Classroom Expectations Research Articles

Anecdote, opinion and whim: lessons in curriculum development from primary science education in England and Wales

On 1 August 1989, the introduction of a National Curriculum of subjects to all maintained schools throughout England and Wales brought compulsory science education into the primary sector for the first time. As a direct result of its elevated profile and an immense amount of hard work and effort by teachers and other professionals responding to requirements, science education provision benefited enormously. Despite this, however, successive overhauls and radical revisions of primary science have brought about many questionable changes, some not necessarily for the better or resulting in improvement. This article presents a critical, analytical and personal review of the history and development of science in the primary school and draws attention to the need for care at times when classroom practices and expectations are driven by national science curricula that remain to be fully informed. Astronomy is used to contextualize some of the changes at their most extreme.

Biliteracy and Second-Language Learners

Biliteracy and Second-Language Learners

Managing Changing Classroom Expectations

This is a continuing series of quarterly articles on lessons learned and best practices in civil engineering education. The intent of the series is to reinforce good practices, describe new or developing practices, and provide a forum for what works well and what does not. It is hoped that this series will be an important quarterly read for all civil engineering educators and all those interested in what’s going on in civil engineering education today. Authors and topics will vary from issue to issue. Contact the associate editor, Mark Evans, at mark.evans @usma.edu if you wish to contribute to an upcoming issue. Managing Changing Classroom Expectations

Does Support for Home–School Behaviour Plans Exist Within Teacher and Pupil Cultures?

Recent legislation by the Department for Education and Employment requires schools to produce written home-school agreements, which should be signed by teachers and parents. Among the benefits expected from this initiative is the creation of a greater sense of partnership between home and school, especially with regard to difficult pupil behaviour. However, research has shown that teachers view parents as being the major cause of pupil misbehaviour, thus creating a potential barrier to a genuine partnership around agreed strategies involving home and school. There is also a belief among teachers that strategies devised for one pupil will lead to negative reactions on the part of classmates. This study examines various aspects of the classroom culture (the belief systems of teachers and pupils) concerning interventions with individual pupils, their teachers and parents. A vignette incorporating elements from two real and successful home-school interventions set up with, and mediated by, educational psychologists, was presented to 206 10 and 11-year-old pupils, and 30 teachers. Analysis of accompanying questionnaire responses allows for the mapping of a range of significant classroom beliefs and expectations, and indicates grounds for some optimism, although careful attention to these 'ecological' features will be necessary before joint home-school strategies can achieve their potential.

Exploring Cultural Differences in Classroom Expectations of Students From the United States and Taiwan

Little is known about students' expectations of classroom practices, much less any cross-cultural differences in those expectations. This study gathered survey data from U.S. and Taiwanese students concerning their expectations of both students' and teachers' obligations in the classroom. The results showed differences between the two cultures. We discuss our findings as they relate to how to improve learning in the multicultural classroom through a better understanding of cross-cultural differences in classroom expectations.

An ESL Writer and her Discipline-Based Professor

This study by a philosophy professor and a compositionist focuses on the progress of an ESL student in the philosopher's writing-intensive Intro course. In it, the authors answer calls for examination of instructional supports that help ESL students in their college classes across the curriculum. Their report is divided into three parts. In the first, the philosophy professor explicates his classroom aims and expectations, rooting them in the educational approaches of Dewey, Freire, and Gramsci. In the second, the compositionist offers an account of the ESL pupil's experiences in this philosophy classroom, describing the pedagogies that promote her progress toward achieving the professor's goals. In the final section, the authors, acknowledging the contested nature of “progress” in this context, describe the ideological conflicts behind their different interpretations of the successes and failures of this ESL student.

