TEACHER EXPECTATIONS OF STUDENTS WHO ARE DEAF: A CASE STUDY by
David H. Smith
A DISSERTATION
Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment Of The Requirements For The Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Major: Psychological and Cultural Studies
Under the Supervision of Professor Claire Ramsey
Lincoln, Nebraska July 2003
TEACHER EXPECTATIONS OF STUDENTS WHO ARE DEAF: A CASE STUDY
David Harry Smith, Ph.D. University of Nebraska, 2003 Advisor: Claire Ramsey This single case study examined a Deaf teacher’s communication behaviors that reflected her expectations of her deaf students. The teacher taught a U.S. History class to high school juniors at a state school for the deaf. The class was considered of average achievement ability at the school. There were seven students of diverse ethnic backgrounds in the class who all identified themselves as Deaf. The primary modes of communication used were American Sign Language and written English. Data were collected through videotaped classroom observations and interviews of the teacher and students. Analysis was done by categorizing the utterances of the participants based on a preliminary model of teacher expectations developed for this study. Within these categories, communication behavior patterns were identified. From the analysis, descriptions were produced of the communication patterns of the teacher that reflected her expectations of her students. Results showed that the Deaf teacher in this study showed communication behaviors that reveal high expectations of her Deaf students including setting a friendly but no-nonsense climate in her classroom, assigning her students a challenging level of work, providing a good amount of direct instruction, frequently questioning her students, and trying to elicit further expansions of their answers. The students were provided many opportunities for output, both signed and written. The teacher provided feedback in a concise manner and encouraged students to do better when they did not meet her
expectations. These teacher behaviors were not only shown for the class as a whole, but were also differentiated by student based on their strengths and needs. Of all factors investigated, the affective climate generated by the teacher was the most overarching communication behavior that manifested teacher expectations. The preliminary model for this study was revised based on the findings. Recommendations for further research to examine teacher expectations with other deaf education settings and participants are included.
What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
i TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................... iv LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................ v Chapter 1 .......................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 The Problem ....................................................................................................................................4 Purpose of The Study ....................................................................................................................6 Research Questions ........................................................................................................................6 Definition of Terms......................................................................................................... 7 Significance of the Study................................................................................................. 8 Limitations ...................................................................................................................... 9 Chapter 2 ........................................................................................................................ 11 Review of the Literature ................................................................................................. 11 Literature on Expectations in the Field of Deaf Education ................................................ 12 Background on Teacher Expectations Research ................................................................... 16 Factors involved in Teacher Expectancies ............................................................................. 18 Theoretical Framework for the proposed study .................................................................... 27 Chapter 3 ........................................................................................................................31 Method ...........................................................................................................................31 Setting ............................................................................................................................................ 31 Participants.................................................................................................................................... 34 Research Design ........................................................................................................... 38 Data Collection ............................................................................................................................ 38 Data Analysis ................................................................................................................................ 39 Verification and Reliability ......................................................................................................... 41 Chapter 4 ....................................................................................................................... 44
ii Input .............................................................................................................................. 44 Overview of Arrangement ......................................................................................................... 44 Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 44 Input and Content ....................................................................................................................... 45 Input and Language/Communication ..................................................................................... 54 Input and Cultural/Social .......................................................................................................... 60 Input and Classroom Behavior ................................................................................................. 65 Summary of Input Communication Behaviors ...................................................................... 68 Chapter 5 ....................................................................................................................... 70 Output ........................................................................................................................... 70 Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 70 Output and Content .................................................................................................................... 70 Output and Language/Communication.................................................................................. 79 Output and Cultural/Social ....................................................................................................... 82 Output and Classroom Behavior .............................................................................................. 85 Summary of Output communication behaviors .................................................................... 85 Chapter 6 ....................................................................................................................... 87 Feedback ....................................................................................................................... 87 Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 87 Feedback and Content ................................................................................................................ 87 Feedback and Language/Communication.............................................................................. 95 Feedback and Cultural/Social ................................................................................................... 98 Feedback and Classroom Behavior ........................................................................................ 102 Summary of Feedback Communication ................................................................................ 103 Chapter 7 ...................................................................................................................... 105 Climate ......................................................................................................................... 105 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 105 The General Climate ................................................................................................................. 105 Climate and Content ................................................................................................................. 110 Climate and Language/Communication ............................................................................... 115 Climate and Cultural/Social..................................................................................................... 117 Climate and Classroom Behavior ........................................................................................... 120 Summary of Climate.................................................................................................................. 123 Chapter 8 ...................................................................................................................... 124 Discussion and Conclusion ......................................................................................... 124
