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Comparison of student, first-year, and experienced teachers' interpretations of a first-grade lesson
Teaching Printed
1 Trachrr Educcar;on. I” Great Bntmn
Vol.
7.
No.
3. pp.
269-270.
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1991
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COMPARISON OF STUDENT, FIRST-YEAR, AND EXPERIENCED TEACHERS’ INTERPRETATIONS OF A FIRST-GRADE LESSON MARGARET C. NEEDELS California State University,
Hayward, U.S.A.
Abstract-Student, first-year, and experienced teachers were shown a videotape of a first-grade language arts lesson and asked to write responses to three questions about the lesson. The questions focused on classroom management, teacher-student interactions, and use of students’ knowledge. The written responses were analyzed in terms of length, complexity, linguistic cues, and topics discussed. Few differences were found between the student teachers and the first-year teachers. The experienced teachers showed a greater understanding of the interconnectedness of classroom events, Differences between the experienced and less-experienced teachers were found in the topics dicussed. Implications of these findings for teacher education are discussed.
Teacher education programs have long followed a practice of requiring their students to devote a certain amount of time to observing experienced teachers at their job of teaching. This practice has been used both in teacher preparation programs and inservice programs for experienced teachers. That is, the majority of teacher preparation programs require students to observe in classrooms before beginning the student-teaching experience, and many district inset-vice programs offer teachers “release days” from their teaching responsibilities so that they can observe other teachers. This practice is based on the assumption that an efficient way to learn to teach is “to watch another teacher at work and go and do likewise” (Stones, 1987, p. 682). This assumption, however, has failed to consider whether a teacher’s experience will influence what is “seen,” and thus, mediate the usefulness of observing another teacher at work. Perhaps the number of years of teaching experience will influence the degree of knowledge and understanding a teacher has about classroom events. Thus, the student teacher, inexperienced in the profession, will lack the knowledge needed to be sensitive to the complexity of classroom events and will not gain from observing another teacher in
ways similar to that of the experienced teacher. Identifying differences in the interpretations of inexperienced and experienced teachers could lead to an understanding of possible differences in what these teachers see when they observe classroom teaching. For inexperienced teachers, observations might need to be especially, planned in ways so that what is observed matches the inexperienced teachers’ knowledge and thus guarantees that the beginning teacher benefits in any way from the experience of observing another’s teaching. Such an understanding of how inexperienced teachers tend to view classroom teaching could contribute to the design of teacher education programs. The research literature on differences between experts and novices in fields outside of teaching indicates that experts remember features and patterns of a task better than do novices and process the information differently from novices. Chase and Simon (1973) studied chess players and reported that after viewing a chess board for 5 seconds a chess master can reconstruct the positions of the pieces with 80 or 90% accuracy. On the other hand, novice chess players can remember the positions of only some half-dozen pieces. The authors also reported that an expert chess player has only a
This research was supported by a grant from the Office of the Chancellor of California State University and the California State Department of Education. Special thanks is extended to Mary Eriksen and the children in her first-grade class, and to Louise Bay Waters for her help. 269
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moderate loss in playing strength when the time for moves is reduced from 180 to 10 seconds. Findings from studies of differences between expert and novice teachers indicate that similar differences are found in teaching (Berliner & Carter, 1989; Borko & Livingston, 1990). Berliner and Carter (1989) reported that the expert teachers in their studies were more able to identify the important features of a task than were the novices and postulants, that is “individuals who expressed an interest in teaching but had no training or experience in public school teaching” (Berliner & Carter, 1989, p. 56). Expert teachers also showed more “if-then” thinking and were also more sensitive to the subtle characteristics of the task. Borko and Livingston (1990) reported that the expert teachers in their study were able to “plan more quickly and efficiently than novices because they are able to combine information from existing schemata to fit the particulars of a given lesson” (p. 490). Thus, the research indicates that experienced teachers and novice teachers differ in terms of their perception and assessment of tasks related to teaching. The research to date, however, has focused on secondary school teaching in mathematics and science as teachers plan or think about their own teaching (Borko & Livingston, 1990). To determine whether similar findings are found with elementary school teachers in different subject areas, the study reported here investigated the differences among elementary school student teachers, first-year teachers, and experienced teachers. To investigate whether differences could be identified in their reports after observing another teacher teaching, the three groups of teachers were asked to assess a first-grade language arts lesson that they viewed on videotape. After viewing the 30-minute lesson, each of the three groups of teachers was asked to write responses to three questions about the lesson. These questions were concerned with the classroom management, teacher-student interactions, and the relevance of the lesson to the students’ existing knowledge. To try to understand the cognitive processes followed by the teachers, the written responses to these three questions were analyzed in terms of (a) the number of teaching features discussed in the response, (b) specific linguistic features contained in the response,
C. NEEDELS
and (c) the topics discussed. This analysis addressed three research questions: Will differences be found in the written responses of the three teacher groups in terms of (a) the number of teaching features discussed in their written responses, (b) the linguistic features contained, and (c) the topics they chose to discuss? It was hoped that answers to these three questions would contribute to our understanding of the growth in teacher thinking-from novice to experienced teacher and the usefulness of the practice of classroom observations in teacher education.
Method This study was designed to provide a standard situation to which all teachers would be asked to respond. Thus, a videotape of an actual classroom lesson was made and presented to the three groups of teachers. The lesson shown on the videotape was planned and carried out with the help of two elementary school teachers who had received recognition from their inner-city school district in northern California as outstanding teachers. (Both teachers were mentor teachers, and one had been elected the school district’s “Teacher of the Year.“) The lesson was intended to be an exemplary lesson taught by an outstanding teacher who followed the State of California curriculum guidelines and made use of teaching strategies based on principles of cognitive psychology and research on effective teaching. Thus, the two teachers and the investigator met several times and jointly planned the lesson which was part of the regular curriculum for that class. A videotape recording was made of one of the teachers teaching the lesson to her first-grade class. This videotape was shown to each of the three groups of teachers participating in this study. The 30-minute language arts lesson occurred in a first-grade class. During the lesson, the class composed its daily newspaper. For this composing activity, the teacher wrote on a 24” x 36” poster paper the sentences dictated by the students. This paper was posted on the front chalkboard, and the students, seated on a rug, watched as the teacher wrote the sentences dictated by individual students. During this activity, students made comments about the
Student,
First-year,
and Experienced
sentences, and the teacher asked questions related to the sentences. After the newspaper was completed (six sentences), it was used for a reading lesson. Interactions between the teacher and individual students or the entire class occurred continually.
Teachers
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were told that, after viewing the lesson, they would be given one hour to write responses to the three questions. All of the questions were listed on one sheet of paper, and several blank sheets of paper were attached. Thirty minutes were required to view the lesson.
