Our study is fully reported in _Opening_Dialogue_, from TCPress and recently
reviewed for xmcaers by David Rusell.
Marty
At 02:29 PM 1/12/98 -0800, you wrote:
>Martin
> This sounds like fascinating data to me especially in the context
>of our recent discussion of teaching practices. Do you have a paper on the
>topic? Also, the fact that a practice like this survives at such a low
>level is very interesting. Do you have data on different teachers? Is
>there a much higher percentage use in some than in others?
>David
>
>
>On Mon, 12 Jan 1998, Martin Nystrand wrote:
>
>> In our ninth-grade study of 11,000+ questions in 54 English classes,=
fully a
>> third involved evaluation in the following pattern: teacher asked a test
>> question (a question with a prespecified answer), a student answered, the
>> question elicited a report, and there was no uptake (incorporation of
>> previous answer into a subsequent question). In fact, this pattern was=
so
>> common that we defined such questions as "normal" teacher questions (in=
our
>> program, we treated it as the default for features of teacher questions).
>>=20
>> One particular kind of follow up we did study was what we called=
"high-level
>> evaluation." Teachers often follow up student responses by elaborating
>> important implications they see. Teachers sometimes turn some of these
>> elaborations into didactic or instructive elucidations=97 little set=
pieces=97of
>> points in a prescripted lesson plan=97essentially coverage of important=
points
>> students should not miss. Others are more serious explorations of lines=
of
>> inquiry opened up by students. When the latter occured, we coded teacher
>> evaluation as high-level: the teacher noted the importance of a student's
>> response in shaping a new understanding, and the course of interactions
>> changed some because of what the student had said. That is, we treated
>> evaluation as high level when a student contributed something new to the
>> discussion that modified the topic in some way, and was so acknowledged=
by
>> the teacher. Specifically, high-level evaluation consists of two parts:
>>=20
>> 1. The teacher's certification of the response and
>> 2. The teacher's incorporation of the response into the discourse of the
>> class usually in the form of either an elaboration (or commentary) or a
>> follow-up question.
>>=20
>> For level of evaluation to be high in our coding, the evaluation had to=
be
>> more than "Good," "Good idea," or a mere repeat of the student's answer.
>> The teacher had to push the student's contribution further, validating it=
in
>> such a way that it affected the subsequent course of the discussion. =
When a
>> teacher's evaluation is high level, the student really "gets the floor."
>> Hence, high-level evaluation, like authentic questions, directly affects=
the
>> dialogicality of teacher-student interaction.
>>=20
>> On average, only 1% of the classes we observed in our ninth-grade study
>> involved high-level evaluation. This compared with 3% in eighth-grade
>> English classes.
>>=20
>> Martin Nystrand
>> Professor, Department of English (608 263-3820)
>> Editor, Written Communication (608 263-4512)
>> Director, Center on English Learning and Achievement (CELA)
>> Wisconsin Center for Education Research
>> 685 Education Sciences
>> 1025 West Johnson Street
>> Madison WI 53706
>> 608 263-0563 voice
>> 608 263-6448 fax
>>=20
>>=20
>
>
>
Martin Nystrand
Professor, Department of English (608 263-3822)
Director, Center on English Learning and Achievement (CELA) (608 263-0563)
Editor, Written Communication (608 263-4215)