INEQUALITIES O F TEACHER-PUPIL CONTACTS 21 1

experience of going to school is clearly very different for boys than for girls. Per- haps this fact is too well known to require further scrutiny, but the frequency with which sex is ignored in educational research would lead one to suspect otherwise.

Fourth, and finally, the findings reveal a range of individual differences in each classroom broad enough to weaken any hopes of making facile generalizations about what goes on there. In each classroom there are a few students who are almost out of the teacher’s range of vision, so to speak, and a few others who are almost always underfoot. What this difference means and how it comes about is anybody’s guess, but it is fair to conclude that by the end of the year some students likely will be more familiar to the teacher than will others, even though they have all lived together in the same room for about the same number of days. This observation calls into question the conventional view of looking upon each classroom as a unit whose participants have shared a common educational experience. In a sense, each classroom contains as many environments as it does pairs of eyes through which to view them.

ATTENDING AND THINKING IN THE CLASSROOnI’ BRYCE B. HUDGINS

Graduate Institute of Education Washington University

This inquiry was generated by an interest in the cues that teachers use to modify their behavior during the course of instruction. There can be several classes of such cues emanating, for example, from the teacher’s own programming of activi- ties, the demands of his subject matter, institutional forces related to curriculum, clock, and calendar, and so forth. However, interest centered around what might be called “group produced” stimuli; that is, signals from the class that denote at- tention to, interest in, and possibly comprehension of the subject matter. The research effort focussed upon determining whether observable characteristics of pupil attention relate to any meaningful dimensions of classroom thinking, and whether teachers can make reliable judgments about such cues.

Procedures for the measurement of pupil attention and questions of the validity of such measures have occupied educational researchers from time to time for at least the last forty years. Morrison (1926) developed a straightforward technique for such measurements. His procedure involved counting the number of pupils judged to be paying attention each minute of the class period, and expressing these judgments as an index of the level of control exercised over the class by the teacher. Morrison clearly was not greatly concerned with either the reliab,ility or the validity of attention data. Of reliability he says only that most pupils can be classified un- equivocally as attentive or inattentive, but there is a peripheral group about whom observers will frequently disagree. Interobserver reliability should be high, but less

’Paper read as part of a symposium entitled, “Observing in Schools: Studies of Classroom Life” at the American Psychological Association meetings iri New York City, September, 1966. This re- search was partially supported by the Central Midwestern ltegioiial Educational Laboratory.

212 BRYCE B. HUDGINS

than perfect. Validity for Morrison is implicit in the overt behavior of pupils. Thus, the teacher has control over pupils who are attentive, but not over those who are inattentive. It is true that he perceived such control to be indicative of the readiness of pupils to learn, but there is no evidence that Morrison attempted to demonstrate this assumed relationship between attention and learning.

A decade after the publication of Morrison’s book, Shannon reported two studies that examined the reliability (1936) and the validity (1942) of measures of pupil attention. Interobserver reliability for scorers using attention measures were the highest of three types of measures used to study the “efficiency” of classrooms. In the latter investigation, attention scores correlated .59 with the results of R test based upon a sample lesson taught to four classes of 7th and 8th grade pupils. Shan- non’s data tend to lend support to the reliability and validity of the measurement of classroom attention, although he interprets the results in both cases to cast doubt upon the usefulness of such measures.

Bloom (1953, 1954) developed the method of stimulated recall for the collection of data about students’ thought processes during class. A class meeting is tape re- corded, and students subsequently are interviewed about their thoughts at selected points during the lecture or class discussion. The responses evoked from students are classified on the basis of their relevance to the topic of the lesson. Relevant re- sponses are further defined as showing passive thinking, comprehension, evaluation, synthesis, or problem solving activity. Responses are also classified according to whether the contents focus upon one’s self or others, events inside or outside the classroom, etc. Bloom reported that his’ index of relevant thinking correlated ‘61 with students’ comprehensive grade average.

The results of subsequent studies at the college level with this method of stimu- lated recall, together with Bloom’s data, have provided a wide range of information about the usefulness of the procedure for measuring students’ thoughts during class. In its various guises the method has been demonstrated to be a significant predictor of learning (Bloom, 1954; Siegel, Siegel, Capretta, Jones, & Berkowitz, 1963; Kraus- kopf, 1963) , to be relatively independent of general ability (Bloom, 1954; Krauskopf, 19631, to fluctuate with changes in stimulus events in the classroom (Bloom, 1954), and with temporary states of the individual (Siegel et all 1963). Siegel and his asso- ciates report interrater reliabilities for scoring eight weighted thinking categories. The median reliability coefficient is .58. However, they believe their obtained values are minimum estimates of the reliability that would result if scorers were given additional training.