The Sample Analysis of the Written Responses Three groups of teachers viewed the film: (a) student teachers, finishing the final quarter of a five-year teacher education program (n = 18); (b) first-year teachers, finishing the first year of teaching, participating in a support program for beginning teachers (n = 14); and (c) experienced teachers with more than 5 years of teaching experience, working toward a masters degree in education (n = 19). All teachers taught at one of the primary grade levels (first, second, and third). All teachers had experience teaching in inner-city schools. Because this study was aimed at identifying differences among teachers based on years of teaching experience, no attempt was made to identify “expert” teachers within any of the three groups; however, the directors of each of the three programs in which these teachers were participating (a teacher education program, a beginning-teacher support program, and a masters degree program) reported that the sample teachers in their respective programs were doing “at least” satisfactory work. Thus, although there might be some unidentified “experts” within the experienced teacher group, no “weak” teachers were included in any of the three groups. Procedure The videotape was shown separately to each of the three groups of teachers, and the same procedures were followed for all three viewings. Before the viewing, the investigator gave the teachers a written description of the school, the class, and the purpose of the lesson. The researcher read the description aloud to the teachers. Attached to the written description were three questions about the lesson. These questions asked the teachers to assess the classroom management, the teacher-student interactions, and the relevance of the lesson to the students’ existing knowledge. The teachers
The written responses were analyzed in terms of (a) the quantity of writing, by question and teacher group; (b) the linguistic features contained in the writing, by question and teacher group; and (c) the topics discussed, by question and teacher group. Quantity of Writing The number of words and T-units (“the minimal unit that can be punctuated as a sentence whether the writer has punctuated it that way or not” (Bereiter, 1980, p. 75)) contained in each of the three responses was counted. The number of T-units provides an indication of the number of thoughts contained in the written response. The mean number of words per T-unit was calculated. This mean is considered a measure of syntactical complexity (Hunt, 1964), and for this study, it provided a measure of the degree of elaboration contained in a particular thought. Linguistic Features The system developed by Ode11 (1977) was used in a content analysis of the written responses. This system identifies specific linguistic features that are considered indicators of particular kinds of cognitive processing used during writing. Table 1 shows the six linguistic features used in this system and their respective linguistic cues. A brief description of the kinds of cognitive processing that might be indicated by each of these linguistic features is also presented. In the analysis, the frequency of each of these linguistic features (by teacher, by question) was counted. Topics Discussed The specific topics used in the analysis were
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Table
C. NEEDELS
1
Linguistic
Features for Identifying
Linguistic
feature
Cognitive
Linguistic
Processes
cue(s)
Inferred
processes
Focus
Grammatical
Contrast
Connectors, superlatives,
Classification
Linking verb joins a subject with a predicate nominative
How features can be labeled or compared to other features
Change
Forms of the words “change,” “become,” “began,” or “stop”
The nature and extent of features undergo change
Physical context
Nouns referring to geograpical an object in a physical setting
Reference
Adverbial elements indicating that something existed before, during, or after a moment in time; cause-effect relationships; if-then statements
Note.
to sequence
Adapted
from Odell,
subjects
cognitive
comparatives negatives
Segmenting and
Knowing it differs
location,
and focusing
what a feature is not, how from other features
Awareness of one’s surroundings, environment Understanding of time sequence and logical sequence
1977.
identified after a reading of all the responses. Because the topics were specific to each question, they varied across question. For the classroom management question, the topics discussed were (a) the affective atmosphere of the classroom, (b) the teacher’s expectations, (c) the teacher’s presence, (d) the content of the lesson and teaching strategies, (e) explicit enforcement of rules, and (f) implicit techniques for maintaining students’ involvement in the lesson. For the question related to teacher-student interactions, the topics were (a) frequency of interactions, (b) pacing, (c) types of questions asked, (d) appropriateness of lesson content, (e) teacher feedback to students, (f, selection of students, and (g) teacher enthusiasm. For the question about the degree to which the lesson seemed to relate to the students’ existing knowledge, the following topics were identified: (a) use of students’ personal experiences, (b) use of a familiar procedure, (c) use of familiar vocabulary, (d) reference to content previously covered in the class, and (f) reference to out-of-school topics familiar to students. The frequency with which teachers in each of the three groups discussed each of these topics was determined.
Coding of Written Responses After the investigator had read and coded each written response, a second reader read and coded the responses of a random sample of onethird of the teachers in each group (student teacher group = 6 teachers’ responses; firstyear teacher group = 5 teachers’ responses; experienced teacher group = 6 teachers’ responses; total = 17 responses). The coding requiring a count of T-units and words showed 88 and 94% agreement, respectively. Coding for the six linguistic cue variables showed between 76 and 96% agreements.
Results and Discussion Quantiq of Writing The mean number of words by teacher group and by question varied; however, only small differences in the mean number of words per Tunit were found across teacher groups and questions. Table 2 shows these values. For all these questions, the experienced teachers wrote the greatest number of words, followed by the first-
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Student. First-year, and Experienced Teachers Table 2 Mean Number of T-Units and Mean Number of Words per T-Unit by Question, by Teacher Group Teacher Group Question
First-year (N = 14)
Student (N = 18)
Experienced (N = 19)
M
SD
M
SD
M
SD
9.8 10.0
2.24 2.49
9.3 11.3
2.02 1.66
12.0 10.7
5.32 4.43
7.7 10.6
2.58 2.38
9.0 10.9
2.57 2.14
11.8 11.1
3.70 3.93
5.4 10.7
1.91 1.82
5.71 11.9
2.01 2.46
6.9 11.6
3.04 3.62
Classroom management T-units Words per T-unit Teacher-student
interactions
T-units Words per T-unit Students’ knowledge T-units Words per T-unit
year teachers, and the student teachers wrote the least. Because the greatest differences were found between the student teachers and the experienced teachers, effect sizes were computed on the means of these two groups. Using the pooled standard deviation for each of the three questions, the effect size for the classroom management question was .52; for the teacher student interaction question, .99; and for the students’ knowledge question, .37. An effect size of .52 is considered moderate, and an effect size of .99 is considered large. Thus, it appears that the experienced teachers tended to express slightly more thoughts about the management aspect of this lesson. Experienced teachers’ responses for the teacher-student interaction question, however, were significantly longer than those of the student teachers. This great difference might be attributed to the experienced teachers’ understanding of the complexities of classroom interactions, for example, concerning the teacher’s selection of respondents, the kinds of questions asked, and the teacher’s reaction to student responses. The experienced teachers seemed to be more aware of these features of
classroom interactions and, thus, more able to elaborate at length after viewing the tape, than were either the student teachers or the first-year teachers. The mean number of words per T-unit, here considered a measure of syntactical complexity, was similar across the three teacher groups and across the questions. The effect sizes for comparison between the student teachers and experienced teachers’ responses ranged from .17 to .22. Such values are considered in this context to be small and insignificant. Thus, it appears that the experienced teachers expressed more thoughts about each of the three questions; however, the degree of complexity of ideas contained in their responses was similar to the other groups. The longer responses (greater number of T-units) of the experienced group of teachers can most likely be attributed to greater knowledge and sensitivity to classroom life. Linguistic
