The author argues here that progress toward greater validity in description through increasingly specifiable standards for quality control is crucial for the advancement of theory as well as for the improvement of method in descriptive studies of classroom life. Some standards for judging the validity of descriptions of classroom action are…

Previous research conducted in both classroom and physical education (PE) settings has examined the impact of student gender on teacher-student interactions. The purpose of this study was to extend this line of research by analysing the influence of student gender and different types of physical activity on the frequency and nature of teacher…

Discusses some of the better known interaction analyses for analyzing teacher behavior generally and the teaching of small groups. One particular category system is advocated and problems in using it are noted, as well as its strengths for general, nonspecialist use. Seven references are listed. (Author/CHC)

The contemporary behavioralistic analysis of teaching assumes a necessary empirical relationship between differences in teacher behavior and levels of student achievement. This paper argues that this assumption lacks both empirical support and conceptual plausibility. Consequences of accepting the null hypothesis of differential teacher…

Interactions between teachers and multiply disabled students were videotaped, and procedures were developed to analyze the interactions, in order to assist the teachers in evaluating the relationship between their own and their student's communicative behavior. Coding categories were prepared to identify characteristics of the student's…

One hundred interactions involving 4,231 communicative acts between classroom personnel and multiply disabled students were videotaped. The resulting data were coded and analyzed, and showed that: (1) conventional communicative forms (e.g., speech, manual signs, conventional nonverbal expressions) were selected to convey information to students…

Organizational socialization concerns the manner in which an individual learns the role of his or her career in the dominant setting in which the work occurs. From the functionalist approach, the role of teacher carries predetermined work attitudes, status, behaviors, and norms into which a beginning teacher is passively socialized. The…