Publication details
Komunikace ve školní třídě
| Title in English | Communication in classroom |
|---|---|
| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2012 |
| Type | Monograph |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The aim of this monograph is to examine educational communication between teachers and pupils in Czech secondary schools. The monograph is based on empirical research done by the authors, who observed and video-recorded 16 different teachers teaching real classes. In-depth interviews with the teachers as well as pupil questionnaires were used as supplementary data collection methods. The study resulted in the following conclusions: 1. Educational communication is strongly dominated by teachers. Their talking time amounts to three quarters of the overall taking time. Pupils have their say relatively often, yet their responses are very short. 2. Classroom communication is interactive, which means that the communication participants take turns. However, the structure of classroom communication is largely predefined. The vast majority of communication sequences are initiated by the teacher, then followed by the pupil's response, and finished by the teacher's feedback. 3. There are communication sequences which are initiated by pupils, yet their content is usually only related to organisational matters. Teachers react to comments and questions related to the subject matters both positively and negatively. Pupils' questions which propose a different understanding of the subject matter from the teacher's one are usually commented on negatively. 4. Teachers tend to ask closed-ended questions of lower cognitive order. By doing so they test the factual knowledge that pupils should learn by heart. However, teachers' questions are very important as they directly influence the pupils' learning experience. This is caused by the fact that the level of cognitive demand of pupils' responses corresponds to the level of teachers' questions. 5. While pupils attempt to answer teachers' questions correctly, they develop a number of strategies that allow them to do so even without knowing the necessary information. 6. The teacher's feedback does not provide enough evaluating information; its role is to steer communication rather than comment on pupils' performances. Pupils' answers are only distinguished as either correct or incorrect, and pupils' answers to open-ended questions are not evaluated at all. 7. Teachers are very interested in developing a dialogue with pupils. Teachers believe that it is an optimal method which guarantees effective teaching. 8. Dialogical forms that appear in communication suffer from a lack of emphasis being placed on rational argumentation. Also, communication forms are affected by the presence of semantic noise (i.e. a situation where teachers and pupils use the same terms but give them different meanings). 9. Teachers use communication to control their relationships with pupils. The most common configuration for these relationships involves power play where the teacher is authoritarian and pupils feel distanced from the teacher's request. A distinct symbiosis exists between power play and meticulous preservation of the I-R-F structure. |
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