Students' Perceptions of Extra Credit

How students use extra credit in a class has been a concern of faculty for many years. The literature presents two perspectives on the subject. One perspective sees extra credit as a beneficial activity that motivates students and allows them to earn credit for work that goes beyond normal classroom expectations. The second perspective sees extra credit as a means for students to bargain their way to a higher grade. According to the second view, students are more concerned with using extra credit that is convenient and does not require work outside of class. Rather, students want to bargain away part of their class responsibilities by doing convenient extra projects. This study surveyed 134 students in Hotel and Restaurant Management (HRM) classes at a major midwestern university. Students were asked to comment on past uses of extra credit, forms of extra credit they were likely to use, and their perceptions of extra credit advantages and disadvantages. Results suggest that the surveyed students strongly support the second perspective of extra credit. In the forms they had used in the past and in the forms they were most likely to use, students were more interested in forms that were convenient and could be used to improve a particular class grade. Students saw as advantages extra credit that could immediately help them individually. They were less concerned about fairness to all students and compromising class integrity. The strongest disadvantages dealt with unfairness of extra credit if not offered to all students. Results also indicated students' perceptions of extra credit were moderated by individual attributes. Most important appeared to be GPA and age. Academic major and gender were of less importance. Implications of the research for hospitality educators and suggestions for future research are also given.

The effects of an overt constructivist approach to learning mathematics and its subsequent effects on classroom teaching

A Master's unit in mathematics education was given to three practicing primary teachers. Constructivism as a theory on which to develop a flexible pedagogy was a central theme and the style of presentation of workshops was guided by constructivist principles. Contact time was 20 hours spread over 10 weeks. The course contained a number of different aspects relating to mathematics teaching and learning some of which provided research data: (1) discussion about the nature of constructivism in mathematics learning, and its implications for teaching; this centred around seminar papers on aspects of constructivism; (2) a workshop each week that focused on a rich mathematical topic designed to provoke mathematical activity and interaction and to encourage reflection on that activity; (3) an extended investigation of a mathematical situation; and (4) classroom implementation of some aspect of (3) together with a report of its implementation and an evaluation of children's understanding. A combined individual and social constructivist approach to learning mathematics by primary teachers is described. some evidence is presented of changes in belief held by teachers about the nature of mathematics and the subsequent changes in classroom practice and expectations of children's learning.

Young Children's Ideas about the Earth in Space

Children's ideas about the Earth in space, at least in terms of its shape and gravitational attraction, have been of interest to science education researchers and cognitive psychologists for some time. Focusing on shape and gravity alone, however, may have resulted in an underestimation of children's other abilities and learning potential in this field. Details from a recent survey of children's ideas arc presented which suggest that this might be the case. The findings highlight a need for care at a time when classroom expectations are increasingly driven and constrained by ‘educational guidelines’ and ‘science curricula’ which remain to be fully informed.

Fifth graders' achievement orientations and beliefs: Individual and classroom differences.

Thirty classes of 5th graders (10-year-olds) were surveyed to see if children's criteria for success (motivational orientations), beliefs about the causes of success, and perceptions of teachers' expectations involved the coordination of personal values and contextual norms. Classes as well as individuals have distinct motivational personalities: For both levels of analysis, Task Orientation was associated with beliefs that Interest and Effort cause success, whereas Ego Orientation was associated with beliefs that Competitiveness causes success. However, 5th graders distinguished their own motivational orientations from the values promoted in their educational environment. Profiles of orientations, beliefs, and perceptions of teachers' expectations were unique for classes, boys, and girls. Boys had more limited perceptions of classroom expectations than girls. Girls had more limited perceptions of their motivational identities than boys.

Education and the Marketplace: Conflicting Arenas? Response to "A Postmodern Explanation of Student Consumerism in Higher Education"

changing dynamics of college classrooms in a number of different forums, from sessions held at professional meetings to articles in disciplinary journals to discussions conducted on the Internet among members of various academic disciplines. In A Postmodern Explanation of Student Consumerism in Higher Education (hereafter noted as Consumerism), the authors provide a framework, or perspective, with which to understand such changes and they encourage educators to use such an understanding in their approach to pedagogy (p. 326). The framework contends that society has evolved into a new era, moving from a modern to a postmodern period resulting in, a student consumerism that drastically affects classroom expectations, behaviors, and outcomes for students and educators alike.

