Academic emphasis. Schools that clearly demonstrated an expectation that students
were in school to master academic subjects produced higher levels of achievement.
These expectations were communicated in a variety of ways, such as the assignment of
homework and regular displays of excellent work on classroom bulletin boards. Figure
13.12 shows the relationship between the amount of homework assigned and the
average examination score pupils achieved. (See also Box 13.5.)
Teachers' behaviors. When teachers must stop to discipline individual children,
everyone tends to lose the thread of the lesson. Successful classrooms were those
where teachers could coordinate the entire class at one time; often these teachers
expected their students to work silently, on their own.
Distribution of rewards and punishments. The most successful classrooms were
those where punishment was less frequent than praise.
Student conditions. Schools in which students were free to use the buildings during
breaks and at lunchtime, had access to a telephone, and were expected to keep the
classrooms clean and pleasant produced better student achievement than schools that
were run entirely by adults.
The most intriguing finding was that in the successful schools, each individual
factor seemed to feed the others, creating an overall environment, or "school
atmosphere," conducive to success. This positive school atmosphere cannot be
legislated; it must be created by the staff and the students together. Each successful
school arrived at its own conducive atmosphere in its own way, taking its own distinctive
mix of approaches.