Features
The content analysis of the linguistic features was intended to give some insight into the cognitive processes used by the teachers as they
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C. NEEDELS
assessed the lesson. As shown in Table 1, six different linguistic features were used in this content analyses: (a) focus, (b) contrasts, (c) classification, (d) change, (e) physical context, and (f) reference to sequence. Differences among teacher groups were found for three of these features: contrasts, change, and reference to sequence. (The other three features were used infrequently in the responses of all three teacher groups.) As shown in Table 3, a larger percentage of the responses of the experienced teachers contained linguistic cues concerning contrast, change, and temporal or logical sequence. Because these variables were considered dichotomous (responses either contained or did not contain the linguistic cue), a series of chi squares were computed to determine any significant differences among the responses of the three teacher groups. The analysis of linguistic cues concerning contrast revealed that for the management and interaction questions, the experienced teachers seemed to be more aware of the options available to a teacher and, as Ode11 put it, “What a feature is not” (see Table 3). For example, in response to the question about classroom management, one experienced teacher wrote that the
Table
teacher “warned a child rather than writing his name on the board. ” When responding to the question about teacher- student interactions, another experienced teacher wrote that “instead of telling students the meaning of a word, the teacher would ask the students what they thought it might mean. ” Another teacher wrote that the teacher did not “change the grammar of the child’s comments, but wrote the child’s language verbatim.” Still another experienced teacher wrote, “The issue of correctness was not emphasized in this lesson, the teacher accepted all efforts by the students to contribute to the lesson.” These kinds of examples occurred infrequently in the student teachers’ responses. The analysis of linguistic cues concerning change revealed that for the interaction and students’ knowledge questions, the experienced teachers were more able to notice changes during the course of the lesson. In response to the classroom management question, one experienced teacher wrote “The teacher begins the lesson with no mention of the kind of behavior expected, but as the lesson progresses, she informs those students who are not behaving what is expected of them.” In response to the
3
Number
of Written Responses
Containing
Contrasr.
Change,
and Sequence Teacher
Student
Question
First-year
by Quesrion.
by Teacher
Group
group Experienced
X2
Management Contrast Change Sequence
4 2 2
6 4 3
14 9 16
9.55** 5.73 23.62****
6 2 4
2 :
18 II 14
24.42-e+ 14.16*** 13.32***
3
2 1 3
4 8 9
0.29 9.82** 8.86*
Interaction Contrast Change Sequence Students’
knowledge
Contrast Change Sequence *p < .05. **p < 0.1.
I I ***p < .005.
****p < .ool
Student,
First-year, and Experienced Teachers
students’ knowledge question, one teacher wrote, “She seems to be tuned in to the students’ backgrounds and experiences from the beginning of the lesson and even more so once the students begin giving her some sentences for the newspaper.” The analysis of sequences revealed that for all three questions, the experienced teachers showed a greater awareness of temporal and logical sequence. This result is similar to a finding reported by Berliner and Carter (1989), who wrote “The experts in both studies provided evidence of more reasoned thinking than did the novices or postulants. . . . they showed more “if-then” thinking” (p. 72). The experienced teachers in the present study also wrote more “if-then” statements. For example, one experienced teacher wrote, “If the students compose the text for their reading, then they might use this text in their own writing.” Another experienced teacher wrote, “If a student did not know a word, then the teacher asked another student to help.” Examples of linguistic cues concerning temporal sequence included the statement of one experienced teacher that the teacher “gave students time to think about what they wanted to say in the newspaper before asking for contributions. ” Another experienced teacher wrote that the “teacher listened carefully to each child’s comment before reacting to what they said.” For the most part, the responses of the student teachers did not contain these kinds of sequences -neither temporal nor logical (see Table 3). Rather, their responses were mainly descriptions of isolated elements of the lesson with little reference to connections between the elements. The student teachers very seldom provided explanations for the events that they reported. This difference between experienced and novice teachers suggests that, with experience, teachers develop a complex understanding of the interconnection of lesson features, rather than perceiving features in isolation. Topics Discussed
As was noted above, the topics for each of the three questions were identified from a reading of the teachers* responses to the three questions, and these topics were listed under the
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“Method.” Because most teachers discussed more than one topic, the analysis was based on a computation of the percentage of all topics discussed within a teacher group related to a specific question. Thus, Teacher A might discuss three topics, Teacher B two topics, and Teacher C, four topics. The total number of topics discussed within that group would be nine and would serve as the denominator in computing the percentage for a given topic, and the total percentage for all topics discussed within one of the teacher groups for a particular question should equal 100. Striking differences among the three teacher groups were found in the responses to all three questions (see Table 4). For the classroom management question, student teachers (54 %) and first-year teachers (43%) tended to discuss teacher expectations for a greater percentage of the time than did the experienced teachers (12%). The student teachers and the first-year teachers tended to make comments like the following made by one of the student teachers: “The teacher let the students know the kind of behavior she expected.” On the other hand, experienced teachers (44%) tended to discuss more frequently the topic of the lesson content and the teaching strategies used by the teacher than did the student teachers (7%) and the first-year teachers (3%). One experienced teacher wrote that “The use of the students’ personal experiences as the content of this lesson gets the students’ interest and thus the children are attentive.” Another experienced teacher wrote that “The teacher is constantly asking students questions. Somehow, she seems to get around to all the students. This kind of teaching helps keep order in the classroom. “The experienced teachers’ emphasis on the relationship between classroom management and what is being taught and how it is being taught provides another example of the experienced teachers’ understanding of the interconnection among elements of a lesson.” The responses to the question about teacher student interaction showed differences in terms of what teachers look at when assessing classroom interactions. The student teachers (56%) tended to discuss the affective tone of the teacher’s interactions with the students. The first-year teachers (35%) also discussed this topic; however, the experienced teachers tended
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MARGARET C. NEEDELS
Table 4 Topics Contained in Written Responses by Question, by Teacher Group Percent of group’s topics
Question
Topic
Teacher group
Management
Atmosphere
Student First-year Experienced
13 18 8
Expectations
Student First-year Experienced
54 43 12
Teacher’s presence
Student First-year Experienced
4 :
Lesson content and teaching strategies
Student First-year Experienced
7 3 44
Enforcement of rules
Student First-year Experienced
20 36 12
Student involvement
Student First-year Experienced
2 0 18
Frequency
Student First-year Experienced
4 3 0
Affective climate
Student First-year Experienced