iii Summary of Findings ................................................................................................................ 124 Conclusions ................................................................................................................................ 128 Revised Model ............................................................................................................................ 133 Directions for Further Research ............................................................................................. 136 References .................................................................................................................... 139 Appendices ................................................................................................................... 148 Appendix A ................................................................................................................... 148 Institutional Review Board Approval Letter ............................................................................. 148 Classroom Parental Informed Consent Form .......................................................................... 149 Classroom Youth Assent Form ................................................................................................... 151 Appendix B ................................................................................................................... 152 Classroom Diagram ....................................................................................................................... 152 Appendix C ................................................................................................................... 153 Interview protocol for Teacher ................................................................................................... 153 Interview protocol for Students .................................................................................................. 154 Appendix D .................................................................................................................. 155 Code Book for Teacher Expectations ........................................................................................ 155 Appendix E................................................................................................................... 157 Data Coding Sheet ......................................................................................................................... 157
LIST OF TABLES
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Table 2-1 Rosenthal’s Four Factor Theory ..................................................................................... 28 Table 2-2 Preliminary Model of Teacher Expectations ................................................................. 30 Table 4-1 Frequency of Utterances by Factor and Focus ............................................................. 44 Table 4-2 Input Behavior Patterns Across Focal Areas ............................................................... 45 Table 5-1 Output Behavior Patterns Across Focal Areas ............................................................. 70 Table 6-1 Feedback Behavior Patterns Across Focal Areas ......................................................... 87 Table 7-1 Feedback Behavior Patterns Across Focal Areas ....................................................... 110 Table 8-1 Communication Behavior Patterns by Focal Areas and Factor............................... 125
LIST OF FIGURES
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Figure 3-1 Diagram of Triangulation ................................................................................................ 41 Figure 8-1 Revised Model of Teacher Communication of Expectations ................................. 135
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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I would first especially like to thank my parents Jean and the late Harry Smith who never expected less than the best from their Deaf son. I would also like to express gratitude to all of the adults who saw my potential when I was young and encouraged me along the way. I am grateful for the Deaf people who I met over the many years for instilling in me a sense of pride and who helped me find my true identity. In particular, I thank the deaf and hard-of-hearing children I have worked with for giving me the inspiration to do this project. It is to them that I dedicate my life’s purpose. In the completion of this project, I would like to thank the students and the teacher who willingly and without hesitation agreed to participate in this study. I sincerely hope all of my future research participants are as generous with their time and confidence as these participants. I would also like to thank my research assistant, Ms. Heidi Hottle, a blessing, for her valuable assistance and ideas with the data analysis, coding, and general all-around help. Ms. Mimi Mann deserves gratitude for helping provide me with access to some of the equipment used in this study and keeping me abreast of the events swirling around me while I was a recluse working on this project. At the University of Nebraska, I would like to thank Dr. Mike Epstein for his straightforward feedback that enabled me to obtain a grant to fund this project (Office of Special Education Programs, U.S. Department of Education Grant Number H324B020052, Student Initiated Research Projects). I would also like to thank Dr. Stanley Vasa and Dr. David Wilson, not only for being my reading committee, but also helping me deal with the myriad details of the Graduate Studies department. I would like to express appreciation to Dr. John Bernthal for his belief in my potential and for financial support through the Barkley
vii Trust. I am greatly indebted to my advisor, Dr. Claire Ramsey, for her support of my ideas, advice, understanding, assistance, and for coaching me on the peculiar customs of higher education. I also appreciate her trust in me by giving me a long leash and not pulling on it too often. Last, but not least, I want to express special appreciation for my better half, Rachel, for her patience and understanding, willingness to sacrifice, emotional support when things got crazy, and pride in my accomplishments. As I often like to say, what goes around comes around.
Chapter 1
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Introduction Historically, the in United States, the issue of successfully raising and educating children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing has been contentious, and even vehement disagreements have occurred among the interested parties as to the best means of accomplishing this goal (Lane, 1984, Moores, 2001). However, there is general agreement that the education of the deaf has been largely unsuccessful. This was first reported to the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare in 1965 (Babbidge, 1965). Twenty-three years later, the President’s Commission on Education of the Deaf reiterated the same conclusion (COED, 1988). In 1992, the Secretary of Education noted that the low reading skills of deaf children reflect the dismal outcomes of the education system’s struggle to effectively teach them (U.S. Department of Education, 1992). Educators, parents of deaf children, and deaf adults themselves have advanced several hypotheses for this failure. Among the various issues blamed for being at fault are ideologies, communication methods, type of school placement, and curricula going back to 1817 when the first U.S. school for the deaf opened (Lane, 1992). One persistent popular myth or belief is that teachers have low expectations of children who are deaf. In ways that are still undocumented, it is believed that teachers’ low expectations lead to students’ poor educational outcomes.
This myth has rarely been
explored, and neither teacher expectations in deaf education, nor the processes by which they might lead to poor schooling outcomes, have been documented. The term “myth” as applied to low expectations was also used by Allen (1998) to describe the ideas the educational community, professionals and parents have about the abilities of children who are deaf.
2 Perhaps the best-known claim that low expectations are to blame for the lack of positive outcomes in education was published in a controversial monograph, Unlocking the Curriculum (Johnson, Liddell & Erting 1989). The authors’ position is that deaf education fails to live up to its promise because children who are deaf lack linguistic access to curricular content and because of “acceptance of the notion that below grade-level performance is to be expected of deaf children” (p.3). However, the authors provide no data to support their claim and little evidence has been published since then. In spite of this, anecdotes regarding low academic expectations of children who are deaf persist. Beliefs that children who are deaf cannot achieve academically are not totally without foundation. Many deaf students do obtain low scores on standardized achievement tests. Although the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT) has a version that is regularly normed on a large sample of students who are deaf, outcomes on measures of basic skills are still low. On average, deaf high school students consistently score below the fourth grade level on the Reading Comprehension sub-test (Allen, 1986; Holt, Traxler & Allen, 1997). Much of the blame has been placed upon programs and teachers of the deaf. Anecdotes to the effect that below-average achievement levels are “normal” for children who are deaf add to the aura of myth surrounding this topic. Lane, Hoffmeister and Bahan (1996) give examples of teachers giving deaf students work of lower complexity, simplified instruction, and various diagnostic labels such as “Learning Disabled” and “Emotionally/Behaviorally Disturbed” at a higher rate than the general population. Wood (1998), in a study of the literacy life stories of deaf college students noted a common pattern. Many of the subjects told of receiving gratuitous praise for their writing in K-12 settings. They often later found out from others that their writing was actually substandard. All of these examples are suggestive of low expectations.
