characters are clearly described.
Most statements about the plot, setting, or characters are arranged in a manner that
makes sense.
Ideas or judgments are supported with facts and details from the story.
Partially
Proficient
The response demonstrates some reading comprehension skills
Educational Psychology 258 A Global Text
11. Teacher-made assessment strategies
Score 1
There is an attempt to describe the plot, setting, or characters
Some statements about the plot, setting, or characters are arranged in a manner that
makes sense.
Ideas or judgments may be supported with some facts and details from the story.
Not Proficient
Score 1
The response demonstrates little or no skill in reading comprehension.
The plot, setting, or characters are not described, or the description is unclear.
Statements about the plot, setting, or characters are not arranged in a manner that
makes sense.
Ideas or judgments are not stated, and facts and details from the text are not used.
Source: Adapted from English Language Arts Grade 2 Los Angeles Unified School District, 2001
(http://www.cse.ucla.edu/resources/justforteachers_set.htm)
Analytical rubrics provide descriptions of levels of student performance on a variety of characteristics. For
example, six characteristics used for assessing writing developed by the Northwest Regional Education Laboratory
(NWREL) are:
• ideas and content
• organization
• voice
• word choice
• sentence fluency
• conventions
Descriptions of high, medium, and low responses for each characteristic are available from:
http://www.nwrel.org/assessment/toolkit98/traits/index.html).
Holistic rubrics have the advantages that they can be developed more quickly than analytical rubrics. They are
also faster to use as there is only one dimension to examine. However, they do not provide students feedback about
which aspects of the response are strong and which aspects need improvement (Linn & Miller, 2005). This means
they are less useful for assessment for learning. An important use of rubrics is to use them as teaching tools and
provide them to students before the assessment so they know what knowledge and skills are expected.
Teachers can use scoring rubrics as part of instruction by giving students the rubric during instruction,
providing several responses, and analyzing these responses in terms of the rubric. For example, use of accurate
terminology is one dimension of the science rubric in Table 40. An elementary science teacher could discuss why it
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is important for scientists to use accurate terminology, give examples of inaccurate and accurate terminology,
provide that component of the scoring rubric to students, distribute some examples of student responses (maybe
from former students), and then discuss how these responses would be classified according to the rubric. This
strategy of assessment for learning should be more effective if the teacher (a) emphasizes to students why using
accurate terminology is important when learning science rather than how to get a good grade on the test (we
provide more details about this in the section on motivation later in this chapter); (b) provides an exemplary
response so students can see a model; and (c) emphasizes that the goal is student improvement on this skill not
ranking students.
Table 40: Example of a scoring rubric, Science
*On the High School Assessment, the application of a concept to a practical problem or real-world situation
will be scored when it is required in the response and requested in the item stem.
Level of
understanding
Use of accurate
scientific
terminology
Use of
supporting
details
Synthesis of
information
Application
of information*
4 There is evidence in
the response that the
student has a full and
complete
understanding.
The use of accurate
scientific terminology
enhances the response.
Pertinent
and complete
supporting
details
demonstrate
an integration
of ideas.
The response
reflects a
complete
synthesis of
information.
An effective
application of the
concept to a
practical problem
or real-world
situation reveals
an insight into
scientific
principles.
3 There is evidence in
the response that the
student has a good
understanding.
The use of accurate
scientific terminology
strengthens the
response.
The
supporting
details are
generally
complete.
The response
reflects some
synthesis of
information.
The concept
has been applied
to a practical
problem or real-
world situation.
2 There is evidence in
the response that the
student has a basic
understanding.
The use of accurate
scientific terminology
may be present in the
response.
The
supporting
details are
adequate.
The response
provides little or
no synthesis of
information.
The application
of the concept to a
practical problem
or real-world
situation is
inadequate.
1 There is evidence in
the response that the
student has some
The use of accurate
scientific terminology is
not present in the
The
supporting
details are only
The response
addresses the
question.
The
application, if
attempted, is
Educational Psychology 260 A Global Text
11. Teacher-made assessment strategies
understanding. response. minimally
effective.
irrelevant.
0 The student has NO UNDERSTANDING of the question or problem. The response is completely
incorrect or irrelevant.
Performance assessments
Typically in performance assessments students complete a specific task while teachers observe the process or
procedure (e.g. data collection in an experiment) as well as the product (e.g. completed report) (Popham, 2005;
Stiggens, 2005). The tasks that students complete in performance assessments are not simple—in contrast to
selected response items—and include the following:
• playing a musical instrument
• athletic skills
• artistic creation
• conversing in a foreign language
• engaging in a debate about political issues
• conducting an experiment in science
• repairing a machine
• writing a term paper
• using interaction skills to play together
These examples all involve complex skills but illustrate that the term performance assessment is used in a
variety of ways. For example, the teacher may not observe all of the process (e.g. she sees a draft paper but the final
product is written during out-of-school hours) and essay tests are typically classified as performance assessments
(Airasian, 2000). In addition, in some performance assessments there may be no clear product (e.g. the
performance may be group interaction skills).
Two related terms, alternative assessment and authentic assessment are sometimes used instead of
performance assessment but they have different meanings (Linn & Miller, 2005). Alternative assessment refers to
tasks that are not pencil-and-paper and while many performance assessments are not pencil-and paper tasks some
are (e.g. writing a term paper, essay tests). Authentic assessment is used to describe tasks that students do that are
similar to those in the “real world”. Classroom tasks vary in level of authenticity (Popham, 2005). For example, a
Japanese language class taught in a high school in Chicago conversing in Japanese in Tokyo is highly authentic—
but only possible in a study abroad program or trip to Japan. Conversing in Japanese with native Japanese speakers
in Chicago is also highly authentic, and conversing with the teacher in Japanese during class is moderately
authentic. Much less authentic is a matching test on English and Japanese words. In a language arts class, writing a
letter (to an editor) or a memo to the principal is highly authentic as letters and memos are common work products.
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However, writing a five-paragraph paper is not as authentic as such papers are not used in the world of work.
However, a five paragraph paper is a complex task and would typically be classified as a performance assessment.
Advantages and disadvantages
There are several advantages of performance assessments (Linn & Miller 2005). First, the focus is on complex
learning outcomes that often cannot be measured by other methods. Second, performance assessments typically
assess process or procedure as well as the product. For example, the teacher can observe if the students are
repairing the machine using the appropriate tools and procedures as well as whether the machine functions
properly after the repairs. Third, well designed performance assessments communicate the instructional goals and
meaningful learning clearly to students. For example, if the topic in a fifth grade art class is one-point perspective
the performance assessment could be drawing a city scene that illustrates one point perspective.
(http://www.sanford-artedventures.com). This assessment is meaningful and clearly communicates the learning
goal. This performance assessment is a good instructional activity and has good content validity—common with
well designed performance assessments (Linn & Miller 2005).
One major disadvantage with performance assessments is that they are typically very time consuming for
students and teachers. This means that fewer assessments can be gathered so if they are not carefully devised fewer
learning goals will be assessed—which can reduce content validity. State curriculum guidelines can be helpful in
determining what should be included in a performance assessment. For example, Eric, a dance teacher in a high
school in Tennessee learns that the state standards indicate that dance students at the highest level should be able
to do demonstrate consistency and clarity in performing technical skills by:
• performing complex movement combinations to music in a variety of meters and styles
• performing combinations and variations in a broad dynamic range
• demonstrating improvement in performing movement combinations through self-evaluation
• critiquing a live or taped dance production based on given criteria
(http://www.tennessee.gov/education/ci/standards/music/dance912.shtml)
Eric devises the following performance task for his eleventh grade modern dance class.
In groups of 4-6 students will perform a dance at least 5 minutes in length. The dance selected should
be multifaceted so that all the dancers can demonstrate technical skills, complex movements, and a
dynamic range (Items 1-2). Students will videotape their rehearsals and document how they
improved through self evaluation (Item 3). Each group will view and critique the final performance
of one other group in class (Item 4). Eric would need to scaffold most steps in this performance
assessment. The groups probably would need guidance in selecting a dance that allowed all the
dancers to demonstrate the appropriate skills; critiquing their own performances constructively;
working effectively as a team, and applying criteria to evaluate a dance.
Another disadvantage of performance assessments is they are hard to assess reliably which can lead to
inaccuracy and unfair evaluation. As with any constructed response assessment, scoring rubrics are very important.
Educational Psychology 262 A Global Text
11. Teacher-made assessment strategies
An example of holistic and analytic scoring rubrics designed to assess a completed product are in Table 39 and
Table 40. A rubric designed to assess the process of group interactions is in Table 41.
Table 41: Example of group interaction rubric
Score Time
management
Participation and
performance in roles
Shared involvement
0 Group did not stay
on task and so task was
not completed.
Group did not assign or
share roles.
Single individual did the task.
1 Group was off-task
the majority of the time
but task was completed.
Groups assigned roles
but members did not use
these roles.
Group totally disregarded comments and
ideas from some members.
2 Group stayed on task
most of the time.
Groups accepted and
used some but not all roles.
Group accepted some ideas but did not
give others adequate consideration.
3 Group stayed on task
throughout the activity
and managed time well.
Group accepted and used
roles and actively
participated.
Groups gave equal consideration to all
ideas.
4 Group defined their
own approach in a way
that more effectively
managed the activity.
Group defined and used
roles not mentioned to
them. Role changes took
place that maximized
individuals’ expertise.
Groups made specific efforts to involve
all group members including the reticent
members.
Source: Adapted from Group Interaction ( GI) SETUP ( 2003). Issues, Evidence and You. Ronkonkomo, NY
Lab-Aids. (http://cse.edc.org/products/assessment/middleschool/scorerub.asp))
This rubric was devised for middle grade science but could be used in other subject areas when assessing group
process. In some performance assessments several scoring rubrics should be used. In the dance performance
example above Eric should have scoring rubrics for the performance skills, the improvement based on self
evaluation, the team work, and the critique of the other group. Obviously, devising a good performance assessment
is complex and Linn and Miller (2005) recommend that teachers should:
• Create performance assessments that require students to use complex cognitive skills. Sometimes teachers
devise assessments that are interesting and that the students enjoy but do not require students to use
higher level cognitive skills that lead to significant learning. Focusing on high level skills and learning
outcomes is particularly important because performance assessments are typically so time consuming.
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• Ensure that the task is clear to the students. Performance assessments typically require multiple steps so
students need to have the necessary prerequisite skills and knowledge as well as clear directions. Careful
scaffolding is important for successful performance assessments.
• Specify expectations of the performance clearly by providing students scoring rubrics during the
instruction. This not only helps students understand what it expected but it also guarantees that teachers
are clear about what they expect. Thinking this through while planning the performance assessment can be
difficult for teachers but is crucial as it typically leads to revisions of the actual assessment and directions
provided to students.
• Reduce the importance of unessential skills in completing the task. What skills are essential depends on the
purpose of the task. For example, for a science report, is the use of publishing software essential? If the
purpose of the assessment is for students to demonstrate the process of the scientific method including
writing a report, then the format of the report may not be significant. However, if the purpose includes
integrating two subject areas, science and technology, then the use of publishing software is important.
Because performance assessments take time it is tempting to include multiple skills without carefully
considering if all the skills are essential to the learning goals.
Portfolios
“A portfolio is a meaningful collection of student work that tells the story of student achievement or growth”
(Arter, Spandel, & Culham, 1995, p. 2). Portfolios are a purposeful collection of student work not just folders of all
the work a student does. Portfolios are used for a variety of purposes and developing a portfolio system can be
confusing and stressful unless the teachers are clear on their purpose. The varied purposes can be illustrated as four
dimensions (Linn & Miller 2005):
Assessment for Learning Assessment of learning
Current Accomplishments Progress
Best Work Showcase Documentation
Finished Working
When the primary purpose is assessment for learning, the emphasis is on student self-reflection and
responsibility for learning. Students not only select samples of their work they wish to include, but also reflect and
interpret their own work. Portfolios containing this information can be used to aid communication as students can
present and explain their work to their teachers and parents (Stiggins, 2005). Portfolios focusing on assessment of
learning contain students’ work samples that certify accomplishments for a classroom grade, graduation, state
requirements etc. Typically, students have less choice in the work contained in such portfolios as some consistency
Educational Psychology 264 A Global Text
11. Teacher-made assessment strategies
is needed for this type of assessment. For example, the writing portfolios that fourth and seventh graders are
required to submit in Kentucky must contain a self-reflective statement and an example of three pieces of writing
(reflective, personal experience or literary, and transactive). Students do choose which of their pieces of writing in
each type to include in the portfolio.
(http://www.kde.state.ky.us/KDE/Instructional+Resources/Curriculum+Documents+and+Resources/Student
+Performance+Standards/).
Portfolios can be designed to focus on student progress or current accomplishments. For example, audio tapes
of English language learners speaking could be collected over one year to demonstrate growth in learning. Student
progress portfolios may also contain multiple versions of a single piece of work. For example, a writing project may
contain notes on the original idea, outline, first draft, comments on the first draft by peers or teacher, second draft,
and the final finished product (Linn & Miller 2005). If the focus is on current accomplishments, only recent
completed work samples are included.
Portfolios can focus on documenting student activities or highlighting important accomplishments.
Documentation portfolios are inclusive containing all the work samples rather than focusing on one special
strength, best work, or progress. In contrast, showcase portfolios focus on best work. The best work is typically
identified by students. One aim of such portfolios is that students learn how to identify products that demonstrate
what they know and can do. Students are not expected to identify their best work in isolation but also use the
feedback from their teachers and peers.
A final distinction can be made between a finished portfolio—maybe used to for a job application—versus a
working portfolio that typically includes day-to-day work samples. Working portfolios evolve over time and are not
intended to be used for assessment of learning. The focus in a working portfolio is on developing ideas and skills so
students should be allowed to make mistakes, freely comment on their own work, and respond to teacher feedback
(Linn & Miller, 2005). Finished portfolios are designed for use with a particular audience and the products selected
may be drawn from a working portfolio. For example, in a teacher education program, the working portfolio may
contain work samples from all the courses taken. A student may develop one finished portfolio to demonstrate she
has mastered the required competencies in the teacher education program and a second finished portfolio for her
job application.
Advantages and disadvantages
Portfolios used well in classrooms have several advantages. They provide a way of documenting and evaluating
growth in a much more nuanced way than selected response tests can. Also, portfolios can be integrated easily into
instruction, i.e. used for assessment for learning. Portfolios also encourage student self-evaluation and reflection, as
well as ownership for learning (Popham, 2005). Using classroom assessment to promote student motivation is an
important component of assessment for learning which is considered in the next section.
However, there are some major disadvantages of portfolio use. First, good portfolio assessment takes an
enormous amount of teacher time and organization. The time is needed to help students understand the purpose
and structure of the portfolio, decide which work samples to collect, and to self reflect. Some of this time needs to
be conducted in one-to-one conferences. Reviewing and evaluating the portfolios out of class time is also
enormously time consuming. Teachers have to weigh if the time spent is worth the benefits of the portfolio use.
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Second, evaluating portfolios reliability and eliminating bias can be even more difficult than in a constructed
response assessment because the products are more varied. The experience of the state-wide use of portfolios for
assessment in writing and mathematics for fourth and eighth graders in Vermont is sobering. Teachers used the
same analytic scoring rubric when evaluating the portfolio. In the first two years of implementation samples from
schools were collected and scored by an external panel of teachers. In the first year the agreement among raters (i.e.
inter-rater reliability) was poor for mathematics and reading; in the second year the agreement among raters
improved for mathematics but not for reading. However, even with the improvement in mathematics the reliability
was too low to use the portfolios for individual student accountability (Koretz, Stecher, Klein & McCaffrey, 1994).
When reliability is low, validity is also compromised because unstable results cannot be interpreted meaningfully.
If teachers do use portfolios in their classroom, the series of steps needed for implementation are outlined in
Table 36. If the school or district has an existing portfolio system these steps may have to be modified.
Table 42: Steps in implementing a classroom portfolio program
1. Make sure students own their
portfolios.
Talk to your students about your ideas of the portfolio, the different
purposes, and the variety of work samples. If possible, have them help make
decisions about the kind of portfolio you implement.
2. Decide on the purpose. Will the focus be on growth or current accomplishments? Best work
showcase or documentation? Good portfolios can have multiple purposes but
the teacher and students need to be clear about the purpose.
3. Decide what work samples to
collect,
For example, in writing, is every writing assignment included? Are early
drafts as well as final products included?
4. Collect and store work
samples,
Decide where the work sample will be stored. For example, will each
student have a file folder in a file cabinet, or a small plastic tub on a shelf in
the classroom?
5. Select criteria to evaluate
samples,
If possible, work with students to develop scoring rubrics. This may take
considerable time as different rubrics may be needed for the variety of work
samples. If you are using existing scoring rubrics, discuss with students
possible modifications after the rubrics have been used at least once.
6. Teach and require students
conduct self evaluations of their
own work,
Help students learn to evaluate their own work using agreed upon
criteria. For younger students, the self evaluations may be simple (strengths,
weaknesses, and ways to improve); for older students a more analytic
approach is desirable including using the same scoring rubrics that the
teachers will use.
7. Schedule and conduct
portfolio conferences ,
Teacher-student conferences are time consuming but conferences are
essential for the portfolio process to significantly enhance learning. These
conferences should aid students’ self evaluation and should take place
frequently.
Educational Psychology 266 A Global Text
11. Teacher-made assessment strategies
8. Involve parents. Parents need to understand the portfolio process. Encourage parents to
review the work samples. You may wish to schedule parent, teacher-students
conferences in which students talk about their work samples.
Source: Adapted from Popham (2005)
Assessment that enhances motivation and student confidence
Studies on testing and learning conducted more than 20 years ago demonstrated that tests promote learning
and that more frequent tests are more effective than less frequent tests (Dempster & Perkins, 1993). Frequent
smaller tests encourage continuous effort rather than last minute cramming and may also reduce test anxiety
because the consequences of errors are reduced. College students report preferring more frequent testing than
infrequent testing (Bangert-Downs, Kulik, Kulik, 1991). More recent research indicates that teachers’ assessment
purpose and beliefs, the type of assessment selected, and the feedback given contributes to the assessment climate
in the classroom which influences students’ confidence and motivation. The use of self-assessment is also
important in establishing a positive assessment climate.
Teachers’ purposes and beliefs
Student motivation can be enhanced when the purpose of assessment is promoting student learning and this is
clearly communicated to students by what teachers say and do (Harlen, 2006). This approach to assessment is
associated with what the psychologist, Carol Dweck, (2000) calls an incremental view of ability or intelligence. An
incremental view assumes that ability increases whenever an individual learns more. This means that effort is
valued because effort leads to knowing more and therefore having more ability. Individuals with an incremental
view also ask for help when needed and respond well to constructive feedback as the primary goal is increased
learning and mastery. In contrast, a fixed view of ability assumes that some people have more ability than others
and nothing much can be done to change that. Individuals with a fixed view of ability often view effort in opposition
to ability (“Smart people don’t have to study”) and so do not try as hard, and are less likely to ask for help as that
indicates that they are not smart. While there are individual differences in students’ beliefs about their views of
intelligence, teachers’ beliefs and classroom practices influence students’ perceptions and behaviors.
Teachers with an incremental view of intelligence communicate to students that the goal of learning is mastering
the material and figuring things out. Assessment is used by these teachers to understand what students know so
they can decide whether to move to the next topic, re-teach the entire class, or provide remediation for a few
students. Assessment also helps students’ understand their own learning and demonstrate their competence.
Teachers with these views say things like, “We are going to practice over and over again. That’s how you get good.
And you’re going to make mistakes. That’s how you learn.” (Patrick, Anderman, Ryan, Edelin, Midgley, 2001, p.
45).
In contrast, teachers with a fixed view of ability are more likely to believe that the goal of learning is doing well
on tests especially outperforming others. These teachers are more likely to say things that imply fixed abilities e.g.
“This test will determine what your math abilities are”, or stress the importance of interpersonal competition, “We
will have speech competition and the top person will compete against all the other district schools and last year the
winner got a big award and their photo in the paper.” When teachers stress interpersonal competition some
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students may be motivated but there can only a few winners so there are many more students who know they have
no chance of winning. Another problem with interpersonal competition in assessment is that the focus can become
winning rather than understanding the material.
Teachers who communicate to their students that ability is incremental and that the goal of assessment is
promoting learning rather that ranking students, or awarding prizes to those who did very well, or catching those
who did not pay attention, are likely to enhance students’ motivation.
Choosing assessments
The choice of assessment task also influences students’ motivation and confidence. First, assessments that have
clear criteria that students understand and can meet rather than assessments that pit students against each other in
interpersonal competition enhances motivation (Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall, Wiliam, 2004). This is consistent
with the point we made in the previous section about the importance of focusing on enhancing learning for all
students rather than ranking students. Second, meaningful assessment tasks enhance student motivation. Students
often want to know why they have to do something and teachers need to provide meaningful answers. For example,
a teacher might say, “You need to be able to calculate the area of a rectangle because if you want new carpet you
need to know how much carpet is needed and how much it would cost.” Well designed performance tasks are often
more meaningful to students than selected response tests so students will work harder to prepare for them.
Third, providing choices of assessment tasks can enhance student sense of autonomy and motivation according
to self determination theory (see Chapter 6). Kym, the sixth grade teacher whose story began this chapter, reports
that giving students choices was very helpful. Another middle school social studies teacher Aaron, gives his students
a choice of performance tasks at the end of the unit on the US Bill of Rights. Students have to demonstrate specified
key ideas but can do that by making up a board game, presenting a brief play, composing a rap song etc. Aaron
reports that students work much harder on this performance assessment which allows them to use their strengths
than previously when he did not provide any choices and gave a more traditional assignment. Measurement experts
caution that a danger of giving choices is that the assessment tasks are no longer equivalent and so the reliability of
scoring is reduced so it is particularly important to use well designed scoring rubrics. Fourth, assessment tasks
should be challenging but achievable with reasonable effort (Elliott, McGregor & Thrash, 2004). This is often hard
for beginning teachers to do, who may give assessment tasks that are too easy or too hard, because they have to
learn to match their assessment to the skills of their students.
Providing feedback
When the goal is assessment for learning, providing constructive feedback that helps students know what they
do and do not understand as well as encouraging them to learn from their errors is fundamental. Effective feedback
should be given as soon as possible as the longer the delay between students’ work and feedback the longer students
will continue to have some misconceptions. Also, delays reduce the relationship between students’ performance and
the feedback as students can forget what they were thinking during the assessment. Effective feedback should also
inform students clearly what they did well and what needs modification. General comments just as “good work, A”,
or “needs improvement” do not help students understand how to improve their learning. Giving feedback to
students using well designed scoring rubrics helps clearly communicate strengths and weaknesses. Obviously
grades are often needed but teachers can minimize the focus by placing the grade after the comments or on the last
Educational Psychology 268 A Global Text
11. Teacher-made assessment strategies
page of a paper. It can also be helpful to allow students to keep their grades private making sure when returning
assignments that the grade is not prominent (e.g. not using red ink on the top page) and never asking students to
read their scores aloud in class. Some students choose to share their grades—but that should be their decision not
their teachers.
When grading, teachers often become angry at the mistakes that student make. It is easy for teachers to think
something like: “With all the effort I put into teaching, this student could not even be bothered to follow the
directions or spell check!” Many experienced teachers believe that communicating their anger is not helpful, so
rather than saying: “How dare you turn in such shoddy work”, they rephrase it as, “I am disappointed that your
work on this assignment does not meet the standards set” (Sutton, 2003). Research evidence also suggests that
comments such as “You are so smart” for a high quality performance can be counterproductive. This is surprising to
many teachers but if students are told they are smart when they produce a good product, then if they do poorly on
the next assignment the conclusion must be they are “not smart” (Dweck, 2000). More effective feedback focuses
on positive aspects of the task (not the person), as well as strategies, and effort. The focus of the feedback should
relate to the criteria set by the teacher and how improvements can be made.
When the teacher and student are from different racial/ethnic backgrounds providing feedback that enhances
motivation and confidence but also includes criticism can be particularly challenging because the students of color
have historical reasons to distrust negative comments from a white teacher. Research by Cohen Steele, Ross (1999)
indicates that “wise” feedback from teachers needs three components: positive comments, criticisms, and an
assurance that the teacher believes the student can reach higher standards. We describe this research is more detail
in “Deciding for yourself about the research” found in Appendix #2.
Self and peer assessment
In order to reach a learning goal, students need to understand the meaning of the goal, the steps necessary to
achieve a goal, and if they are making satisfactory progress towards that goal (Sadler, 1989). This involves self
assessment and recent research has demonstrated that well designed self assessment can enhance student learning
and motivation (Black & Wiliam, 2006). For self assessment to be effective, students need explicit criteria such as
those in an analytical scoring rubric. These criteria are either provided by the teacher or developed by the teacher in
collaboration with students. Because students seem to find it easier to understand criteria for assessment tasks if
they can examine other students’ work along side their own, self assessment often involves peer assessment. An
example of a strategy used by teachers involves asking students to use “traffic lights” to indicate of their confidence
in their assignment or homework. Red indicates that they were unsure of their success, orange that they were
partially unsure, and green that they were confident of their success. The students who labeled their own work as
orange and green worked in mixed groups to evaluate their own work while the teacher worked with the students
who had chosen red (Black & Wiliam, 2006).
If self and peer assessment is used, it is particularly important that the teachers establish a classroom culture for
assessment that is based on incremental views of ability and learning goals. If the classroom atmosphere focuses on
interpersonal competition, students have incentives in self and peer assessment to inflate their own evaluations
(and perhaps those of their friends) because there are limited rewards for good work.
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Adjusting instruction based on assessment
Using assessment information to adjust instruction is fundamental to the concept of assessment for learning.
Teachers make these adjustments “in the moment” during classroom instruction as well as during reflection and
planning periods. Teachers use the information they gain from questioning and observation to adjust their teaching
during classroom instruction. If students cannot answer a question, the teacher may need to rephrase the question,
probe understanding of prior knowledge, or change the way the current idea is being considered. It is important for
teachers to learn to identify when only one or two students need individual help because they are struggling with
the concept, and when a large proportion of the class is struggling so whole group intervention is needed.
After the class is over, effective teachers spend time analyzing how well the lessons went, what students did and
did not seem to understand, and what needs to be done the next day. Evaluation of student work also provides
important information for teachers. If many students are confused about a similar concept the teacher needs to re-
teach it and consider new ways of helping students understand the topic. If the majority of students complete the
tasks very quickly and well, the teacher might decide that the assessment was not challenging enough. Sometimes
teachers become dissatisfied with the kinds of assessments they have assigned when they are grading—perhaps
because they realize there was too much emphasis on lower level learning, that the directions were not clear
enough, or the scoring rubric needed modification. Teachers who believe that assessment data provides
information about their own teaching and that they can find ways to influence student learning have high teacher
efficacy or beliefs that they can make a difference in students’ lives. In contrast, teachers who think that student
performance is mostly due to fixed student characteristics or the homes they come from (e.g. “no wonder she did so
poorly considering what her home life is like”) have low teacher efficacy (Tschannen-Moran, Woolfolk Hoy, & Hoy,
1998).
Communication with parents and guardians
Clear communication with parents about classroom assessment is important—but often difficult for beginning
teachers. The same skills that are needed to communicate effectively with students are also needed when
communicating with parents and guardians. Teachers need to be able to explain to parents the purpose of the
assessment, why they selected this assessment technique, and what the criteria for success are. Some teachers send
home newsletters monthly or at the beginning of a major assessment task explaining the purpose and nature of the
task, any additional support that is needed (e.g. materials, library visits), and due dates. Some parents will not be
familiar with performance assessments or the use of self and peer assessment so teachers need to take time to
explain these approaches carefully.
Many school districts now communicate though websites that have mixtures of public information available to
all parents in the class (e.g. curriculum and assessment details) as well information restricted to the parents or
guardians of specific students (e.g. the attendance and grades). Teachers report this is helpful as parents have
access to their child’s performance immediately and when necessary, can talk to their child and teacher quickly.
The recommendations we provided above on the type of feedback that should be given to students also apply
when talking to parents. That is, the focus should be on students’ performance on the task, what was done well and
what needs work, rather than general comments about how “smart” or “weak” the child is. If possible, comments
should focus on strategies that the child uses well or needs to improve (e.g. reading test questions carefully,
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organization in a large project). When the teacher is white and the student or parents are minority, trust can be an
issue so using “wise” feedback when talking to parents may help.
