Analysis of Teacher-Pupil Interaction in Individualized Instruction Role Variation and Instructional Format
JAMES L. NEUJAHR
INDIVIDUALIZED INSTRUCTION IN THE CLASSES OBSERVED
Bellack (1966) developed an interesting metaphor to guide the study of what goes on in classrooms: that of the game. The classroom game has participants who play different positions, in different ways. How different participants play different types of classroom games is an intriguing question. Reported here is a study of one type of classroom game--the "individualized instruction game." First we will look at the type of individualized instruction being used as well as the observational procedures. Then we will examine how this individualized game is played and how it compares to the lecture-discussion game. To say that instruction is individualized is to categorize it in only the roughest of ways. There are formalized programs that make rather extensive use of the products of educational technology. There are also the informal, teacher-designed, programs that use this technology to varying extents. Teacher-designed programs were observed in this study. Teacher attention, the pace of instruction, and content can be individualized to varying extents. The classes observed were both similar and different along these dimensions.
]ames L. Neujahr is assistant professor in the Department of Elementary Education, City College of New York, NY 10031. AVCRVOL.22, NO. 1, SPRING1974
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The Instructional Setting
Types of Individualization
Recording Procedures
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A mathematics, a science, and a social studies teacher were observed as each spent one week with the same sixth grade class. They were in a new suburban middle school which lent itself to individualizing instruction. In addition to the usual complement of audiovisual resources, there was a dial access system with technician and assistants in a media center. Monitors were within the classrooms and in individual carrels in a commons area. Extensive hilly wooded grounds provided a nearby area of study for the sciences. No packaged programs were used. The teachers were attempting to develop their own individualized programs. This was a first attempt. All three teachers individualized attention; most of their interactions were with individual pupils or small groups. All three teachers provided, to a considerable extent, for pupils to proceed at their own paces. It was in terms of individualization of content that there was the greatest variation between teachers. In mathematics, all pupils worked in the same book on the same exercises with the same tests, but at their own rates. Content was not individualized. In social studies, the teacher selected a two-month unit of study: Ancient Rome. He specified the categories of activity and minimum work in each. These included summarizing four of seven filmstrips, writing a biography on a Roman of choice, map work, and so forth. In the provisions for work beyond the minimum there was greater opportunity for pupils to follow their own interests. This represents a partial individualization of content. In the science class there was the greatest individualization of content. The teacher selected conservation as the area from which pupils chose extensive projects. Pupils investigated topics ranging from the school pond, to erosion, to waste in the cafeteria. One group of sixth graders was videotaped as it spent a week in science, a week in social studies, and a week in mathematics. For social studies and mathematics the taping was done in a classroom like the regular rooms but slightly larger and with carpeting. The science classes were taped in the science room. Two remotely operated cameras having pan, tilt, and zoom lens capabilities were used. Recording was clone on an Ampex 660 VTR. A special effects generator gave a split screen or corner insert picture. The teacher wore a microphone that picked up almost all of the verbal interaction with
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Coding
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individual pupils. T w o other microphones picked up whole class interaction. Technical problems and school assembly resulted in only three social studies tapes: two of 60 minutes and one of 40 minutes. In science there were five 40-minute tapes. Five tapes were recorded in math. However, for the last two periods the teacher switched to a lecture-discussion format. This, although not anticipated, allowed for a direct comparison of individualized instruction and the lecture-discussion with the same teacher, the same pupils, in the same week. The videotapes were analyzed through a modified form of Bellack's observational schema. The basic unit, the pedagogical move, is a functional unit. There are structuring, soliciting, responding, and reacting moves. Structuring and soliciting are considered initiatory moves, responding and reacting reflexive moves. T h e y are defined as follows: Structuring: These moves serve the function of setting the context for subsequent behavior (i.e., "Mr. W., I have a question about the hypothesis" or "Class, there are about five minutes left"). Soliciting: These moves are intended to elicit a response on the part of the person addressed (i.e., "John, bring your folder up here" or "where is a compass?"). Responding: These moves bear a reciprocal relationship to soliciting moves and occur only in relation to them. Their function is to fulfill the expectation of soliciting moves (i.e., carrying out a directive or "The compass is on my desk"). Reacting: These moves are occasioned by a structuring, soliciting, responding, or prior reacting move, but are not directly elicited by them. These moves serve to modify or rate the moves that occasion them (i.e., "That's a good idea" or "That's the same thing I said"). Behavior is coded according to which of the four functions it serves. Bellack's work was expanded to account for nonverbal behaviors serving these functions, as well as verbal. T w o contextual dimensions of the move were recorded, namely the people between w h o m it took place and the location of these people. The move was then coded as to whether it involved communication of subject matter (substantive meaning) and/or communication about materials, assignments, personal things, and so forth (instructional meanings). It is along these dimensions that the results are reported here. A reliability study was done on a sample of the tapes. There was
