Classroom reflection in action

Abstract

This ethnographic study investigated what previous researchers termed interactive decision-making, decisions made by teachers while conducting a planned lesson. Specifically, this research attempted to understand the various types of interactive decisions teachers confront during reading and social studies lessons, the sources of information used to make those decisions, and their effect on student performance, behavior, and interpretation of the learning environment.

The classrooms of two middle school teachers in central Illinois provided the setting for this research. Three ethnographic procedures formed the basis for data collection: (a) participant observation, (b) interviewing, and (c) shared viewing of videotaped lessons. The participant observation extended over a three month period resulting in 100 observational periods. The teachers and a representative group of 35 students participated in privately conducted formal and informal interviews. One lesson for each teacher was videotaped and subsequently discussed.

The findings prompted a reformulation of interactive decision making. First, students had a profound influence on teacher decisions. Therefore, they received equal attention in the analysis of classroom decision making. Consequently, the "interaction" became communicative interactions. Second, while categories of decisions for teachers and students were established, the labels seemed to provide an overly simplistic characterization of decision-making. In these classrooms, the terms did not represent single events with a set of attributes, but a set of decisions marked by endless diversity. Third, the findings clarified the reasons why these students and teachers did what they did. Their reasons were unbounded by the classroom events. The wider classroom ecology, for example the school or the community, triggered reflections and accounted for specific teacher and student actions. To "operationalize" the differences between these findings and those of previous researchers, the term classroom reflection-in-action was adopted. This term signals a change in the conceptualization of what previous scholars called interactive decisions.