Which Fork? Cultural Mystifications and Classroom Expectations

Which Fork? Cultural Mystifications and Classroom Expectations

Alone in a crowd: analysis of secondary adjustments in a kindergarten

This article reports findings from a participant observation study of kindergarten children's adjustments to expectations that, in certain classroom contexts, they would not interact with one another. The study applied naturalistic data collection and analytical techniques and focused on child‐to‐child interaction patterns in classroom settings where talking with peers was either forbidden or discouraged. The findings are descriptions and analyses of adjustment patterns children developed in response to classroom expectations organized in three domains: Forgetting Expectations, Secret Communications, and Exploring the Limits. Response patterns are discussed as secondary adjustments and implications are suggested.

Underlife and Writing Instruction

This article uses the sociological concept of to explain several aspects of writing instruction. In sociological theory, underlife refers to those behaviors which undercut the roles expected of participants in a situation-the ways an employee, for example, shows she is not just an employee, but has a more complex personality outside that role. In contemporary writing instruction, both students and teachers undercut the traditional roles of the American educational system in order to substitute more complex identities in their place. On the one hand, students disobey, write letters instead of taking notes, and whisper with their peers to show they are more than just students and can think independently of classroom expectations. On the other, writing teachers develop workshop methods, use small groups, and focus on students' own voices in order to help students see themselves as writers first and students second. Both sets of behaviors are behaviors, for they seek to provide identities that go beyond the roles offered by the normal teacher-as-lecturer, student-as-passive-learner educational system. These forms of underlife, moreover, are connected to the nature of writing itself. Writing, in the rich sense of interactive knowledge creation advocated by theorists like Ann Berthoff in The Making of Meaning and Janet Emig in Web of Meaning, necessarily involves standing outside the roles and beliefs offered by a social situation-it involves questioning them, searching for new connections, building ideas that may be in conflict with accepted ways of thinking and acting. Writing involves being able to challenge one's assigned roles long enough that one can think originally; it involves living in conflict with accepted (expected) thought and action. This article will explore student and teacher behavior in writing instruction as the of the current educational system, and will suggest that the identities which may be developing for students in writing classrooms are

An Application of a Realistic Job Preview in an Instructional Setting

This study, which applied the research findings on realistic job previews in a classroom setting, compared the effects of a “realistic” and “traditional” preview on students' initial classroom expectations, attitudes, classroom attrition, and performance. During registration, either a realistic or traditional preview booklet was placed in the registration materials of the 402 students enrolled in the class. During the first class period students were asked to predict their final grades for the course. A course evaluation was completed by each student at the end of the semester. Final course grades were obtained for each student as well as the identity of those students who had resigned from the course. No significant differences were found between the realistic preview group and the traditional preview group on any of the dependent variables. Regardless of the treatment group, the preview booklet was well received by the students.

Patterns of Disturbed Classroom Behavior of Nondelinquent and Delinquent Adolescent Girls

Ten patterns or syndromes of classroom behavior of 337 junior and senior high school girls were derived and analyzed for rela tionship to academic success or failure among special (delin quent) and regular school students. The behavior patterns ac counted for over 98 per cent of the students in both groups and clearly differentiated the academically successful from the un successful. Each of the patterns is described both numerically and graphically to provide a reliable means of analyzing and comparing students in other special and regular class settings. It was concluded that in both settings unsuccessful achievement could not be viewed in only academic or cognitive terms, but rather was an indication of failure of the total child to cope with classroom and teacher expectations.

Achievement and School Attitudes of Adolescent Boys as Related to Behavior and Occupational Status of Families

Achievement and School Attitudes of Adolescent Boys as Related to Behavior and Occupational Status of Families