56 35 11
Types of questions
Student First-year Experienced
0 17 0
Appropriateness
Student First-year Experienced
0 19 31
Teacher feedback
Student First-year Experienced
19 0 54
Selection of students
Student First-year Experienced
8 12 4
Teacher enthusiasm
Student First-year Experienced
13 14 0
Personal experiences
Student First-year Experienced
13 22 44
Familiar procedures
Student First-year Experienced
45 48 21
-
-
Students’ knowledge
of lesson content
Student, First-year,
and Experienced
271
Teachers
Table 4 (continued)
Question
Percent of group’s topics
Topic
Teacher group
Familiar vocabulary
Student First-year Experienced
17
Familiar academic content
Student First-year Experienced
39 25 4
Familiar out-of-school topics
Student First-year Experienced
3 5 14
to place less emphasis (11 W) on this element of the teacher-student interactions. The experienced teachers tended to place more emphasis on the kind of feedback the teacher gave to the students (54%). These teachers discussed interaction patterns such as probing, wait-time, offering clues, and acceptance of student responses. On the other hand, only 19% of the student teachers’ topics involved feedback, and the first-year teachers never discussed feedback. The appropriateness of the content of the interactions was discussed by the experienced teachers more frequently (31%) than by the other two teacher groups. The student teachers never discussed this element of the interactions. Thus, these data suggest that the experienced teachers were more sensitive to such subtleties as feedback and the content of what was being said, while the student teachers and the firstyear teachers discussed more frequently the more overt elements of teaching such as the affective climate and the enthusiasm of the teacher. Perhaps teacher preparation programs need to identify ways to help inexperienced teachers to become sensitive to these more subtle elements of teacher-student interactions. The responses to the questions about the degree to which the teacher drew upon the students’ knowledge also showed interesting
differences among the three groups. The experienced teachers discussed topics about how the teacher was able to relate the lesson to the students’ knowledge from personal experiences (44%) and out-of-school topics such as the com-
0 0
munity or cultural practices (14%). The other two teacher groups, however, tended to discuss more frequently topics related to the students’ knowledge of in-school experiences, such as classroom procedures and lesson content. Interestingly, the experienced teachers (17%) discussed the teacher’s use of vocabulary familiar to the students, while the student teachers and the first-year teachers did not discuss that topic. The responses to the question indicate that experienced teachers tend to notice the degree to which a teacher is able to draw upon the students’ knowledge that they bring to school, while the inexperienced teachers tend to notice the kind of knowledge that the students have acquired through their schooling. This difference between the experienced and inexperienced teachers is especially important when teachers are working with a class of culturally diverse students. In such classes, teachers need to be aware of the knowledge that students bring to the classroom (Moll, 1990) and to use that knowledge as a base for instruction. As mentioned above, the teachers in all these groups had some experience teaching in inner-city schools; however, it appears that the inexperienced teachers were not yet sensitive to the experiences and backgrounds young children bring to the classroom. Conclusions This investigation of the differences between
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the perceptions of novice and experienced teachers of classroom teaching yielded findings similar to those reported by Borko and Livingston (1989) for secondary school science and mathematics teachers. That is, the experienced teachers in this study elaborated more upon their assessment of the lesson. This elaboration is attributable to the greater knowledge about classroom teaching and learning that these teachers possess. In addition, the teachers displayed a deeper understanding of alternative teaching practices and temporal and logical sequences within the lesson. They tried to provide more reasons for what they saw in the videotape of this lesson. The speciftc topics they discussed showed a greater understanding of the complexity of teaching and the interconnection of elements of a lesson. These experienced teachers appeared more sensitive to how teachers might draw upon such students’ experiences and backgrounds when presenting lesson content to students. Few differences were found between the student teachers and first-year teachers. This result suggests that acquiring an understanding of the complexities of classroom teaching requires perhaps several years. Further research is needed on beginning teachers so that we can better understand their development as teachers. As the number of support programs for first-year teachers increases, perhaps efforts need to be increased in terms of the content and length of time of these programs, thus helping beginning teachers to make sense out of the complexities of classroom teaching. This study, of course, involves a limited sample, and more research is needed to determine whether these results can be generalized to other teachers. If future research yields similar findings, perhaps teacher education might try to place stronger emphasis on helping novice teachers to understand the complexities of teaching and the relationships between the elements of teaching. This approach would move away from an approach to teacher education that emphasizes specific skiIls or performance objectives. Although learning specific teaching techniques can be useful and is often times essential, skills and techniques should not be viewed as isolated elements. Rather, consideration of the interconnection of teaching strategies and content provides a richer under-
C. NEEDELS
standing of classroom teaching and could contribute greatly to teacher preparation programs. It appears that the usefulness of observing classroom teaching needs to be assessed, for the degree of usefulness may vary as a function of the observer’s experience and knowledge of classroom events and complexities. Perhaps care needs to be taken that student teachers have sufficient background knowledge of a particular phenomenon before observing its occurrence in the classroom. Across all analyses, only small differences were found between the novice and first-year teachers, suggesting that novice teachers are similar to the student teachers in their perceptions of classroom teaching. As the number of support programs for first-year teachers increases, perhaps efforts need to be increased to help beginning teachers to make sense out of the complexities of classroom teaching. References Berliner, D. C., & Carter. K. J. (1989). Differences in processing classroom information by expert and novice teachers. In J. Lowyck & C. M. Clark (Eds.), Teucher rhinking and profissioncrl a&on. Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press. Bereiter, C. (1980). Development in writing. In L. W. Gregg & E. R. Steinberg (Eds.), Cognirive processes in wiring. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Borko, H., & Livingston, C. (1989). Cognition and improvisation: Differences in mathematics instruction by expert and novice teachers. Ametican Educational Research Joumul 26, 473-498. Chase, W. G., & Simon, H. A. (1973). Perceotion in chess. Cognitive Psychology. 4, k8i. ’ Hunt, K. W. (1964). Differences in Prummaricul slructure written 01 three g&deTevels (Cooperative Research Project No. 1998). Tallahassee, FL: Florida State University. Mall, L. (1990). Social and instructional issues in educating “disadvantaged” students. In M. S. Knapp & P. M. Shields (Ms.), Ferrer schooling for the children of poverty: Alternatives to conventional wisdom. Washington, DC: U.S. Deoartment of Education. Odell. L.-( 1977). Measuring-changes in intellectual processes as one dimension of growth in writing. In C. R. Cooper & L. Odell (Eds.), Evaluaring writing. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Stones, E. (1987). Student (practice) teaching. In M. J. Dunkin (Ed.), The inr~mution& encyGopedia of reaching und reacher educarion (pp. 681-685). Oxford, U.K.: Pergamon Press. Received
11 January
1991
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COMPARISON OF STUDENT, FIRST-YEAR, AND EXPERIENCED TEACHERS’ INTERPRETATIONS OF A FIRST-GRADE LESSON MARGARET C. NEEDELS California State University,
Hayward, U.S.A.
