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Flanders
MORE and more social scien of classrooms in which rigor was either
tists are taking a closer look at teacher- high or low and student participation
pupil interaction in the classroom. This was either high or low. Their report ex
hopeful trend can be documented by presses some optimism concerning the
referring to the 1960 volume of Psycho utilization of their methods of observa
logical Abstracts and to reports of proj tion for training more effective teachers
ects now under contract to the National of mathematics. .
Institute of Mental Health or the U.S. Bowers and Soar (1961) exposed ex
Office of Education. perienced teachers to group discussions
of one's own behavior and the behavior
nf others, following a pattern of human
Increasing Research Activity
relations training that is becoming more
A few ambitious research projects in prominent, and then traced the conse
volve attempts to quantify the qualitative quences of this training in terms of spon
aspects of spontaneous classroom be taneous verbal behavior in the classroom
havior. and other aspects' of teaching. They
A research team working with ele found that not all teachers respond con
mentary teachers in Provo, Utah, (Rom- structively to this kind of training, but
ney and Hughes, 1958, 1961) believes that it was possible to predict which
that patterns of spontaneous teacher teachers would have constructive re
action can be identified and that more actions from inventory scale scores.
effective patterns can be distinguished B. O. Smith (I960) and his associates
from less effective patterns. The 1958 at the University of Illinois are working
progress report states that inventories hard at the difficult task of analyzing
can be developed and administered to classroom conversation in terms of
prospective teachers and to teachers in models of logical thinking. Thus far
service that will predict spontaneous they have developed a system of analysis
teaching patterns fairly accurately. and have isolated examples of class
Wright and Proctor (1961) have de room communication that illustrate
veloped a system for analyzing the rigor,
or lack of it, in class discussions of mathe Ned A. Flanders i* Associate Professor of
matics as well as the degree of student Education, University of Minnesota, Minne
participation. They studied four typos apolis.