METHOD Data about the attention and covert thiiiking of pupils were collected in nine junior high school

English classes. All the classes were located in a single junior high school which is part of a large suburban school district. The nine classes were evenly distribut,ed across t,hree grade levels (7, 8, and 9) and three academic achievement, levels (1, 2, and 3; high achievement, pupils are enrolled in level 1 classes). The intent was to sample as broadly as possible across t,he range of pupils, teachers, and activities within a single subject matter area. The t,eachers were told that a pair of observers would &tend the English class for five days, that the lessons would be tape recorded, arid that a variety of information would be solicited from them and from their pupils. They were asked to con- duct their classes as normally as possible under the unusual circumst.ances created by t,he presence and activities of the observers. Complete itnonymit,y was promised for all participants, pupils as well as teachers.

For the collection of dat.a about at.tetit,ion, a simple observation srhedrile was constructed. This schedule included the names of all pupils in a given calnss, arranged to cwiform t o the seating pattern

ATTENDING AND THINKING IN THE CLASSROOM 213

in the classroom. The observer stationed himself unobtrusively in a position where he could see the faces of the pupils without being in their direct line of sight. Each pupil was observed in turn, judged attentive or inattentive, and a mark recorded opposite his name to indicate the observer’s judgment. Each scan of the total class was called a “sweep,” and at the end of a sweep, notation was made of the time elapsed, the dominant activity of the teacher, of the pupils, of the instructional material in use, and the organization of the group.

The criteria used t o judge attention were comparable to those stated by Morrison. The general rule waa that the observer adopt the stance of the teacher in making judgments. That is, a pupil who was ostensibly reading a textbook during a period of assigned reading, or writing when the current activity involved a workbook exercise was judged attentive. The smne behavior during an interval when the teacher was lecturing or giving a demonstration waa judged inattentive. In short, when the pupil appeared to,be involved in an activity relevant to the time and place, he was judged to be at- tentive. Prior to the collection of these data, a number of preliminary observations were made to estimate the reliability of the method. Defined as percentages of agreement, interobserver reliabilities range from 85% to loo%, with the median slightly above 90%.

The procedure used to collect data about the contents of upils’ thoughts during class, although based upon Bloom’s stimulated recall technique, was revisd so that labelling it immediate recall is a more apt description of the process. Sheets of paper were coded to allow the investigator to identify the responses of individuals without having names written on the sheets. During the first observation in ewh class, about ten minutes after the opening of the lesson, pupils were asked to write an answer to the following question: “What were you thinking during the few minutes just before the lesson stopped?” An interval of two minutes was allowed for responses to be written. The class was then given an ex lanation by one of the observers that covered these oints: (a) The observers were interested in h & n g out about how junior high school pupils learn. 6) The pupils were encouraged to be candid in their responses. For example, probabl no one can pay careful attention to a lesson all the time, and if their thoughts sometimes wanderd from the subject it waa legitimate to say so. (c) Pupils were urged t o specify the contents of their thinking as fully as possible, whether it was relevant to the lesson or not. (d) The teacher and principal were cooperating with the observers, but they would at no time be shown the statements of indivldual pupils. Thus the pupil’s status with his teacher, socially and academicall , would not be influenced by the frankness of his responses. I n this connection, also, pupils were tord express1 that the code numbers were used to identify them, that they were used for reaaons of simplicity andlconservation of time, and that there was no intention to deceive upils on that score.

The pfan for data collection called for four such “sto s” to be made during each of the five ob- servations in each class. For various reasons the plan coupd not always be executed, and the range of total stops for the five da s varied from eleven to twenty.

A stop was signal ldby the observer at the rear of the classroom. On the average, these data taking interruptions consumed less than two minutes apiece. They occurred not closer together than five minutes, nor farther apart than ten. A stop might be signalled a t any time within those limits, except under three conditions. Stops were not made during student reports, tests, or when the period had five minutes or less remaining.

While his pupils were writing about their thoughts, the teacher made two ratings on a five-point attention scale, indicating his judgments of the group level of attention for the interval between stops and for the (approximately) two minutes just before the stop. A t the end of the week of observa- tions, the teacher was given two copies of his class list and asked to rate the attention of each pupil on a five-point scale from low to high, once for the week of observation and again for the entire se- mester.

