Educational technology

ANALYSIS OF CLASSROOM INTERACTION

INTERACTION

The act of teaching is a kind of reciprocal contact established between the teacher and the pupil. This reciprocal contact can be perceived as a series of events which occur one after another. Classroom interaction refers to these chains of events each one of which occupies a small sequence of time. An event may be defined as the shortest possible act that a trained observer can observe and record. Ned. A. Flanders defines, “Teaching as an interactive process. Interaction means participation of teacher and students in the process of teaching. In this process, teacher influences the students; students also interact with the teacher. Interaction takes place among the students themselves also. It means, in the process of teaching, everybody interacts with every other person involved in the process.

INTERACTION ANALYSIS

Interaction analysis is a process of encoding and decoding the pattern of interaction between the communicator and the receiver. In the coding process a code symbol is assigned to each category of behaviour and a trained observer records by jotting down code symbols. In the decoding step, a trained analyst interpret the display of code data and reconstructs the original events on the basis of the encoded data. Interaction analysis is the study of classroom climate and teaching behaviour of the teacher.

Classroom interaction analysis can be used for pre service and in service education in order to help teachers improve the quality of classroom instruction. This requires some kind of objective feedback to the person who is trying to change his behaviour.

There are many important techniques to observe the interaction systematically. Some of them are:

1. Flander’s Interaction Analysis Categories System (FIACS)

2. Reciprocal Category System (RCS)

3. Equivalent Talk Categories (ETC)

4. Verbal Interaction Category System (VICS)

5. OBSERVATION SCHEDULE AND RECORD (OSCAR)

Flanders Interaction Analysis Technique is most suitable and widely used technique of interaction analysis.

FLANDER’S INTERACTION ANALYSIS CATEGORY SYSTEM (FIACS)

Ned. A. Flanders developed a system of interaction analysis to study what is happening in a classroom when a teacher teaches. It is known as Flanders Interaction Analysis Categories System (FIACS). Flanders and others developed this system at the University of Minnesota, U.S.A. between 1955 and 1960. Flanders classified total verbal behaviour into 10 categories. Verbal behaviour comprises teacher talk, student talk and silence or confusion.

The ten categories are mentioned as under:

1. Teacher Talk – 7 categories

2. Pupil Talk – 2 categories

3. Silence or Confusion- 1 category

Thus, the first seven categories include teacher talk. Next two categories include pupil talk. The last tenth category includes the small spans of silence or pause or confusion. The first 7 categories or teacher talk has been bifurcated into a) indirect talk, b) direct talk.

Teacher’s Talk - 7 Categories

A) Indirect Talk (4 Categories)

1. Accepts Feelings

2. Praise or Encouragement

3. Accepts or Uses ideas of Pupils

4. Asking Questions

B) Direct Talk (3 Categories)

5. Lecture

6. Giving Directions

7. Criticizing or Justifying Authority

Pupil Talk (2 Categories)

8. Pupil Talk Response

9. Pupil Talk Initiation

Neither Teacher Talk nor Pupil Talk (1 Category)

10. Silence or Pause or Confusion

MEANING OF VARIOUS CATEGORIES

1. Teacher Talk (7 Categories)

A) Indirect Talk

In this method of analysis, the first four categories represent the teacher’s indirect influence.

Category 1: Accepts Feelings

* In this category, teacher accepts the feelings of the pupils.

* He feels himself that the pupils should not be punished for exhibiting his feelings.

* Feelings may be positive or negative. 

Category 2: Praise or Encouragement

*Teacher praises or encourages student action or behaviour.

*When a student gives answer to the question asked by the teacher, the teacher gives positive reinforcement by saying words like “good‟, “very good‟, “better‟, “correct‟, “excellent‟, “carry on‟, etc.

Category 3: Accepts or Uses ideas of Pupils

*It is just like 1st category. But in this category, the pupils ideas are accepted only and not his feelings.

*If a pupil passes on some suggestions, then the teacher may repeat in nutshell in his own style or words.

*The teacher can say, “I understand what you mean‟ etc. Or the teacher clarifies, builds or develops ideas or suggestions given by a student.

Category 4: Asking Questions

*Asking question about content or procedures, based on the teacher ideas and expecting an answer from the pupil.

*Sometimes, teacher asks the question but he carries on his lecture without receiving any answer. Such questions are not included in this category.

B) Direct Talk

Next 5th to 7th categories represent the teacher’s direct influence.

Category 5: Lecturing /Lecture

*Giving facts or opinions about content or procedure expression of his own ideas, giving his own explanation or citing an authority other than a pupil.

Category 6: Giving Directions

*The teacher gives directions, commands or orders or initiation, with which a pupil/student is expected to comply with,

- Open your books.

- Stand up on the benches.

- Solve 4th sum of exercise 5.3.

Category 7: Criticizing or Justifying Authority

*When the teacher asks the pupils not to interrupt with foolish questions, then this behaviour is included in this category.

*Teacher’s “what” and “why‟ also come under this category.

2. Pupil Talk (2 Categories)

Category 8: Pupil Talk Response

*It includes the pupils talk in response to teacher’s talk

*Teacher asks question, student gives answer to the question.