Abstract-Student, first-year, and experienced teachers were shown a videotape of a first-grade language arts lesson and asked to write responses to three questions about the lesson. The questions focused on classroom management, teacher-student interactions, and use of students’ knowledge. The written responses were analyzed in terms of length, complexity, linguistic cues, and topics discussed. Few differences were found between the student teachers and the first-year teachers. The experienced teachers showed a greater understanding of the interconnectedness of classroom events, Differences between the experienced and less-experienced teachers were found in the topics dicussed. Implications of these findings for teacher education are discussed.
Teacher education programs have long followed a practice of requiring their students to devote a certain amount of time to observing experienced teachers at their job of teaching. This practice has been used both in teacher preparation programs and inservice programs for experienced teachers. That is, the majority of teacher preparation programs require students to observe in classrooms before beginning the student-teaching experience, and many district inset-vice programs offer teachers “release days” from their teaching responsibilities so that they can observe other teachers. This practice is based on the assumption that an efficient way to learn to teach is “to watch another teacher at work and go and do likewise” (Stones, 1987, p. 682). This assumption, however, has failed to consider whether a teacher’s experience will influence what is “seen,” and thus, mediate the usefulness of observing another teacher at work. Perhaps the number of years of teaching experience will influence the degree of knowledge and understanding a teacher has about classroom events. Thus, the student teacher, inexperienced in the profession, will lack the knowledge needed to be sensitive to the complexity of classroom events and will not gain from observing another teacher in
ways similar to that of the experienced teacher. Identifying differences in the interpretations of inexperienced and experienced teachers could lead to an understanding of possible differences in what these teachers see when they observe classroom teaching. For inexperienced teachers, observations might need to be especially, planned in ways so that what is observed matches the inexperienced teachers’ knowledge and thus guarantees that the beginning teacher benefits in any way from the experience of observing another’s teaching. Such an understanding of how inexperienced teachers tend to view classroom teaching could contribute to the design of teacher education programs. The research literature on differences between experts and novices in fields outside of teaching indicates that experts remember features and patterns of a task better than do novices and process the information differently from novices. Chase and Simon (1973) studied chess players and reported that after viewing a chess board for 5 seconds a chess master can reconstruct the positions of the pieces with 80 or 90% accuracy. On the other hand, novice chess players can remember the positions of only some half-dozen pieces. The authors also reported that an expert chess player has only a
This research was supported by a grant from the Office of the Chancellor of California State University and the California State Department of Education. Special thanks is extended to Mary Eriksen and the children in her first-grade class, and to Louise Bay Waters for her help. 269
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moderate loss in playing strength when the time for moves is reduced from 180 to 10 seconds. Findings from studies of differences between expert and novice teachers indicate that similar differences are found in teaching (Berliner & Carter, 1989; Borko & Livingston, 1990). Berliner and Carter (1989) reported that the expert teachers in their studies were more able to identify the important features of a task than were the novices and postulants, that is “individuals who expressed an interest in teaching but had no training or experience in public school teaching” (Berliner & Carter, 1989, p. 56). Expert teachers also showed more “if-then” thinking and were also more sensitive to the subtle characteristics of the task. Borko and Livingston (1990) reported that the expert teachers in their study were able to “plan more quickly and efficiently than novices because they are able to combine information from existing schemata to fit the particulars of a given lesson” (p. 490). Thus, the research indicates that experienced teachers and novice teachers differ in terms of their perception and assessment of tasks related to teaching. The research to date, however, has focused on secondary school teaching in mathematics and science as teachers plan or think about their own teaching (Borko & Livingston, 1990). To determine whether similar findings are found with elementary school teachers in different subject areas, the study reported here investigated the differences among elementary school student teachers, first-year teachers, and experienced teachers. To investigate whether differences could be identified in their reports after observing another teacher teaching, the three groups of teachers were asked to assess a first-grade language arts lesson that they viewed on videotape. After viewing the 30-minute lesson, each of the three groups of teachers was asked to write responses to three questions about the lesson. These questions were concerned with the classroom management, teacher-student interactions, and the relevance of the lesson to the students’ existing knowledge. To try to understand the cognitive processes followed by the teachers, the written responses to these three questions were analyzed in terms of (a) the number of teaching features discussed in the response, (b) specific linguistic features contained in the response,
C. NEEDELS
and (c) the topics discussed. This analysis addressed three research questions: Will differences be found in the written responses of the three teacher groups in terms of (a) the number of teaching features discussed in their written responses, (b) the linguistic features contained, and (c) the topics they chose to discuss? It was hoped that answers to these three questions would contribute to our understanding of the growth in teacher thinking-from novice to experienced teacher and the usefulness of the practice of classroom observations in teacher education.
Method This study was designed to provide a standard situation to which all teachers would be asked to respond. Thus, a videotape of an actual classroom lesson was made and presented to the three groups of teachers. The lesson shown on the videotape was planned and carried out with the help of two elementary school teachers who had received recognition from their inner-city school district in northern California as outstanding teachers. (Both teachers were mentor teachers, and one had been elected the school district’s “Teacher of the Year.“) The lesson was intended to be an exemplary lesson taught by an outstanding teacher who followed the State of California curriculum guidelines and made use of teaching strategies based on principles of cognitive psychology and research on effective teaching. Thus, the two teachers and the investigator met several times and jointly planned the lesson which was part of the regular curriculum for that class. A videotape recording was made of one of the teachers teaching the lesson to her first-grade class. This videotape was shown to each of the three groups of teachers participating in this study. The 30-minute language arts lesson occurred in a first-grade class. During the lesson, the class composed its daily newspaper. For this composing activity, the teacher wrote on a 24” x 36” poster paper the sentences dictated by the students. This paper was posted on the front chalkboard, and the students, seated on a rug, watched as the teacher wrote the sentences dictated by individual students. During this activity, students made comments about the
Student,
First-year,
and Experienced
sentences, and the teacher asked questions related to the sentences. After the newspaper was completed (six sentences), it was used for a reading lesson. Interactions between the teacher and individual students or the entire class occurred continually.
Teachers
271
were told that, after viewing the lesson, they would be given one hour to write responses to the three questions. All of the questions were listed on one sheet of paper, and several blank sheets of paper were attached. Thirty minutes were required to view the lesson.