ANALYSIS The pupil responses were classified into several categories, two of which are

pertinent to this discussion. They have been identified as negative social involve- ment (I-) and subject matter relevance (S). Both these categories bear a familial resemblance to Bloom’s (1953) categories. Although Bloom did not use these labels, he seems to have sorted responses into two major groups: social (thoughts about the self and about other persons) and subject matter (relevant or irrelevant to the topic at hand). Our analyses have followed this general framework with several excep- tions. A response was scored for negative social involvement if it pertained to the self, to other people, or to events outside the classroom. Responses that dealt negatively with events or other people in the classroom were also scored for negative social involvement. The rule that governed decisions of the second kind was whether the response indicated a lack of movement toward individual or group instructional goals. Interscorer reliability for this category ranges from .64 to 1.00, with a median of .85.

214 BRYCE B. HUDGINS

Subject matter relevance (S) includes all responses that deal with the sub- stantive topic of the lesson, from tangential and passive thoughts about the subject matter to those that reflect comprehension or higher order cognitive operations. Weighted scores were assigned to these subcategories, thus making it possible in later analyses to estimate for individuals and for classes both the frequency and level of relevant thinking. Reliability for the category is comparable to that re- ported for negative social involvement. Interscorer correlations vary between .46 and 1.00; the median value is 3 7 .

Several analyses of the data have been made. They are in the form of cor- relations between observers’ ratings of attention and those made by teachers and of each of these ratings with the two dimensions of pupil thinking described above. Separate analyses were made for each class. Only pupils who were present on all five days of observation were retained in the analyses.

REHJLTS The results of the study can be seen quickly from Tables 1, 2, and 3. Table 1

shows the correlations for each class between the systematic observation of pupil TABLE 1. CORRELATIONS BETWEEN OBSERVERS’ MEASURES OF ATTENTION AND TEACHERS’ RATINQS

FOR THE WEEK OF OBSERVATIONS AND BETWEEN OBSERVERS’ MEASURES AND TEACHERS’ RATINGS FOR THE TOTAL SEMESTER

Class Observer and Observer and Grade Track df Teacher (Week) Teacher (Semester)

7 7 7 8 8 8 9 9 9

1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3

29 23 11 25 20 13 32 21 17

-30 .34 .74** .68**

.18

.43*

.67* .w** .59** .70** .28 .65** .82**

.56**

.41

.28

.73**

.82** ~ ~ ~

* p < .05; **p < .01.

attention and teachers’ judgments of it for the week under question. The magnitude of the obtained relationships is variable; however, six of the nine are significant. As would be expected, relationships between the ratings of observers and those of teachers based upon the total semester are somewhat lower than the first comparison. TABLE 2. CORRELATIONS BETWEEN OBSERVERS’ MEASURES OF ATFENTION AND SUBJECT MATTER

RELEVANCE OF PUPILS’ THINKINQ (S) AND BETWEEN OBSERVERS’ MEASURES OF ATTENTION AND PUPILS’ NEGATIVE SOCIAL INVOLVEMENT (I-)

Class Observed Attention Observed Attention Grade Track df and S and I-

7 1 29 .05 - .52** 7 2 23 .06 - .35 7 3 11 .36 - .57* 8 1 30 .03 - .10 8 2 20 .63** - .70** 8 3 13 .34 - .56* 9 1 31 .21 - .27 9 2 21 .66** - .63** 9 3 17 .09 - .22

* p < .05; **p < .01.

ATTENDING AND THINKING I N THE CLASSROOM 215

Two sets of relationships are reported in Table 2. Those in the first column are the coefficients between observers’ ratings of attention and subject matter relevance scores. Although all the coefficients are positive, most of them are low, and only two are significant. The second column shows the correlations between observed attention and negative social involvement. These relationships are negative, and five of the nine are significant.

Table 3 presents the relationships between teacher judgments of attention and S and between teacher judgments and I-. These coefficients follow generally the same trend as those in Table 2, although with less consistency. However, in three cases, teacher ratings of attention correlate significantly with both S and I-.