Action research: studying yourself and your students
Assessment for learning emphasizes devising and conducting assessment data in order to improve teaching and
learning and so is related to action research (also called teacher research). In Chapter 1, we described action
research as studies conducted by teachers of their own students or their own work. Action research can lead to
decisions that improve a teacher’s own teaching or the teaching of colleagues. Kym, the teacher we described at the
beginning of this chapter, conducted action research in her own classroom as she identified a problem of poor
student motivation and achievement, investigated solutions during the course on motivation, tried new approaches,
and observed the resulting actions.
Cycles of planning, acting and reflecting
Action research is usually described as a cyclical process with the following stages (Mertler, 2006).
• Planning Stage. Planning has three components. First, planning involves identifying and defining a
problem. Problems sometimes start with some ill defined unease or feeling that something is wrong and it
can take time to identify the problem clearly so that it becomes a researchable question. The next step, is
reviewing the related literature and this may occur within a class or workshop that the teachers are
attending. Teachers may also explore the literature on their own or in teacher study groups. The third step
is developing a research plan. The research plan includes what kind of data will be collected (e.g. student
test scores, observation of one or more students, as well as how and when it will be collected (e.g. from files,
in collaboration with colleagues, in spring or fall semester).
• Acting sage. During this stage the teacher is collecting and analyzing data. The data collected and the
analyses do not need to be complex because action research, to be effective, has to be manageable.
• Developing an action plan. In this stage the teacher develops a plan to make changes and implements these
changes. This is the action component of action research and it is important that teachers document their
actions carefully so that they can communicate them to others.
• Communicating and reflection. An important component of all research is communicating information.
Results can be shared with colleagues in the school or district, in an action research class at the local
college, at conferences, or in journals for teachers. Action research can also involve students as active
participants and if this is the case, communication may include students and parents. Communicating with
others helps refine ideas and so typically aids in reflection. During reflection teachers/researchers ask such
questions as: “What did I learn?” “What should I have done differently?” “What should I do next?”
Questions such as these often lead to a new cycle of action research beginning with planning and then
moving to the other steps.
Ethical issues—privacy, voluntary consent
Teachers are accustomed to collecting students’ test scores, data about performances, and descriptions of
behaviors as an essential component of teaching. However, if teachers are conducting action research and they plan
to collect data that will be shared outside the school community then permission from parents (or guardians) and
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students must be obtained in order to protect the privacy of students and their families. Typically permission is
obtained by an informed consent form that summarizes the research, describes the data that will be collected,
indicates that participation is voluntary, and provides a guarantee of confidentiality or anonymity (Hubbard &
Power, 2005). Many large school districts have procedures for establishing informed consent as well as person in
the central office who is responsible for the district guidelines and specific application process. If the action
research is supported in some way by a college of university (e.g. through a class) then informed consent
procedures of that institution must be followed.
One common area of confusion for teachers is the voluntary nature of student participation in research. If the
data being collected are for a research study, students can choose not to participate. This is contrary to much
regular classroom instruction where teachers tell students they have to do the work or complete the tasks.
Grading and reporting
Assigning students grades is an important component of teaching and many school districts issue progress
reports, interim reports, or mid term grades as well as final semester grades. Traditionally these reports were
printed on paper and sent home with students or mailed to students’ homes. Increasingly, school districts are using
web-based grade management systems that allow parents to access their child’s grades on each individual
assessment as well as the progress reports and final grades.
Grading can be frustrating for teachers as there are many factors to consider. In addition, report cards typically
summarize in brief format a variety of assessments and so cannot provide much information about students’
strengths and weaknesses. This means that report cards focus more on assessment of learning than assessment for
learning. There are a number of decisions that have to be made when assigning students’ grades and schools often
have detailed policies that teachers have to follow. In the next section, we consider the major questions associated
with grading.
How are various assignments and assessments weighted?
Students typically complete a variety of assignments during a grading period such as homework, quizzes,
performance assessments, etc. Teachers have to decide—preferably before the grading period begins—how each
assignment will be weighted. For example, a sixth grade math teacher may decide to weight the grades in the
following manner:
Weekly quizzes 35 per cent
Homework 15 per cent
Performance Assessment 30 per cent
Class participation 20 per cent
Deciding how to weight assignments should be done carefully as it communicates to students and parents what
teachers believe is important, and also may be used to decide how much effort students will exert (e.g. “If
homework is only worth 5 per cent, it is not worth completing twice a week”).
Should social skills or effort be included? Elementary school teachers are more likely than middle or high school
teachers to include some social skills into report cards (Popham, 2005). These may be included as separate criteria
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11. Teacher-made assessment strategies
in the report card or weighted into the grade for that subject. For example, the grade for mathematics may include
an assessment of group cooperation or self regulation during mathematics lessons. Some schools and teachers
endorse including social skills arguing that developing such skills is important for young students and that students
need to learn to work with others and manage their own behaviors in order to be successful. Others believe that
grades in subject areas should be based on the cognitive performances—and that if assessments of social skills are
made they should be clearly separated from the subject grade on the report card. Obviously, clear criteria such as
those contained in analytical scoring rubrics should be used if social skills are graded.
Teachers often find it difficult to decide whether effort and improvement should be included as a component of
grades. One approach is for teachers to ask students to submit drafts of an assignment and make improvements
based on the feedback they received. The grade for the assignment may include some combination of the score for
the drafts, the final version, and the amount of improvement the students made based on the feedback provided. A
more controversial approach is basing grades on effort when students try really hard day after day but still cannot
complete their assignments well. These students could have identified special needs or be recent immigrants that
have limited English skills. Some school districts have guidelines for handling such cases. One disadvantage of
using improvement as a component of grades is that the most competent students in class may do very well initially
and have little room for improvement—unless teachers are skilled at providing additional assignments that will
help challenge these students.
Teachers often use “hodgepodge grading”, i.e. a combination of achievement, effort, growth, attitude or class
conduct, homework, and class participation. A survey of over 8,500 middle and high school students in the US state
of Virginia supported the hodgepodge practices commonly used by their teachers (Cross & Frary, 1999).
How should grades be calculated?
Two options are commonly used: absolute grading and relative grading. In absolute grading grades are assigned
based on criteria the teacher has devised. If an English teacher has established a level of proficiency needed to
obtain an A and no student meets that level then no A's will be given. Alternatively if every student meets the
established level then all the students will get A's (Popham, 2005). Absolute grading systems may use letter grades
or pass/fail.
In relative grading the teacher ranks the performances of students from worst to best (or best to worst) and
those at the top get high grades, those in the middle moderate grades, and those at the bottom low grades. This is
often described as “grading on the curve” and can be useful to compensate for an examination or assignment that
students find much easier or harder than the teacher expected. However, relative grading can be unfair to students
because the comparisons are typically within one class, so an A in one class may not represent the level of
performance of an A in another class. Relative grading systems may discourage students from helping each other
improve as students are in competition for limited rewards. In fact, Bishop (1999) argues that grading on the curve
gives students a personal interest in persuading each other not to study as a serious student makes it more difficult
for others to get good grades.
What kinds of grade descriptions should be used?
Traditionally a letter grade system is used (e.g. A, B, C, D, F ) for each subject. The advantages of these grade
descriptions are they are convenient, simple, and can be averaged easily. However, they do not indicate what
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objectives the student has or has not met nor students’ specific strengths and weaknesses (Linn & Miller 2005).
Elementary schools often use a pass-fail (or satisfactory-unsatisfactory) system and some high schools and colleges
do as well. Pass-fail systems in high school and college allow students to explore new areas and take risks on
subjects that they may have limited preparation for, or is not part of their major (Linn & Miller 2005). While a pass-
fail system is easy to use, it offers even less information about students’ level of learning.
A pass-fail system is also used in classes that are taught under a mastery-learning approach in which students
are expected to demonstrate mastery on all the objectives in order to receive course credit. Under these conditions,
it is clear that a pass means that the student has demonstrated mastery of all the objectives.
Some schools have implemented a checklist of the objectives in subject areas to replace the traditional letter
grade system, and students are rated on each objective using descriptors such as Proficient, Partially Proficient, and
Needs Improvement. For example, the checklist for students in a fourth grade class in California may include the
four types of writing that are required by the English language state content standards
(http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/enggrade4.asp)
• writing narratives
• writing responses to literature
• writing information reports
• writing summaries
The advantages of this approach are that it communicates students’ strengths and weaknesses clearly, and it
reminds the students and parents the objectives of the school. However, if too many objectives are included then
the lists can become so long that they are difficult to understand.
Chapter summary
The purpose of classroom assessment can be assessment for learning or assessment of learning. Essential steps
of assessment for learning include communicating instructional goals clearly to students; selecting appropriate high
quality assessments that match the instructional goals and students’ backgrounds; using assessments that enhance
student motivation and confidence, adjusting instruction based on assessment, and communicating assessment
results with parents and guardians. Action research can help teachers understand and improve their teaching. A
number of questions are important to consider when devising grading systems.
Key terms
Absence of bias
Action research
Alternative assessment
Assessment
Assessment for learning
Assessment of learning
Authentic assessment
Constructed response items
Evaluation
Formative assessment
Formal assessment measurement
Informal assessment
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11. Teacher-made assessment strategies
Performance assessment
Portfolios
Reliability
Selected response items
Summative assessment
Validity
References
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Bangert-Downs, R. L.,Kulik, J. A., & Kulik, C-L, C. (1991). Effects of frequent classroom testing. Journal of
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Black, P., Harrison, C., Lee, C., Marshall, B. & Wiliam, D. (2004). Working inside the black box.: Assessment
for learning in the classroom. Phi Delta Kappan, 86 (1) 9-21.
Black, P., & Wiliam,D. (2006). Assessment for learning in the classroom. In J. Gardner (Ed.). Assessment
and learning (pp. 9-25). Thousand Oaks, CA:Sage.
Bishop, J. H. (1999). Nerd harassment, incentives, school priorities, and learning.In S. E. Mayer & P. E.
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Institution Press.
Borko, H. & Livingston, C. (1989) Cognition and Improvisation: Differences in Mathematics Instruction by
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Cross, L. H., & Frary, R. B. (1999). Hodgepodge grading: Endorsed by students and teachers alike. Applied
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Dempster, F. N. & Perkins, P. G. (1993). Revitalizating classroom assessment: Using tests to promote
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Popham, W. J. (2005). Classroom Assessment: What teachers need to know. Boston, MA: Pearson.
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12. Standardized and other formal assessments
Understanding standardized testing is very important for beginning teachers as K-12 teaching is increasingly
influenced by the administration and results of standardized tests. Teachers also need to be able to help parents and
students understand test results. Consider the following scenarios.
• Vanessa, a newly licensed physical education teacher, is applying for a job at a middle school.
During the job interview the principal asks how she would incorporate key sixth grade math
skills into her PE and health classes as the sixth grade students in the previous year did not
attain Adequate Yearly Progress in mathematics.
• Danielle, a first year science teacher in Ohio, is asked by Mr Volderwell, a recent immigrant
from Turkey and the parent of a tenth grade son Marius, to help him understand test results.
When Marius first arrived at school he took the Test of Cognitive Skills and scored on the eighty-
fifth percentile whereas on the state Science Graduation test he took later in the school year he
was classified as “proficient” .
• James, a third year elementary school teacher, attends a class in gifted education over summer
as standardized tests from the previous year indicated that while overall his class did well in
reading the top 20 per cent of his students did not learn as much as expected.
• Miguel, a 1st grade student, takes two tests in fall and the results indicate that his grade
equivalent scores are 3.3 for reading and 3.0 for math. William’s parents want him immediately
promoted into the second grade arguing that the test results indicate that he already can read
and do math at the 3rd grade level. Greg, a first grade teacher explains to William’s parents
that a grade equivalent score of 3.3 does not mean William can do third grade work.
Understanding standardized testing is difficult as there are numerous terms and concepts to master and recent
changes in accountability under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) have increased the complexity of the
concepts and issues. In this chapter we focus on the information that beginning teachers need to know and start
with some basic concepts.
Basic concepts
Standardized tests are created by a team—usually test experts from a commercial testing company who consult
classroom teachers and university faculty—and are administered in standardized ways. Students not only respond
to the same questions they also receive the same directions and have the same time limits. Explicit scoring criteria
are used. Standardized tests are designed to be taken by many students within a state, province, or nation, and
sometimes across nations. Teachers help administer some standardized tests and test manuals are provided that
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12. Standardized and other formal assessments
contain explicit details about the administration and scoring. For example, teachers may have to remove all the
posters and charts from the classroom walls, read directions out loud to students using a script, and respond to
student questions in a specific manner.
Criterion referenced standardized tests measure student performance against a specific standard or criterion.
For example, newly hired firefighters in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States have to meet
physical fitness standards by successfully completing a standardized physical fitness test that includes stair
climbing, using a ladder, advancing a hose, and simulating a rescue through a doorway (Human Resources
Division, nod.). Criterion referenced tests currently used in US schools are often tied to state content standards and
provide information about what students can and cannot do. For example, one of the content standards for fourth
grade reading in Kentucky is “Students will identify and describe the characteristics of fiction, nonfiction, poetry or
plays” (Combined Curriculum Document Reading 4.1, 2006) and so a report on an individual student would
indicate if the child can accomplish this skill. The report may state that number or percentage of items that were
successfully completed (e.g. 15 out of 20, i.e. 75 per cent) or include descriptions such as basic, proficient, or
advanced which are based on decisions made about the percent of mastery necessary to be classified into these
categories.
Norm referenced standardized tests report students’ performance relative to others. For example, if a student
scores on the seventy-second percentile in reading it means she outperforms 72 percent of the students who were
included in the test’s norm group. A norm group is a representative sample of students who completed the
standardized test while it was being developed. For state tests the norm group is drawn from the state whereas for
national tests the sample is drawn from the nation. Information about the norm groups is provided in a technical
test manual that is not typically supplied to teachers but should be available from the person in charge of testing in
the school district.
Reports from criterion and norm referenced tests provide different information. Imagine a nationalized
mathematics test designed to basic test skills in second grade. If this test is norm referenced, and Alisha receives a
report indicating that she scored in the eighty-fifth percentile this indicates that she scored better than 85 per cent
of the students in the norm group who took the test previously. If this test is criterion-referenced Alisha’s report
may state that she mastered 65 per cent of the problems designed for her grade level. The relative percentage
reported from the norm-referenced test provides information about Alisha’s performance compared to other
students whereas the criterion referenced test attempts to describe what Alisha or any student can or cannot do
with respect to whatever the test is designed to measure. When planning instruction classroom teachers need to
know what students can and cannot do so criterion referenced tests are typically more useful (Popham, 2004). The
current standard-based accountability and NCLB rely predominantly on criterion based tests to assess attainment
of content-based standards. Consequently the use of standardized norm referenced tests in schools has diminished
and is largely limited to diagnosis and placement of children with specific cognitive disabilities or exceptional
abilities (Haertel & Herman, 2005).
Some recent standardized tests can incorporate both criterion-referenced and norm referenced elements in to
the same test (Linn & Miller, 2005). That is, the test results not only provide information on mastery of a content
standard but also the percentage of students who attained that level of mastery.
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Standardized tests can be high stakes i.e. performance on the test has important consequences. These
consequences can be for students, e.g. passing a high school graduation test is required in order to obtain a diploma
or passing PRAXIS II is a prerequisite to gain a teacher license. These consequences can be for schools, e.g. under
NCLB an increasing percentage of students in every school must reach proficiency in math and reading each year.
Consequences for schools who fail to achieve these gains include reduced funding and restructuring of the school
building. Under NCLB, the consequences are designed to be for the schools not individual students (Popham, 2005)
and their test results may not accurately reflect what they know because students may not try hard when the tests
have low stakes for them (Wise & DeMars, 2005).
Uses of standardized tests
Standardized tests are used for a variety of reasons and the same test is sometimes used for multiple purposes.
Assessing students’ progress in a wider context
Well-designed teacher assessments provide crucial information about each student’s achievement in the
classroom. However, teachers vary in the types of assessment they use so teacher assessments do not usually
provide information on how students’ achievement compares to externally established criteria. Consider two eighth
grade students, Brian and Joshua, who received As in their middle school math classes. However, on the
standardized norm referenced math test Brian scored in the fiftieth percentile whereas Joshua scored in the
ninetieth percentile. This information is important to Brian and Joshua, their parents, and the school personnel.
Likewise, two third grade students could both receive Cs on their report card in reading but one may pass 25 per
cent and the other 65 per cent of the items on the Criterion Referenced State Test.
There are many reasons that students’ performance on teacher assessments and standardized assessments may
differ. Students may perform lower on the standardized assessment because their teachers have easy grading
criteria, or there is poor alignment between the content they were taught and that on the standardized test, or they
are unfamiliar with the type of items on the standardized tests, or they have test anxiety, or they were sick on the
day of the test. Students may perform higher on the standardized test than on classroom assessments because their
teachers have hard grading criteria, or the student does not work consistently in class (e.g. does not turn in
homework) but will focus on a standardized test, or the student is adept at the multiple choice items on the
standardized tests but not at the variety of constructed response and performance items the teacher uses. We
should always be very cautious about drawing inferences from one kind of assessment.
In some states, standardized achievement tests are required for home-schooled students in order to provide
parents and state officials information about the students’ achievement in a wider context. For example, in New
York home-schooled students must take an approved standardized test every other year in grades four through
eight and every year in grades nine through twelve. These tests must be administered in a standardized manner and
the results filed with the Superintendent of the local school district. If a student does not take the tests or scores
below the thirty-third percentile the home schooling program may be placed on probation (New York State
Education Department, 2005).
Diagnosing student’s strengths and weaknesses
Standardized tests, along with interviews, classroom observations, medical examinations, and school records are
used to help diagnose students’ strengths and weaknesses. Often the standardized tests used for this purpose are
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12. Standardized and other formal assessments
administered individually to determine if the child has a disability. For example, if a kindergarten child is having
trouble with oral communication, a standardized language development test could be administered to determine if
there are difficulties with understanding the meaning of words or sentence structures, noticing sound differences in
similar words, or articulating words correctly (Peirangelo & Guiliani, 2002). It would also be important to
determine if the child was a recent immigrant, had a hearing impairment or mental retardation. The diagnosis of
learning disabilities typically involves the administration of at least two types of standardized tests—an aptitude test
to assess general cognitive functioning and an achievement test to assess knowledge of specific content areas
(Peirangelo & Guiliani, 2006). We discuss the difference between aptitude and achievement tests later in this
chapter.
Selecting students for specific programs
Standardized tests are often used to select students for specific programs. For example, the SAT (Scholastic
Assessment Test) and ACT (American College Test) are norm referenced tests used to help determine if high school
students are admitted to selective colleges. Norm referenced standardized tests are also used, among other criteria,
to determine if students are eligible for special education or gifted and talented programs. Criterion referenced tests
are used to determine which students are eligible for promotion to the next grade or graduation from high school.
Schools that place students in ability groups including high school college preparation, academic, or vocational
programs may also use norm referenced or criterion referenced standardized tests. When standardized tests are
used as an essential criteria for placement they are obviously high stakes for students.
Assisting teachers’ planning
Norm referenced and criterion referenced standardized tests, among other sources of information about
students, can help teachers make decisions about their instruction. For example, if a social studies teacher learns
that most of the students did very well on a norm referenced reading test administered early in the school year he
may adapt his instruction and use additional primary sources. A reading teacher after reviewing the poor end-of-
the-year criterion referenced standardized reading test results may decide that next year she will modify the
techniques she uses. A biology teacher may decide that she needs to spend more time on genetics as her students
scored poorly on that section of the standardized criterion referenced science test. These are examples of
assessment for learning which involves data-based decision making. It can be difficult for beginning teachers to
learn to use standardized test information appropriately, understanding that test scores are important information
but also remembering that there are multiple reasons for students’ performance on a test.
Accountability
Standardized tests results are increasingly used to hold teachers and administrators accountable for students’
learning. Prior to 2002, many States required public dissemination of students’ progress but under NCLB school
districts in all states are required to send report cards to parents and the public that include results of standardized
tests for each school. Providing information about students’ standardized tests is not new as newspapers began
printing summaries of students’ test results within school districts in the 1970s and 1980s (Popham, 2005).
However, public accountability of schools and teachers has been increasing in the US and many other countries and
this increased accountability impacts the public perception and work of all teachers including those teaching in
subjects or grade levels not being tested.
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For example, Erin, a middle school social studies teacher, said:
“As a teacher in a 'non-testing' subject area, I spend substantial instructional time suporting the
standardized testing requirements. For example, our school has instituted 'word of the day', which
encourages teachers to use, define, and incorporate terminology often used in the tests (e.g.
“compare”, “oxymoron” etc.). I use the terms in my class as often as possible and incorporate them
into written assignments. I also often use test questions of similar formats to the standardized tests
in my own subject assessments (e.g. multiple choice questions with double negatives, short answer
and extended response questions) as I believe that practice in the test question formats will help
students be more successful in those subjects that are being assessed.”
Accountability and standardized testing are two components of Standards Based Reform in Education that was
initiated in the USA in 1980s. The two other components are academic content standards which are described later
in this chapter and teacher quality which was discussed in Chapter 1.
Types of standardized tests Achievement tests
Summarizing the past: K-12 achievement tests are designed to assess what students have learned in a specific
content area. These tests include those specifically designed by states to access mastery of state academic content
standards (see more details below) as well as general tests such as the California Achievement Tests, The
Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills, Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, Metropolitan Achievement Tests, and the Stanford
Achievement Tests. These general tests are designed to be used across the nation and so will not be as closely
aligned with state content standards as specifically designed tests. Some states and Canadian Provinces use
specifically designed tests to assess attainment of content standards and also a general achievement test to provide
normative information.
Standardized achievement tests are designed to be used for students in kindergarten though high school. For
young children questions are presented orally, and students may respond by pointing to pictures, and the subtests
are often not timed. For example, on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (http://www.riverpub.com/) designed for
students are young as kindergarten the vocabulary test assesses listening vocabulary. The teacher reads a word and
may also read a sentence containing the word. Students are then asked to choose one of three pictorial response
options.
Achievement tests are used as one criterion for obtaining a license in a variety of professions including nursing,
physical therapy, and social work, accounting, and law. Their use in teacher education is recent and is part of the
increased accountability of public education and most States require that teacher education students take
achievement tests in order to obtain a teaching license. For those seeking middle school and high school licensure
these are tests are in the content area of the major or minor (e.g. mathematics, social studies); for those seeking
licenses in early childhood and elementary the tests focus on knowledge needed to teach students of specific grade
levels. The most commonly used tests, the PRAXIS series, tests I and II, developed by Educational Testing Service,
include three types of tests (www.ets.org):
• Subject Assessments, these test on general and subject-specific teaching skills and knowledge. They include
both multiple-choice and constructed-response test items.
Educational Psychology 281 A Global Text
12. Standardized and other formal assessments
• Principles of Learning and Teaching (PLT) Tests assess general pedagogical knowledge at four grade levels:
Early Childhood, K-6, 5-9, and 7-12. These tests are based on case studies and include constructed-response
and multiple-choice items. Much of the content in this textbook is relevant to the PLT tests.
• Teaching Foundations Tests assess pedagogy in five areas: multi-subject (elementary), English, Language
Arts, Mathematics, Science, and Social Science.
These tests include constructed-response and multiple-choice items which tests teacher education students. The
scores needed in order to pass each test vary and are determined by each state.
Diagnostic tests
Profiling skills and abilities: Some standardized tests are designed to diagnose strengths and weaknesses in
skills, typically reading or mathematics skills. For example, an elementary school child may have difficult in reading
and one or more diagnostic tests would provide detailed information about three components: (1) word recognition,
which includes phonological awareness (pronunciation), decoding, and spelling; (2) comprehension which includes
vocabulary as well as reading and listening comprehension, and (3) fluency (Joshi 2003). Diagnostic tests are often
administered individually by school psychologists, following standardized procedures. The examiner typically
records not only the results on each question but also observations of the child’s behavior such as distractibility or
frustration. The results from the diagnostic standardized tests are used in conjunction with classroom observations,
school and medical records, as well as interviews with teachers, parents and students to produce a profile of the
student’s skills and abilities, and where appropriate diagnose a learning disability.
Aptitude tests
Predicting the future: Aptitude tests, like achievement tests, measure what students have learned, but rather
than focusing on specific subject matter learned in school (e.g. math, science, English or social studies), the test
items focus on verbal, quantitative, problem solving abilities that are learned in school or in the general culture
(Linn & Miller, 2005). These tests are typically shorter than achievement tests and can be useful in predicting
general school achievement. If the purpose of using a test is to predict success in a specific subject (e.g. language
arts) the best prediction is past achievement in language arts and so scores on a language arts achievement test
would be useful. However when the predictions are more general (e.g. success in college) aptitude tests are often
used. According to the test developers, both the ACT and SAT Reasoning tests, used to predict success in college,
assess general educational development and reasoning, analysis and problem solving as well as questions on
mathematics, reading and writing (http://www.collegeboard.com; http://www.act.org/). The SAT Subject Tests
that focus on mastery of specific subjects like English, history, mathematics, science, and language are used by
some colleges as entrance criteria and are more appropriately classified as achievement tests than aptitude tests
even though they are used to predict the future.
Tests designed to assess general learning ability have traditionally been called Intelligence Tests but are now
often called learning ability tests, cognitive ability tests, scholastic aptitude tests, or school ability tests. The shift in
terminology reflects the extensive controversy over the meaning of the term intelligence and that its traditional use
was associated with inherited capacity (Linn & Miller 2005). The more current terms emphasize that tests measure
developed ability in learning not innate capacity. The Cognitive Abilities Test assesses K-12 students' abilities to
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reason with words, quantitative concepts, and nonverbal (spatial) pictures. The Woodcock Johnson III contains
cognitive abilities tests as well as achievement tests for ages 2 to 90 years (http://www.riverpub.com).
High-stakes testing by states
While many States had standardized testing programs prior to 2000, the number of state-wide tests has grown
enormously since then because NCLB required that all states test students in reading and mathematics annually in
grades third through eighth and at least once in high school by 2005-6. Twenty-three states expanded their testing
programs during 2005-6 and additional tests are being added as testing in science is required by 2007-8. Students
with disabilities and English language learners must be included in the testing and provided a variety of
accommodations so the majority of staff in school districts are involved in testing in some way (Olson, 2005). In
this section we focus on these tests and their implications for teachers and students.
Standards based assessment Academic content standards
NCLB mandates that states must develop academic content standards that specify what students are expected to
know or be able to do at each grade level. These content standards used to be called goals and objectives and it is
not clear why the labels have changed (Popham, 2004). Content standards are not easy to develop—if they are too
broad and not related to grade level, teachers cannot hope to prepare students to meet the standards.
An example, a broad standard in reading is:
“Students should be able to construct meaning through experiences with literature, cultural events
and philosophical discussion” (no grade level indicated). (American Federation of Teachers, 2006, p.
6).
Standards that are too narrow can result in a restricted curriculum. An example of a narrow standard might be:
Students can define, compare and contrast, and provide a variety of examples of synonyms and
antonyms.
A stronger standard is:
“Students should apply knowledge of word origins, derivations, synonyms, antonyms, and idioms to
determine the meaning of words (grade 4) (American Federation of Teachers, 2006, p. 6).
The American Federation of Teachers conducted a study in 2005-6 and reported that some of the standards in
reading, math and science were weak in 32 states. States set the strongest standards in science followed by
mathematics. Standards in reading were particularly problematic and with one-fifth of all reading standards
redundant across the grade levels, i.e. word-by-word repetition across grade levels at least 50 per cent of the time
(American Federation of Teachers, 2006).
Even if the standards are strong, there are often so many of them that it is hard for teachers to address them all
in a school year. Content standards are developed by curriculum specialists who believe in the importance of their
subject area so they tend to develop large numbers of standards for each subject area and grade level. At first
glance, it may appear that there are only several broad standards, but under each standard there are subcategories
called goals, benchmarks, indicators or objectives (Popham, 2004). For example, Idaho’s first grade mathematics
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12. Standardized and other formal assessments
standard, judged to be of high quality (AFT 2000) contains five broad standards, including 10 goals and a total of
29 objectives (Idaho Department of Education, 2005-6).
Alignment of standards, testing and classroom curriculum
The state tests must be aligned with strong content standards in order to provide useful feedback about student
learning. If there is a mismatch between the academic content standards and the content that is assessed then the
test results cannot provide information about students’ proficiency on the academic standards. A mismatch not
only frustrates the students taking the test, teachers, and administrators it undermines the concept of
accountability and the “theory of action” (See box “Deciding for yourself about the research”) that underlies the
NCLB. Unfortunately, the 2006 Federation of Teachers study indicated that in only 11 states were all the tests
aligned with state standards (American Federation of Teachers, 2006).