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agreement between the investigator and two trained coders in the coding of 94 percent of all moves. 1 RESULTS Context of the Game
Activity and Role
In the classes claiming to be individualized a minimum of twothirds of all moves were made between the teacher and a group of four or fewer pupils. In the two traditional mathematics classes moves in this context represented less than 2 percent of all moves. The individualized game was played primarily at the teacher's desk, where records of pupil progress were kept, or at the pupil's desk. Other somewhat less popular sites for interaction were the blackboard in mathematics where more than a quarter of the moves were made one day, and the filmstrip projector in social studies where up to 7 percent of the moves were made. Across all classes 5 percent of the moves were made in no particular location and 7.5 percent were made when teacher and pupil were separated. This briefly is the setting for the interaction observed. In terms of people, interactions were between the teacher and a small group. In terms of place, interactions occurred primarily at the home base of one of the participants. Who makes the moves in the individualized game? As in almost all other classrooms studied, the teachers made the majority. They made 56 percent of all moves, a figure generally lower than in traditional classes. Among the students there was a marked difference in activity between boys and girls. A girl on the average, marie 70 percent more moves than a boy. W h e n looking at individual students the disparity was striking. After making adjustments for the actual amount of time spent in the classroom (students were going in and out to the library, for field studies, and so forth), in mathematics the most active pupil made 49 times as many moves as the least active. In social studies the factor was 21 and in science it was 11. Interestingly, these differences are related to the degree of structure in the class. The greatest difference was in the most structured class where the pupil had the fewest decisions to make about what he was doing. Across all subjects the most active made six times as many moves as the least active, indi-
~For a complete description of the coding system and report of results see "An Analysis of Teacher-Pupil Interactions when Instruction Is Individualized" (Neujahr, 1970).
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cating that the most and least active were not the same in each subject. Nevertheless, 24 percent of the pupils made and received more than the median number of moves in each subject; 20 percent made and received fewer than the median number in each subject. In the individualized classes teachers and pupils differed in the amount of their activity, although not so greatly as in traditional classes (for example, those studied by Bellack). They also differed in the types of activities they carried out, but again not so greatly as in Bellack's classes. The basic unit for analyzing classroom activity is the move. A move performs a pedagogical function. By comparing the extent to which different emitters use a given move, one obtains a picture of the degree to which different participants perform a particular function in the classroom. In Table 1 the relative teacher and pupil usage of each of the four moves is given both for Bellack's study of traditional high school social studies classes and for the individualized and lecture-discussion classes of this study. Most striking is the extent to which pupils structure in the individualized classes: they do so as often as the teacher. When a pupil approaches a teacher in the individualized class (and a pupil initiates the sequence of moves with the teacher 76 percent more often than does the teacher), he may set the context for what is to happen in that subgame by a structuring move. There are many such opportunities in the individu-
TABLE1 Pedagogical Roles of Teachers and Pupils Bellack's Study Move t
STR SOL RES REA NOC
Individualized Classes
Lecture-Discussion
F2
% by T
% by P
F2
% by T
% by P
F2
854
86.0 86.0 12.0 81.0 19.2
12.0 14.0 88.0 19.0 80.8
336 2504 1607 1293 182
50.0 76.5 18.5 67.3 25.3
50.0 23.5 81.5 32.7 74.7
51 674 432 367 28
5135
4385 4649 452
% by T % by P
58.8 80.9 3.9 87.2 11.1
41.2 19.1 96.1 12.8 88.9
~STR--Structuring; SOL--Soliciting; RES--Responding; REA--Reacting; NOC--Not coded ~frequency
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alized game. In the classes observed, pupils initiated a sequence of moves with the teacher 365 separate times. Similarly impressive is the amount of reacting pupils do. In the lecture-discussion classes this is a function performed most of the time by the teacher, four times more frequently than by the pupil. The greater amount of pupil reacting is proably due to the basic nature of the individualized game where the pupil does more soliciting. The teacher, as a result, does more responding-over half again as much in percentage as in Bellack's classes-and the pupil has more opportunity for reacting. As in the lecture-discussion classes, soliciting and responding predominate in the individualized classes. Soliciting alone accounts for over 42 percent of all moves made. Pupils make a larger proportion of these solicitations when in individualized classes; nevertheless soliciting remains primarily a teacher function. This soliciting is not, however, the same kind as found in Bellack's classes. On the one hand there are a large number of directives. Over 40 percent of teacher solicitations prescribe, permit, or prohibit pupil activity. And the 60 percent of all solicitations that were not directives also were not part of the type of solicitation-response cycle that characterizes the traditional recitation. Almost three-quarters of the non-directive solicitations were void of reference to subject matter. Of all solicitations, only 16.3 percent called for responses involving any subject matter. Solicitation remains the dominant function of the teacher, but it is a far different kind of soliciting from that of the traditional class. The relative use of the four moves by teacher and pupils in the lecture-discussion class of this study tends to be more similar to that for Bellack's classes than to that for the individualized classes of this study. This suggests that the differences noted above are due to the instructional format rather than other factors. If we cut the data in Table 1 in the other direction, looking at the relative numbers of structuring, soliciting, responding, and reacting moves made by particular players rather than how use of each move is divided between teacher and pupil, a different picture emerges. Pupils in individualized classes make a higher proportion of structuring, soliciting, and reacting moves than their counterparts in lecture-discussion