3 However, none of them show empirically how teachers direct their expectations towards deaf students. The idea that teacher expectations can influence student achievement was first suggested in an early research project focused on experimentally induced self-fulfilling prophecy effects (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968). This work found that there is indeed a statistically significant relationship between teacher expectations and student achievement. Higher teacher expectations result in higher student achievement levels. Conversely, lower expectations can result in lower achievement. Jussim, Eccles, and Madon (1996) found that the strongest effects for lowered expectations occur with stigmatized groups, such as ethnic minorities, students with low socio-economic status (SES), students in transition, and diagnostically labeled groups (e.g. those who have been labeled learning disabled). These socially stigmatized groups are more vulnerable to expectancy effects from teachers. In light of the assignment of children to special education services by credible experts, diagnostic labels have been found to be an even more significant basis for teacher expectations effects (Rist & Harrel, 1982). At this time no evidence exists that children who are deaf suffer from the expectations effects attributed to stigmatized groups. However, Marschark (1997) states that children who are deaf can be considered a stigmatized group. Also Keane-Dawes (1997) noted that Jamaican and American children who are deaf have been categorized as a stigmatized population and that they can perceive stigmatizing attitudes directed at them. It also goes almost without saying that children who are deaf acquire at least one diagnostic label as a result of their enrollment into special education programs and participation in the Individual Education Plan (IEP) process upon entering school. From the above, it can be
inferred that children who are deaf are a vulnerable group and thus potentially subject to
4
increased teacher expectations effects. Also as previously noted, there are reports of educational practices that appear to reflect low expectations. The Problem There is a need to begin documenting teacher expectations of students in the field of deaf education. Before we can even explore the existence of whether low expectations exist, the issue of the various kinds of communication modes used in deaf education forces us to consider how expectations can be conveyed to or mediated by deaf students. This includes both high and low expectations. There are no known examples of expectations research outside of the verbal and nonverbal components of spoken languages. Some observations have been made of methodologies and curricula that appear to reflect the existence of lowered expectations in deaf education (Allen, 1998; Johnson, et al., 1989; Lane, et al., 1996). However, an exhaustive search of the literature in deaf education yielded only one example of empirical research focused on the area of teacher expectations. Using a survey in his dissertation, Redding (1995) found no difference for teacher expectations towards minority deaf students. There is a need to expand teacher expectations research into the field of deaf education. As for needs in the area of teacher expectations research in general, most previous studies have focused on individual aspects of teacher behavior towards students. The research methodology of some of these studies has been criticized as misleading (e.g. gratuitous praise for easy work coded as a “positive affect”) by Good & Thompson (1998). These authors have stated that there is a need for a description of multiple communication patterns that convey expectations. For example, communication patterns that reflect low expectations might be: (a) frequent praise for student initiations, even marginal ones, (b)
5 giving easy assignments, (c) asking students to answer easy questions and/or lower order questions, and (d) giving up and providing the answer. Good and Thompson do not propose a hypothetical example of high expectation communication patterns, although they can also be present in classrooms. Most expectations research to date uses quantitative methods. Of the hundreds of previous studies of expectations, very few have been done using a qualitative approach. It is one thing to quantify the number of times supposedly positive praise is given to a child. But it can be quite misleading if one does not try to get good descriptions of the conditions under which these discourse patterns occur. Good & Thompson (1998) noted that in the overall field of expectations research, there is a need to look at the quality of the patterns of behaviors shared by the teacher-student dyad. Their conclusion was that intensive study of individual teachers and their interactions with students would better illustrate clusters of behaviors more effectively than studies done on teacher expectation effects across many classrooms. In addition, Weinstein (2002) states that in the quest for experimental rigor and proof of self-fulfilling prophecies, the field of educational research has neglected the issue of the broader ecological circumstances under which expectancy effects can be found. This includes the experiences of the participants (particularly the students); interaction of person and environment; interaction of the institutions of classrooms, school, homes, and universities; and chronological processes. While the scope of such an approach was too ambitious for this study, it is hoped from the research reported here that we can begin to gain some detailed insights on the communication aspect of expectations within the deaf education classroom.
Purpose of The Study
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The purpose of this study is to present an in-depth description of deaf teacher/deaf student classroom interaction in order to document teacher expectations and the multiple communication patterns that convey these expectations to students. For the purposes of this study, multiple communication patterns were generally and tentatively defined as groupings or sets of observed behaviors that convey a certain type of implicit or explicit message. Because the motivations behind expectations are not directly observable, follow-up interviews with the teacher were critical in eliciting and examining the intentions of communication behaviors observed. The students were also interviewed to assess their perceptions of teacher communication behaviors and their interpretations of expectations. The goal of this study was to initiate the development of a theoretical model of teacher expectations in the education of the deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Research Questions For this study, one focal research question was developed with sub-questions designed to focus on various aspects of the communication of and interpretations of teacher expectations. Focal Question: How does a deaf teacher communicate her expectations to deaf students? Sub-questions: 1.What kinds of expectations does the teacher hold for the students? 2.What patterns of verbal and non-verbal cues does the teacher use? 3. How does the teacher exhibit differential behaviors with the students? 4.How do the students respond to these cues and behaviors?
Definition of Terms
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For the purposes of this study teacher expectations are defined as a teacher’s beliefs and attitudes about the ability of a student to (a) meet certain established academic standards; (b) use language appropriately, including ASL and English; (c) behave appropriately within the classroom environment; and (d) follow established social and cultural norms which may include those of the dominant cultural group, other non-Anglo groups, and of the Deaf community. Verbal communication as used here means communication through language and may include, but is not limited to, vocal speech. It can also include the prosodic and grammatical features of ASL, some of which might be mistaken for non-verbal communication by those not familiar with the language, such as certain gestures and facial expressions. Non-verbal communication includes all gestures, facial expressions and other communication actions that are not generated by the grammatical rules of ASL. The term “communication actions” is not just limited to bodily actions by individuals; it also includes other actions described within the following definitions. Climate refers to the general mood, provision of emotional support, warmth and attention or a lack thereof by teachers through verbal or non-verbal cues indicating support and approval. This can include the attitudes, statements and behaviors directed towards the student(s). Feedback denotes the teachers’ evaluations of student contributions, comments, work, or behavior. This can include praise, criticism, acceptance of ideas, or ignoring student contributions.
