Bad boys and good girls? Patterns of interaction and response in whole class teaching.
This digest found in
Gender
What did the research aim to do?
Concerned by national reports of boys' under-achievement which were mirrored by the Dorset schools' own findings, the research set out to explore the frequency and nature of interactions between teachers and children in the classroom and how they might relate to under-achievement. It was decided to monitor both whole class interactions and interactions during individual, paired or group work. These observations were categorised into two significant bands:
'positive learning interactions' which included engagements in the learning process, or compliance with classroom conventions, such as:
- joins in collective response;
- puts hand up; and
- answers questions after invitation.
interactions considered by the authors to be 'broadly negative' including:
- task related calling out;
- task un-related calling out;
- talking to a neighbour; and
- being off task.
The researchers were keen to relate these observations to whether boys and girls participated in the process of learning and how each gender responded to classroom conventions and orthodoxies.
To find out how the research was carried out click here.
