Classroom Scripts Research Articles

Teacher Professional Development on Trauma-Informed Care: Tapping into Students’ Inner Emotional Worlds

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of a multipronged, trauma-informed professional development for teachers at a K-8, Title I public school in an urban city. The instructional approach involved four elements: (1) training on trauma-informed care related to student development, learning, and skill-building, (2) prepared lesson plans for classroom implementation, including classroom scripts, activities, and student handouts, (3) specialized support during class application, and (4) expert feedback on self-reflective journal entries. Qualitative results underscored two main themes regarding the professional development influence on teachers. First, as teachers opened a window into their students’ lives, their understanding, responsiveness, and relatedness changed. They began to view their students as children first and learners second, allowing them to relate in a manner of empathy and compassion. Secondly, teachers began to change themselves as they altered their responses beyond the classroom to their own families and others around them. Thus, gaining access to students’ inner emotional worlds helped change teachers’ internal experiences and interactions with their outer world. Quantitative results highlighted significant pre-and posttest differences in compassion satisfaction and secondary traumatic stress (STS) despite instructional disruptions due to the COVID-19 global pandemic. Implications include offering school-wide trauma-informed professional development for school personnel to understand their students’ life experiences better and thus their learning environment beyond the classroom.

Effects of two differently sequenced classroom scripts on common ground in collaborative inquiry learning

Collaborative learning involves the collaborative regulation of cognitive activities to establish common ground for the coordination of content. Drawing on research on cognitive scripts to embed collaboration in learning, this study examines the effect of the quality of the grounding and testing processes on the quality of the inquiry processes (i.e., generating and evaluating evidence, drawing conclusions) in two differently sequenced classroom scripts. Both script conditions began with the teacher modeling each inquiry skill at the plenary level. After the plenary session, students in the Plenary–Individual–Small Group (PISG) classroom script first worked individually before working in small groups, whereas students in the Plenary–Small Group–Individual (PSGI) condition first worked in small groups before working individually. Overall, 61 students (grades 6–9) participated in a quasi-experimental study: 10 groups of three to four students in each condition. We coded all 20 groups’ discourse. Descriptive findings showed no statistical significance in both script conditions. Case studies of the two groups’ discourse in each experimental condition showed that occurrences of high-level grounding and high-level testing processes led to more occurrences of high-level inquiry processes in the PISG script condition. Excerpts of students’ work at the individual level in both conditions illustrated how the script sequence shaped the discourse moves at the small group level. We discuss these findings against the background of literature on grounding, anticipated interaction, and cognitive scripts in collaborative learning.

‘The best app is the teacher’ Introducing classroom scripts in technology‐enhanced education

AbstractA quasi‐experimental study was set up in secondary education to study the role of teachers while implementing tablet devices in science education. Three different classroom scripts that guided students and teachers' actions during the intervention on two social planes (group and classroom level) are compared. The main goal was to investigate which classroom script leads to the best results regarding progress in domain‐specific knowledge and inquiry skills. Besides student achievement, students' experiences towards the role of the teacher and students' perceptions towards learning with tablets within the three conditions were investigated.In the first condition, the classroom script included learning activities that were balanced between the group and the classroom level. In the second condition, the learning activities occurred predominantly on the group level. The third condition entailed the classroom script as the control condition in which the learning activities were situated only on the classroom level, with the tablet used in a traditional way or as ‘book behind glass’. Results show that students perform better on domain‐specific knowledge in the conditions where the teacher intervened on the classroom level. Regarding the acquisition of inquiry skills, students performed best in the condition where the learning activities were balanced between the group and the classroom level. Moreover, students who perceived more structure achieved better. These results indicate that the role of the teacher cannot be ignored in technology‐enhanced learning. Moreover, these results seem to suggest that one of the best apps remains the teacher.