8 Input refers to the type and amount of material presented to the student by the teacher. This could include challenging or difficult work, insignificant “busy work,” or anything in between. Output indicates the opportunities provided by the teacher for the students to express their knowledge either by written work, question and answer sessions, or via verbal interactions. Significance of the Study Given the paucity of research on teacher expectations in deaf education and the persistence of the low expectations myth, this study fills a gap in knowledge by providing empirical grounding for development of a model of expectations in deaf education. It will also propose questions for further research. In addition, there is an emerging body of research on American Sign Language (ASL) discourse, classroom discourse and teacher/student interactions in deaf education to which this study contributes. By shedding light on the myth of expectations in deaf education, it is hoped that a dialogue will begin towards understanding and improving the dismal achievement results we have been seeing. This will necessarily involve teachers, parents, administrators, teacher preparation personnel, and advocates for deaf students. Such discussions will lead participants to reflect on their beliefs about expectations and to design ways to encourage children who are deaf to achieve more. The model developed will begin highlighting effective strategies and practices teachers can use to communicate high expectations towards their students, as well as methods for realistically examining low expectation behaviors and revising them. This study adds to the growing literature on teacher and student interactions in terms of expectations, especially in groups viewed as vulnerable to schooling difficulties. This study
9 also expands upon a theoretical model first developed by Rosenthal (1974) that is widely supported in the literature (e.g. Brophy, 1985; Cooper, 1985; Harris & Rosenthal, 1985; Jussim, et al., 1998). Rosenthal’s model and its relevance to the design of this study are described in both the literature review and methods section. Limitations There are several limitations to this study. First, since only one classroom and teacher is involved, the results cannot be generalized to other classrooms. This is just the beginning of adding teacher expectations as a topic to the variety of research done on deaf education. Others reasons not to generalize the results include but are not limited to the following: (a) There are wide variations in the kinds of communication modes used between teachers and deaf students; (b) Teachers are sometimes hired before they have the skills to handle even rudimentary communication with their deaf or hard-of-hearing students; (c) There are noteworthy differences between a self-contained deaf education classroom and a mainstreamed classroom, that in the latter, communication is often mediated by a third party in the form of a sign language interpreter (Labue, 1998); and (d) No two teachers handle their classrooms exactly the same way. Finally, my presence as a researcher observing a classroom is bound to induce an expectancy effect on the behavior of the teacher. It is possible that the participant teacher deviated from her normal approach with students. Such behavior was noted in a narrative research project on teachers (Wilson, 1994). Students themselves may be self-conscious and/or behave in a manner that is not typical of their ordinary style. Thus the early observations and data were analyzed with this in mind. However, once the novelty of my presence wore off, over time more “normal” behaviors emerged from the participants. This
typical experience of the “observer’s paradox” justifies an ethnographic approach to the question and the relatively long period of time spent doing field work for this study.
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Chapter 2
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Review of the Literature For many years, anecdotes and published statements of educators of the deaf have suggested that there are low expectations for the academic achievement of their students. A literature on expectations in the field of deaf education revealed just two research-based documents. Other documents were more rhetorical in nature, such as position papers, although they do point towards a need for research in this area. A broader literature search about the role of teachers’ expectations on their interactions and behaviors with their students in general education settings yielded numerous articles. Much of this literature predates 1990 reflecting the fact that the topic had been well researched, theoretically defined, and well tested by that time. This suggested that the study of expectations in Deaf Education was timely and would fill a gap in knowledge. Rosenthal (Harris & Rosenthal, 1985; Rosenthal, 1973) developed a theoretical model that is commonly cited in the literature. This model served as the framework of this study. The term “expectations” as used here refers to the achievement levels that teachers presume their students are capable of being able to accomplish.
Other terms used
interchangeably in the literature with expectations include “self-fulfilling prophecy” and “teacher expectancy effect.”
One other term that was employed in older literature was
“Pygmalion effect” in reference to George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion about efforts to change a Cockney girl into a refined Englishwoman. This term as applied to expectations was used in the landmark text Pygmalion in the Classroom (Rosenthal and Jacobsen, 1968), which will be explained in further detail below. As defined by McCown, et al., (1996), the Pygmalion effect, and all the other interchangeable terms, refer to the influence that a teachers’
12 expectations may have on the behavior of students. A more detailed definition of these terms will be given below. Literature on Expectations in the Field of Deaf Education The charge that the results of deaf education in the United States are unsatisfactory was made in Unlocking the Curriculum: Principles for Achieving Access in Deaf Education (Johnson, et al., 1989). Reasons given for this failure were a lack of linguistic access to curricular content and the cycle of low expectations in deaf education. In this monograph and in a follow-up summary (Johnson, et al., 1994), the authors argued for an educational program that includes the use of ASL as a first language, early intervention, and parent education. Little was said in either article about the issue of low expectations itself, although they contend that speechcentered deaf education is perpetuated by the idea that low academic achievement is an inevitable consequence of deafness. They also added that the blame for the failure of speechcentered pedagogy was placed on the students rather than the system or the practices of the people implementing the system. Schleper (1995) further articulated low expectations in an article on whole language approaches for teaching English to students who are deaf. He reported finding old notes from graduate school in which a guest speaker who was a “distinguished expert” in the field of deaf education outlined what deaf students “could do” and what deaf students “could not do.” According to this “expert,” they could do math computation, express concrete ideas, and do arts and crafts. They could not solve word problems, use passive voice in English, or grasp complex ideas. Along with this, Schleper added that the underlying message from professional literature is not to expect much from deaf children. He also told of a conversation with the mother of a deaf child who was not satisfied with her child’s progress,
and who was told that she should not complain because he was doing much better than
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the “average” deaf child. Schleper cited Whitesell (1991) in which the subject of the study, a deaf teacher, explained that she was successful as a teacher because she expected her students to become literate. The basic message of Schleper’s article was that a whole language approach was appropriate for deaf children and that a positive attitude and high expectations should be a part of this approach. Wood’s (1998) study of the life stories of Deaf learners of English raised issues of teachers’ attitudes about the abilities of deaf children to become skilled at writing. One common theme was gratuitous praise for having good writing skills and getting good grades. The deaf autobiographers in this study often found out later from other teachers who were either not familiar with deafness, or just more honest, that their writing was actually substandard. In addition, Wood gathered statements from English teachers to the effect that teaching deaf people English is an impossible task, and they also told her that deaf people couldn’t read or write well because they cannot hear spoken English. In effect, the teachers blamed the students for their failures. In a similar case study of gifted deaf children by Vaille and Paterson (1996), one of the participants who was mainstreamed and had teachers with no training in deaf education said that they had low expectations of him. A person might think that teachers who had training in deaf education issues would do better. However, another participant who attended a residential program remarked that the quality of work she received was repetitive and unchallenging. In essence her teachers had low expectations for her and her deaf classmates. This is supported by Lane, et al. (1996) who presented examples of teachers giving deaf students simplified instruction, and repetitious work of low complexity. They stated that
