Interaction in the Classroom

There were many differences between the Traditional School of Education and the Progressive School of Edition and the most important was Interaction; the interpersonal relationship between the teacher and the students. This week we will look at this concept in the classroom - next week we will look at how it differs on the ball field, in the gym, etc.

In the Traditional School I learned in and first taught in there was almost no Interaction. In the Progressive School that I taught later, my students and I were all involved in the learning process - I was a Co-learner with my Learners. An accurate description of what was happening is that the teacher and the students were sharing a learning experience - we were Interacting,.

The question that came up among us teachers was; What are we doing that makes this so much better than the lecture, fact-recall activities in the former classrooms? Can we measure or at least identify what we’re doing?

In 1963, Edmund J. Amidon, and Ned A Flanders, created Interaction Analysis.

Flanders’ definition of the system, “Teaching as an interactive process. Interaction means participation of teacher and students in the process of teaching”. In this process, the teacher influences the students; students also interact with the teacher. Interaction takes place among the students themselves also. It means, in the process of teaching, everybody interacts with every other person involved in the process. The teachers influence students through lecture, asking questions, criticizing, giving directions etc. Students react to the teacher’s lecture and questions, they give responses. It's an interaction between teachers and students.”

Interaction Analysis in Teaching

This is a copy of the chart that was used to identify what was happening in the classroom. It identified two types of Teacher talk; Indirect Influence and Direct Influence. The four types of Indirect Influence were numbered 1. Accepts - 2. Praises or encourages - 3. Accepts ideas - 4. Asks questions. The three types of Direct Influence were numbered 5. Lectures, 6. Gives directions, and 7. Criticizes.

The two types of Student talk are numbered 8. Student response and 9. Student talk initiation.. A commentary on a problem action or inaction was 10. Silence or confusion.

Today, we are visiting Miss Clarke’s junior-high school class. Let’s listen in:

All right, on Monday we started our study on the Age of Exploration and chose to

do our own exploration on what was done by these European countries; Portugal, Spain, England, Holland, and France. We decided that using small groups for each of these countries would be a good way to learn about this period in history. You five groups have had two class days to work on the country you chose and we’ll start having your reports tomorrow. Do you want to have volunteers for who goes first, second, and so on?

Arthur?

Well, we thought picking names for the membership of each group was a good idea so let’s do that again.

Glen: Yeah, we’ll all be ready to go so that’ll work for our group, too.

All of you are nodding. I was ready for that response so I have a cup here with slips of paper numbered from one to five. So I’ll come around and each of you will pick a slip out.

Okay, who has slip number one/

Rose?

We do. We’re the France group. We’re #1!

A little laughter from the entire class.

All right. You have the rest of class today to tidy up your work. I will be coming around helping you do that.

My notation of what Miss Clarke and her students did was: 5, 4, 10, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10, 4. 3, 6

This would indicate that the teacher asked a question, waited for and got a student response; then another student responded and there was silence until the teacher asked another question. Somewhere along the line, the teacher merely nodded (3ed) accepting the response and encouraging more student involvement.

Your notation may have been different - that was one problem with this method - the teacher and analyst might disagree on what was done. However, it encouraged us teachers to find out more about questioning strategies and encouraged creative teachers and authors to find more types of interaction. For example, number 10 originally used only the term “Confusion.” It was found that the expert teachers who had been chosen for the original research had a lot of 10s - especially after 4s (questions). This was not confusion - it was the expert teachers giving their students time to ponder the question before they 8ed and 9ed. I learned to wait and listen better.

On questioning strategies, there has been much work done on the different types of questions and involvement of our students in the learning process. Just type “Questioning Strategies” in your search program.

One thing that worked extremely well for me was our fourth-grade class meetings. On Monday mornings, after I had read a chapter of a book or a new poem to my kids, we had a meeting on “What are we going to do this week?” and every Friday afternoon we finished the week with a meeting on “How did we do this week. “ At these sessions we included how we work together and how we care about each other.

Next week - Interaction in Our Sports Venues.