The Sample Analysis of the Written Responses Three groups of teachers viewed the film: (a) student teachers, finishing the final quarter of a five-year teacher education program (n = 18); (b) first-year teachers, finishing the first year of teaching, participating in a support program for beginning teachers (n = 14); and (c) experienced teachers with more than 5 years of teaching experience, working toward a masters degree in education (n = 19). All teachers taught at one of the primary grade levels (first, second, and third). All teachers had experience teaching in inner-city schools. Because this study was aimed at identifying differences among teachers based on years of teaching experience, no attempt was made to identify “expert” teachers within any of the three groups; however, the directors of each of the three programs in which these teachers were participating (a teacher education program, a beginning-teacher support program, and a masters degree program) reported that the sample teachers in their respective programs were doing “at least” satisfactory work. Thus, although there might be some unidentified “experts” within the experienced teacher group, no “weak” teachers were included in any of the three groups. Procedure The videotape was shown separately to each of the three groups of teachers, and the same procedures were followed for all three viewings. Before the viewing, the investigator gave the teachers a written description of the school, the class, and the purpose of the lesson. The researcher read the description aloud to the teachers. Attached to the written description were three questions about the lesson. These questions asked the teachers to assess the classroom management, the teacher-student interactions, and the relevance of the lesson to the students’ existing knowledge. The teachers
The written responses were analyzed in terms of (a) the quantity of writing, by question and teacher group; (b) the linguistic features contained in the writing, by question and teacher group; and (c) the topics discussed, by question and teacher group. Quantity of Writing The number of words and T-units (“the minimal unit that can be punctuated as a sentence whether the writer has punctuated it that way or not” (Bereiter, 1980, p. 75)) contained in each of the three responses was counted. The number of T-units provides an indication of the number of thoughts contained in the written response. The mean number of words per T-unit was calculated. This mean is considered a measure of syntactical complexity (Hunt, 1964), and for this study, it provided a measure of the degree of elaboration contained in a particular thought. Linguistic Features The system developed by Ode11 (1977) was used in a content analysis of the written responses. This system identifies specific linguistic features that are considered indicators of particular kinds of cognitive processing used during writing. Table 1 shows the six linguistic features used in this system and their respective linguistic cues. A brief description of the kinds of cognitive processing that might be indicated by each of these linguistic features is also presented. In the analysis, the frequency of each of these linguistic features (by teacher, by question) was counted. Topics Discussed The specific topics used in the analysis were
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MARGARET
Table
C. NEEDELS
1
Linguistic
Features for Identifying
Linguistic
feature
Cognitive
Linguistic
Processes
cue(s)
Inferred
processes
Focus
Grammatical
Contrast
Connectors, superlatives,
Classification
Linking verb joins a subject with a predicate nominative
How features can be labeled or compared to other features
Change
Forms of the words “change,” “become,” “began,” or “stop”
The nature and extent of features undergo change
Physical context
Nouns referring to geograpical an object in a physical setting
Reference
Adverbial elements indicating that something existed before, during, or after a moment in time; cause-effect relationships; if-then statements
Note.
to sequence
Adapted
from Odell,
subjects
cognitive
comparatives negatives
Segmenting and
Knowing it differs
location,
and focusing
what a feature is not, how from other features
Awareness of one’s surroundings, environment Understanding of time sequence and logical sequence
1977.
identified after a reading of all the responses. Because the topics were specific to each question, they varied across question. For the classroom management question, the topics discussed were (a) the affective atmosphere of the classroom, (b) the teacher’s expectations, (c) the teacher’s presence, (d) the content of the lesson and teaching strategies, (e) explicit enforcement of rules, and (f) implicit techniques for maintaining students’ involvement in the lesson. For the question related to teacher-student interactions, the topics were (a) frequency of interactions, (b) pacing, (c) types of questions asked, (d) appropriateness of lesson content, (e) teacher feedback to students, (f, selection of students, and (g) teacher enthusiasm. For the question about the degree to which the lesson seemed to relate to the students’ existing knowledge, the following topics were identified: (a) use of students’ personal experiences, (b) use of a familiar procedure, (c) use of familiar vocabulary, (d) reference to content previously covered in the class, and (f) reference to out-of-school topics familiar to students. The frequency with which teachers in each of the three groups discussed each of these topics was determined.
Coding of Written Responses After the investigator had read and coded each written response, a second reader read and coded the responses of a random sample of onethird of the teachers in each group (student teacher group = 6 teachers’ responses; firstyear teacher group = 5 teachers’ responses; experienced teacher group = 6 teachers’ responses; total = 17 responses). The coding requiring a count of T-units and words showed 88 and 94% agreement, respectively. Coding for the six linguistic cue variables showed between 76 and 96% agreements.
Results and Discussion Quantiq of Writing The mean number of words by teacher group and by question varied; however, only small differences in the mean number of words per Tunit were found across teacher groups and questions. Table 2 shows these values. For all these questions, the experienced teachers wrote the greatest number of words, followed by the first-
273
Student. First-year, and Experienced Teachers Table 2 Mean Number of T-Units and Mean Number of Words per T-Unit by Question, by Teacher Group Teacher Group Question
First-year (N = 14)
Student (N = 18)
Experienced (N = 19)
M
SD
M
SD
M
SD
9.8 10.0
2.24 2.49
9.3 11.3
2.02 1.66
12.0 10.7
5.32 4.43
7.7 10.6
2.58 2.38
9.0 10.9
2.57 2.14
11.8 11.1
3.70 3.93
5.4 10.7
1.91 1.82
5.71 11.9
2.01 2.46
6.9 11.6
3.04 3.62
Classroom management T-units Words per T-unit Teacher-student
interactions
T-units Words per T-unit Students’ knowledge T-units Words per T-unit
year teachers, and the student teachers wrote the least. Because the greatest differences were found between the student teachers and the experienced teachers, effect sizes were computed on the means of these two groups. Using the pooled standard deviation for each of the three questions, the effect size for the classroom management question was .52; for the teacher student interaction question, .99; and for the students’ knowledge question, .37. An effect size of .52 is considered moderate, and an effect size of .99 is considered large. Thus, it appears that the experienced teachers tended to express slightly more thoughts about the management aspect of this lesson. Experienced teachers’ responses for the teacher-student interaction question, however, were significantly longer than those of the student teachers. This great difference might be attributed to the experienced teachers’ understanding of the complexities of classroom interactions, for example, concerning the teacher’s selection of respondents, the kinds of questions asked, and the teacher’s reaction to student responses. The experienced teachers seemed to be more aware of these features of
classroom interactions and, thus, more able to elaborate at length after viewing the tape, than were either the student teachers or the first-year teachers. The mean number of words per T-unit, here considered a measure of syntactical complexity, was similar across the three teacher groups and across the questions. The effect sizes for comparison between the student teachers and experienced teachers’ responses ranged from .17 to .22. Such values are considered in this context to be small and insignificant. Thus, it appears that the experienced teachers expressed more thoughts about each of the three questions; however, the degree of complexity of ideas contained in their responses was similar to the other groups. The longer responses (greater number of T-units) of the experienced group of teachers can most likely be attributed to greater knowledge and sensitivity to classroom life. Linguistic