Category 9: Pupil Talk Initiation

*Talk by pupils that they initiate.

*Expressing own ideas; initiating a new topic; freedom to develop opinions and a line of thought like asking thoughtful questions; going beyond the existing structure.

3. Silence or Pause or Confusion (1 category)

Category 10: Silence or Pause or Confusion

*Pauses, short periods of silence and period of confusion in which communication cannot be understood by the observer.

PROCEDURE OF OBSERVATION / ENCODING PROCEDURE

*The observer sits in the classroom in the best position to hear and see the participants.

*At the end of every three seconds he decides which category best represents the communication events just completed. Thus the time involves in coding one tally for every 3 seconds, is 20 tallies in one minute, 100 tallies in 5 minutes and 1200 tallies in one hour.

*In this process only the serial numbers of the categories are recorded.

*The serial number of that category is recorded on the data sheet by the observer.

*When the observation is over, the observer shifts to some other room and prepares the details on the basis of those serial numbers of the categories.

*In this observation process, the writing of serial numbers of the categories is known as ENCODING.

*Writing details of behaviour on the basis of these categories is known as DECODING.

*The observers should remember the serial numbers of these categories.

RULES FOR OBSERVATION / RULES FOR RECORDING OR DECODING

Flanders category method has many rules for observation, without following which the observation is not possible. The observer must remember these rules. These rules help in maintaining consistency and making observations uniform. These rules are as follows:

Rule 1: If more than one type of category occurs during a 3 second period, the observer should choose the category that is numerically farther from category 5 (but not category 10). Suppose the observer is in doubt whether the category is 2 or 3; he should write 2 categories.

Rule 2: The observer should not involve his personal viewpoint.

Rule 3: If more than one category is active in a span of 3 seconds, and then all the categories should be recorded. If after 3 seconds, no category changes, then the same serial number should be repeated in the next 3 seconds.

Rule 4: If the time period of silence exceeds 3 seconds, it should be recorded under the category No.10

Rule 5: When teacher calls a child by name, the observer is supposed to record a 4th category.

Rule 6: When the teacher repeats the student’s answer and the answer is a correct, that is recorded as a category No. 2. This tells the student that he has the right answer and therefore functions as praise or encouragement.

Rule 7: When a teacher listens to a pupil and accepts his ideas for a discussion, then this behaviour belongs to category No. 3.

Rule 8: The words “All is ok‟, “yes‟, “yah‟, “hum‟, “alright‟ etc. belong to the category No. 2. (Encouragement)

Rule 9: If a teacher jokes without aiming at any pupil, this behaviour belongs to the category No. 2. But if he makes any joke aiming at some particular pupil, then it belongs to the category No. 7.

Rule 10: When all the pupils respond to a very small question collectively, then the serial number of category-8 is recorded.

CONSTRUCTING INTERACTION MATRIX

 After encoding or observation procedure of interaction, the coded behaviours are written in 10 x 10 table. This 10 (rows) x 10 (columns) table is known as a matrix.

 The category numbers of the record sheet are tabulated in the matrix table. Each number is entered in the form of sequence pairs, being used twice, first as the first numbers and second as second number.

 The row of the matrix represent the first number and the columns the second number.

 For example an observation recorded is 6, 10, 7, 5, 1, 4, 8, 4

 Hence, the beginning and end of the coding should have the same number of the categories.

 It is the tradition of adding number 10 in the beginning and at the end. Hence the above number will be written in this way 10, 6, 10, 7, 5, 1, 4, 8, 4, 10

1st Pair (10, 6)

2nd Pair (6, 10)

3rd Pair (10, 7)

4th pair (7, 5)

5th Pair (5, 1)

6th Pair (1, 4)

7th Pair (4, 8)

8th Pair (8, 4)

9th Pair (4, 10)

 Sequence of the pair: (10, 6), (6, 10), (10, 7), (7, 5), (5, 1), (1, 4), (4, 8), (8, 4), (4, 10)

 While preparing matrices, one pair is marked at a time.

 The matrices have rows and columns.

 The first number of the pair represents “row‟ and second number of the pair represents “column’.

 For example, in the first pair (10, 6), the number 10 represents row and the number 6 represents column.

 Every pair overlaps the other pair. Total tallies of the matrices is N

 In the matrices (N-1) i.e. one less number is marked. In the above example, N=10, (N-1) i.e. 9 numbers will be marked.

 Each matrix has 100 cells.

INTERACTION MATRIX TABLE

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	Total
1				/							1
2											0
3											0
4								/		/	2
5	/										1
6										/	1
7					/						1
8				/							1
9											0
10						/	/				2
Total	1	0	0	2	1	1	1	1	0	2	9(N)

INTERPRETING THE MATRIX

The purpose of interaction analysis is to preserve selected aspects of interaction through observation, encoding, tabulation and then decoding.

      1. The proportion of teacher talk, pupil talk, and silence or confusion:

The proportion of tallies in columns 1,2,3,4,5,6and 7, columns 8,9 and column 10 to the total tallies indicates how much the teacher talks, the student talks and the time spent in silence or confusion. After several years of observing, we anticipate an average of 68 percent teacher talk, 20 percent of pupil talk and 11 or 12 percent silence or confusion.