State standards and their alignment with state assessments should be widely available—preferably posted on the
states websites so they can be accessed by school personnel and the public. A number of states have been slow to do
this.Table 43 summarizes which states had strong content standards, tests that were aligned with state standards,
and adequate documents on online. Only 11 states were judged to meet all three criteria in 2006.
Table 43: Strong content standards, alignment, and transparency: evaluation for each state in 2006 (Adapted
from American Federation of Teachers, 2006).
Standards are
strong
Test documents match
standards
Testing documents
online
Alabama +
Alaska + +
Arizona + +
Arkansas +
California + + +
Colorado +
Connecticut
Delaware +
District of Columbia + +
Florida + +
Georgia + +
Hawaii +
Idaho + +
Illinois +
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Indiana + +
Iowa +
Kansas + +
Kentucky + +
Louisiana + + +
Maine +
Maryland +
Massachusetts + +
Michigan + +
Minnesota + +
Mississippi +
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada + + +
New Hampshire + +
New Jersey +
New Mexico + + +
New York + + +
North Carolina +
North Dakota + +
Ohio + + +
Oklahoma + +
Oregon + +
Pennsylvania +
Rhode Island + +
South Carolina
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12. Standardized and other formal assessments
South Dakota + +
Tennessee + + +
Texas + +
Utah +
Sampling content
When numerous standards have been developed it is impossible for tests to assess all of the standards every
year, so the tests sample the content, i.e. measure some but not all the standards every year. Content standards
cannot be reliably assessed with only one or two items so the decision to assess one content standard often requires
not assessing another. This means if there are too many content standards a significant proportion of them are not
measured each year. In this situation, teachers try to guess which content standards will be assessed that year and
align their teaching on those specific standards. Of course if these guesses are incorrect students will have studied
content not on the test and not studied content that is on the test. Some argue that this is a very serious problem
with current state testing and Popham (2004) an expert on testing even said: “What a muddleheaded way to run a
testing program.” (p. 79)
Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP)
Under NCLB three levels of achievement, basic, proficient and advanced, must be specified for each grade level
in each content area by each state. States were required to set a time table from 2002 that insured an increasing
percentage of students would reach the proficient levels such that by 2013-14, soevery child is performing at or the
proficient level. Schools and school districts who meet this timetable are said to meet adequate yearly progress
(AYP).
Because every child must reach proficiency by 2013-14 greater increases are required for those schools that had
larger percentages of initially lower performing students.
Exhibit 16 illustrates the progress needed in three hypothetical schools. School A, initially the lowest performing
school, has to increase the number of students reaching proficiency by an average of 6 per cent each year, the
increase is 3 per cent for School B, and the increase is only 1 per cent for School C. Also, the checkpoint targets in
the timetables are determined by the lower performing schools. This is illustrated on the figure by the arrow—it is
obvious that School A has to make significant improvements by 2007-8 but School C does not have to improve at all
by 2007-8. This means that schools that are initially lower performing are much more likely to fail to make AYP
during the initial implementation years of NCLB.
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Exhibit 15: Adequate Yearly Progress requires greater student improvement in
schools with lower levels of initial proficiency
Schools A, B and C all must reach 10 per cent student proficiency by 2013-4. However the school that initially
has the lowest level of performance (A) has to increase the percentage of students proficient at a greater rate than
schools with middle (B) or high (C) levels of initial proficiency rates.
Subgroups
For a school to achieve AYP not only must overall percentages of the students reach proficiency but subgroups
must also reach proficiency in a process called desegregation. Prior to NCLB state accountability systems typically
focused on overall student performance but this did not provide incentives for schools to focus on the neediest
students, e.g. those children living below the poverty line (Hess & Petrilli, 2006). Under NCLB the percentages for
each racial/ethnic group in the school (white, African American, Latino, Native American etc.), low income
students, students with limited English proficiency, and students with disabilities are all calculated if there are
enough students in the subgroup. A school may fail AYP if one group, e.g. English language learners do not make
adequate progress. This means that it is more difficult for large diverse schools (typically urban schools) that have
many subgroups to meet the demands of AYP than smaller schools with homogeneous student body (Novak &
Fuller, 2003). Schools can also fail to make AYP if too few students take the exam. The drafters of the law were
concerned that some schools might encourage low-performing students to stay home on the days of testing in order
to artificially inflate the scores. So on average at least 95 per cent of any subgroup must take the exams each year or
the school may fail to make AYP (Hess & Petrilli, 2006).
Sanctions
Schools failing to meet AYP for consecutive years, experience a series of increasing sanctions. If a school fails to
make AYP for two years in row it is labeled “in need of improvement” and school personnel must come up with a
school improvement plan that is based on “scientifically based research”. In addition, students must be offered the
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12. Standardized and other formal assessments
option of transferring to a better performing public school within the district. If the school fails for three
consecutive years, free tutoring must be provided to needy students. A fourth year of failure requires “corrective
actions” which may include staffing changes, curriculum reforms or extensions of the school day or year. If the
school fails to meet AYP for five consecutive years the district must “restructure” which involves major actions such
as replacing the majority of the staff, hiring an educational management company, turning the school over to the
state.
Growth or value added models
One concern with how AYP is calculated is that it is based on an absolute level of student performance at one
point in time and does not measure how much students improve during each year. To illustrate this, Exhibit 16
shows six students whose science test scores improved from fourth to fifth grade. The circle represents a student’s
score in fourth grade and the tip of the arrow the test score in fifth grade. Note that students 1, 2, and 3 all reach the
level of proficiency (the horizontal dotted line) but students 4, 5 and 6 do not. However, also notice that students 2,
5 and 6 improved much more than students 1, 3, and 4. The current system of AYP rewards students reaching the
proficiency level rather than students’ growth. This is a particular problem for low performing schools who may be
doing an excellent job of improving achievement (students 5 and 6) but do not make the proficiency level. The US
Department of Education in 2006 allowed some states to include growth measures into their calculations of AYP.
While growth models traditionally tracked the progress of individual students, the term is sometimes used to refer
to growth of classes or entire schools (Shaul, 2006).
Exhibit 16: An illustration of value added vs proficiency approach to assessment.
Each arrow represents the mathematics achievement results of one student who was
tested in the fourth grade (shown by the dot) and also the fifth grade (shown by the tip
of the arrow).
Some states include growth information on their report cards. For example, Tennessee (http://www.k-
12.state.tn.us/rptcrd05/) provides details on which schools meet the AYP but also whether the students’ scores on
tests represent average growth, above average, or below average growth within the state. Exhibit 17 illustrates in a
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simple way the kind of information that is provided. Students in schools A, B, and C all reached proficiency and
AYP but in Schools D, E, and F did not. However, students in schools A and D had low growth, in schools B and E
average growth, in schools C and F high growth. Researchers have found that in some schools students have high
levels of achievement but do not grow as much as expected (School A), and also that in some schools, the
achievement test scores are not high but the students are growing or learning a lot (School F). These are called
“school effects” and represent the effect of the school on the learning of the students.
Ach
iev
em
en
t
School A School B School C
Proficiency School D School E School F
Low growth Average growth High growth
Exhibit 17: Proficiency and growth information
Growth over one year
Schools can vary on overall school achievement (proficiency) as well as the amount of growth in student
learning, For example schools A, B, and C all have high achievement levels but only in School C do students have,
on average, high growth. Schools D, C, and F all have low levels of proficiency but only in school D do students, on
average, have low growth.
Growth models have intuitive appeal to teachers as they focus on how much a student learned during the school
year—not what the student knew at the start of the school year. The current research evidence suggests that
teachers matter a lot—i.e. students learn much more with some teachers than others. For example, in one study
low-achieving fourth grade students in Dallas, Texas were followed for three years and 90 per cent of those who had
effective teachers passed the seventh grade math test whereas only 42 per cent of those with ineffective teachers
passed (cited in Bracey, 2004). Unfortunately, the same study reported that low achieving students were more
likely to be assigned to ineffective teachers for three years in a row than high achieving students. Some policy
makers believe that teachers who are highly effective should receive rewards including higher salaries or bonuses
and that a primary criterion of effectiveness is assessed by growth models, i.e. how much students learn during a
year (Hershberg, 2004). However, using growth data to make decisions about teachers is controversial as there is
much more statistical uncertainty when using growth measures for a small group or students (e.g. one teacher’s
students) than larger groups (e.g. all fourth graders in a school district).
Growth models are also used to provide information about the patterns of growth among subgroups of students
that may arise from the instructional focus of the teachers. For example, it may be that highest performing students
in the classroom gain the most and the lowest performing students gain the least. This suggests that the teacher is
focusing on the high achieving students and giving less attention to low achieving students. In contrast, it may be
the highest performing students gain the least and the low performing students grow the most suggesting the
teacher focuses on the low performing students and paying little attention to the high performing students. If the
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12. Standardized and other formal assessments
teacher focuses on the students “in the middle” they may grow the most and the highest and lowest performing
students grow the least. Proponents of the value-added or growth models argue that teachers can use this
information to help them make informed decisions about their teaching (Hershberg, 2004).
Differing state standards
Under NCLB each state devises their own academic content standards, assessments, and levels of proficiency.
Some researchers have suggested that the rules of NCLB have encouraged states to set low levels of proficiency so it
is easier to meet AYP each year (Hoff, 2002). Stringency of state levels of proficiency can be examined by
comparing state test scores to scores on a national achievement test called the National Assessment of Educational
Progress (NAEP). NCLB requires that states administer reading and math NAEP tests to a sample of fourth and
eighth grade students every other year. The NAEP is designed to assess the progress of students at the state-wide or
national level not individual schools or students and is widely respected as a well designed test that uses current
best practices in testing. A large percentage of each test includes constructed-response questions and questions that
require the use of calculators and other materials (http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard).
Exhibit 18 illustrates that two states, Colorado and Missouri had very different state performance standards for
the fourth grade reading/language arts tests in 2003. On the state assessment 67 per cent of the students in
Colorado but only 21 per cent of the students in Missouri were classified as proficient. However, on the NAEP tests
34 per cent of Colorado students and 28 per cent of Missouri students were classified as proficient (Linn 2005).
These differences demonstrate that there is no common meaning in current definitions of “proficient achievement”
established by the states.
Exhibit 18: Relationship between state proficiency levels and
scores on NAEP (Adapted from Linn 2005)
Implications for beginning teachers:
Dr Mucci is the principal of a suburban fourth through sixth grade school in Ohio that continues to
meet AYP. We asked her what beginning teachers should know about high stakes testing by the
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states. “I want beginning teachers to be familiar with the content standards in Ohio because they
clearly define what all students should know and be able to do. Not only does teaching revolve
around the standards, I only approve requests for materials or professional development if these are
related to the standards. I want beginning teachers to understand the concept of data-based decision
making. Every year I meet with all the teachers in each grade level (e.g. fourth grade) to look for
trends in the previous year's test results and consider remedies based on these trends. I also meet
with each teacher in the content areas that are tested and discuss every student's achievement in his
or her class so we can develop an instructional plan for every student. All interventions with students
are research based. Every teacher in the school is responsible for helping to implement these
instructional plans, for example the music or art teachers must incorporate some reading and math
into their classes. I also ask all teachers to teach test taking skills, by using similar formats to the
state tests, enforcing time limits, making sure students learn to distinguish between questions that
required an extended response using complete sentences versus those that only requires one or two
words, and ensuring that students answer what is actually being asked. We begin this early in the
school year and continue to work on these skills, so by spring, students are familiar with the format,
and therefore less anxious about the state test. We do everything possible to set each student up for
success.”
The impact of testing on classroom teachers does not just occur in Dr Mucci’s middle school. A national survey
of over 4,000 teachers indicated that the majority of teachers reported that the state mandated tests were
compatible with their daily instruction and were based on curriculum frameworks that all teachers should follow.
The majority of teachers also reported teaching test taking skills and encouraging students to work hard and
prepare. Elementary school teachers reported greater impact of the high stakes tests: 56 per cent reported the tests
influenced their teaching daily or a few times a week compared to 46 per cent of middle school teacher and 28 per
cent of high school teachers. Even though the teachers had adapted their instruction because of the standardized
tests they were skeptical about them with 40 per cent reporting that teachers had found ways to raise test scores
without improving student learning and over 70 per cent reporting that the test scores were not an accurate
measure of what minority students know and can do (Pedulla, Abrams, Madaus, Russell, Ramos, & Miao; 2003).
International testingTesting in the Canadian provinces
Canada has developed a system of testing in the provinces as well as national testing. Each province undertakes
its own curriculum based assessments. At the elementary school level provinces assess reading and writing
(language arts) as well as mathematics (also called numeracy). In the middle grades science and social studies is
often assessed in addition to language arts and mathematics. Summary results of these tests are published but there
are no specific consequences for poor performance for schools. In addition, these tests are not high stakes for
students. At the secondary school level high stakes curriculum based exit tests are common
(http://edudata.educ.ubc.ca/Data_Pages/PanCan.htm).
Canada has developed pan-Canada assessment in mathematics, reading and writing, and science that are
administered to a random sample of schools across the country. These assessments are intended to determine
whether, on average, students across Canada reach similar levels of performance at about the same age
Educational Psychology 291 A Global Text
12. Standardized and other formal assessments
(http://www.cmec.ca/pcap/indexe.stm). They are not intended to provide individual feedback to students are
similar in purpose to the NAEP tests administered in the United States.
International comparisons
Along with the increasing globalization has come an interest with international comparisons in educational
achievement and practices and more than 40 countries participate in two major testing initiatives. The Trends in
International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) have assessed students in fourth and eighth grades four
times through 2007. The Programme for International Assessment (PISA) have assessed 15-year-olds in reading,
mathematical and science literacy in more than forty countries on three times since 2000. The items on both series
of tests include multiple choice, short answer and constructed response formats and are translated into more than
30 languages.
Policy makers are often interested in the comparison of average students’ scores across countries. For example,
in eighth grade science on the 2003 TIMMS students from Canada, United States, Hong Kong, and Australia scored
significantly higher than the international average whereas students from Egypt, Indonesia, and the Philippines
scored significantly below the international average (TIMMS 2003). On the mathematics test in the 2003 PISA, 15-
year-old students from Hong Kong, China and Finland scored higher than students from Canada and New Zealand
who in turn scored higher than the students from United States and Spain, who in turn scored higher than the
student from Mexico and Brazil (OECD, 2004).
Both series of tests also collect survey data from students, teachers or school principals allowing for information
about instructional practices and student characteristics. For example, teachers from the Philippines report
spending almost twice as much time teaching science to fourth graders than in the United States (Martin, Mullis,
Gonzalez, & Chrostowski, (2004). Student reports from PISA indicate that there is considerable cross-country
variation in how much students feel anxiety when doing mathematics. Students in France, Italy, Japan, Korea
report feeling the most anxious whereas students in Denmark, Finland and Netherlands and Sweden feel the least
anxious (OECD 2004).
Understanding test results
In order to understand test results from standardized tests it is important to be familiar with a variety of terms
and concepts that are fundamental to “measurement theory”, the academic study of measurement and assessment.
Two major areas in measurement theory, reliability and validity, were discussed in the previous chapter; in this
chapter we focus on concepts and terms associated with test scores.
The basicsFrequency distributions
A frequency distribution is a listing of the number of students who obtained each score on a test. If 31 students
take a test, and the scores range from 11 to 30 then the frequency distribution might look like Table 44. We also
show the same set of scores on a histogram or bar graph inExhibit 20. The horizontal (or x axis) represents the
score on the test and the vertical axis (y axis) represents the number or frequency of students. Plotting a frequency
distribution helps us see what scores are typical and how much variability there are in the scores. We describe more
precise ways of determining typical scores and variability next.
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Table 44: Frequency distribution for 30 scores
Score on test Frequency Central tendency measures
17 1
18 1
19 0
20 3
21 2
22 6 Mode
23 3 Median
24 2 Mean
25 0
26 2
27 6 Mode
28 2
29 2
30 1
TOTAL 31
Exhibit 19: Tests scores from Table 44represented as a bar graph
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12. Standardized and other formal assessments
Central tendency and variability
There are three common ways of measuring central tendency or which score(s) are typical. The mean is
calculated by adding up all the scores and dividing by the number of scores. In the example in Table 44, the mean is
24. The median is the “middle” score of the distribution—that is half of the scores are above the median and half are
below. The median on the distribution is 23 because 15 scores are above 23 and 15 are below. The mode is the score
that occurs most often. In Table 44 there are actually two modes 22 and 27 and so this distribution is described as
bimodal. Calculating the mean, median and mode are important as each provides different information for
teachers. The median represents the score of the “middle” students, with half scoring above and below, but does not
tell us about the scores on the test that occurred most often. The mean is important for some statistical calculations
but is highly influenced by a few extreme scores (called outliers) but the median is not. To illustrate this, imagine a
test out of 20 points taken by 10 students, and most do very well but one student does very poorly. The scores might
be 4, 18, 18, 19, 19, 19, 19, 19, 20, 20. The mean is 17.5 (170/10) but if the lowest score (4) is eliminated the mean is
now is 1.5 points higher at 19 (171/9). However, in this example the median remains at 19 whether the lowest score
is included. When there are some extreme scores the median is often more useful for teachers in indicating the
central tendency of the frequency distribution.
The measures of central tendency help us summarize scores that are representative, but they do not tell us
anything about how variable or how spread out are the scores. Exhibit 20 illustrates sets of scores from two
different schools on the same test for fourth graders. Note that the mean for each is 40 but in School A the scores
are much less spread out. A simple way to summarize variability is the range, which is the lowest score subtracted
from the lowest score. In School A with low variability the range is (45—35) = 10; in the school B the range is ( 55-
22 = 33).
Exhibit 20: Fourth grade math scores in two different schools with the
same mean but different variability
However, the range is only based on two scores in the distribution, the highest and lowest scores, and so does
not represent variability in all the scores. The standard deviation is based on how much, on average, all the
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scores deviate from the mean. In the example in Exhibit 17 the standard deviations are 7.73 for School A and 2.01
for School B. In the exercise below we demonstrate how to calculate the standard deviation.
Calculating a standard deviation
Example: The scores from 11 students on a quiz are 4, 7, 6, 3, 10, 7, 3, 7, 5, 5, and 9
5. Order scores.
6. Calculate the mean score.
7. Calculate the deviations from the mean.
8. Square the deviations from the mean.
9. Calculate the mean of the squared deviations from the mean (i.e. sum the squared deviations from the
mean then divide by the number of scores). This number is called the variance.
10. Take the square root and you have calculated the standard deviation.
Score
(Step 1, order)
Deviation
from the mean
Squared deviation
from the mean
3 -3 9
3 -3 9
4 -2 4 (Step 4-5, complete the calculations)
5 -1 1 Formula:
5 -1 1Standard deviation=∑ Score−Mean2
N
N = Number of scores
6 0 0
7 1 1
7 1 1
7 1 1
9 3 9
10 4 4
TOTAL = 66 40
(Step 2, calculate
mean)
MEAN 66 /11=6
(Step 3, calculate
deviations)
Mean=40 /11=3.64
(Step 6, find the standard deviation)
Standard deviation=3.64=1.91
Exhibit 21: Calculating a standard deviation
The normal distribution
Knowing the standard deviation is particularly important when the distribution of the scores falls on a normal
distribution. When a standardized test is administered to a very large number of students the distribution of scores
Educational Psychology 295 A Global Text
12. Standardized and other formal assessments
is typically similar, with many students scoring close to the mean, and fewer scoring much higher or lower than the
mean. When the distribution of scores looks like the bell shape shown in Exhibit 19 it is called a normal
distribution. In the diagram we did not draw in the scores of individual students as we did in Exhibit 20, because
distributions typically only fall on a normal curve when there are a large number of students; too many to show
individually. A normal distribution is symmetric, and the mean, median and mode are all the same.
Exhibit 22: Bell shaped curve of normal distribution
Normal curve distributions are very important in education and psychology because of the relationship between
the mean, standard deviation, and percentiles. In all normal distributions 34 per cent of the scores fall between the
mean and one standard deviation of the mean. Intelligence tests often are constructed to have a mean of 100 and
standard deviation of 15 and we illustrate that in Exhibit 15.
Exhibit 23: Normal distribution for an IQ test with mean 100 and standard
deviation 15
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In this example, 34 per cent of the scores are between 100 and 115 and as well, 34 per cent of the scores lie
between 85 and 100. This means that 68 per cent of the scores are between -1 and +1 standard deviations of the
mean (i.e. 85 and 115). Note than only 14 per cent of the scores are between +1 and +2 standard deviations of the
mean and only 2 per cent fall above +2 standard deviations of the mean.
In a normal distribution a student who scores the mean value is always in the fiftieth percentile because the
mean and median are the same. A score of +1 standard deviation above the mean (e.g. 115 in the example above) is
the 84 per cent tile (50 per cent and 34 per cent of the scores were below 115). In Exhibit 10 we represent the
percentile equivalents to the normal curve and we also show standard scores. 1
Kinds of test scores
A standard score expresses performance on a test in terms of standard deviation units above of below the
mean (Linn & Miller, 2005). There are a variety of standard scores:
Z-score: One type of standard score is a z-score, in which the mean is 0 and the standard deviation is 1. This
means that a z-score tells us directly how many standard deviations the score is above or below the mean. For
example, if a student receives a z score of 2 her score is two standard deviations above the mean or the eighty-
fourth percentile. A student receiving a z score of -1.5 scored one and one half deviations below the mean. Any score
from a normal distribution can be converted to a z score if the mean and standard deviation is known. The formula
is:
Z−score=Score−mean scoreStandard deviation
So, if the score is 130 and the mean is 100 and the standard deviation is 15 then the calculation is:
Z=130−10015
=2
If you look at Exhibit 15 you can see that this is correct—a score of 130 is 2 standard deviations above the mean
and so the z score is 2.
T-score: A T-score has a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 10. This means that a T-score of 70 is two
standard deviations above the mean and so is equivalent to a z-score of 2.
Stanines: Stanines (pronounced staynines) are often used for reporting students’ scores and are based on a
standard nine point scale and with a mean of 5 and a standard deviation of 2. They are only reported as whole
numbers and Figure 11-10 shows their relation to the normal curve.
Grade equivalent sores
A grade equivalent score provides an estimate of test performance based on grade level and months of the school
year (Popham, 2005, p. 288). A grade equivalent score of 3.7 means the performance is at that expected of a third
grade student in the seventh month of the school year. Grade equivalents provide a continuing range of grade levels
and so can be considered developmental scores. Grade equivalent scores are popular and seem easy to understand
however they are typically misunderstood. If, James, a fourth grade student, takes a reading test and the grade
equivalent score is 6.0; this does not mean that James can do sixth grade work. It means that James performed on
1 Exhibit 11.10 must be re-drawn. Please contact the Associate Editor for the original.
Educational Psychology 297 A Global Text
12. Standardized and other formal assessments
the fourth grade test as a sixth grade student is expected to perform. Testing companies calculate grade equivalents
by giving one test to several grade levels. For example a test designed for fourth graders would also be given to third
and fifth graders. The raw scores are plotted and a trend line is established and this is used to establish the grade
equivalents. Note that in Error: Reference source not found the trend line extends beyond the grades levels actually
tested so a grade equivalent above 5.0 or below 3.0 is based solely on the estimated trend lines.
Exhibit 24: Using trend lines to estimate grade equivalent
scores
Grade equivalent scores also assume that the subject matter that is being tested is emphasized at each grade
level to the same amount and that mastery of the content accumulates at a mostly constant rate (Popham, 2005).
Many testing experts warn that grade equivalent scores should be interpreted with considerable skepticism and that
parents often have serious misconceptions about grade equivalent scores. Parents of high achieving students may
have an inflated sense of what their child’s levels of achievement.
Issues with standardized tests
Many people have very strong views about the role of standardized tests in education. Some believe they provide
an unbiased way to determine an individual’s cognitive skills as well as the quality of a school or district. Others
believe that scores from standardized tests are capricious, do not represent what students know, and are misleading
when used for accountability purposes. Many educational psychologists and testing experts have nuanced views
and make distinctions between the information standardized tests can provide about students’ performances and
how the tests results are interpreted and used. In this nuanced view, many of the problems associated with
standardized tests arise from their high stakes use such as using the performance on one test to determine selection
into a program, graduation, or licensure, or judging a school as high vs low performing.
Are standardized tests biased?
In a multicultural society one crucial question is: Are standardized tests biased against certain social class,
racial, or ethnic groups? This question is much more complicated than it seems because bias has a variety of
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meanings. An everyday meaning of bias often involves the fairness of using standardized test results to predict
potential performance of disadvantaged students who have previously had few educational resources. For example,
should Dwayne, a high school student who worked hard but had limited educational opportunities because of the
poor schools in his neighborhood and few educational resources in his home, be denied graduation from high
school because of his score on one test. It was not his fault that he did not have the educational resources and if
given a chance with a change his environment (e.g. by going to college) his performance may blossom. In this view,
test scores reflect societal inequalities and can punish students who are less privileged, and are often erroneously
interpreted as a reflection of a fixed inherited capacity. Researchers typically consider bias in more technical ways
and three issues will be discussed: item content and format; accuracy of predictions, and stereotype threat.
Item content and format. Test items may be harder for some groups than others. An example of social class bias
in a multiple choice item asked students the meaning of the term field. The students were asked to read the initial
sentence in italics and then select the response that had the same meaning of field (Popham 2004, p. 24):
My dad’s field is computer graphics.
a. The pitcher could field his position
b. We prepared the field by plowing it
c. The doctor examined my field of vision
d. What field will you enter after college?
Children of professionals are more likely to understand this meaning of field as doctors, journalists and lawyers
have “fields”, whereas cashiers and maintenance workers have jobs so their children are less likely to know this
meaning of field. (The correct answer is D).
Testing companies try to minimize these kinds of content problems by having test developers from a variety of
backgrounds review items and by examining statistically if certain groups find some items easier or harder.
However, problems do exist and a recent analyses of the verbal SAT tests indicated that whites tend to scores better
on easy items whereas African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans score better on hard items
(Freedle, 2002). While these differences are not large, they can influence test scores. Researchers think that the
easy items involving words that are used in every day conversation may have subtly different meanings in different
subcultures whereas the hard words (e.g. vehemence, sycophant) are not used in every conversation and so do not
have these variations in meaning. Test formast can also influence test performance. Females typically score better
at essay questions and when the SAT recently added an essay component, the females overall SAT verbal scores
improved relative to males (Hoover, 2006).
Accuracy of predictions
Standardized tests are used among other criteria to determine who will be admitted to selective colleges. This
practice is justified by predictive validity evidence—i.e. that scores on the ACT or SAT are used to predict first year
college grades. Recent studies have demonstrated that the predictions for black and Latino students are less
accurate than for white students and that predictors for female students are less accurate than male students
(Young, 2004). However, perhaps surprisingly the test scores tend to slightly over predict success in college for
black and Latino students, i.e. these students are likely to attain lower freshman grade point averages than
Educational Psychology 299 A Global Text
12. Standardized and other formal assessments
predicted by their test scores. In contrast, test scores tend to slightly under predict success in college for female
students, i.e. these students are likely to attain higher freshman grade point averages than predicted by their test
scores. Researchers are not sure why there are differences in how accurately the SAT and ACT test predict freshman
grades.
Stereotype threat
Groups that are negatively stereotyped in some area, such as women’s performance in mathematics, are in
danger of stereotype threat, i.e. concerns that others will view them through the negative or stereotyped lens
(Aronson & Steele, 2005). Studies have shown that test performance of stereotyped groups (e.g. African Americans,
Latinos, women) declines when it is emphasized to those taking the test that (a) the test is high stakes, measures
intelligence or math and (b) they are reminded of their ethnicity, race or gender (e.g. by asking them before the test
to complete a brief demographic questionnaire). Even if individuals believe they are competent, stereotype threat
can reduce working memory capacity because individuals are trying to suppress the negative stereotypes.
Stereotype threat seems particularly strong for those individuals who desire to perform well. Standardized test
scores of individuals from stereotyped groups may significantly underestimate actual their competence in low-
stakes testing situations.
Do teachers teach to the tests?
There is evidence that schools and teachers adjust the curriculum so it reflects what is on the tests and also
prepares students for the format and types of items on the test. Several surveys of elementary school teachers
indicated that more time was spent on mathematics and reading and less on social studies and sciences in 2004
than 1990 (Jerald, 2006). Principals in high minority enrollment schools in four states reported in 2003 they had
reduced time spent on the arts. Recent research in cognitive science suggests that reading comprehension in a
subject (e.g. science or social studies) requires that students understand a lot of vocabulary and background
knowledge in that subject (Recht & Leslie, 1988). This means that even if students gain good reading skills they will
find learning science and social studies difficult if little time has been spent on these subjects.
