This study reports on work activities structures, student social cognitive understanding, and student participation as ecological perspectives from which to describe and analyze the teaching that took place in one elementary school. Detailed descriptions of the ecological features of 10 elementary school classrooms are presented, and an…

In open-ended interviews, students characterized their teachers as: mean, hard, easy, good, strict, fun, or nice. Analyses of later student interviews suggested that, when these seventh-grade students conceptualize their teachers, they attend to four major foci: (1) academic work students are expected to complete; (2) teachers' instructional…