      2. The ratio between indirect influence and direct influence:

The sum of column 1,2,3,4, divided by the sum of columns 5, 6, 7 gives this ratio. If the ratio is 1 or more than 1, the teacher is said to be indirect in his behavior. This ratio, therefore, shows whether a teacher is more direct or indirect in his teaching.

      3. The ratio between positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement:

The sum of column 1, 2, 3 is to be divided by the sum of the columns 6, 7 to get this ratio. If the ratio is 1 or more than 1 then the teacher is said to have succeeded in providing positive reinforcement.

      4.  Student’s participation ratio:

     The sum of columns 8 and 9 is to be divided by total sum to get this ratio. The answer will reveal how much the students have participated in the teaching-learning process.

      5.  Steady state cells:

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	Total
1	1.1
2		2.2
3			3.3
4				4.4
5					5.5
6						6.6
7							7.7
8								8.8
9									9.9
10										10.10
Total

The above figure shows the ‘steady state’ cells along the diagonal from the upper left to the lower right. If these cells are heavily loaded it shows that the teacher remains in a particular category for more than three seconds. The cell with the highest frequency of the entire matrix is typically the 5-5 cell which lies on this diagonal indicating that the teacher frequently stays longer than 3 seconds when he provides information through lecture.

      6. Content cross cell:

       The cell corresponding to the number pairs (4,4) and (5,5) are known as ‘content cross’ cells. If these cells are overloaded they reflect the teacher’s emphasis on the subject matter

      7. Constructive integration cells and vicious cells:

Two areas that are most sensitive to the positive and negative aspects of social skill is the teacher-student relationship.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	Total
1
2		A
3
4
5
6							B
7
8
9
10
Total

       Area A might be called “Constructive Integrative Cells” while area B is called the “Vicious Cells”. The cells corresponding to number 1,2 and 3 are known as constructive integration cells because they indicate the positive aspect of the social skill of the teacher. Cells of numbers 6 and 7 are known as vicious cells because they reveal the negative aspect of the teacher.

ADVANTAGES OF FIACS

1. It is an effective tool /instrument to measure the social-emotional climate in the classroom.

2. It is also used for in-service teachers.

3. It provides feedback to the pupil-teachers.

4. It is an objective and reliable method for observation of classroom teaching.

5. It is used to compare the behaviour of teachers at different age levels, gender, subject etc.

6. It is much useful in team teaching and microteaching.

LIMITATIONS OF FIACS

1. It consumes much time in preparing 10 x 10 matrix without which, interpretation is not possible.

2. The observers have to be trained in order to code correctly.

3. Classroom interaction of pupil-pupil type is not considered here.

4. The system of coding and decoding procedure very difficult and expensive.

VERBAL INTERACTION CATEGORY SYSTEM (VICS)

The verbal interaction category system VICS developed by Amidon and Hunter 1967 is an extension of Flander’s system of ten categories. It contains five major categories for analysing verbal behaviour as follows;

Teacher initiated talk

1. Gives information or opinion

2. Gives direction

3. Ask narrow questions

4. Ask broad questions

Teacher response

5. Accepts

a. Ideas

b. Behaviour

c. Feeling

6. Rejects

a. Ideas

b. Behaviour

c. Feeling

Pupil response

7. Responds to teacher

a. Predictably

b. Unpredictably

8. Responds to another pupil

Pupil initiated task

9. Initiates talk to teacher

10. Initiates talk to another pupil

Other

11. Silence

12. Confusion

As in the FIAC a category is tallied every 3 seconds, in sequence, in columns. The pace of recording is thus the same as in the FIAC. Finally, however, the VICS observations are entered in a 17 row by 17 col matrix for summary, review and reconstruction of the verbal phenomenon observed. As in the FIAC the VICS matrix too has certain significant areas, where the relatively high tally concentrations occurring would refer to unusual aspects in the verbal communication.

OBSERVATION SCHEDULE AND RECORD (OSCAR)

Medley and Mitzel in 1963 developed the Observation Schedule and Record (OSCAR) which is both a ‘sign and category system’ designed to facilitate observational study of teacher graduates. The scales have been derived from factor analysis and the items have been empirically tested. Both verbal and non-verbal phenomena are observed and analysed with this system.

In this ‘combined checklist and category system’, items included are the following

Teacher categories

1. Teacher lectures

2. Teacher reads, tells story

3. Teacher talks to class

4. Teacher illustrates

Pupil categories

1. Pupil talks to group

2. Pupil reads aloud

3. Pupil sings, plays instrument

4. Pupil plays games

5. Pupil scuffles, fidgets

6. Pupil whispers

7. Pupil laughs

8. Pupil talks to visitor, etc.

Non-verbal categories

1. Use of black board

2. Use of slides, film

3. Special teaching aids, etc.

The system is designed to increase observer accuracy by reducing the difficulty of the judgements required; the process of scoring is separated from that of observing teacher behaviour. Very detailed observation cards are used for observing and recording teacher behaviour in this system.