Taking a test with an unfamiliar format can be difficult so teachers help students prepare for specific test
formats and items (e.g. double negatives in multiple choice items; constructed response). Earlier in this chapter a
middle school teacher, Erin, and Principal Dr Mucci described the test preparation emphasis in their schools. There
is growing concern that the amount of test preparation that is now occurring in schools is excessive and students
are not being educated but trained to do tests (Popham, 2004).
Do students and educators cheat?
It is difficult to obtain good data on how widespread cheating is but we know that students taking tests cheat and
others, including test administrators, help them cheat (Cizek, 2003; Popham 2006). Steps to prevent cheating by
students include protecting the security of tests, making sure students understand the administration procedures,
preventing students from bringing in their notes or unapproved electronic devices as well as looking at each others
answers. Some teachers and principals have been caught using unethical test preparation practices such as giving
actual test items to students just before the tests, giving students more time than is allowed, answering students’
questions about the test items, and actually changing students’ answers (Popham, 2006). Concerns in Texas about
cheating led to the creation of an independent task force in August 2006 with 15 staff members from the Texas
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Education Agency assigned investigate test improprieties. (Jacobson, 2006). While the pressure on schools and
teachers to have their student perform well is large these practices are clearly unethical and have lead to school
personnel being fired from their jobs (Cizek, 2003).
Chapter summary
Standardized tests are developed by a team of experts and are administered in standard ways. They are used for
a variety of educational purposes including accountability. Most elementary and middle school teachers are likely to
be responsible for helping their students attain state content standards and achieve proficiency on criterion-
referenced achievement tests. In order for teachers to interpret test scores and communicate that information to
students and parents they have to understand basic information about measures of central tendency and
variability, the normal distribution, and several kinds of test scores. Current evidence suggests that standardized
tests can be biased against certain groups and that many teachers tailor their curriculum and classroom tests to
match the standardized tests. In addition, some educators have been caught cheating.
Key terms Achievement tests
Aptitude testsAYP (Annual Yearly Progress)
Criterion referenced testsDiagnostic tests
Frequency distributionGrade equivalent scores
High stakes tests
Mean
MedianMode
Norm referenced tests Range
Standard deviationStanine
Z-score
On the Internet
Testing (CRESST) at UCLA focuses on research and development that improves assessment and accountability
systems. It has resources for researchers, K-12 teachers, and policy makers on the implications of NCLB as well as
classroom assessment.
of tests and has links to the testing requirements for teachers seeking licensure in each state District of Columbia
and the US Virgin Islands.
promoting information and supporting and NCLB. Links for teachers and the summaries of the impact of NCLB in
each state are provided.
References
American Federation of Teachers (2006, July) Smart Testing: Let’s get it right. AFT Policy Brief. Retrieved
August 8th 2006 from http://www.aft.org/presscenter/releases/2006/smarttesting/Testingbrief.pdf
Aronson, J., & Steele, C. M. (2005). Stereotypes and the Fragility of Academic Competence, Motivation, and
Self-Concept. In A. J. Elliott & C. S. Dweck (Eds.). Handbook of competence and motivation. (pp.436-
456) Guilford Publications, New York.
Educational Psychology 301 A Global Text
12. Standardized and other formal assessments
Bracey, G. W. (2004). Value added assessment findings: Poor kids get poor teachers. Phi Delta Kappan, 86,
331- 333
Cizek, G. J. (2003). Detecting and preventing classroom cheating: Promoting integrity in assessment. Corwin
Press, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Combined Curriculum Document Reading 4.1 (2006). Accessed November 19, 2006 from
http://www.education.ky.gov/KDE/Instructional+Resources/Curriculum+Documents+and+Resources/
Teaching+Tools/Combined+Curriculum+Documents/default.htm
Freedle, R. O. (2003). Correcting the SAT’s ethnic and social–class bias: A method for reestimating SAT
scores. Harvard Educational Review, 73 (1), 1-42.
Fuhrman, S. H. (2004). Introduction, In S. H. Fuhrman & R. F. Elmore (Eds). Redesigning accountability
systems for education. (pp. 3-14). New York: Teachers College Press.
Haertel, E. & Herman, J. (2005) A historical perspective on validity arguments for accountability testing. In
J. L.Herman & E. H. Haertel (Eds.) Uses and misuses of data for educational accountability and
improvement. 104th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. Malden, MA: Blackwell
Hershberg, T. (2004). Value added assessment: Powerful diagnostics to improve instruction and promote
student achievement. American Association of School Administrators, Conference Proceedings. Retrieved
August 21 2006 from www.cgp.upenn.edu/ope_news.html
Hess, F. H. Petrilli, M. J. (2006). No Child Left Behind Primer. New York: Peter Lang.
Hoff, D. J. (2002) States revise meaning of proficient. Educational Week, 22,(6) 1,24-25.
Hoover, E. (2006, October 21). SAT scores see largest dip in 31 years. Chronicle of Higher Education, 53(10),
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Human Resources Division (n. d.). Firefighter Commonwealth of Massachusetts Physical Abilities Test (PAT)
Accessed November, 19, 2006 from http://www.mass.gov/?
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Idaho Department of Education (2005-6). Mathematics Content standards and assessment by grade level.
Accessed November 22 2006 from http://www.sde.idaho.gov/instruct/standards/
Jacobson, L. (2006). Probing Test irregularities: Texas launches inquiry into cheating on exams. Education
Week, 28(1), 28
Jerald, C. D (2006,August).The Hidden costs of curriculum narrowing. Issue Brief, Washington DC: The
Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement. Accessed November 21, 2006 from
www.centerforcsri.org/
Joshi, R. M. (2003). Misconceptions about the assessment and diagnosis of reading disability. Reading
Psychology, 24, 247-266.
Linn, R. L., & Miller, M. D. (2005). Measurement and Assessment in Teaching 9th ed. Upper Saddle River,
NJ: Pearson .
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Linn, R. L. (2005). Fixing the NCLB Accountability System. CRESST Policy Brief 8. Accessed September 21,
2006 from http://www.cse.ucla.edu/products/policybriefs_set.htm
New York State Education Department (2005). Home Instruction in New York State. Accessed on November
19, 2006 from http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/nonpub/part10010.htm
Martin, M.O., Mullis, I.V.S., Gonzalez, E.J., & Chrostowski, S.J. (2004). Findings From IEA’s Trends in
International Mathematics and Science Study at the Fourth and Eighth Grades Chestnut Hill, MA:
TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center, Boston College. Accessed September 23, 2006 from
http://timss.bc.edu/timss2003i/scienceD.html
Novak, J. R. & Fuller, B (2003, December), Penalizing diverse schools? Similar test scores, but different
students bring federal sanctions. Policy analysis for policy education. University of California, Berkeley
School of Education: Berkeley CA. Accessed on September 21, 2006 from
http://pace.berkeley.edu/pace_index.html
(OECD 2004). Learning for Tomorrow's World—First Results from PISA 2003. Accessed on September 23,
2006 from http://www.pisa.oecd.org/document/
Olson, L. (2005, November 30th). State test program mushroom as NCLB kicks in. Education Week 25(13)
10-12.
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state-mandated testing programs on teaching and learning: Findings from a national survey of
teachers. Boston College, Boston MA National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy. Accessed
September 21 2006 from http://escholarship.bc.edu/lynch_facp/51/
Popham, W. J. (2004). America’s “failing” schools. How parents and teachers can copy with No Child Left
Behind. New York: Routledge Falmer.
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Recht, D. R. & Leslie, L. (1988). Effect of prior knowledge on good and poor readers’ memory of text. Journal
of Educational Psychology 80, 16-20.
Shaul, M. S. (2006). No Child Left Behind Act: States face challenges measuring academic growth.
Testimony before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce Government Accounting Office.
Accessed September 25, 2006 from www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-948T
Stiggins, R (2004). New Assessment Beliefs for a New School Mission, Phi Delta Kappan, 86 (1) 22 -27.
Wise, S. L. & DeMars, C. W. (2005). Low examinee effort in low-stakes assessment: Problems and potential
solutions. Educational Assessment 10(1), 1-17.
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Educational Psychology 303 A Global Text
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Appendix A: Preparing for licensure
If you live in the United States or another country that certifies or licenses teachers with some form of test or
assessment of knowledge of teaching, you will find the following case studies helpful in preparing for at least the
test. The cases each deal with a realistic teaching problem or dilemma. They are followed by a few questions that
can, in principle, be answered in short (half-page) essay format. (This style parallels the style of the PRAXIS II
examination taken by many future teachers in the United States.) The content or topic of the cases parallel major
topics of the chapters of Educational Psychology—one case per chapter.
Readers who are planning to take the PRAXIS II test, especially the version called “Principles of Learning and
Teaching”, will know that the test also includes a number of structured, multiple-choice items. We have not
included any examples of multiple-choice test items here, but they are widely available in various published study
guides for the PRAXIS II. Perhaps the most authoritative is the one published by the administrators of the PRAXIS
itself, the Educational Testing Service:
Educational Testing Service. (2004). Study guide for Principles of Learning and Teaching, 2nd edition.
Princeton, NJ, USA: Author.
Educational Psychology 304 A Global Text
Appendix A: Preparing for licensure
Preparing for licensure : the decline and fall of Jane Gladstone
See also Chapter 2, The learning process; Chapter 7, Classroom management and the learning environment.
Jane Gladstone was student teaching in a sixth-grade classroom. She had been there for several
weeks, helping with activities and occasionally leading specific activities that she had devised
herself. She liked the students and felt that she had been developing good relationships with them.
One morning Ms Wilson, her supervising teacher, had to leave unexpectedly. “Something’s come
up, Jane, and the principal needs me to come to a meeting right away. It could be awhile before I’m
back, so you’ll need to take care of things. But you know the routines now, don’t you?”
Jane was surprised and a bit worried, but also excited by the challenge. She did indeed know the
routines, so she smiled cheerfully as Ms Wilson went out the door. “OK, everyone”, she said. “We’ll
start with language arts. Turn to where we left off yesterday, page 46.”
“But Ms Gladstone”, said Paul, “We actually left off on page 32.”
“No, dummy!” chimed in Katherine, “You were absent yesterday, and the day before we had an
assembly. Remember?” Suddenly three or four students were discussing where in fact the class had
left off in the book, and therefore where Jane ought to begin. Jane was wondering that herself.
“Page 46!” she said firmly—actually more firmly than she had intended. But the students agreed,
and the lesson began. The lesson turned out to be a short story about an athlete who trained hard
as a runner for a local competition. Students took turns reading selections from the story, and in
this way got about half way through it. Then Joe raised his hand.
“Ms Gladstone”, he asked. “Do you think athletes should be arrested for taking steroids?” Jane was
taken off guard by this. She had been determined to finish the lesson smoothly. All she could think
to say was, “Well I don’t know. That’s a hard question.”
“My dad says they should be arrested, and that no one should have any doubts about that.”
In seconds the language arts lesson was forgotten and students were arguing about whether
athletes should take drugs. For the moment Jane was on the sidelines.
“My uncle took steroids at university”, said Frank, “and it never hurt him.”
“Gross!” called out Jill from across the room. “I suppose you take them too, then?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Frank, obviously annoyed.
“She’s saying your too fat, Frank”, said Joe. “That’s what steroids do, you know.”
Jane was getting worried. How could she get the discussion back on track? Students were just
getting more worked up.
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“I’ve never taken any drugs!”
“Not real drugs—steroids—you weren’t listening.”
“I bet you have, though…”
On it went, with some students getting annoyed and others clearly tuning out. What if Ms Wilson
came back now?
“BE QUIET!” Jane shouted, surprised at hearing herself be so loud. Everyone got still instantly,
stunned and surprised. But not for long.
“Be quiet!” someone mimicked softly from the back of the room. A few snickers. Then someone else
said it, with sarcasm dripping from the words. “Be quiet!” Jane glowered at the class, wondering
what to do next.
Questions
➢ What did Jane do wrong?
➢ (a) How could the students’ inappropriate behaviors be considered examples of operant
behaviors being reinforced?
➢ (b) In what way did Jane’s “clamping down” on the students reinforce Jane?
➢ Describe briefly a way for Jane and Ms Wilson to prevent behavior problems from
occurring when and if Jane has to take over the class unexpectedly.
Educational Psychology 306 A Global Text
Appendix A: Preparing for licensure
Preparing for licensure : Joey’s individual educational plan
See also Chapter 5, Students with special educational needs; Chapter 10, Planning instruction.
The following are excerpts from two parts of the Individual Educational Plan (IEP) for a fourth-
grade student named Joey who has an intellectual disability. The excerpts list various performance
objectives and actions, but only some of these are complete. For others—marked with question
marks (??)—relevant information or plans have been deliberately left blank. Read the excerpts and
then respond to the questions that follow:
Part 1: domain—communication
Performance
Objectives
Methods, Materials,
or Strategies
Roles and
Responsibilities
Assessment
1. Joey will increase his
vocabulary in all areas—
people, things, and
actions.
– Joey will use pictures
to learn new words
– TA will prompt active
responses—e.g. “Show me
__.”
– Conversation book
with pictures of Joey doing
things
Teacher:
-monitor
-plan daily activities
TA (i.e. “Teacher
Assistant”):
-modeling
-direct instruction
-informal observation
-checklists re whether
desired vocabulary is being
learned
2. Joey will begin using
2- or 3-word sentences
more often.
-Joey will be provided
with model phrases such
as: “__??__”
-Joey will be given an
entire sentence and then
__??__
Teacher:
-modeling
TA:
-modeling
-facilitating
-informal observations
-checklists of particular
sentences used
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Part 2: domain—academic/cognitive
Performance Objectives Methods, Materials,
or Strategies
Roles and
Responsibilities
Assessment
3. Joey will recognize and print his
name.
-Cards with one
student’s name per card.
Joey will __??__
-Make name using
__??__
-__??__
Teacher:
-monitor
TA:
-facilitate
-model
– __??__
4. ___??___ -__??__
-__??__
Teacher:
-monitor
TA:
-facilitate
-model
-__??__
-__??__
Questions
➢ For Performance Objectives #2 and #3, the sample phrases and model sentences are
missing in the “Methods, Materials, and Strategies” column. Suggest two reasonable
sample phrases and two model sentences to fill in these blanks. Then suggest how each of
the teaching strategies illustrate principles of learning.
➢ For Performance Objective #3, what is missing in the “Assessment” column? Suggest a
reasonable method of assessment and then explain (1) why the method would be both valid
and practical, and (2) any cautions the teacher should be aware of in using the method of
assessment.
➢ Performance Objective #4 is missing both “Methods, Materials, and Strategies” and
“Assessment.” Fill in both boxes—i.e. suggest two ways of implementing the objective and
two ways of assessing it. Then explain how your suggestions reflect the nature of
Performance Objective #4.
Educational Psychology 308 A Global Text
Appendix A: Preparing for licensure
Preparing for licensure: Rosemary’s instructional decision
See also Chapter 8, Nature of classroom communication; Chapter 9, Facilitating complex thinking.
Rosemary had planned a lesson for her second grade class about personal and social management,
but she was not satisfied with it. She had taken the general goal directly from the state’s official
curriculum guide for health education: “Students will identify positive communication skills”, it
said. But the guide said nothing about how to translate this goal into practice.
She was thinking that she would use puppets to demonstrate how to communicate in positive ways.
The puppets would engage in dialogue, during which they would nod their heads appropriately,
focus on the speaker, not interrupt, and keep still while listening. Maybe she would include a few
communication mistakes as well—times when a puppet might interrupt in appropriately, for
example—and challenge students to identify those moments.
Her plan seemed fine as far as it went, but she felt unsure about two things. One concern was how
to make sure that students got the point of the activity, and did not regard it simply as
entertainment. How should she introduce the activity? What should she say about it, either
beforehand, during, or afterwards? What exactly should she tell students she is expecting from
them?
The other concern was with the very format of the activity. She did not want students just to know
about good communication skills; she wanted them to use them as well. The puppets did not seem
to help with this latter purpose. How, she wondered, could she get students to take responsibility
for practicing good communication? Was there a way to modify or extend the puppet activity that
would do this? Or perhaps additional activities that students could do?
Think of the range of instructional strategies available to Rosemary. Then answer each of the
following questions.
Questions
➢ Choose two strategies that would help her with the first of her concerns—with making sure
that students understood the purpose of the puppets lesson. Compose an imaginary script
of what she might say before, during, and after using the puppets in the way described.
➢ Devise one way to modify the puppet activity so that it focused less on students’ knowledge
of communication and more on students’ skills with communication.
➢ Devise one additional activity to develop students’ skills with communication and their
sense of responsibility for doing so. Outline each activity in point (or summary) form.
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➢ Comment briefly on how each of your answers above (to Questions #1-3) draws on
principles and methods of major instructional strategies.
Educational Psychology 310 A Global Text
Appendix A: Preparing for licensure
Preparing for licensure: Mr Cullen teaches about houses
See also Chapter 10, Planning instruction; Chapter 4, Student diversity.
Mr Cullen teaches fifth grade at an urban elementary school, where one of the normal curriculum
topics is about “where people live”. The general goal of the unit, as expressed in the curriculum
framework document from the State Department of Education, is for students “to understand the
nature and purposes of houses and how they are affected by the circumstances of their society”. To
get started in planning the unit, Mr Cullen brainstormed the conceptual web of ideas and topics
shown below as “Document 1” below. He also introduced students to making conceptual webs
about houses, one of which is shown below as “Document 2”. Part way through the unit, in
addition, he took the class on a simple field trip to look at the houses in the residential
neighborhood near the school. His notes about that field trip are shown as “Document 3”.
Document 1: Mr Cullen’s conceptual map about houses
Styles Sizes Types Brick Wood Plaster
Appearance Construction materials
HOUSES Costs Purchase Price
Maintenance Rental costs
Parts of a House Effects of Location
Inside
Bath Outside Neighboring Schools Street
Bedroom(s) Garage Houses & Stores traffic
Kitchen Yard
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Document 2: Jill’s conceptual map about houses
Color Size Painted? Yard tidy?
Similarity & Differences Appearance of
among Houses Houses
HOUSES
Parts of Houses Location of Houses
Bedrooms Furnace/heater Near friends? Near stores?
Privacy? Warm enough? Near bus stop
Document 3: Notes on Field Trip Looking at Neighborhood Houses
20 students walked about ½ mile around the neighborhood (30 minutes) and viewed
approximately 100 houses in the process. Behavior during the walk was generally good.
Several questions asked by students (no particular order of importance):
(a) “Who lives in these houses?”
(b) “Why are some houses painted nicely but others are not?”
(c) “Why are some houses bigger than others?”
(d) “Where are some really BIG houses?”
(e) “Do children play on these yards and streets?”
Question to myself: How to address these questions back in class?
Questions
➢ Compare the concept webs of Mr Cullen and of the two students. Identify one topic or goal
that appears to be a priority for all three individuals. Then devise a strategy or activity
appropriate for teaching about this topic or goal. Use principles of instructional planning
such as described in this chapter.
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Appendix A: Preparing for licensure
➢ Identify a topic or goal that appears to be a priority only for Mr Cullen (i.e. that does not
appear on either student’s concept web). Devise a strategy or activity appropriate for
teaching about this topic or goal, taking into account the possibility that the students have
less prior knowledge or motivation about this topic than about the one identified in
Question #1.
➢ Identify a topic or goal that appears to be a priority only for one of the students (i.e. that
appears only on that student’s concept web). Devise a strategy or activity appropriate for
supporting the student in pursuing this topic, and for connecting it to at least one other
topic in Mr Cullen’s concept web.
➢ Choose any two of the questions cited in Mr Cullen’s field trip notes. Discuss how these
questions might be addressed in the context of one of the other activities described in
Questions #1-#3 “Deciding for yourself about research”.
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Preparing for licensure: facilitating students’ communication through group work
See also Chapter 7, Classroom management and the learning environment; Chapter 8, The nature of classroom
communication.
Scene 1: Barbara Fuller makes plans
It is late August.
Barbara Fuller, a third grade teacher, peers about her classroom, wondering how she will organize
her program for the coming year. She wants to try some sort of collaborative group work because
she has heard good things about it—especially that it gets students talking to each other in ways
that are productive rather than mere chit-chat. Ms Fuller is thinking of trying a group project for
social studies that she is calling “How many people does it take to raise a child?” Students are
supposed to explore how people outside the family contribute to the welfare of infants and
children. If they do collaborate successfully, then students can pool their research, share ideas and
interpretations, and present their results to class more effectively.
Ms Fuller has read some very specific literature about how to get started with collaborative group
work. One book recommends, for example, that she assign the members of each group rather than
letting students select their own groups; this procedure is supposed to avoid cliques and ensure
that everyone is included. But it also means that some group mates may not be each other’s first
choice. Ms Fuller considers this trade-off carefully, and finally decides to go ahead and assign the
group members herself. To minimize possible complaints, she also decides to give each group an
immediate task: choose a leader as well as a name for the group.
Scene 2: Collaborate groups that don’t collaborate
Two weeks into the term, Ms Fuller begins the collaborative project about community helpers. She
describes the purposes and advantages of group work: students can help each other, cover more
reading material, and enjoy each other’s company. They will also be challenged to explain what
they learn to each other and to justify to each other their ideas for the final report and presentation.
Once the work begins, she begins noticing a variety of reactions from groups and the individuals
within them. In one group (Ms Fuller dubs it “Group 1”), for example, Tom complains to her that
he is the only boy in the group. “You’ll be fine,” she says to Tom. “If you look around, you’ll see that
most people are with other people they don’t know terribly well.” Tom looks uncomfortable with
her response, but continues working.
In Group 2, Jasmine takes over almost immediately; everyone seems to agree that she should have
this job. Unfortunately Jasmine is not pleased to be in charge: she issues orders reluctantly (“Kyla,
you look up about nurses”), to which her group happily agree.
Educational Psychology 314 A Global Text
Appendix A: Preparing for licensure
In Group 3, Ken and Serge confer about the project, but ignore the girls in the group. The girls soon
are chatting about activities outside school, doodling in their notebooks, and apparently
daydreaming.
In Group 4, Ms Fuller can hear voices periodically rising in anger. She can’t make out who is saying
what, but it seems to involve Jennifer, Sean, and possibly Lavar. The other two group members are
sitting quietly, simply observing the argument and presumably waiting for it to be over.
Questions
➢ If you could speak to Ms Fuller right now (at the end of Scene 2), what advice could you
give her to assist in continuing the activity? For this question, take the situation as it has in
fact evolved so far; avoid giving advice, that is like “You should never have done X in the
first place.” Focus your advice on developing effective strategies of communication, either
for Ms Fuller, for the students, or for both.
➢ Now imagine that you can, miraculously, turn the clock back to the beginning of Scene 1,
when Ms Fuller was planning the collaborative activity in the first place. What advice could
you give her at that initial point in time? Again, focus your advice on developing effective
strategies of communication, either for Ms Fuller, for the students, or for both.
➢ Consider how nonverbal communication among the students might be affecting students’
experience in particular. Describe a way in which one or more features of nonverbal
communication might cause a collaborate group to fall apart or become unproductive.
Then suggest ways that Ms Fuller might be able to help so that members of the group
remained mutually supportive and productive.
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Preparing for licensure: Ms Scanton teaches second grade
See also Chapter 10 Planning instruction; Appendix C: The reflective practitioner.
When Ms Scanton taught second grade, she kept a journal about her experiences. Sometimes she
simply recorded interesting facts or information individuals, but other times she commented and
reflected on individuals at more length. Here are three of her journal entries.
Document 1: Ms Scanton’s observation of Ashley’s writing
October 4: Ashley procrastinated a lot again today during journal-writing time—stared at the
ceiling, at the kids near her, etc. etc. I reminded everyone that they were supposed to write about
“this week at school,” but it didn’t seem to sink in with Ashley. After sitting a long time, she drew a
picture of her family—Mom, Dad, cat.
I know she especially loves her cat, but I also thought she should follow directions more closely. I
ask her, “Is that all you’ve done?” She frowns. I smile—a sincere one.
“It’s hard,” she says cautiously—referring to the writing itself.
“But that’s why it’s important to work at it—to actually write,” say I.
A pause. Then, “How do you spell ‘Mom’?” she asks.
I tell her to sound it out; ask what is the first sound, etc. /m/…/ah/…/m/… She says these sounds
slowly, maybe to please me.
“/m/,” she repeats, and then write down one letter: M. I have to leave to check on others. From a
distance I see her write down K, then erase and switch it to C. Was she sounding out “cat”?
Document 2: Later that year: Ms Scanton’s log of Ashley’s misspellings
Ashley, November 21: Ashley is still misspelling so many words in her writing that I’m getting
exasperated, to put it nicely. Here’s a list of her misspellings from the past two weeks—mostly from
her journal:
techrs (teachers)
milmen(mailmen)
peliec (police)
fier pepel (fire people)
pepl (people)
librein (librarian)
lectrisudie (electricity)
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Appendix A: Preparing for licensure
doctrs (doctors)
nrsis (nurses)
loyors (lawyers)
* What to do for her? *
Document #3: Still later: Ms Scanton journal reflections
April 21: Just finished a cool book, GNYS AT WRK, by Glenda Bissex, that made me think about
Ashley and her misspellings. The author described her son’s invented spellings and how they
became more plentiful and complicated at first, but eventually became more “adultlike” or
conventional. Fascinating! The mom was in no hurry to cure her child of his spelling problems, but
he seemed to outgrow them on his own. The chief point seemed to be that invented spellings may
be good because they show active efforts by the child to figure out the rules of spelling.
So maybe Ashley will outgrow her misspellings too? I do note that her misspellings—her inventions
—have become more complicated across the year. Here’s from her journal last week:
TDA W WT T JM NAD W PLY TWLIT TAG
With a little help from Ashley, I figured this out as “Today we went to gym and we played toilet
tag.”
Here’s from the week before:
TIZ WK W MAD PTY MAX.
Translation: “This week we made party masks.”
Quite a difference from the start of the year, when she would only write down a couple of letters
during journal-writing time! Maybe I need to support her efforts more and worry about them less.
But how to do that and still make sure she really is learning how to spell?
P.S. If you are interested, the book about invented spellings that Ms Scanton mentioned in
Document #3 is listed in the bibliography.
Questions
➢ In these excerpts from her journal, Ms Scanton has observed and reflected on Ashley’s
learning to spell. Considered her activities as a whole, how much do they qualify as action
research in the sense described in this chapter? What should be added or changed to make
her activities a full-fledged example of action research?
➢ Consider the list of misspellings (or invented spellings) in Document #2. Suggest how, if at
all, Ms Scanton might address those misspellings with Ashley. In particular, comment on
whether she should make time to work with Ashley in the same way that she did in
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Document #1. Assuming that she does make time, how she might set priorities about
which word(s) to focus on if she does not have time to deal with them all?
➢ Suppose that Ms Scanton does not have time to review every misspelled word with Ashley.
How else could she address Ashley’s spelling problems? Consider briefly how she might
use each of the following: (1) peer tutor, (2) classroom computer, (3) homework. Comment
on how Ms Scanton might collect information about each of these strategies.
Educational Psychology 318 A Global Text
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Appendix B: Deciding for yourself about the research
In most of this book, educational research is used to establish ideas and advice about teaching. Except in
Chapter 13 (“The reflective practitioner”), however, we do not analyze research studies in depth. In this appendix
therefore we look at examples or cases of research studies in detail. We describe how they were conducted, reflect
on their significance and meaning, and pose a few questions to consider about each study. There is approximately
one case per chapter, and their topics roughly parallel one or more of the major themes of each chapter. The
references for the books cited are listed at the end of each case study, as well as in the bibliographies of the chapter
related to each case. Looking at the research studies in detail gives a different perspective on the research than
simply using the results: “up close” the implications of a study are often not as clear as when seen from a distance.
Educational Psychology 319 A Global Text
Appendix B: Deciding for yourself about the research
Deciding for yourself about the research
Chapter 1, The changing teaching profession and you: effects of high-stakes testing on learning educational psychology
As indicated in this chapter, the trend toward high-stakes testing has affected even the preparation
of teachers themselves. Many American states now require new teachers to pass a standardized test
of subject matter knowledge, and many also require them to pass a test about educational
psychology—the sort of content that is the focus of this textbook (Cochran-Smith, 2003;
Educational Testing Service [ETS], 2004). These changes highlight make the issues about testing
very vivid—and at times anxiety-provoking—for many new teachers.