lowered curriculum content is a consequence of the low expectations teachers have of
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their students. One article that at first did not seem to have any sort of relationship to the issue of expectations was a description of a collaborative effort between Gallaudet University’s Teacher Education program and Liaoning Normal School of Special Education in China (Martin, et al., 1999). Two deaf education students from Gallaudet were sent to a school for the deaf in China to do an internship. The article described how the project came about, the cultural and educational experiences, the accommodations that needed to be made, the communication modality, educational philosophy and teaching methods. In addition it mentioned expectations of deaf learners. As it turns out, there are low expectations for employment capabilities as reflected by the job choices for deaf Chinese. Part of the reason for this goes back to the type of curriculum employed in schools for the deaf that prepares deaf adolescents mostly for non-professional jobs. There are some exceptions to this, but they are rare. As we can see, low expectations for children who are deaf are not limited to the United States. The deaf American interns had serious informal discussions with their Chinese students and as part of their teaching unit they offered “Deaf can” types of activities (i.e. Deaf people can do anything). A positive result is that the Chinese schoolteachers and leaders took notice and began to discuss more options for high school preparation. One research project that lends itself to expectancies or self-fulfilling prophecies is a study done comparing teachers’ ratings of the communication abilities of their deaf students to test scores (Hyde & Power, 1996). In this study, teachers’ ratings of the speech intelligibility and receptive communication ability across five methods of communication were compared with student scores on tests of these methods. Results showed that the
15 teachers underestimated their students’ communicative abilities in all modes. The authors hypothesized that this would engender self-fulfilling prophecies of poor performance. However, this issue was outside the scope of their study so it was not addressed further. They did recommend the use of quick, reliable and valid procedures of assessment so that teachers would have a better awareness of their students’ communication competencies. The one study that directly addressed the issue of teacher expectations of deaf or hard-of-hearing children was done by Redding (1995). This project focused more on the effect of the ethnic, racial, or linguistic background of the students on teachers’ expectations. A survey was sent to 449 teachers of deaf and hard-of-hearing students in New York State and 192 responded. In this survey, vignettes were provided of a student with implied behavior problem who had average academic skills. The racial/ethnic label was varied among the vignettes. Teachers were asked to respond using a Likert scale about expectations and intervention strategies. Data analysis showed no main effects among either the expectations or intervention strategies for any of the racial/ethnic backgrounds. Before concluding this part of the literature review, it is worth looking at other indications that teacher expectations are a significant issue in deaf education. Harold Kund in his first news article as Superintendent at California School for the Deaf, Riverside, remarked that he wanted higher expectations for student performance (Ahern, 2001). Jane Fernandes (1997) made similar comments regarding the deaf education program she directed at Hawaii and subsequently at the Pre-College Programs at Gallaudet University. Ron Stern, Director of Instruction at California School for the Deaf at Fremont, (now Superintendent at New Mexico School for the Deaf) noted that expectations for deaf children were watered down in the past and that they were now much higher (Mladinich, 1995). Some programs for deaf
16 students have explicit statements related to expectations in their policies. The TRIPOD Deaf Education program in Burbank, California has a policy of teaming regular and deaf education teachers together. The idea behind this is that the regular education teacher would have higher expectations for a whole class based on those for hearing children (Allen, 1998). Rocky Mountain Magnet School for the Deaf describes itself as a school with high expectations for student achievement on par with their hearing peers (Rocky Mountain Magnet School for the Deaf, 2002). This is not an issue confined only to self-contained deaf education programs.
A mainstreamed school program at West Hill school district in
Syracuse, New York states that their expectations and academic demands are the same for all students regardless of their classroom setting (OCM Board of Cooperative Educational Services, 2001). These examples bolster the idea that teacher expectations of the deaf are an issue that needs to be explored and given a theoretical basis in order to improve practice in the field. Background on Teacher Expectations Research Here, we look to the field of education in general for information regarding expectations. Nearly all of the articles that follow cite Rosenthal and Jacobsen’s Pygmalion in the Classroom (1968) as the landmark study that led to increased interest and research on teacher expectancies. What follows is a summary of the study, some of the criticism leveled at it, and a description of its impact on research in educational psychology. Rosenthal and Jacobsen (1968) wished to test their hypothesis that self-fulfilling prophecies, first popularized by the sociologist Robert Merton in 1948, operate within the classroom. In order to do this, they administered a “test” to students within an elementary school. This “test” purportedly was able to predict academic “blooming” within the near future. They randomly
17 selected 20% of the students from each grade in the entire school and told their teachers that they had been identified by the test as potential “bloomers.” This was intended to instill the expectancy effect in the teachers about those children. All of these children had actually been given an IQ test, which was used as a pre-test for the experiment. These children were tested again a year later, after the conclusion of the experiment. The results showed that there were significant intellectual gains among the students identified as “bloomers.” In the aftermath of this research there was criticism leveled at the methodology and the analysis (Elashoff & Snow, 1971). However, even if the results were questionable, this work led to more research being done on the topic. Darley and Fazio (1980) conducted one of the later experimental studies that helped more decisively to confirm the phenomenon of self-fulfilling prophecies. Unlike the other studies, this one set out to show the intervening process by which self-fulfilling prophecies were mediated. They postulated a sequence model of simple social interactions that involves the following; (a) a perceivers’ formation of an expectancy about a target person, (b) the perceivers’ behavior matching the expectancy, (c) the target’s perception of this behavior (d) the target’s response (e) the perceiver’s interpretation of the response and (f) target’s interpretation of their own response. While other factors lead to self-fulfilling prophecies at each step, and this model shows only social aspects and not necessarily educational practices, it does help clarify the process of the phenomenon Jussim (1986) put forth a theoretical and integrative view that includes the classroom in order to further confirm the validity of self-fulfilling prophecies. The author presented a model with three sequential stages: (a) teachers develop expectations, (b) teachers treat students differently depending on their expectations, and (c) students react to this treatment
in expectancy-confirming ways.