TABLE 3. CORRELATIONS BETWEEN TEACHERS’ RATINGS OF ATTENTION FOR THE WEEK OF OBSERVA- TION AND SUBJECT MATTER RELEVANCE OF PUPILS’ THINKING (S) AND BETWEEN TEACHERS’

RATINGS AND PUPILS’ NEGATIVE SOCIAL INVOLVEMENT (I-)

Class Teacher’s Ratings Teacher’s Ratings Grade Track df of Attention and S of Attention and I-

1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3

29 23 11 30 20 13 31 21 17

- . l l .18 .02

- .20 .56** .43 .38* .73**

- .02

- .03 -.25 - .42

.03 - .46* - .17 - .36* - .69** - .12

* p < .05; **p < .01.

INTERPRETATION Overall the results of this investigation point to the general inability of ob-

servers or teachers to predict the relevance of pupil thinking from observable char- acteristics of attention. Systematic observation yielded two significant relation- ships, and three teachers were able to predict subject matter relevance on the basis of judged attention. It should be poted that all five of these relationships pertain to the same three classes. When the nine classes are ranked from highest to lowest on mean frequency of S, these three classes rank first, second, and third. Similarly, when means based upon weighted scores are computed to provide an estimate of the level of pupil thinking, these three classes again rank first, second, and third in the sample. Indeed, they are three of only four classes that show any marked change when level rather than simple frequency of thinking is considered. Furthermore, these three classes have in common the fact that, at the time of observation, they were studying literature. The other six groups in the sample can be characterized as grammar classes. Whether or to what extent the factors cited influenced the ob- tained results between attention and S is not known.

Observers’ scores for attention relate more closely to negative social involve- ment (I-) than they do to subject matter relevance (S). The relationships for five classes are significant. Relationships between I- and teacher ratings of attention are significant for the same three classes in which S was seen to be significantly related to attention. A significant relationship occurs in six of the nine classes be- tween I- and attention as judged either by observers or by teachers.

216 BRYCE B. HUDGINS

The simplest interpretation of the findings seems to be this. Gross measures of attention are useful in discriminating between the pupil who is responding to stimuli inside the classroom and the one who is not. But the range of stimuli within the classroom is much broader than the category of subject matter relevant thinking. Thus only under certain conditions, perhaps related to reducing the range of po- tential covert responses of pupils, do we discover a relationship between observed attention and substantive thinking.

REFERENCES BLOOM, B. S. Thought processes in lectures and discussions. Journal of General Education, 1953, 7,

160-169. BLOOM, B. S. The thought process of students in discussion. In S. J. French (Ed.), Accent on leaching.

New York: Hamer. 1954. 1 ,

KRAUSKOPF, C. J. Use of written responses in the stimulated recall method. Journal of Educational Psgcholoqg, 1963, 64, 172-176.

MORRISON, HI C. The practice of teaching in the secondary school. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1926.

SHANNON, J. R. A comparison of three means for measuring efficiency in teaching Journal of E d w - tional Research, 193536, 29, 501-508.

SHANNON, J. R. A measure of the validity of attention scorm. Journal of Educational Research, 1941- 42, 55, 623-631.

SIEGEL, L., SIEGEL, LILA C., CAPRETTA, P. J., JONES, R. L., & BERKOWITZ, H. Students’ thoughts during class: a criterion for educational research. Journal of Educational Psychology, 1963, 54, 4551.

THE MICRO-ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE CLASSROOM’ LOUIS M. SMITH

Graduate Institute of Education Washington University

Several years ago we2 began what we thought was a relatively simple project whose central problem lay in the question, How does a middle class teacher cope with a group of lower class youngsters? The methodology seemed not only simple and naive, but unscientific as well. I proposed to sit in the back of the classroom, observe what the teacher and pupils seemed to be doing and saying, and keep notes of these events. The teacher was to keep a set of notes on his perception of the class and the problems in teaching his group of children. Later we hoped to describe the classroom in considerable detail and to conceptualize the events in more general psychological terms. All of this has come to pass.

Apropos of such classroom investigations as the one we carried out, my friend, Bruce Biddle of the University of Missouri, has written that the participant ob- server methodology is “the broadest and simplest methodology used in classroom

‘Paper read as part of a s mposium entitled, “Observing in Schools: Studies of Classroom Life” at the American PsychologicarAssociation meetings in New York City in September, 1966. The data in this report Itre based upon Project SO48 supported by the U. S. Office of Education. The paper was written during the author’s tenure as a Senior Research Associate of the Central Midwestern Regional Educational Laboratory (CEMREL).

*The “we” refers to the classroom teacher, Mr. Geoffrey, who was co-investigator.