Rosemary Sutton studied the effects of high-stakes testing on her own teaching of educational
psychology as well as on her undergraduate students’ responses to studying this subject (Sutton,
2004). In her state of Ohio, new teachers must all take a test called the “PRAXIS II: Principles of
Learning and Teaching” (ETS, 2004). She reported experiencing a number of new instructional
dilemmas as a result of this test being introduced as a requirement for teacher licensing and
certification, and she described how she resolved them. The effects of the dilemmas and of her
solutions to them were not uniform, but depended on the particular feature of the course.
One negative effect was that Professor Sutton felt more pressure to cover as much of the content of
the PRAXIS in her course as possible, so that students could be prepared as well as possible for the
test. Doing so, however, meant covering more material and therefore reducing depth of coverage of
certain topics. This was a serious problem, she feared, because some parts of the course became
more shallow or fragmented. She also had less time for open-ended discussions that truly followed
interests expressed by the students.
On the other hand, Professor Sutton also reported diversifying her teaching methods—for example
by using more group work and less lecturing—as a way to make class sessions more interesting and
motivating, and therefore insuring that students learned the increased material as well as possible.
She also began using more assignments that resembled the PRAXIS test itself. In this case
imitating the PRAXIS meant giving “case study quizzes” throughout the semester, which were
featured prominently on the PRAXIS. The quizzes consisted of short anecdotes or stories followed
by open-ended questions which students answered the space of a few sentences or brief paragraph.
Since the students knew that the quizzes were a type of preparation for licensing, they tolerated
them well, and even welcomed them. She and the students felt as if they were “on the same side”,
working together to help the students pass their exam. The relationship was therefore more
positive and less “conflicted” compared to earlier times when Professor Sutton was expected not
only to teach the students, but also to evaluate them.
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With the introduction of the licensing exam, finally, some students seemed to regard educational
psychology as more important than in the past—even using university break weeks for additional
study of the textbook! On the other hand, some students seemed to worry about their performance
on the test, and their anxiety may have interfered with learning about educational psychology
itself. Their worries created a dilemma that Professor never truly resolved: how to get students to
prepare for the test seriously without arousing undue worry or anxiety in them?
Questions
➢ How well do you feel that Professor Sutton’s dilemmas about high-stakes testing reflect the
dilemmas that public school teachers might face in preparing their own students for high-
stakes tests?
➢ On balance, and taking into account Professor Sutton’s experience, do you think that high-
stakes tests are desirable?
References
Cochran-Smith, M. (2003). Assessing assessment in teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 54(3),
187-191.
Educational Testing Service. (2004). Study guide for Principles of Learning and Teaching, 2nd edition.
Princeton, NJ: Author.
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Appendix B: Deciding for yourself about the research
Deciding for yourself about the research
Chapter 2, The learning process: behaviorist and constructivist teaching compared
Numerous educators have planned and implemented activities and curriculum units that use either
behaviorist or constructivist principles in one way or another. Often the demonstrated activities or
units are hard to compare directly simply because behaviorism and constructivism address
different aspects of learning, and therefore call upon teachers to perform somewhat different roles.
To see what I mean, look at these two examples of instructional research. The first is grounded in
behaviorism and the second is grounded in constructivism.
Behaviorism in action: a remedy for stuttering Mark Onslow and his colleagues have
described a way to help young children overcome stuttering, a problem in which sounds and words
are repeated or stretched unduly, so that fluent conversation is difficult (2001). Onslow’s research
strategy was simple, at least in principle: he trained parents of children who stuttered to praise
their child more strongly is the child spoke fluently (without any stutter), and to correct the child
quietly, but non-punitively whenever the child did stutter. A fluent sentence therefore produced
praise, or even a gold star, from parents. A stuttered sentence produced an immediate sentence like
“I think that was a stutter”, stated factually and quietly. Value judgments and criticisms were not
allowed.
Onslow’s program contradicted the conventional advice to parents about stuttering, which was to
ignore it wherever possible. Nonetheless the program produced very positive results. All of the
stuttering children reduced or even eliminated their stuttering after a few weeks of the differential
reinforcement by their parents, and the stuttering did not return when they were tested even one
year after the program finished.
Constructivism in action: project-based learning Juliette Goldman, an educator working in
Australia, demonstrated how this can be done with health education for middle years students
(Goldman, 2006). She designed a project for seventh-grade students in which they had to publish a
training manual for fellow-students on the topic of “good food handling”, advice for restaurant
workers about how they can keep for contaminating either themselves or the food that they serve.
The writers of the manual worked in groups of three, researching information on a range of topics
related to food handling. Then they used computer self-publishing software to prepare and print
copies of their information. They also made oral presentations about their manuals to a school
assembly to which local food-industry representatives were invited, and they arranged to display
the finished manuals at the local public library.
The initiative used constructivist principles in a number of ways. For example, it challenged
learners to make decisions about what their particular manual should “teach”. The decision-
making required learners constantly to monitor their own knowledge and learning—engage in
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metacognition—in order to insure that the content was complete, accurate, and important to learn.
It also grouped students into teams, so that they could, to some extent, teach each other whatever
they needed to learn, including helping each other to sense whether they actually were learning
from their research.
Questions
➢ Obviously these two studies are about different educational problems or issues. What if the
learning theories underlying them were switched? Could a stuttering program be built
around constructivist principles of learning, and a health education program be built
around behaviorist principles? What would each program look like?
➢ Be a skeptic for a moment. What do you suspect might be the hardest part of
implementing behavioral conditioning for stuttering described by Onslow? And what
might be hardest part of implementing the constructivist program about health education?
References
Onslow, M., Menzies, R., & Packman, A. (2001). An operant intervention for early stuttering. Behavior
modification 25(1), 116-139.
Goldman, J. (2006). Web-based designed activities for young people in health education: A constructivist
approach. Health Education Journal 65(1), 14-27.
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Appendix B: Deciding for yourself about the research
Deciding for yourself about the research
Chapter 3, Student development: schools and the obesity epidemic
Childhood obesity leads not just to teasing by peers, but eventually also to a variety of serious
medical problems, ranging from back pain to heart disease and diabetes. That is why medical
experts are quite concerned that obesity in children has increased markedly since the 1950s, to the
point of being considered a genuine health “epidemic” (Ogden, et al., 2002). Recent projections
suggest that fully one-third of all children born in 2000 will eventually develop diabetes as a side-
effect of being overweight (Narayan, et al., 2003).
Why have these changes happened? One factor is probably the vast increase in individuals’
consumption of sugar especially “disguised” forms like corn syrup (Bawa, 2005). Another is a more
sedentary, “stay-inside” lifestyle than in the past. The latter has happened, among other reasons,
because of population shifts: cities and towns have increased in population and size, while rural
areas have decreased in population, causing more people to rely on car travel more than ever
before. The changes have also led residents in many areas of many cities to consider their
neighborhoods less safe than in the past, causing them to respond with inactivity: either they stay
inside more or they rely even more on cars to get around.
Even schools have contributed to the trend toward obesity. “Junk food” drinks and snacks are
widely available in many schools through commercial vending machines—each one giving a
student an extra 150 and 300 unneeded calories per day. More insidiously, perhaps, is the effect of
the trend toward high-stakes testing: because of them, many schools tend to strengthen courses
and special programs that prepare students in the “basic” subjects that they know will be tested,
and to trim programs (like physical education, but also the arts) that will not be tested.
These considerations led a group of physicians at the University of Georgia to organize an after-
school program of physical activity for elementary school students (Yin, et al., 2005), and to assess
whether the program actually helped prevent weight gain in students. Students volunteered for a
program that had three components: 30 minutes of physical activity, a healthy snack, and
assistance with the students’ homework. (The researchers explain that assistance with homework
had nothing to do with weight loss, but was very important in getting students to attend and
getting parents to support the program!) Staff for the program included a mix of regular teachers
from the school (not necessarily physical education specialists) and other individuals hired
specifically for the project. Physical activities were chosen in part by the students, and were
generally non-competitive and cooperative in nature.
Initial results of the program have been very encouraging; students and parents support the
program strongly, and teachers have been successful in making sure that students are actually
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active enough during the program sessions. Since the program is still ongoing, however, it will be a
few more years before there will be definitive results about weight gain, or lack thereof.
Questions
➢ It is hard to disagree with the purposes of this study—reducing the prevalence of obesity.
But does it really show what it claims? Be a deliberate skeptic for a moment and ask
yourself these questions:
➢ If the students were volunteers, how typical do you think they are of all students?
➢ And if the teachers are receiving a large research grant to implement the program, might
they be working harder to do a good job than most of us ordinarily work?
➢ An important ambiguity about the program was the fact that it included both physical
activity and homework assistance. Think about this ambiguity.
➢ If the researchers split up these two elements—offering only one or the other at any one
school—how might the split affect the outcomes?
➢ Would different sorts of students volunteer as a result of the split, and how if at all would
their selection matter?
References
Ogden, C., Flega, K., Carroll, M. & Johnson, C. (2002). Prevalence and trends in overweight among U.S.
children and adolescents, 1999-2000. Journal of the American Medical Assocation, 288(14), 1728-1732.
Narayan, K., Boyle, J., Thompson, T., Sorensen, S., & Williamson, D. (2003). Lifetime risk for diabetes
mellitus in the United States. Journal of the American Medical Association, 290(14), 1884-1890.
Bawa, S. (2005). The role of the consumption of beverages in the obesity epidemic. Journal of the Royal
Society for the Promotion of Health, 125(3), 124-128.Yin, Z., Hanes, J., Moore, J., Humbles, P., Barbeau,
& Gutin, B. (2005). An after-school physical activity program for obesity prevention in children.
Evaluation and the Health Professions, 28(1), 67-89.
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Appendix B: Deciding for yourself about the research
Deciding for yourself about the research
Chapter 4, Student diversity: using African-American English to enrich classroom discourse
In addition to speaking a language other than English at home, many students learn another
version or dialect of English. A dialect is a version of a language with somewhat unique vocabulary,
grammar, and pronunciation. The most prominent dialect of English in North America is African-
American English, sometimes also called Ebonics. Intellectually and emotionally, Ebonics is just as
rich and capable of expressiveness as “Standard English,” the dialect usually used, for example, by
radio and television news broadcasters. It is used by many African Americans in the United States,
though not by all and often not in every possible situation.
But Ebonics has distinctive features not shared with Standard English. In grammar, for example,
the verb to be is used differently than in Standard English. Instead of simply indicating existence or
non-existence, to be can also distinguish between a one-time event and an ongoing, continuous
state. Consider these two sentences and their meanings:
(1) He tired. (“He is tired right now.)
(2) He be tired. (“He is often or always tired.”)
Ebonics also has features of language use or communication, just like a “foreign” language, which
are different from Standard English. One is the use of repetitive, rhythmic phrases for emphasis—
not unlike the style of an enthusiastic “preacher” in church. Another is the use of call-and-
response, in which an individual asks a question or makes a statement to which the group expects
to respond in unison.
What is interesting and important about the features of language use is that teachers can use them
to communicate more effectively with students, often even if they themselves have not personally
learned to speak African-American dialect. Anita Bohn (2003) illustrated this principle by carefully
observing the teaching styles of two teachers who regularly incorporated the dialect into
conversations with students and who used these conversations as a bridge for students to learn
Standard English.
In one observation, for example, the class was beginning a writing activity and the teacher said,
“This morning we are going to practice some sentences, and when we do that I want you to listen.
Can you say that?” The class responded in chorus, “Listen!” The teacher said, “Do what?” The class
replied even louder, “Listen!” The teacher repeated the work a few times together with the
students: “Listen…listen…” Then she began clapping in between words: “Listen… [clap]…listen…
[clap]…listen… [clap]…” Suddenly she stopped, leaned forward and asked the class, “How you
gonna listen? With your feet?” All responded loudly: “Nooo!” After a pause, she asked again, “You
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gonna listen with your nose?” All responded again: “Nooo!” She asked, “How?” Everyone
responded loudly together, “With our ears!”
The teacher’s approach used both repetitive, rhythmic language and a call-and-response style with
which, as it happened, many of her students were already familiar. By using these features of
African-American communication, she gained students’ attention effectively, but also used the
style of communication to support an activity embedded in Standard English, writing sentences. In
addition to being a familiar style of interaction, however, the technique worked for another reason:
it implied respect for the language and communication skills that students had acquired already.
Such respect has been shown to be important for success not only when students are learning two
dialects, but also when they are learning two languages, such as Spanish and English (Marinez-
Roldan & Malave, 2004).
Questions
➢ Most teachers agree that part of teachers’ goals should be to encourage students in
learning Standard English, both spoken and written. But an issue that we may disagree
about, and that is raised by Bohn’s study, is whether teachers should do so by using non-
standard dialect in class. You could think about it this way: by “speaking Ebonics”, is a
teacher modeling inappropriate English or is he/she providing students with a bridge from
Ebonics to standard English? What do you think about this?
➢ There is also a related question that is more practical. Is using non-standard dialect really
practical for every teacher? Presumably using it is easier for those with prior experience
speaking the dialect, than for those without experience. But could other teachers learn it
well enough to be effective with students? If not, then how else, if at all, could such
teachers communicate with students effectively?
References
Bohn, A. (2003). Familiar voices: Using Ebonics communication techniques in the primary classroom.
Urban Education, 38(6), 688-707.
Martinez-Roldan, C. & Malave, G. (2004). Language ideologies mediating literacy and identity in bilingual
contexts. Journal of early childhood literacy, 4(2), 155-180.
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Appendix B: Deciding for yourself about the research
Deciding for yourself about the research
Chapter 5, Students with special educational needs: How well does inclusion occur in high schools?
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act applies to all levels of schooling, from kindergarten
through twelfth grade, and one of its revisions (Public Law 101-336, 104 Stat. 327, 1990)
further addressed the needs of secondary schools by including provisions for school-to-work
transitions for students with disabilities. Yet progress at including such students has generally been
more rapid and complete in elementary schools—especially at the youngest grade levels—than in
secondary schools. The reasons for the difference do not necessarily have to do high school
teachers’ attitudes about disabilities as compared to elementary teachers’ attitudes. Much of it
stems from differences in how the two levels of schooling are structured, with secondary schools
being much larger and organized by a complex timetable of classes that tends to sort students—and
even teachers themselves!—by academic background (Kelly, 2004; Oakes, 2005). One effect of this
organization is to make it harder for special education and general education teachers to
collaborate, and therefore to integrate learning experiences for students with disabilities into high
school as a whole.
Yet some teachers and schools manage to collaborate anyway. A research study by Joseph
Stowitschek and his colleagues explored the factors that account for comparative success at
including students with disabilities in secondary school (Stowitschek, Lovitt, & Rodriguez, 2001).
The researchers were interested, first, in how much teachers actually do collaborate to design and
carry out programs for youth with disabilities, and second, in what specific circumstances or
practices were associated with collaborating successfully. They chose three contrasting high
schools to study in detail: a large urban public high school, a rural public high school in a small
town, and a private urban high school. For each school they collected information from a wide
range of staff—special education teachers, general education teachers, administrators, parents, and
students with disabilities themselves. The information came from surveys, interviews, reviews of
official school documents, and observations of classrooms.
What did they find? Among other things, they found that special education teachers at all of the
schools strongly supported inclusion of students with disabilities to the fullest possible extent; they
did not, that is, seek to strengthen or increase the schools’ reliance on segregated special education
classes. They also found significant interest and support from parents of the students with
disabilities in the educational programs of their children. These factors suggested that change
toward fuller inclusion may continue in the years ahead.
But they also found limitations on how much the teachers could collaborate at any of the schools. A
major problem was the teachers’ dependency on informal communication with general education
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teachers. Instead of regularly announced meetings to discuss inclusion initiatives, teachers had to
“catch” each other in the hallway or during lunch hours, for example, in order to have
conversations about students and ways of including them in class or school activities. At these
moments the teachers tended already to be busy. A partial result was that the general education
teachers ended up with limited knowledge both about the special education program at their
school, and about why particular students might be placed successfully in their particular
classrooms. All of the students with disabilities had IEPs, but the general teachers had little or no
knowledge of their contents—or even of their existence. Not surprisingly, under these conditions
there were few major collaborative activities, such as the co-teaching of a course by a special
education teacher and a general teacher or jointly operated activities or programs.
Yet for each school there were also individual teachers and activities that boosted collaboration in
the school, and that could in principle be tried elsewhere as well. The private high school, for
example, had an especially effective, vital program for involving parents: there were regular
advisory group meetings to assess the current needs of the special education program and to
develop and sustain support for it among the parents. Another especially effective collaboration
involved peer tutoring—using high school students to tutor the students with disabilities on a
regular basis, often with course credit given as “payment” to the tutors. Peer tutoring proved a
good way to communicate the nature and extent of the special education program to the student
population as a whole. A third effective form of collaboration involved using a teacher as a
“community coordinator”, someone who developed linkages to agencies and potential employers in
the community. The linkages proved especially helpful in students’ transitions to work and life
after high school.
All in all, there were limitations on inclusion in the secondary schools, but also grounds for
optimism because of the collaborative successes and the dedication of the teachers. Although
Stowitschek and his colleagues focused on only three schools, their findings suggested three key
points: (1) that the motivation for inclusion and collaboration definitely exists among secondary
teachers, (2) that it is possible to work around the organizational constraints of high schools, and
(3) that changes in those constraints in the future should further increase levels of inclusion and
collaboration.
Questions
➢ If you were a teacher in a high school (as many readers of this book plan to become), how
would you prepare your students to receive a student with a disability into one of your
classes? Consider actions that you would take both before and after the student actually
arrives.
Educational Psychology 329 A Global Text
Appendix B: Deciding for yourself about the research
➢ Sometimes teachers at every grade level express concern about receiving students with
disabilities into their classes, even if it can be arranged easily. Why do you think that the
teachers feel this way? Think of three possible objections to inclusion, and then think of
how an advocate for inclusion might respond to each of them.
References
Public Law 101-336, 104 Stat. 327 (July 26, 1990). Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Washington,
D.C.: United States Government Printing Office.
Stowitschek, J., Lovitt, T., & Rodriguez, J. (2001). Patterns of collaboration in secondary education for youth
with special needs: Profiles of three high schools. Urban Education, 36(1), 93-128.
Kelly, S. (2004). Are teachers tracked? On what basis and with what consequences. Social psychology in
education, 7(1), 55-72.
Oakes, J. (2005). Keeping track: How schools structure inequality, 2nd edition. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
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Deciding for yourself about the research
Chapter 6, Student motivation: Is self-efficacy culturally biased?
As we explain in this chapter, self-efficacy beliefs are based heavily on experiences—mastery,
vicarious (or observed) mastery, and social persuasion. Research has found that these experiences
are effective in a wide variety of situations, such as making decisions about careers, performing
tasks at work, choosing courses at school, deciding whether to join after-school sports teams, and
planning effective instruction as a teacher (Allison, Dwyer, & Makin, 1999; Bandura, 1997;
Goddard, Hoy, & Hoy, 2004). Because it has proved valid in so many situations, self-efficacy
seems relatively universal cognitive process—as if it “works” everywhere, for everyone.
But does it? The very fact that self-efficacy is based on experience should make us suspicious of its
limits, since there are few experiences that are literally shared by all people in all places or
societies. And the wide diversity among students in most schools should lead to similar skepticism.
Maybe it is true that self-efficacy promotes motivation for many students, or even for most, but
does it do so for all students? And if it does not, then what are the reasons?
These questions prompted a psychologist named Lori Lindley to investigate whether self-efficacy
has in fact proved useful and valid for understanding motivation in unusually diverse populations
(Lindley, 2006). She searched the research literature for studies about self-efficacy in each of the
following groups:
(a) women with careers
(b) ethnic minorities living in the United States
(c) societies and cultures outside the United States
(d) self-identified gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals
(e) people with disabilities
What has research shown about the self-efficacy of members of these groups? Compared to the
“classic” research about this concept, is self-efficacy higher, lower, confined to just limited areas of
activity, or not even a meaningful idea?
What Lindley found was that self-efficacy beliefs were (like the people she studied) complex and
varied. Women, for example, were just as likely to express high self-efficacy and low motivation
about using computers, as to express low self-efficacy and high motivation to use them. Among
ethnic minority students (Hispanics, Asian-Americans, and African Americans), some studies
found lower self-efficacy about choosing careers than among white students. But other studies
found no differences.
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Appendix B: Deciding for yourself about the research
Among societies outside the United States, however, high self-efficacy seemed to predict
motivation, much as it does in the “classic” research with white American populations—though
again with some differences. Among Italian high school students, for example, self-efficacy beliefs
about career choice are strongly associated with the students’ interest in and choice of career (Lent,
et al., 2003). Yet the connection between self-efficacy and motivation was found to have a different
character for students from Taiwan (Mau, 2000): for them high self-efficacy was associated not
with being highly motivated, but with relying heavily on others to assist with making decisions and
with being highly rational or logical in making them. Self-efficacy, under these conditions, was not
so much a belief in yourself as a belief in your community.
Among the remaining groups—the gay/lesbian/bisexual individuals and the people with
disabilities—research was especially scarce and conclusions were therefore hard to reach. The
publications that did exist emphasized a belief in the potential value of self-efficacy for these
groups, but they did not report research studies describing whether in fact self-efficacy in fact
motivated the individuals, or even existed consistently and meaningfully as a concept or belief.
What does the diversity of these findings suggest (beyond Grandmother’s rule that “sometimes one
thing happens, and sometimes another”)? Lindley noted two points, both of which were hinted at
by some of the studies that she reviewed. The first point is that self-efficacy may be a belief about
personal capacity only for some individuals in some situations. For others, efficacy may really be a
belief in the group or community, such as your family, classroom, or workplace. Self-efficacy may
really be collective self-efficacy—a belief that your group can accomplish its goals. Believing
primarily in the group may be quite motivating, but also be quite a different experience from
believing primarily in yourself. In recent years some psychologists and educators have
acknowledged this possibility and begun studying the dynamics of collective self-efficacy (Bandura,
1997; Gordon, Hoy, & Hoy, 2004).
Lindley’s second point is that for some groups, the main barriers to success are not beliefs in
personal capacity, but real, external obstacles independent of personal beliefs. Imagine, for
example, that a person encounters daily, real social prejudice because he or she is non-white,
homosexual, or has a disability. For that person, self-confidence may only go part of the way to
insuring success, and removing the real social barriers may be needed to go the rest of the way.
For teachers, three implications of this research seem clear. First, individual self-efficacy beliefs do
often motivate students, and teachers should therefore encourage them in these students. Second,
some students may see their personal capacity in terms of the capacity of groups to which they
belong. Teachers can motivate these students by strengthening the capacity of their groups—
perhaps using strategies like the ones described in this chapter and the next. Third, some students
rightly perceive genuine injustices in their world which limit their chances of success; teachers
should not deny the importance of these injustices, but recognize them and do what they can to
reduce them.
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Questions
➢ Think about your own belief in your capacity to teach well, as well as your doubts and
worries about your capacity. You might call this your teaching self-efficacy. What is
that belief primarily based on, and what would it take to raise that belief even higher?
➢ Suppose your students consisted of about equal numbers who believed in individual self-
efficacy and in collective self-efficacy. Imagine and describe one advantage of having such
a mix in your class, as well as one potential source of conflict that you might have to deal
with between the two groups.
References
Allison, K., Dwyer, J., & Makin, S. (1999). Self-efficacy and participation in vigorous physical activity by high
school students. Health Education and Behavior, 26(1), 12-24.
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: Freeman.
Goddard, R., Hoy, W., & Hoy, A. (2004). Collective efficacy beliefs: Theoretical developments, empirical
evidence, and future directions. Educational Researcher, 33(3), 3-13.
Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.
Lent, R., Brown, S., Nota, L., & Soresi, S. (2003). Teaching social cognitive interest and choice hypotheses
across Holland types in Italian high school students. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 62, 101-118.
Mau, W.-C. (2003). Factors that influence persistence in science and engineering career aspirations. Career
Development Quarterly, 51, 234-243
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Appendix B: Deciding for yourself about the research
Deciding for yourself about the research:
Chapter 7, Classroom management and the learning environment: Culturally responsive classroom management
Even though teachers might believe that consistency is a mark of good classroom management, it is
not always true that “one size fits all” when it comes to matching particular management strategies
to specific students. A lot of research suggests, on the contrary, that success in classroom
management needs to be adjusted to the cultural background and expectations of students.
Educators sometimes call this approach culturally responsive classroom management.
Support for culturally responsive management comes a number of research studies. In one study,
for example, David Brown interviewed 13 teachers who taught in classrooms from 1st through 12th
grade in urban, inner-city schools in several different cities (Brown, 2004). A few of the teachers
were themselves culturally diverse—one was from Sri Lanka, one was African American, two were
Hispanic American—but most were white. Although the interviews were lengthy and detailed, they
centered on just three underlying questions:
(1) How do you interact with students?
(2) How would you describe your management style?
(3) What works well for you in communicating with students?
The teachers’ views could be summarized in several points. First, the teachers considered it
important to show students that the teachers cared and respected them: this attitude was
significantly more important, they felt, when teaching urban students than when teaching
suburban students. The teachers therefore made more effort than usual to be friendly with all
students and to get to know them as individuals. To do so, though, the teachers also had to know
how the students themselves preferred to be publicly known or acknowledged. In some classrooms
with Hispanic American students, for example, the teachers found it wise not to call on individuals
during class, because some of the students preferred to be recognized for their relationships with
classmates—for their membership in the class as a group—rather than for their distinctiveness
from the group.
Interestingly, “caring” involved more than simple warmth and nurturance. It also meant teachers’
asserting their authority to make clear demands on students both for high quality work and for
appropriate classroom behavior. Asserting authority indirectly in order to sound polite (like saying
“Would you like to sit down now?”) was less effective and was often interpreted by students as a
sign of a teacher’s indifference. Direct, specific commands (like “Take your seat”) were more
effective, provided they did not also express hostility.
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The teachers’ caring had to be consistent in every way: not only did they have to say friendly things
to students, but also they had to look friendly with eye contact and smiles. What made such
consistency initially challenging for some teachers was recognizing students’ own signs of
friendliness for what they were. In some classrooms with African American students, for example,
students engaged in a “call response” pattern of interaction: as the teacher gave instructions or
explained an idea, some students would say or speak their own feelings or mention their own ideas.
The pattern was not meant to interrupt the teacher, however, so much as to show involvement in
the lesson or activity, and the teacher needed to acknowledge it as such.
Other educational researchers besides David Brown have found similar results, though some point
out that actually practicing culturally responsive management can be harder than simply knowing
what it involves (Weinstein, Tomlinson-Clarke, & Curran, 2004). To become skillful with the
strategies described by Brown and others, for example, teachers also need to look honestly at their
own preconceptions about ethnic, cultural and racial differences, so that they do not misconstrue
culturally ambiguous behaviors of students just because students have a background different from
the teacher’s own. Teachers also need to be aware of how much society-wide prejudice on students’
sense of efficacy, since pervasive prejudice and discrimination can stimulate some students to
withdraw in ways that may be mistaken for laziness.
Perhaps the most challenging aspect of culturally responsive management, however, is for teachers
to accommodate to students’ cultural differences while also helping them learn how to function
well in the somewhat bureaucratic, middle-class oriented “culture” of school. This challenge is full
of dilemmas. How much, for example, should a teacher sacrifice conventional “politeness”
behaviors (like using indirect questions) simply because students understand and respect
directness more easily? How much should a teacher encourage students to critique each other’s or
the teacher’s ideas even if students’ families give higher priority to cooperation and compliance
with authorities? And what if a particular class is itself culturally diverse, containing students from
many cultural backgrounds in one room? What should a teacher do then?
Questions
➢ Think about the issue of politeness versus directness mention in the final paragraph above.
Presumably teachers and students need some sort of mutual accommodation about this
issue. If you were the teacher, what would the accommodation look like? Obviously it
might depend on the particular students and on the precise the behavior at hand. But go
beyond this generality. Imagine—and describe—what you might actually say to students to
show respect for their preferred styles of talking while still encouraging them to respect or
even adopt styles of speech that lead to more success in school?
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Appendix B: Deciding for yourself about the research
➢ Culturally responsive classroom management has sometimes been criticized on the
grounds that it encourages teachers to “profile” or stereotype students according to their
ethnic, racial, or cultural backgrounds. Being culturally responsive, it is said, makes
teachers overlook the individual differences among students. Others argue that treating
students strictly as individuals makes teachers overlook students’ obvious cultural
heritages. How might you resolve this issue in your own mind? Again, go beyond the
obvious: imagine an actual conversation that you might have with your own students about
this issue.