18 This is similar to Darley and Fazio’s (1980) model
described above. Unlike previous models, which focused on specific parts of the selffulfilling prophecy process or a single mediating mechanism, the author attempted to provide a more comprehensive view. While not exhaustive, Jussim’s article does provide a good overview of the research that went on over the years since Pygmalion in the Classroom (Rosenthal & Jacobsen, 1968). Factors involved in Teacher Expectancies The literature suggests three general themes that correspond to Jussim’s model (1986). One is the influence of student characteristics on formation of teacher expectations. Another is how teachers communicate their expectations to their students. The third is student reaction to teacher perceptions of their expectations of them. Influence of student characteristics on teacher expectations. There are several types of student characteristics that potentially influence a teacher’s expectations. One of them is gender. In a study of the effects of teachers’ expectations on young children’s literacy development (Palardy, 1998), the influences of gender were observed. The author claimed that it is well documented that boys do less well than girls in beginning literacy. Reasons that have been given are a slower physical and mental maturity rate for boys, higher appeal for basal readers to girls, and that classroom acculturation patterns have greater suitability to girls. However, the author hypothesized that some boys are less successful at beginning literacy because their teachers believe that they will be less successful. Conversely, other boys may be as successful as the girls because of their teacher’s positive beliefs. Students whose teachers believed that boys and girls could be equally successful had statistically equal SAT scores. Students of teachers who believed that boys were inferior to girls, showed they had significantly lower
SAT scores. The author argued that this comes about due to teachers’ unintentional
19
communication of expectations to their students. As a result, students develop their selfconcepts of their reading ability based on what they perceive from their teachers. In another gender-related study (Peterson & Bainbridge, 1999), the authors studied how middle school teachers assess student writing assignments based on gender. In this study researchers removed names or other references to gender from student writing assignments and asked the teachers to assess them. The teachers made a conscious effort to ignore the influence of gender perceptions and tried to ensure equality in their assessments. In spite of the above conditions, the teachers were able to construct the gender of their students based on the qualities inherent in their writing. Once gender perceptions are constructed, they influenced how the teachers assessed the writing, perpetuating gender stereotypes and inequalities. These inequalities tended to favor the girls over the boys. The authors contend that rubrics used to evaluate writing are slanted towards the girls writing. They believed that teachers needed to know both male and female rhetorical styles to fairly evaluate student writing. In the areas of socio-economic status (SES) and race, a quantitative meta-analysis was conducted by Baron, Tom and Cooper (1985). They hypothesized that teacher expectations would be higher for white students than for blacks or other ethnic minority groups and that teacher expectations for middle-class students would be higher than those for lower SES students. The results of the analysis supported their hypothesis. Solomon, Battitisch and Hom (1996) compared teachers working in suburban schools with their urban counterparts. Their results indicated that teachers from schools serving lower SES students were less trusting and more skeptical about student abilities.
This was reflected by the greater
20 emphasis on teacher authority and control, and less emphasis on student autonomy and constructivist approaches as compared to teachers in other schools. To take the issue of race and SES a bit further, Cooper and Moore (1995), asked teachers to evaluate the academic potential of students who differed by race, gender, SES, whether they came from singleparent homes, and whether they were teenage mothers. Lowered expectations were found for students who were teenage mothers, from single-parent homes, and those who were black males. Prom (1999) did a small-scale study of general education teacher perceptions of special education students. The results indicated that the general education teachers had some negative perceptions regarding participation and progress of special education students in class. This was in spite of videotaped observations showing that the students were participating more and progressing far better than the teachers perceived. On the issue of adding minority status to a special education label, Obiakor (1999) discussed cases that reveal the impact of teacher expectations on the accuracy or inaccuracy of self-concepts of children with exceptionalities who have minority backgrounds. The author argued that this population faces multidimensional problems in the school. These include attribution of academic failure to underlying genetic defects, unrealistically low expectations, inaccurate perceptions of the self-concepts of minority learners, a lack of appropriate role models, and over-representation of minorities in special education programs. The latter issue is deemed one of the most serious problems. Because they look, behave, speak and learn differently from their peers, they are much more likely to be mislabeled as special education students. This in turn could lead to lowered achievement and lowered self-concept on the part of the student.
21 Teacher communication of expectations to students. Once teachers form expectations, in what ways are they communicated to their students? One of the first studies to address this question was by Brophy and Good (1970). They stated that the biggest weakness of the Rosenthal and Jacobsen (1968) study was that it only demonstrated the existence of expectancy effects. It accounted for none of the intervening events between the formation of teacher expectancies and the measurement of the resulting outcomes. The authors advanced one of the first models of this process, which is a sequential model similar to those explained above. This was an observational study of dyadic contacts between teachers and students in four first grade classrooms. Brophy and Good wanted to know how differential teacher expectations were communicated to children in ways that would cause the children to produce reciprocal behavior. They observed that teachers demanded better performance from those children for whom they had higher expectations and were more likely to praise such performance. When it came to students with lower expectations, they were more likely to accept poor performance and less likely to praise good performance when it did occur. The authors followed this up with further studies (Brophy, 1985; Brophy & Good, 1974; Good, 1981) where they compiled research findings as to how teachers vary their behavior towards high and low achieving students. The findings include the following teacher behaviors: 1. Less waiting time for the lows to answer. 2. Giving less attention to the lows. 3. Calling less frequently on the lows to answer. 4. Not staying with the lows in failure situations or giving them the answer. 5. Seating the lows further away from teacher.
6. Demanding less work and effort from the lows.
22
7. Criticizing lows more frequently than the highs. 8. Praising the lows less frequently than the highs after success. 9. Failing to provide feedback to the public responses of lows. 10. Inappropriate reinforcement of marginal or incorrect answers by lows. 11. Interrupting the performance of lows more frequently than the highs. 12. Less friendly interaction with lows. 13. Less smiling and non-verbal warmth, including less eye contact towards lows. 14. Showed highly differentiated behaviors between highs and lows The above behaviors are a combination of verbal and non-verbal communication towards students. While Rosenthal (Rosenthal & Jacobsen, 1968) initially focused on the outcomes of teacher expectancies, he later put forward a “theory” of the mediation of communication expectancy effects (Rosenthal, 1974; Harris & Rosenthal, 1985). His deliberate use of quotation marks on the word theory was because he did not want to imply that it was a theory in the strictest scientific sense, but rather a preliminary model. He postulated four factors that influence the way teachers interact with students for whom they have high expectations. These four factors are (1) Climate; creating a warmer social-emotional mood, (2) Feedback; giving more of it to students (3) Input; teaching extra material of a more difficult level, and (4) Output; giving them more opportunities to respond and question. Rosenthal developed these four factors through meta-analysis of the findings of more than 40 studies of teacher expectations. Further support came with a follow-up meta-analysis of over 200 studies (Harris & Rosenthal, 1986).