Features
The content analysis of the linguistic features was intended to give some insight into the cognitive processes used by the teachers as they
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MARGARET
C. NEEDELS
assessed the lesson. As shown in Table 1, six different linguistic features were used in this content analyses: (a) focus, (b) contrasts, (c) classification, (d) change, (e) physical context, and (f) reference to sequence. Differences among teacher groups were found for three of these features: contrasts, change, and reference to sequence. (The other three features were used infrequently in the responses of all three teacher groups.) As shown in Table 3, a larger percentage of the responses of the experienced teachers contained linguistic cues concerning contrast, change, and temporal or logical sequence. Because these variables were considered dichotomous (responses either contained or did not contain the linguistic cue), a series of chi squares were computed to determine any significant differences among the responses of the three teacher groups. The analysis of linguistic cues concerning contrast revealed that for the management and interaction questions, the experienced teachers seemed to be more aware of the options available to a teacher and, as Ode11 put it, “What a feature is not” (see Table 3). For example, in response to the question about classroom management, one experienced teacher wrote that the
Table
teacher “warned a child rather than writing his name on the board. ” When responding to the question about teacher- student interactions, another experienced teacher wrote that “instead of telling students the meaning of a word, the teacher would ask the students what they thought it might mean. ” Another teacher wrote that the teacher did not “change the grammar of the child’s comments, but wrote the child’s language verbatim.” Still another experienced teacher wrote, “The issue of correctness was not emphasized in this lesson, the teacher accepted all efforts by the students to contribute to the lesson.” These kinds of examples occurred infrequently in the student teachers’ responses. The analysis of linguistic cues concerning change revealed that for the interaction and students’ knowledge questions, the experienced teachers were more able to notice changes during the course of the lesson. In response to the classroom management question, one experienced teacher wrote “The teacher begins the lesson with no mention of the kind of behavior expected, but as the lesson progresses, she informs those students who are not behaving what is expected of them.” In response to the
3
Number
of Written Responses
Containing
Contrasr.
Change,
and Sequence Teacher
Student
Question
First-year
by Quesrion.
by Teacher
Group
group Experienced
X2
Management Contrast Change Sequence
4 2 2
6 4 3
14 9 16
9.55** 5.73 23.62****
6 2 4
2 :
18 II 14
24.42-e+ 14.16*** 13.32***
3
2 1 3
4 8 9
0.29 9.82** 8.86*
Interaction Contrast Change Sequence Students’
knowledge
Contrast Change Sequence *p < .05. **p < 0.1.
I I ***p < .005.
****p < .ool
Student,
First-year, and Experienced Teachers
students’ knowledge question, one teacher wrote, “She seems to be tuned in to the students’ backgrounds and experiences from the beginning of the lesson and even more so once the students begin giving her some sentences for the newspaper.” The analysis of sequences revealed that for all three questions, the experienced teachers showed a greater awareness of temporal and logical sequence. This result is similar to a finding reported by Berliner and Carter (1989), who wrote “The experts in both studies provided evidence of more reasoned thinking than did the novices or postulants. . . . they showed more “if-then” thinking” (p. 72). The experienced teachers in the present study also wrote more “if-then” statements. For example, one experienced teacher wrote, “If the students compose the text for their reading, then they might use this text in their own writing.” Another experienced teacher wrote, “If a student did not know a word, then the teacher asked another student to help.” Examples of linguistic cues concerning temporal sequence included the statement of one experienced teacher that the teacher “gave students time to think about what they wanted to say in the newspaper before asking for contributions. ” Another experienced teacher wrote that the “teacher listened carefully to each child’s comment before reacting to what they said.” For the most part, the responses of the student teachers did not contain these kinds of sequences -neither temporal nor logical (see Table 3). Rather, their responses were mainly descriptions of isolated elements of the lesson with little reference to connections between the elements. The student teachers very seldom provided explanations for the events that they reported. This difference between experienced and novice teachers suggests that, with experience, teachers develop a complex understanding of the interconnection of lesson features, rather than perceiving features in isolation. Topics Discussed
As was noted above, the topics for each of the three questions were identified from a reading of the teachers* responses to the three questions, and these topics were listed under the
275
“Method.” Because most teachers discussed more than one topic, the analysis was based on a computation of the percentage of all topics discussed within a teacher group related to a specific question. Thus, Teacher A might discuss three topics, Teacher B two topics, and Teacher C, four topics. The total number of topics discussed within that group would be nine and would serve as the denominator in computing the percentage for a given topic, and the total percentage for all topics discussed within one of the teacher groups for a particular question should equal 100. Striking differences among the three teacher groups were found in the responses to all three questions (see Table 4). For the classroom management question, student teachers (54 %) and first-year teachers (43%) tended to discuss teacher expectations for a greater percentage of the time than did the experienced teachers (12%). The student teachers and the first-year teachers tended to make comments like the following made by one of the student teachers: “The teacher let the students know the kind of behavior she expected.” On the other hand, experienced teachers (44%) tended to discuss more frequently the topic of the lesson content and the teaching strategies used by the teacher than did the student teachers (7%) and the first-year teachers (3%). One experienced teacher wrote that “The use of the students’ personal experiences as the content of this lesson gets the students’ interest and thus the children are attentive.” Another experienced teacher wrote that “The teacher is constantly asking students questions. Somehow, she seems to get around to all the students. This kind of teaching helps keep order in the classroom. “The experienced teachers’ emphasis on the relationship between classroom management and what is being taught and how it is being taught provides another example of the experienced teachers’ understanding of the interconnection among elements of a lesson.” The responses to the question about teacher student interaction showed differences in terms of what teachers look at when assessing classroom interactions. The student teachers (56%) tended to discuss the affective tone of the teacher’s interactions with the students. The first-year teachers (35%) also discussed this topic; however, the experienced teachers tended
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MARGARET C. NEEDELS
Table 4 Topics Contained in Written Responses by Question, by Teacher Group Percent of group’s topics
Question
Topic
Teacher group
Management
Atmosphere
Student First-year Experienced
13 18 8
Expectations
Student First-year Experienced
54 43 12
Teacher’s presence
Student First-year Experienced
4 :
Lesson content and teaching strategies
Student First-year Experienced
7 3 44
Enforcement of rules
Student First-year Experienced
20 36 12
Student involvement
Student First-year Experienced
2 0 18
Frequency
Student First-year Experienced