References
Brown, D. (2004). Urban teachers’ professed classroom management strategies: Reflections of culturally
responsive teaching. Urban Education, 39(3), 266-289.
Weinstein, C.,Tomlinson-Clarke, S., & Curran, M. (2004). Toward a conception of culturally responsive
classroom management. Journal of Teacher Education, 55(1), 25-38.
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Deciding for yourself about research
Chapter 8, Nature of classroom communication: When is a student lying?
Although we might wish that it were not true, students do occasionally tell a deliberate lie to the
teacher. In explaining why an assignment is late, for example, a student might claim to have been
sick when the student was not in fact sick. Worse yet, a student might turn in an assignment that
the student claims to have written when in fact it was “borrowed” from another student or
(especially among older students) even from Internet.
In situations like these, is there any way to discern when a person actually is lying? Many of the
signs would have to be nonverbal, since by definition a liar’s verbal statements may not indicate
that falsehood is occurring. A large body of research has studied this question—looking for
nonverbal signs by which deception might be detected. The research can be summarized like this:
people generally believe that they can tell when someone is lying, but they can not in fact do so very
accurately. In a survey of 75 countries around the world, for example, individuals from every
nation expressed the belief that liars avoid eye contact (Global Deception Research Team, 2006).
(This is an unusually strong trend compared to most in educational and psychological research!)
Individuals also named additional behaviors: liars shift on the feet, for example, they touch and
scratch themselves nervously, and their speech is hesitant or flawed. But the most important belief
is about eye contact: a liar, it is thought, cannot “look you in the eye”.
Unfortunately these beliefs seem to be simply stereotypes that have little basis in fact. Experiments
in which one person deliberately lies to another person find little relationship between averting eye
contact and lying, as well as little relationship between other nonverbal behaviors and lying
(DePaulo et al., 2003). A person who is lying is just as likely to look directly at you as someone
telling the truth—and on the other hand, also just as likely to look away. In fact gaze aversion can
indicate a number of things, depending on the context. In another study of eye contact, for
example, Anjanie McCarthy and her colleagues observed eye contact when one person asks another
person a question. They found that when answering a question to which a person already knew the
answer (like “What is your birthday?”), the person was likely to look the questioner directly in the
eye (McCarthy, et al., 2006). When answering a question which required some thought, however,
the person tended to avert direct gaze. The researchers studied individuals from three societies and
found differences in where the individuals look in order to avoid eye contact: people from Canada
and Trinidad looked up, but people from Japan looked down. All of their answers, remember, were
truthful and none were lies.
If gaze aversion does not really indicate lying, then why do people believe that it does anyway? The
research team that studied this belief suggested that the belief does not actually reflect our
experiences with liars, but instead function as a deterrent to lying behavior (Global Deception
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Appendix B: Deciding for yourself about the research
Research Team, 2006). Since nearly everyone disapproves of lying, and since detecting it is often
difficult, the next best strategy is to persuade potential liars that they might in fact be detected.
Furthermore, if we believe that liars should feel ashamed of their behavior, it is reasonable to
suppose that they would show signs of shame—i.e. gaze aversion, shifting on their feet, hesitation,
and the like. The irony is that if we begin to doubt a person’s truthfulness, a truthful person is more
likely to feel uncomfortable, so the person is likely to begin averting gaze and showing other signs
of nervousness anyway. The end result is to reinforce the stereotype of gaze aversion, but not to
identify an actual liar.
For teachers, the implications of this research are twofold. First, it suggests that we should be very
careful before deciding whether or not a particular student is lying on a particular occasion. We
should encourage students to be equally careful with each other; it is too easy, it seems, to jump to
conclusions about this sort of judgment. Second, it implies that a better way to reduce lying by
students is to develop high-quality relationships with them, so that students will not feel a need to
lie. Obviously, developing high-quality relationships is a big job and it may be easier with some
students than with others. But it appears to be more effective than falsely accusing truthful
students while overlooking actual deceptions.
Questions
➢ Classrooms are like any other social setting in that they can only function well if their
members’ are truthful with each other. How could you communicate this message to
students so that they endorse it themselves? One way, of course, is to discuss the problem
with students. But another way might be to stage “simulated lying” between students, and
have students see how well they can discern true liars. Would a simulation be a good idea,
or would it be undesirable by giving students practice at lying effectively? Explain your
views about this question.
➢ Recall the study above in which thought-questions caused individuals to avert direct gaze.
Why do you suppose that people from Trinidad and Canada averted gaze by looking up,
while people from Japan averted by looking down? What sort of cultural significance does
this difference have, if any? In answering this question, think as well about how you could
find out if the answer is valid.
References
Global Deception Research Team. (2006). A world of lies. Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology, 37(6), 60-
74.
DePaulo, B., Lindsay, J., Malone, B., Muhlenbruck, L., Charlton, K., & Cooper, H. (2003). Cues to deception.
Psychological Bulletin, 129, 74-118.
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McCarthy, A., Lee, K., Itakura, S., & Muir, D. (2006). Cultural display rules drive eye gaze during thinking.
Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology, 37(6), 717-722.
Educational Psychology 339 A Global Text
Appendix B: Deciding for yourself about the research
Deciding for yourself about research
Chapter 9, Facilitating complex thinking: identifying attitude-treatment interactions
As we have stated in various places in this chapter, and as many teachers will confirm from
experience, there seems to be no instructional strategy that is best for all students. Instead a more
guarded comment may be more accurate: there seem to be strategies that are especially good for
certain students under certain conditions. Educational psychologists have long studied this idea
and call it aptitude-treatment interaction (abbreviated ATI) (Cronbach & Snow, 1977; Snow,
1989). The aptitude in this term is the unique quality, talent, or skill of a student; the treatment is
the instructional strategy or approach being used; and the interaction is the combination of the
two.
The idea seems intuitively appealing, but it has proved surprisingly difficult to identify particular
ATIs scientifically. Part of the problem is the ambiguity of the term aptitude. Numerous qualities,
talents, and skills of students have been identified and studied, including memory for verbal
material, memory for visual material, memory for sequences of ideas, ability to analyze a problem
into its parts, and creativity .
The situation is just as ambiguous in defining treatment. Is it a specific teacher-directed strategy
such as the use of advance organizers described in this chapter? Or does treatment mean a broad
approach such as Madeline Hunter’s effective teaching model that we describe in this chapter, or
like student-centered inquiry learning that we also describe? Since both key terms have multiple
possible meanings, it is not surprising that research studies of their combinations have also yielded
ambiguous results. Sometimes a particular combination of aptitude and treatment help learning,
but other times it makes little difference.
In spite of these problems with the research as a whole, the specific studies of ATIs have clearly
been helpful to teachers. In one, for example, the researchers investigated human ecology students’
preferred styles of learning—their aptitudes (Crutsinger, Knight, & Kinley, 2005). Did they prefer,
for example, to learn from visual information (pictures, diagrams) or from verbal information (text
and oral explanations)? Did they prefer to scan new information in sequence, or to skip around in
it and piece it together at the end? The researchers found that this particular group of students
tended to prefer new information to be visual and sequential. As a result, they were able to improve
students’ learning by adding to the course more computer-based instruction, which was relatively
visual and sequential in its organization.
In another study, the researcher who initially was studying cooperative learning groups in
university students discovered—and wondered why—some of the groups were more productive
than others (Peterson, 2004). On closer investigation of the groups he found an ATI-related
problem. Students in this particular university course were choosing their own group partners.
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They therefore tended to choose their own friends, a practice that inadvertently reduced the talents
and resources available in some groups. Friends, it seemed, tended to duplicate each other’s styles
of problem solving and of performing academic tasks, rendering the group as a whole less rich in
talents and therefore less productive or successful.
To remedy this problem, the instructor undertook to identify students’ strong points in different
aspects of problem solving. He identified which students were inclined to take action, which were
good at decision-making, which at identifying problems, and which at brainstorming. Then he
assigned students to groups so that each group had one person strong in each of these areas. The
results were a striking increase in the productivity of all groups. But there was a catch: although the
students were indeed more productive, they did not like being assigned partners as well as
choosing their own! Maintaining this particular ATI may therefore prove difficult over the long
term—perhaps another reason by ATI research has not always found consistent results.
Questions
➢ Think about the fact that results of ATI have been inconsistent, even though it seems
reasonable given the obvious diversity among students in every classroom. Assuming that
you support the idea of ATIs, explain how you would justify it to two kinds of people: (1) a
fellow teacher in your school, and (2) a professor of educational psychology.
➢ Given the results of Peterson’s research study, what is the best advice you could give to
teachers (or to yourself) about how to set up cooperative learning groups? Should students
choose their own partners, or should the teacher choose them? Keep in mind the proviso
mentioned at the end—that the students preferred to choose their own partners, even
though it meant learning less.
References
Cronbach, L. & Snow, R. (1977). Aptitudes and instructional methods: A handbook for research on
interaction. New York: Irvington.
Crutsinger, C., Knight, D., & Kinley. (2005). Learning style preferences: Implications for Web-based
instruction. Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, 23(4), 266-276.
Snow, R. (1989). Aptitude-treatment interaction as a framework for research on individual differences in
learning. In P. Ackerman, R. Sternberg, & R. Glaser (Eds.), Learning and individual differences, pp. 13-
60. New York: W. H. Freeman.
Peterson, T. (2004). So you’re thinking of trying problem-based learning?: Three critical success factors for
implementation. Journal of Management Education, 28(5), 630-647.
Educational Psychology 341 A Global Text
Appendix B: Deciding for yourself about the research
Deciding for yourself about the research
Chapter 10, Planning instruction: How does multicultural curriculum affect racial knowledge and biases?
Multicultural and anti-racist curricula work partly by portraying and discussing individuals of
diverse racial or ethnic background in ways that counteract stereotypes. Students read stories,
watch videos, and talk about respected citizens—doctors, political leaders, celebrities, and the like
—who happen to be African-American, Hispanic, or of some other non-Caucasian origin. In some
cases, especially at the early childhood level, students’ interests and concerns are used to guide the
selection and integration of diversity-related activities (Derman-Sparks, 1994).
One way of thinking about such a curriculum is that it tries to make students into “experts,” even at
relatively young ages, about racial and ethnic differences. Instead of thinking about diversity in
superficial terms—as based merely on skin color, for example—students learn to see diversity as
complex and multi-faceted. An African-American child and a White child do not simply differ in
color, for example; they are both similar and different in many ways. Hopefully the greater subtlety
of their expert knowledge also reduces negative biases felt about race.
To test these possibilities, Donna Perkins and Carolyn Mebert interviewed 79 children at six
preschool and after-school child care centers (2005). Some of the centers emphasized multicultural
education, some emphasized multicultural education as well as an emergent curriculum, and some
emphasized neither. Perkins and Mebert assessed children’s knowledge and attitudes about race in
several ways. For example, they displayed pictures of other children over various races on a felt
board, and asked the participating children to arrange the pictures so that children were closer
together if more similar and farther apart if more different. They also asked participating children
to evaluate simple stories or anecdotes about three pictures, one of a white child, one of an African-
American child, and one of an Asian-American child. In one of the anecdotes, for example, the
researcher asked, “Some children are naughty because they draw with crayons on the walls. Which
of these children (in the pictures) might do that?” The participating child could then choose any or
all of the pictured children—or choose none at all.
What did Perkins and Mebert find from this study? Four ideas stood out especially clearly:
(1) Children indeed showed more “expertise” about race if they attended a child care center that
emphasized multicultural education—but only if they center also emphasized emergent
curriculum. To be effective, in other words, information about human diversity had to grow out of
children’s personal concerns and interests. It was not enough simply to tell them about human
diversity.
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(2) Although a multicultural/emergent program was effective in sensitizing children to
differences between races, it was not especially effective for sensitizing them to differences within
races. When it came to differences among African-Americans, for example, the
multicultural/emergent children were no more subtle or “expert” in their judgments than any other
children.
(3) Children in the multicultural programs tended to view all children, regardless of race, in a
relatively more positive light, and this tendency increased as they got older (i.e. from age 4 to 6).
(4) Most important of all, the program orientation did affect the children’s knowledge and
attitudes, even at (or perhaps because of) their young age.
Questions
➢ Why do you suppose that multicultural education worked only in conjunction with an
emergent curriculum? Imagine that you writing a brief summary of this study for a school
newsletter, and that you need to comment on this question. What would you say about it?
➢ Skeptics might say that the study assessed only what children say about race, not how
children might act in racially related situations. In an interview, in other words, a child
might express positive sentiments about every race or ethnic group, but still behave in
prejudiced ways during play or other activities at school. Is this a legitimate criticism of the
Perkins and Mebert study? How could you devise another study to test whether there is
truth to the criticism?
References
Perkins, D. & Mebert, C. (2005). Efficacy of multicultural education for preschool children. Journal of Cross-
Cultural Psychology, 36(4), 497-512.
Derman-Sparks, L. (1994). Empowering children to create a caring culture in a world of differences.
Childhood Education, 70, 66-71.
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Appendix B: Deciding for yourself about the research
Deciding for yourself about the research
Chapter 11, Teacher-made assessment strategies: the importance of establishing trust when giving critical feedback across the racial divide
Providing accurate but constructive feedback to students is difficult for teachers. Identifying
problems in student work and pointing out areas for improvement can undermine students’
confidence and motivation. However, students cannot make significant improvements in their
work if they do not get accurate information about their strengths and weaknesses. Cohen, Steele
and Ross (2002) argue that trust is crucial to this dilemma: students are more likely to respond
well to accurate feedback if they trust the teacher and believe that the feedback is not biased.
However, if the student distrusts the teacher feedback that points out weaknesses is likely to lower
motivation and confidence.
The dilemma of providing trust and accurate feedback that enhances motivation is particularly
acute when the students come from a group that has been stereotyped as less competent (e.g.
African American, Latino) and the teacher is white. Several studies suggest that feedback that is
“wise” can help establish trust and foster motivation even though the feedback includes
information about weaknesses. In one study, 45 African American and 48 White College students
were asked by a White experimenter to write a letter of commendation for their favorite teacher
(Cohen Steele, Ross, 1999). The students were told that the best letters would be published in a
journal and that the skills needed were similar to those needed to write an effective college paper. A
photo of each student was attached to their draft letter. A week later the students returned for the
second session of the study and were given one of three types of feedback:
(1) Unbuffered criticism: Spelling and grammatical errors were marked as well as some
shortcomings in the writing (e.g. stylistic concerns). Also two check marks acknowledging good
points were included.
(2) Criticism and positive buffer: In addition to the criticism described for the unbuffered group,
students were told that they did a good job and made a number of good points.
(3) Wise feedback: Criticism, positive buffer, and assurance. In addition to the criticism and
positive buffer described above, students were also told that the person critiquing the letter
believed that the student could meet the high standards needed for publication.
The researchers assessed how biased the students believed the reviewer was, how motivated
students were to revise the letter, and how much students identified with writing skills. All
students were less motivated and identified less with writing if they received unbuffered criticism.
However, for White students the distinction between criticism with positive buffer vs the wise
feedback was not as important as it was for African American students. The group of African
American students who received wise feedback was more motivated, identified more with writing,
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and was significantly less likely to believe the reviewer was biased than the groups that received the
other forms of criticism.
This study suggests that the kind of feedback given is important: unbuffered criticism is
associated with lower motivation for all students. However, for African American students who
grow up amidst negative stereotypes about their competence, feedback that promotes motivation,
needs to include three components: some positive comments, criticism that identifies specific
weaknesses, and comments that make it clear the teacher believes the student can do well.
Questions
➢ This study was conducted using College students—do you think the findings would also
apply to elementary, middle, and high school students?
➢ This study focused on African American students. Do you think the findings might also
apply to Latino and Native American students who are also often stereotyped as less
competent?
➢ How important is trust in classroom interactions?
➢ Have you received the kinds of feedback described here? Did it influence your motivation?
References
Cohen, G., Steele, C., & Ross, L. (1999). The mentor's dilemma: Providing critical feedback across the racial
divide. Personality and social psychology bulletin, 25(10), 1302-1318.
Cohen, G., Steele, C., & Ross, L. (2002). A barrier of mistrust: How negative stereotypes affect cross-race
mentoring. In Aronson, J. M. & Aronson, J. (Eds.), Improving academic achievement: Impact of
psychological factors in education, 305-331. Emerald Group Publishing.
Educational Psychology 345 A Global Text
Appendix B: Deciding for yourself about the research
Deciding for yourself about the research
Chapter 12, Standardized assessment strategies: Why are standardized tests so important to NCLB?
The use of standardized testing in NCLB arises from reforms that were initiated in the 1980s.
These reforms were heavily influenced by business leaders who were concerned with the rising
productivity of international competitors and believed that improving education would aid USA
competitiveness. Corporate leaders who had orchestrated company turnarounds stressed the
importance of setting explicit goals, performance or outputs, use of benchmarks or standards, and
organizational restructuring. Policy makers needed support from the business leaders for the
additional financial resources needed for widespread education reforms they wished so it is not
surprising they adopted these business ideas as they devised ways to make teachers and students
more accountable.
According to Susan Fuhrman (2004) a “theory of action” underlies these new accountability
systems that contains the following assumptions:
(a) Schools’ primary focus should be student achievement in the key areas of math, reading and
science. Clear content standards developed by each State for each subject area and grade level help
schools in this focus. If rewards and sanctions are based on the basis of students’ meeting the
content standards in that school then the teachers and administrators will devote energy and
resources to improving student achievement.
(b) Standardized tests that are aligned with the content standards can accurately and
authentically measure student performance. Well designed tests are reliable and valid and so other
measures such as classroom observations are not needed to determine if teachers and schools are
doing a good job.
(c) Meaningful consequences will not only motivate teachers, students, and administrators but
also improve instruction. Positive consequences include bonuses for teachers and administrators
and negative consequences include denial of graduation or promotion for students, or school take
over and restructuring. Because these consequences are real, teachers will work harder to teach
and be more likely to additional professional development to improve their skills. Students will
also work harder to learn so teacher-student interactions around content will improve. Frequent
assessment will provide meaningful feedback on student performance which in turn will promote
improved teaching.
(d) There will be minimal unintended consequences if the systems work as intended. For
example, instruction will improve rather then becoming narrowly focused on test taking skills, and
high school graduation tests will promote learning not increase drop out rates.
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Questions
Our questions focus on part of each assumption.
➢ How much emphasis should schools place on reading, mathematics and science? What
role should art, physical education, social studies, and music play in school classrooms?
➢ Do standardized tests measure students’ performance on content standards adequately?
Should schools be judged on students’ scores on standardized tests? Is it important that
classroom observations of students (by teachers or others) are not included.
➢ Will students and teachers be motivated by the tests. Stiggins (2004) argued that while
high achieving students may be motivated by tests many students who find the tests
difficult will give up and so be less motivated. Do you agree with Stiggins or the
assumption underlying NCLB?
➢ Are the unintended consequences minimal? Is classroom instruction improving or
becoming narrowly focused on test taking skills and content?
References
Fuhrman, S. H. (2004). Introduction, In S. H. Fuhrman & R. F. Elmore (Eds). Redesigning accountability
systems for education. (pp. 3-14). New York: Teachers College Press.
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Appendix B: Deciding for yourself about the research
Deciding for yourself about research
Appendix C, The reflective practitioner: action research as a way to deal with the isolation of teaching
Observers of education have sometimes noted that classroom teachers tend to be isolated from
each other by the very nature of their work (Lortie, 1975; Zeichner, 2007). A teacher may be
constantly surrounded by students, but chances are that no colleague will be there to witness what
the teacher does in class. Conversation about classroom experiences do happen, but they tend to
happen outside of class time—perhaps over lunch, or before or after school. This circumstance does
not prevent teachers’ from sharing experiences or concerns related to teaching altogether, but
delaying conversations probably makes them less frequent or likely. Fewer collegial conversations,
in turn, can limit teachers by reducing their opportunities to learn from each other—or even to
realize many of the instructional options open to them.
Action research addresses teachers’ isolation because it promotes not only reflection on practice,
but also collaboration and sharing (Hayes, 2006). The benefits of sharing may be the most obvious
when an action research project is actually published for a wider audience. Over the past 20 years,
numerous teachers and other educators have published studies of their own teaching or their own
students’ learning. There are now entire books compiling such accounts (for example, Samaras &
Freese, 2006; Tidwell & Fitzgerald, 2006), a comprehensive handbook discussing aspects of
teachers’ studies of their own teaching (Loughran, et al., 2004), several journals whose purpose is
largely or solely to publish examples of action research (one, for example, is called simply Action
Research), and a variety of blogs and websites that post action research projects. Collectively these
publications are a rich source of practical wisdom from which individual teachers can learn and
think about their own teaching.
But an action research project does not have to published formally in order to promote
collaboration or sharing. The benefits can happen locally—even within a single school building—
whenever a teacher plans, carries out, and talks about a research initiative. A teacher named Betty
Ragland, for example, described how this happened in her highly unusual teaching situation, a
juvenile correctional facility (Ragland, 2006). The facility functioned somewhat like a prison for
youth convicted of various crimes. As you might suppose, Ms Ragland’s students experienced
behavior problems and conflicts more often than usual in schools, to the extent that teachers
sometimes felt physically vulnerable themselves, as well as isolated from help if serious conflicts
developed during class. To deal with these stresses, Ms Ragland initiated a self-study of her
practice in which she wrote and thought about her experiences and her reactions to the
experiences. She shared the results, both in writing and through meetings, with fellow teachers. In
the course of doing so, she developed a number of insights which colleagues found helpful in
formulating their own thinking:
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As Ms Ragland reflected on her work as a teacher, she realized that teaching in a correctional
facility had made her more cautious about her safety even outside of teaching hours. For example,
she had become more careful about locking her car door, where she walked at night, and even
where she sat in restaurants (she preferred to sit with her back to the wall).
Ms Ragland found it impossible to describe her work in a fully detached or objective way, and
finally decided that being detached was not even desirable. Her feelings and interpretations of
students’ behavior were essential to understanding experiences with them, so she decided that it
was better to include these in whatever she wrote about them.
As she wrote, talked, and reflected on her experiences, she found herself governed by two
incompatible perspectives about her work, which she called the educational perspective (try to
help students and turn their lives around) and the correctional perspective (remember that the
students had committed serious crimes and often could not be trusted).
More importantly, she discovered, through conversations with fellow staff, that they too felt torn
between these same two perspectives.
By talking with each other about the dilemmas in how to interpret students’ needs and
(mis)behaviors, she and the other staff were able to develop a common perspective about their
purposes, about appropriate ways of helping students, and about appropriate ways of dealing with
conflicts when they arose.
In the end, a study initiated by one teacher, Ms Ragland, benefited all the teachers. What began as
a self-study eventually became a group study, and teachers’ mutual isolation at work decreased.
Not many teachers, of course, find themselves teaching in a correctional facility. But many—
perhaps most—do experience serious dilemmas and stresses either about students’ behavior or
about their learning. Depending on circumstances, for example, a teacher may wonder how to
respond to students who treat the teacher or other students disrespectfully. Or a teacher may feel
lost about helping certain students who are struggling or wonder where the teacher’s responsibility
ends if a student persists in not learning even after receiving special help. Such uncertainties may
not lead to physical threats, as actually happened to Betty Ragland occasionally, but they can create
a lot of stress nonetheless. But action research can help—systematically studying and reflecting on
how to solve them, reading and listening to how others have done the same, and sharing what
teachers therefore learn. Because of these activities, questions about teaching can be resolved, or at
least clarified, and classroom practice can be enhanced. Most important, the benefits can be shared
not only with the teacher as researcher, but with a teacher’s colleagues as well.
Questions
➢ Consider the three ways discussed in this chapter that research articles can differ: (1) by
how much they seek universal truths, (2) by the response the author expects from the
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Appendix B: Deciding for yourself about the research
reader, and (3) by the assumptions the author makes about the reader’s prior experiences.
Where is Ms Ragland’s action research situated on each of these dimensions of difference?
➢ Consider the ethical issues about action research discussed at the end of this chapter—
insuring privacy of students, gaining informed consent, and insuring freedom to
participate. Given the nature and focus of Ms Ragland’s particular action research, how
might she honor these ethical considerations? Does the fact that her students were
(literally) captives make any difference?
➢ Suppose that instead of an inside staff member like Ms Ragland studying youthful offenders,
an outsider unfamiliar with youth correctional facilities wanted to do so. How would outsider
status affect what could be learned about life in a juvenile correctional facility?
References
Lortie, D. (1975). Schoolteacher. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Zeichner, K. (2007). Accumulating knowledge across self-studies in teacher education. Journal of Teacher
Education, 58(1), 36-46.
Hayes, D. (2006). Telling stories: Sustaining improvement in schools operating under adverse conditions.
Improving Schools, 9(3), 203-213.
Samaras, A. & Freese, A. (Eds.). (2006). Self-study of teaching practices. New York: Peter Lang.
Tidwell, D. & Fitzgerald, L. (Eds.). (2006). Self-study and diversity. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense
Publishers.
Ragland, B. (2007). Positioning the practitioner-researcher: Five ways of looking at practice. Action Research,
4(2), 165-182.
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Appendix C: The reflective practitioner
The experience in reflective teaching is that you must plunge into the doing, and try to educate
yourself before you know what it is you’re trying to learn.
(Donald Schön, 1987)
Donald Schön, a philosopher and educational researcher, makes an important observation: learning about
teaching often means making choices and taking actions without knowing in advance quite what the consequences
will be. The problem, as we have pointed out more than once, is that classroom events are often ambiguous and
ambivalent, in that they usually serve more than one purpose. A teacher compliments a student’s contribution to a
discussion: at that moment she may be motivating the student, but also focusing classmates’ thinking on key ideas.
Her comment functions simultaneously as behavioral reinforcement, information, and expression of caring. At that
moment complimenting the student may be exactly the right thing to do. Or not: perhaps the praise causes the
teacher to neglect the contributions of others, or focuses attention on factors that students cannot control, like their
ability instead of their effort. In teaching, it seems, everything cuts more than one way, signifies more than one
thing. The complications can make it difficult to prepare for teaching in advance, though they also make teaching
itself interesting and challenging.
The complications also mean that teachers need to learn from their own teaching by reflecting (or thinking
about the significance of) their experiences. In the classrooms, students are not the only people who need to learn.
So do teachers, though what teachers need to learn is less about curriculum and more about students’ behavior and
motivation, about how to assess their learning well, and about how to shape the class into a mutually supportive
community.
Thinking about these matters helps to make a teacher a reflective practitioner (Schön, 1983), a professional who
learns both from experience and about experience. Becoming thoughtful helps you in all the areas discussed in this
text: it helps in understanding better how students’ learning occurs, what motivates students, how you might
differentiate your instruction more fully, and how you can make assessments of learning more valid and fair.
Learning to reflect on practice is so important, in fact, that we have referred to and illustrated its value
throughout this book. In addition we devote this entire chapter to how you, like other professional teachers, can
develop habits of reflective practice in yourself. In most of this chapter we describe what reflective practice feels like
as an experience, and offer examples of places, people, and activities that can support your own reflection on
practice. We finish by discussing how teachers can also learn simply by observing and reflecting on their own
teaching systematically, and by sharing the results with other teachers and professionals. We call this activity
teacher research or action research. As you will see, reflective practice not only contributes to teachers’ ability to
make wise decisions, but also allows them to serve as effective, principled advocates on behalf of students.
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Appendix C: The reflective practitioner
Types of resources for professional development and learning
At some level reflection on practice is something you must do for yourself, since only you have had your
particular teaching experiences, and only you can choose how to interpret and make use of them. But this rather
individual activity also benefits from the stimulus and challenge offered by fellow professionals. Others’ ideas may
differ from your own, and they can therefore help in working out your own thoughts and in alerting you to ideas
that you may otherwise take for granted. These benefits of reflection can happen in any number of ways, but most
fall into one of four general categories:
• talking and collaborating with colleagues
• participating in professional associations
• attending professional development workshops and conferences
• reading professional literature
In the next sections we explore what each of these activities has to offer.
Colleagues as a resource
Perhaps the simplest way to stimulate reflections about your own teaching is to engage fellow teachers or other
colleagues in dialogue (or thoughtful conversation) about teaching and learning: What do you think of this kind of
experience? Have you ever had one like it yourself, and what did you make of it? Note that to be helpful in
stimulating reflection, these conversations need to be largely about educational matters, not about personal ones
(“What movie did you see last night?”). Dialogues with individual colleagues have certain advantages to more
complex or formal professional experiences. Talking with an individual generally allows more participation for both
of you, since only two people may need to express their views. It also can provide a measure of safety or
confidentiality if your conversation partner is a trusted colleague; sometimes, therefore, you can share ideas of
which you are not sure, or that may be controversial.