23 Cooper (1985) gave a presentation of four models of expectation communication. Two were Brophy and Good’s (1974), and Rosenthal’s (1974) as described above. The other two were Cooper’s own model (Cooper, 1979), and a later revision of this model (Cooper & Good, 1983). The strength of this article is that four operational definitions of teacher expectations are explained. The first is ability or achievement measures, in which teachers are asked to rate or rank their students on some sort of scale. The second measure is expected improvement, where teachers are asked to predict how much academic progress they anticipate. The third is manipulated expectations, where teachers are given an erroneous estimate of a students’ potential in order to create a treatment effect on the part of the teacher. The last was natural discrepancy measures, where comparisons are made between a teacher’s estimates of student ability and an objective assessment tool. Another useful definition supplied here is the distinction between types of expectation effects. One type is the “self-fulfilling prophecy,” which is based on erroneous estimates that induce new behaviors that make the originally false belief come true. The other type of effect is the “sustaining expectation effect” where teachers respond on the basis of their existing expectations rather than changes caused by sources other than the teacher. Cooper stated that the latter effects are more frequently found in classrooms. Four units of analysis deemed critical to expectations research are looked at in the Cooper article. The first one is within/between classes, which has social implications because teacher comparisons between students occur more within a class than between classes. The second one is the level of schooling. Teacher influence appears to diminish from elementary to high school and undergraduate college years and reemerges in graduate school because of the amount of close interaction with a teacher. The third unit is time of the year with the
24 beginning and end of school years deemed the most unstable for demonstrating expectation effects. The fourth unit is subject matter, since the level of objectivity for teacher assessment differs for subjects like math where there are more “right” answers, compared to reading where the correctness of an answer can be more subjective. To sum up these factors, the author stated there are a total of 192 possible combinations assuming six levels of schooling.
Given all of the above criteria, the four models studied were best used for
sustained expectations effects, using naturalistic observation and ability or achievement measures, and within a class at early elementary grade levels. Cooper’s (1979) expectation communication model is borrows from achievement attribution theory, studies of learned helplessness, and locus of control research. It states that in the beginning teachers will form expectations of their students based on student ability and background. Then it moves on to teacher perceptions of control over performance and the interaction context. Teachers feel they have more control when they initiate the interaction and it is more of private than public nature. For low expectation students, more control is needed than for high expectation students. In order to maintain control, teachers will provide a less friendly social emotional environment and use less praise and more criticism towards lows than highs. This will reduce the initiation of interactions by lows. In other words, teachers use feedback and climate to control contexts and reduce the contingency between rewards and student effort. This can lead to low students believing that effort will not bring about success and therefore they try less. This is believed to lead to reduced student selfefficacy and learned helplessness. This model was later revised in terms of teacher control to include not only control over interactions but also control over performance outcomes that they attributed to their directions and instructions (Cooper & Good, 1983). Also, student
25 perceptions of teacher behavior were given a larger role in the model in relation to their self-efficacy. Overall, the model explains how student levels of performance are sustained rather than how achievement might be dramatically altered. Effect of teacher efficacy. One issue that can have an effect on teacher expectations is the teachers’ own sense of efficacy, both personally and as a teacher. Ashton, Webb, and Doda (1983) showed that teachers with high personal efficacy held high academic standards, concentrated on the academic progress of their students, had warm and supportive classroom environments. Their students did well on achievement tests. Gibson and Dembo (1984) stated that teacher efficacy is the belief that students will benefit from educational experiences. To further this idea the authors did a study that showed that high efficacy teachers spent more time focused on academic activities, engaged in effective whole-class instruction, gave feedback, and were more persistent when students were in failure situations. The characteristics of teachers with high personal and teaching efficacy are consistent with the models discussed above. Influence of teacher expectations on students. Here we look at literature more directly focused on students. Good (1984) outlined several issues involving the interaction between expectancy effects and students. Student passivity among low achievers is a result of students’ observation of teacher behavior such as being praised fewer times, or for marginal or incorrect behavior. This leads students to believe there is no relationship between effort and reward. Also, different teachers may behave differently towards students causing confusion and withdrawal from the learning process. The way students are grouped also has an effect on their learning. Students tracked into low groups deal with several issues: fragmentary presentation of material, repetition of material, immature social contexts that
disrupt learning, and high levels of controlling acts by the teacher. Students are quite
26
perceptive of differential treatment and are able to infer teacher expectations about their own abilities from it. Weinstein (1985, 2002) compiled studies of student mediation of classroom expectancy effects. She examined the following general areas: (a) Student perceptions of teacher behavior, (b) perceived teacher behavior as influencing student beliefs, (c) links between self-other perceptions and performance, and (d) student susceptibility to teacher expectations. Student perceptions of teacher behaviors showed that they perceived that high achievers received higher expectations, more opportunities and special treatment, while the low achievers got negative feedback, and more teacher direction and vigilance. Selfperceptions of teacher behavior indicate that the low achievers felt they were getting more negative feedback, while the high achievers saw themselves engaging in more frequent teacher-initiated public interactions, received more appropriate responses to correct answers and less frequent criticism. Other studies showed that students are sensitive to verbal as well as non-verbal cues. Studies in the area of perceived influence of teacher behavior on student beliefs revealed several patterns. One was that higher achieving students had expectations that corresponded more closely with their teacher’s expectations of them than did the lower achievers. Younger children are shown to see ability as a changeable trait and are more resistant to negative teacher feedback. Their perceptions of their own ability become more congruent with those of their teachers as they grow older. Feedback patterns, competitive classrooms (vs. cooperative), public comparisons, differential treatment patterns are shown to have a significant impact on student self-perception. In the area of links between self and others’ perceptions and performance, many studies show a positive link of student self-