4 3 0
Affective climate
Student First-year Experienced
56 35 11
Types of questions
Student First-year Experienced
0 17 0
Appropriateness
Student First-year Experienced
0 19 31
Teacher feedback
Student First-year Experienced
19 0 54
Selection of students
Student First-year Experienced
8 12 4
Teacher enthusiasm
Student First-year Experienced
13 14 0
Personal experiences
Student First-year Experienced
13 22 44
Familiar procedures
Student First-year Experienced
45 48 21
-
-
Students’ knowledge
of lesson content
Student, First-year,
and Experienced
271
Teachers
Table 4 (continued)
Question
Percent of group’s topics
Topic
Teacher group
Familiar vocabulary
Student First-year Experienced
17
Familiar academic content
Student First-year Experienced
39 25 4
Familiar out-of-school topics
Student First-year Experienced
3 5 14
to place less emphasis (11 W) on this element of the teacher-student interactions. The experienced teachers tended to place more emphasis on the kind of feedback the teacher gave to the students (54%). These teachers discussed interaction patterns such as probing, wait-time, offering clues, and acceptance of student responses. On the other hand, only 19% of the student teachers’ topics involved feedback, and the first-year teachers never discussed feedback. The appropriateness of the content of the interactions was discussed by the experienced teachers more frequently (31%) than by the other two teacher groups. The student teachers never discussed this element of the interactions. Thus, these data suggest that the experienced teachers were more sensitive to such subtleties as feedback and the content of what was being said, while the student teachers and the firstyear teachers discussed more frequently the more overt elements of teaching such as the affective climate and the enthusiasm of the teacher. Perhaps teacher preparation programs need to identify ways to help inexperienced teachers to become sensitive to these more subtle elements of teacher-student interactions. The responses to the questions about the degree to which the teacher drew upon the students’ knowledge also showed interesting
differences among the three groups. The experienced teachers discussed topics about how the teacher was able to relate the lesson to the students’ knowledge from personal experiences (44%) and out-of-school topics such as the com-
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munity or cultural practices (14%). The other two teacher groups, however, tended to discuss more frequently topics related to the students’ knowledge of in-school experiences, such as classroom procedures and lesson content. Interestingly, the experienced teachers (17%) discussed the teacher’s use of vocabulary familiar to the students, while the student teachers and the first-year teachers did not discuss that topic. The responses to the question indicate that experienced teachers tend to notice the degree to which a teacher is able to draw upon the students’ knowledge that they bring to school, while the inexperienced teachers tend to notice the kind of knowledge that the students have acquired through their schooling. This difference between the experienced and inexperienced teachers is especially important when teachers are working with a class of culturally diverse students. In such classes, teachers need to be aware of the knowledge that students bring to the classroom (Moll, 1990) and to use that knowledge as a base for instruction. As mentioned above, the teachers in all these groups had some experience teaching in inner-city schools; however, it appears that the inexperienced teachers were not yet sensitive to the experiences and backgrounds young children bring to the classroom. Conclusions This investigation of the differences between
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MARGARET
the perceptions of novice and experienced teachers of classroom teaching yielded findings similar to those reported by Borko and Livingston (1989) for secondary school science and mathematics teachers. That is, the experienced teachers in this study elaborated more upon their assessment of the lesson. This elaboration is attributable to the greater knowledge about classroom teaching and learning that these teachers possess. In addition, the teachers displayed a deeper understanding of alternative teaching practices and temporal and logical sequences within the lesson. They tried to provide more reasons for what they saw in the videotape of this lesson. The speciftc topics they discussed showed a greater understanding of the complexity of teaching and the interconnection of elements of a lesson. These experienced teachers appeared more sensitive to how teachers might draw upon such students’ experiences and backgrounds when presenting lesson content to students. Few differences were found between the student teachers and first-year teachers. This result suggests that acquiring an understanding of the complexities of classroom teaching requires perhaps several years. Further research is needed on beginning teachers so that we can better understand their development as teachers. As the number of support programs for first-year teachers increases, perhaps efforts need to be increased in terms of the content and length of time of these programs, thus helping beginning teachers to make sense out of the complexities of classroom teaching. This study, of course, involves a limited sample, and more research is needed to determine whether these results can be generalized to other teachers. If future research yields similar findings, perhaps teacher education might try to place stronger emphasis on helping novice teachers to understand the complexities of teaching and the relationships between the elements of teaching. This approach would move away from an approach to teacher education that emphasizes specific skiIls or performance objectives. Although learning specific teaching techniques can be useful and is often times essential, skills and techniques should not be viewed as isolated elements. Rather, consideration of the interconnection of teaching strategies and content provides a richer under-
C. NEEDELS
standing of classroom teaching and could contribute greatly to teacher preparation programs. It appears that the usefulness of observing classroom teaching needs to be assessed, for the degree of usefulness may vary as a function of the observer’s experience and knowledge of classroom events and complexities. Perhaps care needs to be taken that student teachers have sufficient background knowledge of a particular phenomenon before observing its occurrence in the classroom. Across all analyses, only small differences were found between the novice and first-year teachers, suggesting that novice teachers are similar to the student teachers in their perceptions of classroom teaching. As the number of support programs for first-year teachers increases, perhaps efforts need to be increased to help beginning teachers to make sense out of the complexities of classroom teaching. References Berliner, D. C., & Carter. K. J. (1989). Differences in processing classroom information by expert and novice teachers. In J. Lowyck & C. M. Clark (Eds.), Teucher rhinking and profissioncrl a&on. Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press. Bereiter, C. (1980). Development in writing. In L. W. Gregg & E. R. Steinberg (Eds.), Cognirive processes in wiring. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Borko, H., & Livingston, C. (1989). Cognition and improvisation: Differences in mathematics instruction by expert and novice teachers. Ametican Educational Research Joumul 26, 473-498. Chase, W. G., & Simon, H. A. (1973). Perceotion in chess. Cognitive Psychology. 4, k8i. ’ Hunt, K. W. (1964). Differences in Prummaricul slructure written 01 three g&deTevels (Cooperative Research Project No. 1998). Tallahassee, FL: Florida State University. Mall, L. (1990). Social and instructional issues in educating “disadvantaged” students. In M. S. Knapp & P. M. Shields (Ms.), Ferrer schooling for the children of poverty: Alternatives to conventional wisdom. Washington, DC: U.S. Deoartment of Education. Odell. L.-( 1977). Measuring-changes in intellectual processes as one dimension of growth in writing. In C. R. Cooper & L. Odell (Eds.), Evaluaring writing. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Stones, E. (1987). Student (practice) teaching. In M. J. Dunkin (Ed.), The inr~mution& encyGopedia of reaching und reacher educarion (pp. 681-685). Oxford, U.K.: Pergamon Press. Received
11 January
1991
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