A somewhat more complex way of stimulating reflection is group study. Several teachers at a school gather
regularly to bring themselves up to date on a new curriculum, for example, or to plan activities or policies related to
a school-wide theme (e.g. “the environment”). Group meetings often result in considerable dialog among the
members about the best ways to teach and to manage classrooms, as well as stories about students’ behavior and
learning experiences. For a beginning teacher, group study can be a particularly good way to learn from
experienced, veteran teachers.
Sharing of ideas becomes even more intense if teachers collaborate with each other about their work on an
extended basis. Collaboration can take many forms; in one form it might be “team teaching” by two or more
teachers working with one group of students, and in another form it might be two or more teachers consulting
regularly to coordinate the content of their courses. Collaborations work best when each member of the team brings
responsibilities and expertise that are unique, but also related to the other members’ responsibilities. Imagine, for
example, a collaboration between Sharon, who is a middle-years classroom teacher, and Pat, who is a resource
teacher—one whose job is to assist classroom teachers in working with students with educational disabilities or
special needs. If Pat spends time in Sharon’s classroom, then not only will the students benefit, but they both may
learn from each other’s presence. Potentially, Pat can learn the details of the middle-years curriculum and learn
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more about the full range of students’ skills—not just those of students having difficulties. Sharon can get ideas
about how to help individuals who, in a classroom context, seem especially difficult to help. Achieving these
benefits, of course, comes at a cost: the two teachers may need to take time not only for the students, but also to talk
with each other. Sometimes the time-cost can be reduced somewhat if their school administrators can arrange for a
bit of extra planning and sharing time. But even if this does not happen, the benefits of collaboration will be very
real, and often make the investment of time worthwhile.
Professional associations and professional development activities
Another way to stimulate reflection about teaching is by joining and participating in professional associations—
organizations focused on supporting the work of teachers and on upholding high standards of teaching practice.
Table 45 lists several major professional associations related to education and their Internet addresses. Most of
them are composed of local branches or chapters serving the needs of a particular city, state, or region.
Table 45: A selection of professional associations related to education
• American Association for the Mentally Retarded (AAMR) [www.aamr.org]
• Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, & Dance (AAHPERD) [www.aahperd.org]
• Association for Experiential Education (AEE) [www.princeton.edu/~rcurtis/aee.html]
• Association for Retarded Citizens (ARC) [www.thearc.org/welcome.html]
• ENC Online Resources for Math and Science Education [www.enc.org/stan.htm]
• National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE) [www.nabe.org/]
• National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) [www.naeyc.org/]
• National Council for Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) [[www.nctm.org/]
• National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) [www.socialstudies.org/]
• National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE) [www.ncte.org]
• National Science Teachers Association [www.nsta.org/]
• Organization of American Historians (OAH) [www.oah.org]
To achieve their purposes, a professional association provides a mixture of publications, meetings, and
conferences intended for the professional development of educators, including classroom teachers. Typically the
publications include either a relatively frequent newsletter or a less frequent journal focused on issues of practice or
research. Very large associations often publish more than one newsletter or journal, each of which is focused on a
particular topic or type of news (for example, the National Education Association in the United States publishes
eight separate periodicals). Some also publish online journals (there are several listed as part of Table 46 or online
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Appendix C: The reflective practitioner
versions of print journals. Whatever format they take, professionally sponsored publications stimulate thinking by
discussing issues and dilemmas faced by professional educators, and sometimes also by presenting recent
educational research and the recommendations for teaching that flow from that research. We discuss ways of using
these publications further in the next section of this chapter.
Table 46: A sampling of journals related to professional education
• Annotated Bibliography of Education Journals – annotations of over 426 education related journals
and extensive links to educational organizations and institutions that sponsor them.
• CSS Journal – Computers in the Social Studies – dedicated to the encouragement of the use of
computers and related technology in K-12 social studies classrooms.
• Education Policy and Analysis – published by the College of Education at Arizona State University
• Educational Theory – publishes work in the philosophy of education and other disciplines.
• Effective Teaching – electronic journal devoted to the exchange of ideas and information relevant to
college and university teaching in North Carolina.
• Harvard Educational Review – quarterly journal that provides an inter-disciplinary forum for
innovative thinking and research in education.
• Interact – European platform for interactive learning and new media.
• Journal of Computing in Higher Education – publishes articles that contribute to our understanding of
the issues, problems, and research associated with instructional technology
• New jour – electronic journal and newsletter archive.
• Revista Iberoamericana de Educacion – Revista de la OEI.
• Scholarly Electronic Journals – Trends and Attitudes: A Research Proposal
• WORLDSPEAKER online – an international academic journal written by and for international
scholars, university administrators, and researchers.
Meetings and conferences sponsored by a professional association also take a variety of forms. Depending on the
size of the association and on the importance of the topic, a meeting could be as short as a one half-day workshop or
as long as a full week with many sessions occurring simultaneously. Sometimes, too, an association might sponsor a
more extended course—a series of meetings focused on one topic or problem of concern to teachers, such as
classroom management or curriculum planning. In some cases, the course might carry university credit, though not
always.
As you might expect, the size of a professional association makes a difference in kinds of professional
development experiences it can provide. In general, the smaller the association, the more exclusively it focuses on
local news and educational needs, both in its publications and in its meetings or other activities. At a professional
development workshop sponsored by a local teachers’ association, for example, you are relatively likely to see
colleagues and acquaintances not only from your own school, but from other neighboring schools. Locally
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sponsored events are also more likely to focus on local issues, such as implementing a new system for assessing
students’ learning within the local schools. In general, too, local events tend to cost less to attend, in both time and
money.
By the same token, the larger the association, the more its professional development opportunities are likely to
focus on large-scale trends in education, such as the impact of the No Child Left Behind legislation we discussed in
Chapter 1 or the latest trends in using computer technology for teaching. Conferences or other professional
development events are more likely to span several days and to be located outside the immediate town or region
whether you live and work. You may therefore see fewer of your everyday colleagues and acquaintances, but you
may also have a greater incentive to make new acquaintances whose interests or concerns are similar to your own.
The event is more likely to feature educators who are well-known nationally or internationally, and to call attention
to educational trends or issues that are new or unfamiliar.
Whether large or small, the activities of professional associations can stimulate thinking and reflecting about
teaching. By meeting and talking with others at a meeting of an association, teachers learn new ideas for teaching,
become aware of emerging trends and issues about education, and confront assumptions that they may have made
about their own practices with students. Professional meetings, conferences, and workshops can provide these
benefits because they draw on the expertise and experience of a wide range of professionals—usually wider than is
possible within a single school building. But compared simply to talking with your immediate colleagues, they have
a distinct disadvantage: they take effort and a bit of money to attend, and sometimes they are available at
convenient times. Well-balanced professional development should therefore also include activities that are
available frequently, but that also draw on a wide range of expertise. Fortunately, an activity with these features is
often easily at hand: the reading of professional publications about educational research and practice.
Reading and understanding professional articles
Although publications about educational issues and research can take many forms, they tend to serve three
major purposes in some sort of combination. A publication could either (1) provide a framework for understanding
teaching and learning, (2) offer advice about how to teach, or (3) advocate particular ideas or practices about
education. Benefiting from a professional publication depends partly on understanding which of these purposes a
particular article or book is emphasizing.
Three purposes of educational publications
Consider the first purpose, to provide a framework for understanding teaching and learning (Hittleman and
Simon, 2005). A “framework” in this context means a perspective or general viewpoint for understanding specific
events and actions. They are much like the theories described earlier in this book, though not always as formal or
broad. A published article might propose, for example, a way of understanding why certain students are
disrespectful in spite of teachers’ efforts to prevent such behavior (perhaps they are reinforced by peers for being
disrespectful). It might offer evidence supporting this perspective. In doing so, the author provides a sort of “theory
of disrespectful behavior”, though he or she may not call it a theory explicitly.
A second purpose is to offer advice about appropriate teaching practices. An article intended for this purpose,
for example, might suggest how to introduce reading instruction to first graders, or how to use fiction to teach high
school history, or how to organize a class to include a student with a disability. Often giving such advice overlaps
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with the first purpose, providing a framework for understanding, since thinking about an educational issue in a
particular way may imply certain ways of dealing with it in practice.
A third purpose of a published article is to advocate ideas and persuade others to take actions benefiting
students and society. It might take a position about important issues in education: Is it a good idea or not to retain
(or hold back) a student in grade level for another year if the student fails the curriculum the first time? Should
schools teach about sexuality? Should girls learn science in classrooms separate from boys? In advocating for ideas
or policies about such matters, the article may express concern about what is good, ethical or desirable in
education, not just about what is factually true or practical. The author may seek explicitly to persuade readers of
the author’s point of view. These features do not mean, however, that you need to give up thinking for yourself. On
the contrary, when reading an advocacy-oriented article, reflection may be especially important.
Whatever its purpose—understanding, advice, or advocacy—an article or book about a professional issue can
stimulate thinking about what you know and believe about teaching and learning. It should therefore create, rather
than undermine, your individuality as a teacher. Think of professional reading as a dialogue or conversation about
education: some of the comments in the conversation will probably be more helpful than others, but each
participant contributes somehow, even if none can give a final answer or everlasting truth. It is the same with
publications; some may be more helpful than others, but none will be so perfect that you can afford to cease further
reading or further thinking. If you are about to begin a teaching career, for example, you may be especially
interested in anything published about classroom management, but less interested in the problems of
administering schools or in the political issues that usually accompany educational systems. Yet some publications
may discuss these latter issues anyway, and eventually you may find yourself more concerned about them than at
the start of a career. Your job, as a reflective teacher, will be sort out the currently useful articles (or parts of
articles) from ones you cannot use immediately.
To experience educational publications in this way, however, you must think of the authors as your collaborators
as well as general authorities. As a reader, you need to assume that you are entitled to consider an author’s ideas,
but not obligated to accept it without journals related to professional education question. There are several
strategies for developing this attitude, but to keep the discussion focused, we will look at just two. We have already
discussed the first strategy, which is to understand the purposes of any particular piece of research which you
encounter, in order to assess its current usefulness to your daily work and your long-term professional goals. We
have already indicated several general purposes of educational research publications, but we will go into more
detail about this in the next section. The second strategy for relating to authors as collaborators is to think about
how you yourself might contribute to professional knowledge by engaging in research of your own, even as a
classroom teacher—an activity often called action research (Mills, 2006; Stringer, 2007). At the end of this chapter
we discuss what action research involves, and how you might consider using it.
Authors’ assumptions about readers
Authors of professional articles and books also make assumptions about their readers, and it helps to be aware of
these while you read. The assumptions affect the style, content, and significance of the author’s ideas in ways that
are both obvious and subtle.
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One assumption is about the response which an author expects from you, the reader: does he or she expect you
actually to do something new, or simply to consider doing something new? Or does the author just want you to be
aware of a new idea? Consider, for example, an article reviewing best practices about inclusion of students with
special needs. The author may imply, or even urge you to take a moral position: you should include these students,
the author may seem to say. But in a different article—one recommending particular teaching practices—the author
may merely ask you to think about alternatives to your normal ways of teaching. Certain strategies worked under
certain teaching conditions, the author says, so simply consider whether they might work for you as well.
A second, less obvious difference among professional publications is in their un-stated assumptions about prior
experiences and attitudes of readers. This assumption may be either helpful or frustrating, depending on you actual
prior background. A piece intended as a “framework for understanding” may assume, for example, that you are
familiar with basic theories of learning already. If you have read and understood what we outlined in Chapter 2 of
this book, the article may turn out to be relatively accessible or understandable to you even if you have relatively
little experience in actual classroom teaching, and even if you have never studied learning theories in detail. The
article might seem more accessible than you expect because, for example, it focuses primarily on how teacher's
praise affects students' learning, an idea with which you may be somewhat familiar already.
On the other hand, a professional publication may assume that you have taught school for a number of years
already, or that you are at least familiar with classroom life from the point of view not of students, but of a teacher.
An author writing about “withitness” (discussed in Chapter 7), for example, may make this assumption, since the
concept originated by observing teachers managing large group classroom activities. If you yourself are experienced
at actual teaching, reading about withitness may trigger a lot of questions about just how withit teachers are able to
be in practice, and about whether in fact they always need to be withit. You can also ask yourself these questions
even if you have not yet been a teacher yourself, of course, but they may seem less immediate or urgent.
A professional article intended to advocate for a particular educational policy or practice may make very
different assumptions about you as a reader. It may assume, for example, that you do in fact enjoy persuading
others of your point of view, even when others initially disagree or react indifferently. This sort of assumption may
show up as much in what the writing omits, as in what it includes: if the term cooperative learning activity is used
without explanation, for example, the researcher may be assuming not only that you are the sort of person—
perhaps a teacher—who knows what that term means already, but also that you already believe in the value of
cooperative learning and are motivated to explain its value to others.
In making these distinctions among published articles, keep in mind a point we made at the outset: that an
individual article usually serves more than one purpose at a time and makes more than one assumption about your
prior knowledge and about how you are supposed to respond to the article. The differences are only about
emphasis. To illustrate these ideas about the purposes and effects of research, look in the next section at three
examples of actual published articles relevant to education. The studies are not a full cross-section of educational
research or publications, but they do suggest some of the variety possible (and necessary) among them. Each
example serves a mixture of purposes, but also emphasizes one purpose in particular (perspective-taking, teaching
recommendations, or advocacy) described earlier. The authors of each example also make particular assumptions
about you, the reader—about the intellectual work which the authors expect you to do and about the motivations
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Appendix C: The reflective practitioner
which they assume you have or hope that you will acquire. For each example, we describe the reactions of one of us
(Kelvin Seifert) as he read the article.
Example #1: How do children acquire moral commitments?
In 1997, Herbert Saltzstein and several colleagues published a research-oriented article about how
children acquire moral beliefs (Saltzstein, et al., 1997). The group of researchers were all graduate students
and professors of psychology, working mostly at the City University of New York. When Kelvin read of their
affiliation with psychology, he suspected that they would talk about moral beliefs in general, and not
necessarily about moral issues in classrooms, such as cheating or treating classmates with care and respect.
Still, the article interested Kelvin as a former teacher and current university professor, because he had long
been concerned with fostering qualities like integrity, honesty, cooperation, and loyalty in students. If Kelvin
could find out about the mechanism or process by which children acquire mature moral beliefs, he reasoned,
maybe he could modify his teaching to take advantage of that knowledge.
So Kelvin began reading the article. He discovered some parts were challenging and required careful reflection,
whereas others were easier to read. One of the most challenging passages came almost immediately, in the second
and third paragraphs; these paragraphs, it seemed, required a bit of prior knowledge about theories of moral
development. But Kelvin was willing to concentrate more fully on these paragraphs, because he expected that they
might clarify the rest of the study. Here are the paragraphs, and some of Kelvin’s thoughts as he read them:
Initial problem: We began by re-examining the
phenomenon of heteronomy, Piaget's assertion
(1932/1965) following Kant (1785/1959) that young
children equate moral obligation with deference to
authority when justifying their moral judgments. The
concept is important because it is central to the
organismic account of moral development as a series of
differentiations and integrations…. [p. 37]
This was one of the difficult paragraphs, perhaps
especially because Kelvin had never read the specific book
by Piaget or by the philosopher Kant. But Kelvin did recall
reading, at various times over the years, about Piaget's
views on moral development. Piaget believed that at first,
children define morality in terms of what adults think: an
action is “good” if and only if adults (e.g. parents)
consider it good, and “bad” if and only if adults consider it
bad. This is the idea of “heteronomy” to which Saltzstein
is referring. Children, in this view, take quite awhile to
develop or “grow” into truly autonomous moral beliefs.
Autonomous beliefs form slowly out of earlier beliefs, in
the way that a young plant or animal might grow. This is
the “organismic account of moral development” that
Saltzstein is talking about.
…This account has been challenged by Turiel's
domain theory (Turiel, 1983). According to Turiel and
his colleagues, even young children intuitively
distinguish moral from conventional rules. [p. 37]
Here was an idea that was intriguing! Saltzstein and
his colleagues were pointing to research (by the person
cited, named Turiel) that suggests that even
preschoolers know the difference between truly moral
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rules and merely conventional rules. Apparently they
believe, for example, that it would be wrong to steal toys
or to hit someone, even if adults gave you permission to
do so. But apparently they also know that it would be
OK for traffic lights to use different colors—for red to
mean “go” and green to mean “stop”—provided that
everyone agreed on changing the rule. That is what the
researcher named Turiel apparently meant by
distinguishing convention from morality.
The introduction continued in this challenging style for about two pages, requiring Kelvin to read slowly and
carefully in order to understand its points. Kelvin was not discouraged from continuing, though, because he wanted
to find out more about how, in general, children acquire moral beliefs. Did moral beliefs take time to develop—did
they “grow” on children slowly after initially being borrowed from parents or other adults? In this case, then maybe
Kelvin owed it to his students to adopt and express desirable moral attitudes myself, so as to provide a good model
for their developing beliefs. Or were students’ key moral beliefs already in place when they entered school—almost
as if “hard wired” in their minds, or at least already learned during infancy and the preschool years? In this second
case, it might still be desirable for Kelvin to adopt positive moral attitudes, but not for the purpose of modeling
them for students. Students already “hard wired” for key moral beliefs might not need a model so much as an
enforcer of desirable moral behaviors. Concerning the issue of cheating, for example, the students might already
understand the undesirable nature and implications of this behavior. As a result they might not need
demonstrations of honest integrity from their teacher as much as affirmations from the teacher of the importance
of honesty and integrity, along with consistent enforcement of appropriate sanctions against cheating when it did
occur.
For Kelvin, therefore, the outcomes of research on moral development—including Saltzstein's that he was
currently reading—posed issues of classroom management, both in university classrooms and in public school
classrooms. So Kelvin read on. Saltzstein proposed resolving the issues about the origins of moral development by
distinguishing between moral conflicts and moral dilemmas:
Moral conflicts are conflicts between moral duty or
right and a non-moral desire. An example might be the
conflict between whether to return a wallet to its
rightful owner or keep the coveted wallet with its extra
cash. In contrast, moral dilemmas are conflicts
involving two moral rights or duties. For example, [a
person might feel a dilemma between] whether to steal
a drug to save a spouse's life. [p. 38]
The distinction between conflicts and dilemmas
looked promising to Kelvin. Moral conflicts looked
fairly simple in cognitive terms, even if they were
sometimes difficult emotionally. The “right” action was
obvious. Moral dilemmas were more complex
cognitively as well as emotionally, because two “goods”
were being weighed against each other. The moral
alternatives might both be right and wrong at the same
time, and their relative “rightness” might not be
immediately obvious.
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Saltzstein and his colleagues proposed that when young children show awareness of moral rules, they may be
doing so in the simpler context of moral conflicts. A young child might believe that you should return a dollar to its
owner, even if the child has trouble in practice overcoming a selfish impulse to keep the dollar. The same child
might have trouble deciding, however, whether it is “right” to inform his teacher if a best friend has cheated on a
test. In that case two moral principles compete for attention—honesty and loyalty to a friend. To sort out the
implications of choosing between these principles, a young child might need to rely on older, wiser minds, such as
parents or other adults. The minute that he or she does so, the child is showing the moral heteronomy that Piaget
used to write about and that Saltzstein referred to early in the article.
Understanding these ideas took effort, but once Kelvin began figuring them out, the rest of the article was easier
to follow. In reading the remaining pages, he noted in passing that the researchers used several techniques common
in educational research. For example, they interviewed participants, a common way of gathering systematic
information about individuals' thinking. They also imposed controls on their procedures and on the selection of
participants. Procedures were controlled, for example, by posing the same three moral dilemmas and to all
participants, so that individuals' responses could be compared meaningfully. The selection of participants was
controlled by selecting two age groups for deliberate comparison with each other—one that was seven years old and
the other that was eleven. Since the researchers wanted to generalize about moral development as much as possible,
but they obviously could not interview every child in the world, they sampled participants: they selected a
manageable number (sixty-five, to be exact) from the larger student population of one particular school. In a second
part of the investigation, they also selected a comparable number of children of the same two ages (7 and 11) from
the city of Recife, located in Brazil. The Brazilian group's responses were compared deliberately with the American
group's responses, in order to allow for the impact of cultural beliefs on moral development in general. Kelvin
recognized this research strategy as an example of using control groups. In research terms, the Brazilian group
“controlled for” the impact of American culture on children's moral beliefs, and vice versa, the American group
controlled for the impact of Brazilian culture on children's moral beliefs. Altogether, these techniques helped insure
that the interviews of children's moral beliefs really illustrated what they were supposed to illustrate—that they
were reliable and valid, in the senses that we discussed in earlier chapters. As Kelvin noticed Saltzstein's attention
to good research techniques, he gained confidence in Saltzstein’s observations and in the interpretations that the
authors made from them.
What did Saltzstein and his colleagues find out—or more to the point, what did Kelvin Seifert learn from what
Saltzstein and his colleagues wrote about? There were three ideas that occurred to Kelvin. One was that in everyday
life, children probably deal with moral beliefs of all levels of cognitive complexity, and not just “simple” moral
conflicts and “complex” moral dilemmas. Saltzstein found that children's solutions to moral dilemmas depended a
lot on the content of the dilemma. Children advocated strongly for truthfulness in some situations (for example, in
deciding whether to tell the teacher about a friend's cheating), but not in other situations (like in deciding whether
to back up a friend who is being teased and who has lied in an effort to stop the teasing). But it was rare for all
children to support any one moral principle completely; they usually supported a mix.
Another idea that Kelvin learned from Saltzstein's research was about how children expressed moral
heteronomy versus moral autonomy. Age, it seemed, did not affect the beliefs that children stated; younger and
older children took similar positions on all dilemmas initially. But age did affect how steadfastly children held to
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initial beliefs. Younger children were more easily influenced to switch opinions when an adult “cross-examined”
with probing questions; older children were more likely to keep to their initial position. Moral heteronomy was
revealed not by a child's views as such, but by the kind of dialogue a child has with adults.
A third idea that Kelvin learned was about children's perceptions of adults' moral beliefs. Saltzstein found that
even though older children (the 11-year-olds) showed more moral autonomy (were more steadfast) than younger
children, they tended to believe that adults thought about moral issues in ways similar to children who were
younger. In the “teasing” dilemma mentioned above, for example, the 11-year-olds opted much more often than 7-
year-olds for remaining loyal to a friend, even though doing so meant further untruthfulness with peers. Yet the 11-
year-olds also more often stated a belief that adults would resolve the same dilemma in a way characteristic of 7-
year-olds—that is, by telling the truth to peers and thus betraying loyalty to a friend. This finding puzzled Kelvin.
Why should older, and presumably more insightful, children think that adults are more like younger children than
like themselves? Saltzstein suggested an interpretation, however, that helped him make sense of the apparent
inconsistency:
…Consistent with our past research, children
attributed the kinds of moral choices made by younger
children to adults. In our view, this finding tends to
support a constructivist rather than a [social modeling]
view of morality, which would predict that the child's
judgments mirror (or develop toward) their
representation of adult judgments. [p. 41]
In other words, thought Kelvin, if children learned
moral beliefs by imitating (or modeling themselves
after) parents or other adults, then they ought to see
themselves as resembling adults more and more as they
get older. Instead, they see themselves as resembling
adults less, at least during middle childhood. This
would happen only if they were preoccupied with
“constructing” their own beliefs on the basis of their
experiences, and therefore failed to notice that adults
might also have constructed beliefs similar to their own.
Relevance: a framework for understanding moral development
The article by Saltzstein offered a way to understand how children develop moral beliefs, and especially to
understand the change from moral heteronomy to moral autonomy. By imposing controls on the procedures
(uniform interviews) and on the selection of participants (particular ages, particular societies or cultures), the
researchers eliminated certain sources of ambiguity or variability in children's responses. By framing their project
in terms of previous theories of moral development (Piaget’s, Turiel’s), furthermore, they made it easier to interpret
their new results in the general terms of these theories as well. In these ways the investigation aspired to provide a
general perspective about children's moral development. Providing a framework for understanding, you recall, is
one of the major purposes of many professional publications.
But note that the authors paid a price for emphasizing this purpose. By organizing their work around existing
general theory and research, they had to assume that readers already had some knowledge of that theory and
research. This is not an unreasonable assumption if the readers are expected to be fellow researchers; after all,
many of them make a living by “knowing the literature” of psychology. But assuming such knowledge can be an
obstacle if the authors intend to communicate with non-psychologists: in that case, either the authors must make
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Appendix C: The reflective practitioner
more of an effort to explain the relevant background research, or readers must educate themselves about the
research. The latter activity is not necessarily difficult (the background knowledge for Saltzstein's work, for
example, took me only a few paragraphs to explain in writing), but it must be done to make full sense of research
that tries to provide a universal framework of psychological knowledge.
The reader's role: interested observer of children
In conducting and reporting their research, Saltzstein and his colleagues were not presenting themselves as
school teachers, nor were they expecting readers necessarily to respond as teachers. As they put it in the first
paragraph of the article, they sought to offer “a more contextualized perspective for understanding the development
of moral judgments” [p. 37]. Unlike most teachers, they seemed indifferent to recommending how children's moral
judgements ought to be fostered. Observation of children was their purpose, not intervention. The meaning of the
term “contextualized perspective” was not obvious to Kelvin when he first read it, but eventually it became clearer:
they were talking about the importance of distinguishing among types of moral decisions and moral beliefs. They
did sometimes note information relevant to teaching—for example, they pointed out that for cultural reasons,
teachers in Brazil do not command high respect and therefore compared to American children, Brazilian children
may feel less compelled to tell the truth to their teachers. But this comment was not the primary focus of their
research, nor did the authors discuss what (if anything) it might imply about teaching in the United States.
Yet the non-teaching perspective of the article did not keep Kelvin, a long-time school teacher and current
university teacher, from reflecting on the article in terms of its educational relevance. As we mentioned already,
Kelvin was attracted to the article because of his own concerns about character development in students—how do
they acquire moral beliefs and commitments, and how should he help them in doing so? Kelvin did not really expect
to find an answer to the second of these questions, given the “observation” orientation of the authors. He did hope
to find an answer to the first, although even here he also expected that to make allowances for the fact that research
interviews are not usually identical to classroom situations. Children might respond differently when interviewed
individually by a researcher, compared to how they might respond to a teacher in class. Or perhaps not. So in
reflecting on the article, Kelvin had to note the context and purposes of Saltzstein's study, and to remind himself
that once a teacher went beyond simply observing children to intervening on their behalf, the teacher might be led
to different conclusions about children’s moral development. But in spite of these cautions—or maybe because of
them—Kelvin found much food for thought in the article related to teaching.
Example #2: Learning disability as a misleading label
In 2006, Ray McDermott, Shelley Goldman, and Hervé Varenne published an article that discussed the use
of disability categories in education. The article attracted Kelvin’s attention because he had been concerned
for a long time about the ambiguities of disability categories (see Chapter 5 of this book) as well as about
their potential for stigmatizing individuals. He expected the article to document additional problems with
labeling when a student is from a non-white ethnic group. Kelvin’s expectation was fulfilled partially, but he
was surprised also to encounter an additional and tougher message in the article. Here is how the study
began:
Since about 1850…classifying human beings by
mental ability, accurately or not, has been a politically
Kelvin had a mixed reaction to this opening. In one
way it seemed to say something familiar—that
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rewarded activity. Those with power have placed others,
usually the downtrodden, into ability and disposition
groups that they cannot escape… People who live
together in a culture must struggle constantly with the
constraints…of systems of classification and
interpretation used in the culture.
classification systems (such as categories for
disabilities) may create problems for individuals. But
the tone of the paragraph sounded more severely
critical than Kelvin had expected: it was saying that
power governed all classifications, implying that
misclassifications may be widespread or even universal.
Kelvin’s initial hunch was therefore that the article would express a radically critical view of disability
classifications—particularly as they affect the “downtrodden”, which presumably included children from
minority ethnic groups. His expectation proved correct as the authors explained their point of view, which
they called a cultural approach to understanding disability. Using learning disabilities (LD) as an example,
here is how they explained their position:
We are not as interested in LD behavior as in the
preoccupations—as seen from the level of classroom
organization—of all those adults who are professionally
poised to discover LD behavior. We are less interested
in the characteristics of LD children than in the cultural
arrangements that make an LD label relevant.
At this point Kelvin was not sure if he wanted to
continue reading the article because it seemed like it
might not be relevant to classroom life specifically. It
also implied a severe criticism of professional educators
—implied that they are too eager to find examples of LD
and for this reason may misclassify students. On the
other hand, Kelvin was already aware that LD are an
especially ambiguous category of disability; maybe the
article would help to show why. So he kept reading.
