This article describes how students in an urban Catholic school draw on racial and religious categories to construct classroom-specific identities during coursework. When students engage with each other in classroom discussions, they use broadly circulating, institutional, and event-level categories to position one another, and in doing so…

It has been theorized that contextual tasks support student engagement and sense making. Yet, contradictory ideas exist about the role of these tasks in lessons, and further research is needed to explore how classroom interactions can help achieve their intended purposes. Through video observation of lessons in three eighth-grade classrooms using…

There is considerable agreement about the fact that the presence of researchers in the classroom mediates teaching and learning. Why "should" two very different forms of human activity, one designed to study the other, interact and mediate each other? In this article, we propose cultural-historical activity theory as a framework for understanding…

VIC is a computer program for the analysis of verbal interaction category systems, especially the Flanders interaction analysis system. The observer codes verbal behavior on coding sheets for later machine scoring. A matrix is produced by the program showing the number and percentages of times that a particular cell describes classroom behavior.…

The first three chapters of this booklet describe the utilization of observation as a measurement technique, the types of observation systems available, and the necessary components of an observation system. The second part focuses on the following four commonly used observation systems: 1) primary reading checklist, 2) student affective behavior…

The Instructional Process Analysis Project (IPA) is a study jointly undertaken by the Nordic countries in 1967. The present study discusses a methodological problem area of very narrow scope within the IPA project. The general aim of the study is to examine the factor-analytical method of sequence analysis and to produce variables that measure the…

A set of criteria was developed to assist users and developers of observation systems. Thirty-three criteria which observation systems should meet were identified and classified into three main types: identifying, validity, and practicality. (Author/DEP)

This paper discusses the supervisory use of one observational system -- Observation Schedule and Record, Form 5V (OScAR 5V). OScAR 5V refers to a series of observation schedules to develop techniques for obtaining an objective, quantitative record of observed classroom behavior that could be scored on dimensions of teacher behavior. Under this…

One of the main advantages of the naturalistic approach to classroom research is that the observations are of natural phenomena, occuring in circumstances which the researcher ultimately hopes to generalize. Some problem areas are associated with this approach, however. Observers must obtain complete and accurate records of classroom activities…

The correlation between high-inference measures and low-inference observation measures was studied using two groups of social studies student teachers (25 students per group). The high-inference measure for two video-taped lessons was obtained with the 10-item Teacher Performance Appraisal Scale (TPAS), on which pupils rated the lesson on a scale…

Written from the perspective of the classroom teacher as novice supervisor, this paper describes two cycles of clinical supervision involving teaching peers in an elementary public school. A discussion is presented on the quality of the efforts and accuracy of the perceptions of the beginning supervisor. Some constants that may be thought of as…

This report provides one school district's program for evaluating teachers. The report (1) discusses the philosophy behind the evaluation program, (2) outlines the procedures to be followed, (3) defines the roles of the participants, (4) describes the goals and objectives of the school district, and (5) provides sample instruments used in the…

Discusses the number of observations necessary to obtain a trustworthy sample of classroom transactions by reanalyzing existing data. Eleven to twenty observations appear necessary for teachers' questions which require students to hypothesize. The reliability of a single observation was zero for four other questioning types. (CC)

The purpose of this pilot project was to develop, use, and film teaching tasks to demonstrate their effectiveness in showing variations in teaching styles. Thirty teaching tasks designed to include a variety of curricular dimensions were developed by 6 observers with considerable experience as preschool teachers and observers; each task listed…

The study reported here analyzed the interaction performance of instructional supervisors as they conducted postobservation conferences with teachers. Seven supervisor-teacher pairs consisting of varying combinations of experienced, beginning, and novice teachers and supervisors were examined, to determine status indicators such as jargon use,…