The Teachers Out-Talk the Pupils

Abstract

AGREAT deal of schoolroom learning is accompanied by talking. The questions that teachers and pupils ask and answer orally give insight into the progress of learning and into the types of learning which the teacher deems most important. In an attempt to cast some light on these matters, a verbatim record was made, during the academic year 1938-39, of all the oral questions asked by teachers and pupils in six classes in a laboratory high school. Of a total of approximately thirty-nine thousand inquiries, the pupils were responsible for fewer than four thousand. This ratio of more than eight questions asked by teachers to every one asked by a pupil was fairly constant from class to class. The total number of questions asked in a group ranged from forty-four hundred in tenth-grade English to twelve thousand in an eleventh-grade history class. The present report involves data gathered during one week of the year when an expert stenographer made verbatim records of all classroom talk in the six classes. It is always possible that the presence of a stenographer makes for atypical classroom procedures, but that effect would seem to be unlikely under the circumstances of this study. In addition to the pupils in each class, from three to ten practice teachers were in the room every day, and visitors of various varieties were frequent observers. The chief purpose of this analysis of a complete talk record was to get some evidence bearing on the growth of pupils in understanding. From this point of view the