The authors continued by outlining the history of LD as a category of disability, describing this category as an
outgrowth of the general intelligence testing movement during the twentieth century. By the 1970s, they argued, the
concept of LD offered a way to classify children with academic difficulties without having to call the children
mentally disabled. Because of this fact, the LD category was needed—literally—by well-off parents who did not want
their children treated or educated as children with mental disabilities. LD as a concept and category came to be
applied primarily to children from the white middle-class, and mental disability became, by default, the equivalent
category for the non-white and poor.
To support this assertion, the authors reported a classroom observation of three non-white boys—Hector,
Ricardo, and Boomer—while they worked together to design an imaginary research station in Antarctica. Citing
actual transcripts of conversation while the boys worked, the authors concluded that all three boys showed
intelligence and insight about the assignment, but that the teacher was only aware of the contributions of one of the
boys. Hector systematically hid his knowledge from the teacher’s view by getting Boomer to speak for their group;
Ricardo participated well in the group work but was rarely acknowledged by the other two boys. Boomer received
considerable praise from the teacher, thanks to his speaking for the group. Yet the teacher was never aware of these
subtleties. The authors blamed her oversight not on the teacher herself, but on an educational and cultural system
that leads educators to classify or typify students too quickly or easily. Here is how they put it:
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Appendix C: The reflective practitioner
The American classroom is well organized for the
production of display of failure, one child at a time if
possible, but group by group if necessary…Even if the
teacher manages to treat every child as capable, the
children can hammer each other into negative status;
and even if both…resist dropping everyone into
predefined categories, the children’s parents can take
over, demanding more and more boxes with which to
specify kinds of kids doing better than other kinds of
kids. In such a classroom, if there were no LD
categories, someone would have to invent them.
When Kelvin read this conclusion, he did not really
disagree, but he did feel that it was beside the point for
most teachers. Maybe children do get classified too
easily, he thought, but a teacher’s job is not just to
lament this possibility, as the authors seemed to be
doing. Instead their job is to help the real, live children
for whom they have daily responsibility. What teachers
need are therefore suggestions to avoid misclassifying
students by overlooking key information about them.
Kelvin wished, at the end, that the authors had made
some of these suggestions.
Relevance: a critical framework
In this study the authors offered a sort of backhanded framework of thinking about categories of disability; or
more precisely they offered a framework for understanding what the categories are not. In essence they said that
disability categories describe qualities “in” students only in the sense that educators and others happen to think of
disability categories in this way. An equally reasonable way to think about disabilities, they argued, is that modern
society is organized so that its citizens have to be classified for many different reasons. Educators are simply
helping to implement this society-wide expectation. A frequent result in classrooms is that teachers classify
students too easily and that key evidence of students’ capacity is overlooked.
In making this argument, the authors implied an indirect recommendation about how to teach, though the
recommendation actually focused on what teachers should not do. Instead of (mis)identifying children with
learning difficulties, the authors implied, teachers and other educators should stop concerning themselves with
classifying children, and seek to reorganize classrooms and schools so that classification is less important. “Change
the school”, they wrote, “and LD becomes less relevant”. This conclusion may be an important reminder, but it is
not especially helpful as a recommendation to practicing teachers, who usually need to know about more than what
to avoid.
The readers’ role: concerned advocate for social justice
It is not surprising that the article lacked concrete recommendations for teaching, given that the authors seemed
to speak to readers not as classroom teachers, but as general critics of society who are concerned about fairness or
social justice. Their comments made two assumptions: first, that readers will want to minimize unfair stereotypes of
students, and second, that readers will seek greater fairness in how teachers treat students. For readers who happen
to be teachers themselves, the first of these assumptions is a reasonable one; most of us would indeed like to
minimize unfair stereotyping of students. The second is also reasonable, but perhaps not in a way that the authors
intended. Teachers probably do try their best to treat students fairly and respectfully. Their responsibilities usually
mean, however, that they can only do this conveniently with their own students; the time available to work toward
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general social justice is often limited. (As you might suspect, Kelvin was not fully satisfied after he finished reading
this article!)
Example #3: The impact of bilingualism on reading
In 1995, three education professors—Robert Jiménez, Georgia García, and David Pearson—published a
study about the impact of bilingualism on children's ability to read English (1995). The three specialized in
curriculum studies, literacy acquisition, and bilingual language development, and were therefore motivated
by a concern for the academic success of bilingual children and especially by concern for identifying why
bilingual children sometimes have difficulty learning to read English. Too much research on bilingualism,
they argued, was based on what they called a “deficit” framework: it focused on what bilingual children
lacked compared to monolinguals. They sought an alternative framework, one focused on bilingual students'
competence, and especially on their competence to read a second language.
To search for this alternative, the researchers mounted a large research program, and the article published in
1995 was one of the studies resulting from this research. It caught Kelvin’s interest not only because of its topic, but
because of its approach. Instead of surveying dozens of students with a questionnaire, as researchers sometimes do,
these investigators relied on just three students studied intensively. Each student became a case study and included
detailed, lengthy observations and interviews of that particular student. Each student was chosen deliberately for a
particular purpose. One was a highly proficient reader who was also bilingual (Spanish and English); a second was a
marginally proficient reader who was bilingual (Spanish and English); and a third was a highly proficient reader
who was monolingual in English. To qualify for the study, furthermore, each student had to be comfortable
reflecting on and talking about their own reading processes, so that the authors could interview them at length on
this topic. The researchers asked each student to read six one-page passages in English and (where relevant) in
Spanish. They invited all three to think aloud about their reading as they went along, commenting on how they
figured out particular words or passages. The oral readings and think-aloud commentaries were taped and
transcribed, and became the information on which the authors based their conclusions and recommendations.
Using these procedures, Jiménez, García, and Pearson discovered important differences among the three girls.
The proficient bilingual, Pamela, used her growing knowledge of each language to help in learning vocabulary from
the other language. When she encountered the English word “species” , for example, she guessed correctly that it
meant the same as the similar Spanish word “especies”; and when she encountered the Spanish “liquído”, she
guessed correctly that it meant the English “liquid”. Her focus on learning vocabulary was stronger than for the
proficient monolingual, Michelle, who commented less on specific words than how the overall reading passages
related to her prior general knowledge. The difference presumably stemmed from Michelle's greater familiarity with
English vocabulary—so much greater, in fact, that Michelle did not need to think about individual words
deliberately. Both Michelle and Pamela differed, however, from the less-proficient bilingual reader, Christine. Like
Pamela, Christine focused on vocabulary, but she did not think of her native Spanish as a resource for this task.
When reading a Spanish word, she was sometimes reminded of English equivalents (“cognates,” as language
teachers call them), but she did not use her much greater knowledge of Spanish to assist with her more limited
English. She did not search for equivalent words deliberately, as Pamela did.
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Appendix C: The reflective practitioner
Relevance: recommendations for teaching english as an additional language
The authors of this article focused more directly on particular learning behaviors than did the authors of the two
articles described earlier. Jimenez and his colleagues emphasized the importance of regarding a child's native
language as a strength in the process, not a liability, and they then pointed out the importance of facilitating
vocabulary development. But they did not claim this recommendation to be appropriate for all children or for all
forms of bilingualism. They only focused on a particular pair of languages (Spanish and English in the USA), and on
three combinations of skill level in these two languages. These are common bilingual experiences in the United
States, but they are not the only ones, either in the United States or elsewhere in the world.
For other bilingual situations, their conclusions might not hold true. For some students (e.g. Chinese-
Americans), the native language and the second language are much more different in vocabulary, pronunciation,
and grammar than Spanish is to English, and therefore may provide less of a resource to a child learning to read. In
some settings, relationships between languages are more equal than in the United States. In Canada, for example,
both the numbers and the overall social status of English speakers and French speakers are more equal than in the
United States. In both of these situations, if a child fails to learn to read the second language, it may not be for the
reasons suggested by Robert Jiménez, but for other reasons, ranging from difficulties with reading per se to cultural
differences in how a child expects to be taught (Johnson, 2004).
The reader's role: both teacher and researcher
In the published article describing their research, Jiménez, García, and Pearson assumed that readers have some
familiarity with bilingual students and with issues related to teaching reading. They began their article by
describing previous research studies in these areas—more than a dozen of them, in fact. In the middle they
described numerous responses of the three bilingual students to the passages they were asked to read. At the end of
the article they made specific suggestions for teaching, such as “focus more on vocabulary development”. When
Kelvin read these various sections, he found that his prior knowledge of and reflections about teaching helped to
make sense of them. But he also found that did not need to be an expert in bilingualism order to understand the
authors' messages—he had never, in fact, taught English as a Second Language, nor had he ever conducted research
on reading or bilingual language development.
Action research: hearing from teachers about improving practice
Each of the professional articles just described offers ideas and recommendations that can stimulate reflection
about teaching and learning. But they all suffer from a particular limitation: Although they often relate to teachers
and classrooms, teachers’ role in influencing in designing and interpreting a study is minimal. In the world of
educational research, persons other than teachers—typically professors, educational administrators, or other
professional researchers—tend to speak on behalf of teachers. All three of the articles described earlier in this
chapter had this feature. Persons other than teachers chose the research topics.
The information that emerges from this arrangement often still relates to teaching and learning, and may
contain useful insights for classroom work. But by definition, it is framed by people whose interests and
fundamental commitments may not be identical with classroom teachers. As a result, the studies are somewhat
more likely to attend to problems posed by academic disciplines or by educational administrators. Two of the
studies which we described earlier—the ones about moral development and about labels for disabilities—showed
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this quality. Classroom teachers are concerned, of course, about both moral development and categorizing of
students. But if teachers had designed the two projects themselves, they might have re-framed both of them to focus
more explicitly on the challenges of classroom teaching. In studying moral beliefs, for example, teachers might have
focused more squarely on how to foster moral beliefs in their students. In studying inclusive education, they might
have focused more fully on the practical difficulties faced by teachers in assessing students’ learning disabilities
with validity.
The nature of action research
In view of these issues, a particularly important kind of investigation for teachers is action research (sometimes
also teacher research), an activity referring to systematic, intentional inquiry by teachers for the purpose of
improving their own practice (Stenhouse, 1985; Brydon-Miller, Greenwood, & Maguire, 2003; Russell, T. &
Loughran, J. 2005). Action research is not to be confused with research about teaching and learning, which are
investigations by professional researchers on topics of teachers, teaching, or learning.
Action research has several defining characteristics, in addition to being planned and conducted by teachers.
First, it originates in the problems and dilemmas of classroom practice, or in chronic problems with certain
students, materials, or activities. Second, its outcomes offer information focused on particular teachers and
classrooms, rather than about teachers in general or students in general. Although this feature might make action
research seem less useful as a source of advice or knowledge that is truly general, supporters argue that focusing on
specific learning contexts makes action research more credible or valid as a source of practical information and
ideas. It is, they argue, simply more attuned to the context of real classrooms (St. Clair, 2005). Third, while the
audience for action research can certainly include professors and educational administrators, the audience tends to
be other teachers (Fenstermacher, 1994; Ackerman & MacKenzie, 2007). Action research is therefore in an
especially strong position to provide “insider” perspectives on educational problems.
Action research in practice
Action research makes a number of assumptions as a result of its nature and purposes (Richardson, 1994;
Schmuck, 2006). To varying degrees, most such studies support some combination of these ideas:
• that teaching is itself really a form of research
• that action research, like teaching itself, requires substantial reflection
• that collaboration among teachers is crucial for making teacher research meaningful, and for the
improvement of teaching
• that teachers' knowledge of teaching has to be shared publicly, especially when gained systematically
through action research
To see how these features look in practice, look at several examples of action research studies.
Example #1: Focusing on motivating students
A number of years ago, Patricia Clifford and Sharon Friesen published an account of their effort to develop a
classroom program based on students' out-of-school interests and experiences (1993). Clifford and Friesen
were co-teachers in a double-sized classroom which deliberately included children from first, second and
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third grades. Their interest in students’ out-of-school experiences grew out of three more basic questions
about teaching, which they phrased like this:
• How can curriculum remain open to children's unique experiences and connect with the world they know
outside the school? Too often, the official school curriculum lacked meaning for children because it seemed
cut off from the rest of the world. The result was unmotivated students and poor learning.
• Why is imaginative experience the best starting place for planning? The teachers felt that imaginative
experiences—make-believe play, stories, poems—provided access to children's lives outside school—their
make-believe play, or their stories or poems. Perhaps somehow these could be connected to the goals of the
official curriculum.
• What happens when teachers break down the barriers between school knowledge and real knowledge? In
drawing on children's outside experiences, would children actually become more motivated or not? Would
they take over the program, and fail to learn the official curriculum goals?
To answer these questions, the teachers kept extensive diaries or journals for one entire school year. These
became the “data” for the research. In the journals, they described and reflected on their daily teaching
experiences. The teachers also talked with each other extensively about classroom events and their significance,
and the results of the conversations often entered the journals eventually during the research. In their journal,
for example, the teachers recorded an experience with students about ways of telling time. In preliminary
discussions the students became interested in how a sundial worked. So the teachers and students went outside,
where they created a human sundial, using the students themselves. The teachers' journal kept a chronicle of
these events, and noted the comments and questions which students developed as a result:
• If you stood in the same place for a whole day you would see your shadow change places because the earth
changes position.
• Why is my shadow longer than I am in the evening, but shorter at noon?
• Clouds can block the sun's rays so sundials won't work on rainy days.
• How did people start to tell time?
As the year evolved and observations accumulated and were recorded, the teachers gradually began to
answer their own three questions. They found, for example, that connecting the curriculum with children's
interests and motives was most effective when they could establish a personal bond with a child. They also
found that imaginative expression helped certain children to feel safe to explore ideas. They found that
blending school-based and personal knowledge caused children to learn much more than before—although
much of the additional knowledge was not part of an official curriculum. With these conclusions in mind, and
with numerous examples to support them, Clifford and Friesen published their study so that others could
share what they had learned about teaching, learning, and students.
The study by Clifford and Friesen is interesting in its own right, but for our purposes think for a moment about
their work as an example of action research. One of its features is that it formed part of the normal course of
teaching: the authors were simply more systematic about how they observed the students and recorded information
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about classroom events. Another feature is that the research required conscious reflection over an extended time:
their journals and conversations contained not only descriptions of events, but also interpretations of the events. A
third feature is that the study involved collaboration: it was not just one teacher studying the major questions, but
two. Th fourth feature is that the teachers not only developed their results and conclusions for themselves, but also
shared them with others. These four qualities make the study by Clifford and Friesen a clear example of teacher
research. Note, though, that sometimes studies conducted by teachers may not show all of these features so clearly;
instead they may show some of the key features, but not all of them, as in the next two examples.
Example #2: Focusing on development
Since 1981, Vivian Paley has published a series of short books documenting and interpreting her observations
of young children in classrooms (1981, 1986, 1991, 1998, 2000, 2005). Paley was interested in how young
children develop or change over the long term, and in particular how the development looks from the point of
view of a classroom teacher. In one of these books, for example, she observed one child in particular, Mollie,
from the time she entered nursery school just after her third birthday until after the child turned four years
old (Paley, 1986). Her interest was not focused on curriculum, as Clifford and Friesen's had done, but on
Mollie as a growing human being; “the subject which I most wished to learn,” she wrote, “is children” (p. xiv).
Paley therefore wrote extended narrative (or story-like) observations about the whole range of activities of
this one child, and wove in periodic brief reflections on the observations. Because the observations took
story-like form, her books read a bit like novels: themes are sometimes simply suggested by the story line,
rather than stated explicitly. Using this approach, Paley demonstrated (but occasionally also stated) several
important developmental changes. In Mollie at Three (1988), for example, she describes examples of Mollie's
language development. At three years, the language was often disconnected from Mollie’s actions—she would
talk about one thing, but do another. By four, she was much more likely to tie language to her current
activities, and in this sense she more often “said what she meant”. A result of the change was that Mollie also
began understanding and following classroom rules as the year went on, because the language of rules
became more connected in her mind to the actions to which they referred.
Vivian Paley's book had some of the characteristics of action research—but with differences from Clifford and
Friesen’s. Like their research, Paley's “data” was based on her own teaching, while her teaching was influenced in
turn by her systematic observations. Like Clifford and Friesen’s, Paley’s research involved numerous reflections on
teaching, and it led to a public sharing of the reflections—in this case in the form of several small books. Unlike
Clifford and Friesen, though, Paley worked independently, without collaboration. Unlike Clifford and Friesen, she
deliberately integrated observation and interpretation as they might be integrated in a piece of fiction, so that the
resulting “story” often implied or showed its message without stating it in so may words. In this regard her work
had qualities of what some educators call arts-based research, which are studies that take advantage of an artistic
medium (in this case, narrative or story-like writing) to heighten readers' understanding and response to research
findings (Barone and Eisner, 2006). If you are studying the use of space in the classroom, for example, then
aesthetically organized visual depictions (photos, drawings) of the room may be more helpful and create more
understanding than verbal descriptions. If you are studying children's musical knowledge, on the other hand,
recordings of performances by the children may be more helpful and informative than discussions of performances.
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Example #3: Focusing on collaboration
In 1996, an example of action research was published that was intended simultaneously for classroom
teachers and for university researchers, and which focused on the challenges of collaboration among
educators (Ulichny & Schoener, 1996). A teacher (Wendy Schoener) and a university researcher (Polly
Ulichny) explored how, or even whether, teachers and university researchers could participate as equals in
the study of teaching. Wendy (the two used first names throughout when they published their experiences)
was a teacher of adults learning English as a Second Language (ESL); Polly was a specialist in multicultural
education and wanted to observe a teacher who was successful at reaching the ethnically diverse students
who normally study ESL. Polly therefore asked Wendy for permission to study her teaching for an extended
period of time—to visit her class, videotape it, interview her about it, and the like.
What followed is best described as an extended negotiation between teacher and professor for access to Wendy's
class, on the one hand, and for mutual respect for each other's work, on the other. In the published article, the
negotiations are described separately by each participant, in order to honor the differences in their concerns and
perspectives. Before, during, and after the observations, it was necessary for Polly and Wendy each to adjust
expectations of what the other person could do and was willing to do. As the authors put it, some things were “easy
to hear” from the other and some things were “hard to hear”. Wendy, as a teacher, found it easier to hear criticisms
of her teaching if they came from herself, rather than from the higher-status university professor, Polly. Polly, for
her part, found it easier to hear Wendy's comments if she matched Wendy's self-criticisms and evaluations with
some of her own experiences. Polly therefore made sure to tell Wendy about dilemmas and problems she
experienced in her own (university) teaching. Because they needed to adjust to hearing and talking with each other,
the two educators eventually focused less on Polly's original purpose—studying multicultural teaching—and more
on the problem of how teachers and university researchers might collaborate effectively.
Overall, this study qualifies as a piece of action research, though it is not fully focused on classroom teaching.
For example, the teachers did collaborate and reflect on their experiences, but not all of the reflection was about
teaching in classrooms. The rest was about the relationship between Wendy and Polly. While the problem selected
was originally about classroom teaching—Wendy’s—it did not originate with the classroom teacher (Wendy) or
concerns she had about her own classroom; instead it was chosen by the university researcher (Polly) and her
desire to study multicultural teaching. The researchers did share what they learned by publishing their observations
and ideas, but their published report speaks only partly to classroom teachers as such; in addition it speaks to
academic researchers and educators of future teachers.
By pointing out differences among these examples of action research, we do not mean to imply that one is
“better” than another. The point is simply to show how diverse studies by teachers can be and to appreciate their
differences. Whatever their specific features, classroom studies by teachers hold in common the commitment to
giving a voice to teachers as they reflect on problems and challenges intrinsic to classroom life. This goal can be
accomplished in more than one way: through journals and other record-keeping methods, through oral discussions
with colleagues, and through written reflections created either for themselves or for others concerned about
teaching and learning. Diversity among topics and methods in action research studies should not surprise us, in
fact, since classrooms are themselves so diverse.
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The challenges of action research
Well and good, you may say. Action research offers teachers a way to hear each other, to learn from their own
and other's experience. But there are also a few cautions to keep in mind, both ethical and practical. Look briefly at
each of these areas.
Ethical cautions about action research
One caution is the possibility of conflict of interest between the roles of teaching and conducting action research
(Hammack, 1997). A teacher’s first priorities should be the welfare of his or her students: first and foremost, you
want students to learn, to be motivated, to feel accepted by their peers, and the like. A researcher’s first priorities,
however, are to the field or topic being studied. The two kinds of priorities may often overlap and support each
other. Vivian Paley’s observations of children in her classes, described earlier, not only supported her children’s
learning, but also her studies of the children.
But situations can also occur in which action research and teaching are less compatible, and can create ethical
dilemmas. The problems usually relate to one of three issues: privacy, informed consent, or freedom to participate.
Each of these becomes an issue only if the results of a research project are made public, either in a journal or book,
as with the examples we have given in this chapter, or simply by being described or shared outside the classroom.
(Sharing, you may recall, is one of the defining features of action research.) Look briefly at each of the issues.
Insuring privacy of the student
Teachers often learn information about students that the students or their families may not want publicized.
Suppose, for example, you have a student with an intellectual disability in your class, and you wish to study how the
student learns. Observing the student work on (and possibly struggle with) academic activities may be quite
consistent with a teacher’s responsibilities; after all, teachers normally should pay attention to their students’
academic efforts. But the student or his family may not want such observations publicized or even shared
informally with other parents or teachers. They may feel that doing so would risk stigmatizing the student publicly.
To respect the student’s privacy and still study his learning behavior, the teacher (alias the “action researcher”)
therefore needs to disguise the student’s identity whenever the research results are made public. In any written or
oral report, or even in any hallway conversation about the project, the teacher/researcher would use a pseudonym
for the student, and change other identifying information such as the physical description of the student or even the
student’s gender. There are limits, however, to how much can be disguised without changing essential information.
The teacher could not, for example, hide the fact of the intellectual disability without compromising the point of the
study; yet the intellectual disability might be unusual enough that it would effectively identify the student being
studied.
Gaining informed consent
Students may not understand what is being studied about them, or even realize that they are being studied at all,
unless the teacher/researcher makes an explicit effort to inform them about the action research and how she will
use the results from it. The same is true for the students’ parents; unless the teacher-researcher makes an effort to
contact parents, they simply will not know that their child’s activities are being observed or may eventually be made
public. Students’ ignorance is especially likely if the students are very young (kindergarten) or have intellectual or
reading difficulties, as in the example we described above. As an action researcher, therefore, a teacher is obliged to
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explain the nature of a research project clearly, either in a letter written in simple language or in a face-to-face
conversation, or both. Parents and students need to give clear indications that they actually understand what class
activities or materials will constitute data that could be made public. In most cases, indicating informed consent
means asking students’ parents signing a letter giving permission for the study. Sometimes, in addition, it is a good
idea to recheck with students or parents periodically as the project unfolds, to make sure that they still support
participation.
Insuring freedom to participate
When a student fails to participate in an ordinary class activity, most teachers consider it legitimate to insist on the
student’s participation—either by persuading, demanding, or (perhaps) tricking the student to join. Doing so is ethical
for teachers in their roles as teachers, because teachers are primarily responsible for insuring that students learn, and
students’ participation presumably facilitates learning. If a teacher designates an activity as part of an action research
project, however, and later shares the results with them, the teacher then also becomes partly responsible for how other
teachers use knowledge of the research study. (Remember: sharing results is intrinsically part of the research process.)
The resulting dual commitment means that “forcing” a student to participate in an action research activity can no
longer be justified solely as being for the student’s own educational good.
Much of the time, a simultaneous commitment to both teachers and students presents no real dilemma: what is
good for the action research project may also be good for the students. But not always. Suppose, for example, that a
teacher wants to do research about students’ beliefs about war and global conflict, and doing so requires that students
participate in numerous extended group discussions on this topic. Even though the group discussions might resemble a
social studies lesson and in this sense be generally acceptable as a class activity, some parents (or students) may object
because they take too much class time away from the normal curriculum topics. Yet the research project necessitates
giving it lots of discussion time in class. To respond ethically to this dilemma, therefore, the teacher may need to allow
students to opt out of the discussions if they or their parents choose. She may therefore need to find ways for them to
cover an alternate set of activities from the curriculum. (One way to do this, for example, is to hold the special group
discussions outside regular class times—though this obviously also increases the amount of work for both the teacher
and students.)
Practical issues about action research
Is action research practical? From one perspective the answer has to be “Of course not!” Action research is not
practical because it may take teachers’ time and effort which they could sometimes use in other ways. Keep in mind,
though, that a major part of the effort needed for action research involves the same sort of work—observing,
recording information, reflecting—that is needed for any teaching that is done well. A better way to assess
practicality may therefore be to recognize that teaching students always takes a lot of work, and to ask whether the
additional thoughtfulness brought on by action research will make the teaching more successful.
Looked at in this way, action research is indeed practical, though probably not equally so on every occasion. If
you choose to learn about the quality of conversational exchanges between yourself and students, for example, you
will need some way to record these dialogues, or at least to keep accurate, detailed notes on them. Recording the
dialogues may be practical and beneficial—or not, depending on your circumstances. On the other hand, if you
choose to study how and why certain students remain on the margins of your class socially, this problem too may be
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practical as action research. Or it may not, depending on whether you can find a way to observe and reflect on
students' social interactions, or lack thereof. Much depends on your circumstances—on the attention you can afford
to give to your research problem while teaching, in relation to the benefits that solutions to the problems will bring
students later. In general any action research project may require certain choices about how to teach, though it
should not interfere with basic instructional goals or prevent coverage of an important curriculum. The main point
to remember is that action research is more than passive observation of students and classrooms; it also includes
educational interventions, efforts to stimulate students to new thinking and new responses. Those are features of
regular teaching; the difference is primarily in how systematically and reflectively you do them.
Benefiting from all kinds of research
Although we authors both feel a degree of sympathy for the nature and purposes of action research, we are not
trying to advocate for it at the expense of other forms of educational research or at the expense of simply reading
and understanding professional publications in general. The challenge for you, as a classroom teacher, is to find the
value in all forms of professional development, whether it be participation in a professional association, reading
general articles about research, or engaging in your own action research. To the extent that you draw on them all,
your ways of learning about teaching will be enriched. You will acquire more ways to understand classroom life,
while at the same time acquiring perspective on that life. You will learn ways to grasp the individuality of particular
students, but also to see what they need in common. You will have more ways to interpret your own experiences as
a professional teacher, but also be able to learn from the professional experience of others. Realizing these benefits
fully is a challenge, because the very diversity of classrooms renders problems about teaching and learning complex
and diverse as well. But you will also gain good, professional company in searching for better understanding of your
work—company that includes both educational researchers, other professional teachers, and of course your
students.
Chapter summary
The complexities of teaching require teachers to continue learning throughout their teaching careers. To
become a lifelong reflective practitioner, teachers can rely on colleagues as a resource, on professional associations
and their activities, and on professional publications related to educational issues and needs. Understanding the
latter, in turn, requires understanding the purposes of the published material—whether it is offering a general
framework, recommending desirable teaching practices, or advocating for a particular educational policy or need.
Interpreting published material also requires understanding the assumptions that authors make about readers’
prior knowledge and beliefs.
An important additional strategy for becoming a reflective practitioner is action research—studies of teaching
and learning designed and carried out by teachers in order to improve their own practice. By nature, action
research studies are highly relevant to classroom practice, but there are also cautions about it to keep in mind, both
ethically and practically.
Key termsaction research
assumptions about readers’ prior knowledge
informed consentinsuring privacy of students
insuring freedom to participate
professional associationspurposes of educational research
reflective practitioner
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Appendix C: The reflective practitioner
reliability validity
On the Internet
AERA), a major “umbrella” professional association supporting educational research of all kinds. The home page
has links to over two dozen special interest groups (called “SIGs”), each specializing in some form of educational
research or practice. There is, among others, a special interest group called “teacher as researcher”, intended
primarily for educators involved in action research.
professional association of educators. The difference between this association and the American Educational
Research Association, however, is that the NEA focuses less on presenting research as such, and more on issues of
teaching practice. Like the AERA website, it includes articles on numerous topics that can be downloaded or read
online.
and Improvement. It summarizes current research initiatives about education that are sponsored by the United
States Federal government, and includes links for finding information about the individual initiatives which it lists.
dedicated to action research. The first belongs to the Society for Community Research and Action, a division of the
American Psychological Association. It promotes and publishes action research in many professions, one of which
is education. The second website belongs to the Action Research Special Interest Group of the American
Educational Research Association; as you might suspect from its name, it focuses exclusively on action research by
educators.
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