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classes. Naturally there is great variation between individual pupils. In math for example there was one pupil who did not make a structuring or soliciting move in his 17 moves. Another in 20 moves was initiating 60 percent of the time. Even greater variation was observed in social studies. In science the range was narrower with one student initiating in 47 percent of his moves, another in only 16 percent. If we correlate the number of initiatory moves made by a pupil with the total number of moves made by the teacher to that pupil, we find a strong relationship. The correlation coefficients for math, science, and social studies are .86, .76, and .67 respectively, all significant beyond the .01 level. To a considerable extent the pupil who does not direct structuring and soliciting moves to the teacher does not get the teacher's attention. It was noted above that in the individualized classes the predominance of teacher solicitations and pupil responses was not related to the traditional recitation with a subject matter focus. In these classes less than 16 percent of all moves had a subject matter focus. This compares to 44 percent in the traditional math classes of this study and 63 percent in Bellack's classes. The disparity in these last two figures is clue largely to the coding of nonverbal moves which usually had instructional meaning, as in the raised hand. If subject matter was not the focus of interaction, what was? Of the moves coded as having instructional meaning 30 percent dealt with the work the pupil was to do or had done. A third of these involved the progress a student was making, an area of considerable importance to these teachers whose students were working at their own rates. Twenty-two percent of the moves related to a move already made: a request to repeat it, a positive or negative rating of a response, agreement to carry out a directive. Fourteen percent dealt with cognition: "Do you understand this now?" Twelve percent focused on procedures to be followed, particularly common in the science class where there was a set format for carrying out the projects. Surprisingly, only 11 percent of the instructional moves dealt with materials. This was split fairly evenly between talk about printed materials, supplies, and apparatus. References to audiovisual materials represented only 1 percent of instructional meanings; 3.2 percent of the moves were of a personal nature, and other categories were less frequently coded.
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Discussion
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Individualized instruction as carried out by these three teachers represents a very different way of playing the classroom game than that traditionally seen. For the pupil, interaction with the teacher represents only a small portion of his time in the classroom. The rest of his time is spent with varying types of learning materials. For the teacher, each pupil is an audience for his moves a small portion of the period only. The teacher-pupil interchange is markedly different than that in lecture-discussion classes in two major respects: the roles played and the meanings communicated. In lecture-discussion classes the teacher is typically the initiator of interaction. Not so here. In these classes pupils initiate the pupilteacher t~te-~-t~te over 75 percent more often than do the teachers. They do considerably more structuring and soliciting than their lecture-discussion counterparts. These are average figures and generalizations, of course, and don't hold true for all pupils. The individualized format allows for considerable variation in the ways pupils play the game and this variation is evident in their interaction with the teacher. Some students rarely structure or solicit. Their posture with the teacher is almost always reflexive. It is easy for the teacher to lose sight of them. Other students make more initiatory moves with the teacher. These students also receive the most moves from the teacher. In the lecture-discussion classes, content is communicated through teacher-pupil talk, and this tends to be the primary function of this talk. At least in these individualized classes (and other individualized formats may differ here) the teacher function was not that of communicating content. Fewer than 16 percent of all moves contained substantive meaning. Rather, when teacher and pupil talked they were concerned with the pupil's work, what he had done, or what he would do, with materials, and with other such nonsubstantive topics. Subject matter was conveyed through materials, not through the teacher. Again, this is a generalization. In each subject one or two pupils had a lot of substantive interchange with the teacher. But this was the exception. It seems clear that as instructional format is changed, the roles of teacher and pupil change in very basic ways. It is probable that among both teachers and pupils there are people who function better in one type of role, others who func-
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tion better in another. W e have far to go in the process of matching people with instructional formats so that various sorts of learning may be maximized.
REFERENCES
Bellack, A. A. et al. The language of the classroom. New York: Teachers College Press, 1966. Neujahr, J. L. An analysis of teacher-pupil interactions when instruction is individualized. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1970.