Teacher Scaffolding and Language Socialization of English Learners in Literature-Based Activities

The contributions of teachers in building foundation of social processes, promoting learners’ agency and engagements have been constantly highlighted. This study explores language socialization of English Language Learners (ELLs) in an elementary school in U.S., focusing on the role of an ESL teacher. It examines how the ESL teacher provides linguistic and cultural scaffolding, and creates a learning environment conducive to ELLs’ socialization into American school academic discourse (Gee, 1999). A prevalent approach for linguistic scaffolding was through using questions. Questions were used for assessment, identifying prior knowledge, current understanding level, and potential level for future development, and to train ELLs to think critically and analytically. Cultural scaffolding was made through classroom scripts, such as whole group and small group activities, individual work with teacher assistance, and working locations in the classrooms. The classroom script projected American values of power functioning, respect for individuals, and freedom of choice. The findings imply that ESL learners need more than linguistic scaffolding and having the knowledge of cultural learning dynamics could be crucial in multicultural students’ socialization into the mainstream American school discourse.

Promoting metacognitive regulation through collaborative problem solving on the web: When scripting does not work

Opportunities for collaborative work can support the process of information problem solving, although this is not a guaranteed outcome of collaborative work. Strong metacognitive regulation is necessary for successful web-based inquiry learning. In the light of these issues, the present study was intended to investigate the regulatory processes that come into play when individual learners work collaboratively in solving information problems on the web and if these can be supported by providing students with a collaboration script. The web-based project was implemented in 12 secondary school classes involving 202 students working in pairs. Six classes were provided with a collaboration script embedded in the learning environment, while the other six classes acted as the control group. Although it was hypothesized that students in the script condition would yield higher shared metacognitive regulation than students in the control condition, based on quantitative as well as qualitative analyses no significant improvement was found that could be attributed to the classroom script intervention. Yet it was found that shared regulation leads to better knowledge co-construction. Moreover, this study confirms that the overall implementation improved students' metacognitive awareness. Results are discussed concerning their theoretical relevance and practical implications for collaborative IPS on the web in face-to-face classroom settings.

The effects of teacher-led class interventions during technology-enhanced science inquiry on students’ knowledge integration and basic need satisfaction

This study investigated the effects of two differently designed classroom scripts that guided the teacher-led interventions during the courses of the WISE Climate Change project. 168 students from 10 classes were randomly assigned to either the high-structured condition (teacher interventions on group level and on class level) or the low-structured condition (only teacher interventions on group level). Effects were measured on students' knowledge integration and students’ need satisfaction. The results did not provide evidence that the high-structured condition leads to higher learning gains, yet it was found that pausing the group work during computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) to provide structure and feedback by the teacher at a whole-classroom plenary level significantly lowered the feelings of competence frustration. Especially low prior knowledge students expressed higher competence frustration in the low-structured condition. These findings suggest to blend CSCL with teacher-led class interventions to optimize the learning environment.

Patterns of Physics Reasoning in Face-to-Face and Online Forum Collaboration Around a Digital Game

Students playing digital learning games in the classroom rarely play alone, even in digital games that are ostensibly “single-player” games. This study explores the patterns of physics reasoning that emerge in face-toface and online forum collaboration while students play a physics-focused educational game in their classroom. We observed five increasing levels of explicit articulation of physics reasoning across interactions in the face-toface and online forum interactions. Additionally, we found that students were much more likely to explicitly articulate formal physics reasoning in their online forum interactions than they were in their face-to-face interactions. We discuss multiple possible explanations for these patterns of articulation in terms of differences in timing of interactions, affordances of medium, classroom scripts, and social norms. The findings and discussion extend our understanding of the structuring and contributions of peer interactions to student learning in digital learning environments in the classroom.

Orchestration is nothing without conducting – But arranging ties the two together!: A response to Dillenbourg (2011)

In contrast to Dillenbourg (2013), who calls debates about the analogies between orchestras and classrooms “unproductive”, this contribution attempts to show how a search for such analogies may inspire both TEL research and educational practice. We argue that, just like musical pieces, TEL environments need to be created (i.e., orchestrated), adapted (i.e., arranged) and reified (i.e., conducted), and educational research that attempts to make a practical impact needs to consider all three processes. Further, classroom scripts that distribute learning activities over the social planes of the classroom can be regarded as counterparts of the score in an orchestra, which demonstrates the necessity of careful lesson planning across these social levels. And finally, viewing orchestras (and classrooms) as social entities that consist of different sections or subgroups can foster the development of research methodologies that are capable of dealing with hierarchical data structures.

Computer-supported collaborative inquiry learning and classroom scripts: Effects on help-seeking processes and learning outcomes

This study examined the influence of classroom-script structure (high vs. low) during computer-supported collaborative inquiry learning on help-seeking processes and learning gains in 54 student pairs in secondary science education. Screen- and audio-capturing videos were analysed according to a model of the help-seeking process. The results showed that the structure of the classroom script substantially affects patterns of student help-seeking and learning gain in the classroom. Overall, students in the high-structured classroom-script condition sought less help but learnt more than those in the low-structured classroom-script condition.

Teachers as Intercultural Learners: Negotiating German–American Telecollaboration along the Institutional Fault Line

This article examines how social, cultural, and institutional affordances and constraints in a telecollaborative foreign language learning partnership shape the agency of online teachers. In particular, it details how various aspects of schools and schooling impact the negotiation, execution, and management of a German–American virtual course from the perspectives of the teachers. These aspects include: the misalignment of academic calendars, local patterns of socialization into the teaching profession, institution–specific classroom scripts, systems of learning assessment, student workloads, and the physical layouts of local institutions and social forms of classroom collaboration. The article presents a self–reflective case study of our 10–month electronic negotiation, execution, and management of a German–American telecollaborative partnership within the constructivist paradigm of social realism. Using Agar's (1994) notion of the linguistic rich point and examining patterns of communication, specific lexical items, and grammatical structures, the study uncovers how the culturally varying nature of schools and schooling is linguistically encoded in the texts of electronic correspondence.

Institutional and individual dimensions of transatlantic group work in network-based language teaching

Network-based language teaching (NBLT) involves the application of global or local communication networks within foreign and second language education (Warschauer and Kern, 2000). In telecollaboration, a type of NBLT, distally located language learners use internet communication tools to support dialogue, debate, collaborative research and social interaction for the purposes of language development and cultural awareness (e.g. Kinginger et al., 1999). To date, the research on NBLT has been limited, focusing primarily on pedagogical implementations of technology and linguistic features of online communication. In particular, researchers have not robustly explored social and institutional dimensions of telecollaboration (Chapelle, 2000:217) nor have they adequately investigated the pervasive assumption that telecollaborative interaction will necessarily and unproblematically afford language learning (e.g. Kramsch and Thorne, to appear). Drawing on social realism (Layder, 1993), a sociological theory which emphasizes the inter-relationship between structure, i.e. society and institution, and agency, i.e. situated activity and psycho-biography, in researching and explaining social action, I present a sociocultural account of German-American telecollaboration. In particular, I explore the meanings that the macro features of (1) language valuation (Hilgendorf, 1996); (2) membership in electronic discourse communities (Gee, 1999); and (3) culturally determined classroom scripts (Hatch, 1992) may have for the differential functionality of virtual group work in this partnership. Differences in group functionality are reflected at the micro-interactional level in terms of (1) frequency and length of correspondence; (2) patterns of discursive behavior such as question-answer pairs; and (3) opportunities for assisted L2 performance and negotiation of meaning. Ethnographic data (e.g. interviews, electronic and classroom discourse, surveys and participant observations) on individual psycho-biographies are interwoven with macro-level descriptions and statistics to paint a rich picture of learner behavior in intercultural telecollaboration. This project is funded by a United States Department of Education International Research and Studies Program Grant (CFDA No.: 84.017A). The author is a research associate for the German component.

A Teacher's Knowledge as Classroom Script for Mathematics Instruction

This study was designed to portray a second-/third-grade teacher's classroom knowledge in a schematic structure called a "script." Activities embedded within events in 2 math classes were examined in order to determine patterns that suggested the teacher's knowledge in 1 content area, mathematics. An external representation of the teacher's classroom script was constructed to illuminate not only the essential elements of the script but also what the teacher understood about teaching and what connections existed within the script that described the complexity of teaching and classrooms. The script functioned as an aid to the teacher as she planned lessons, predicted the sequence of classroom events, interpreted students' actions and interactions, and reflected about events as or after they occurred. The classroom script construct extends others' research on "curriculum scripts" and integrates research on teachers' personal, practical, and pedagogical knowledge.