27 perception, self-esteem, and confidence with achievement. That is, student perceptions of teaching behavior towards them can mediate the effect of teaching behavior on achievement. Student susceptibility to teacher expectations yielded rather mixed results. Weinstein states that findings were few and inconsistent, and that further research needs to be done so that teachers may become more aware of subtle classroom processes that impact student selfconcepts. Theoretical Framework for the proposed study As we have seen, teacher expectations in and of themselves are a natural phenomenon of the classroom, and so are student reactions to these expectations. Classrooms are complex environments that require a significant amount of interpretation of the behavior of others by both teachers and students. An understanding of the background literature and theory on teacher expectations aids in identifying the conditions and behaviors that convey expectations as well as the ways they may be perceived by students. We have seen that several theoretical models exist (Jussim, Smith, Madon & Palumbo, 1998; Cooper 1985). From among these theoretical models, Rosenthal’s Four-factor theory (Harris and Rosenthal, 1986; Rosenthal, 1974) best lends itself to the proposed study because it is general in nature, but able to distinguish specific behaviors into discrete observable patterns. Rosenthal’s theory and its modifications for this study are discussed below. The four factors identified by Rosenthal (1974) as being influenced by teacher expectations are summarized in Table 2-1 below. In addition to Rosenthal’s four factors, four specific issues of concern in expectations research have been noted in the literature. Most studies to date have focused on the relationship of expectations to academic outcomes, and to a lesser extent on classroom behavior as seen in compilations of studies (Brophy, 1998;
28 Dusek, 1985). Additionally, Irvine (1990) identified appropriateness of language use by students and adherence to cultural/social norms as important issues. Her meta-analysis of studies on students who were Black noted that there were differences in teacher expectations across language use and social and cultural issues depending on the race of the teacher. Students who used Black Vernacular English and followed the social and cultural norms of the Black community had less favorable expectations by White teachers than by Black teachers. The issues of language use, and cultural and social norms were extrapolated to this study to include the questions of how the use of ASL and English, and the influence of Deaf culture can impact teacher expectations of deaf students. In sum, we have four issues to examine- academic content area, classroom behavior, language and communication, and cultural and social norms. Each of these four areas has each been labeled an “Area of Focus.” Table 2-1 Rosenthal’s Four Factor Theory Description
Factor
The provision of emotional support, warmth and attention or a lack Climate
thereof by teachers through verbal or non-verbal cues indicating support and approval.
Input
Output Feedback
The amount and quality of teaching effort given to child, including opportunities to learn new material and its difficulty level. Opportunities given by teacher for students to respond and the teacher’s persistence in pursuing responses The teacher’s response to a child’s answers or comments
29 Table 2-2 below shows how Rosenthal’s four factors can be used to illuminate the four specific foci of expectations. The table also describes specific behaviors that may mediate expectations. For example, a teacher praising a student for behaving well is an instance of feedback directed toward the specific issue of classroom behavior. Rosenthal’s factors combined with the four foci creates a matrix of 16 possible situations where expectations can be communicated. Some teacher behaviors identified in the proposed study replicates those of past studies. In addition a description of behaviors that are unique to the language and culture of the Deaf and a deaf education classroom has emerged from this research.
30 Table 2-2 Preliminary Model of Teacher Expectations Areas of Focus Rosenthal’s Four
Language and
Factors
Communication
Climate
Behavior towards
Type of atmosphere
Content Area
Classroom
Cultural and
Behavior
Social
Behavior to
Behavior relevant
Behavior relevant
certain language
establish learning of
to classroom
to students with
use by student
subject matter
behavior
certain social norms
Input
Instruction on
Subject Lessons
Classroom rule
Types of social
Quality and quantity
language use
and Units
instruction and
norms referred to
enforcement
and taught
taught
Output
Student
Student Academic
Student classroom
Student social
Opportunities for
expression of
response
behavior
behavior
student to respond
language
Feedback
Comments about
Comments about
Comments about
Comments about
Teacher reaction to
language skills
academic
classroom behavior
appropriate social
student response
performance
norms
Chapter 3
31
Method The purpose of this study was to use a case study methodology to present an indepth description of deaf teacher/deaf student classroom interaction in order to document teacher expectations and the multiple communication behavior patterns that convey these expectations to students. This study includes data collected from observations, videotaping, photographs of the setting, and interviews at the school for the deaf, with deaf students and a teacher who was deaf herself. The subject taught was U.S. History, and the students were all in their junior year of High School. Approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) and informed consent from participants and parents was obtained prior to beginning the study (see Appendix A). All names used in this document are pseudonyms. Setting The school. All observations and interviews for the study took place at a State School for the Deaf. This was a residential school for the deaf with a K-12 enrollment of just under 500 students who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. Approximately half of the students resided in the dormitories during the week and went home for the weekends. The other half of the student body commuted daily from their local home school district. The high school department at this school had an enrollment of approximately 150 students. The student body was nearly equally divided between Latino and Anglo students, with smaller percentages of African-American, Asian, and Native American students. The classes had between three to ten students in size who were usually grouped between classes according to academic achievement level.
32 The school is located in a climate suitable for an open-air design. The hallways consisted of concrete walkways covered with arcades overhead. Most of the buildings holding the classrooms were built in rows with each room having doors directly to the outside. The buildings themselves were spread out in clusters over a large campus with each cluster being a grade-level department or dormitory area. The high school department was centrally located on the campus. The general appearance of the high school area itself could be described as clean and a bit sparse. There was not much to distinguish it from the rest of the campus other than a sign on one door saying “High School Office” and four bulletin boards attached to the red brick walls. The rest of the doors had the name of the classroom teacher. Of the bulletin boards, one displayed pictures from the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center. Another had general information such as the time schedule for the class periods. The third board had “Character Counts” in red cut out letters. Underneath were the words Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Caring, and Citizenship. The last bulletin board had a laminated, printed poster with the school name, logos and mascot, and in the center was “Expected Schoolwide Learning Results.” Each side of this statement listed the expected “results” written vertically: Effective communicators, problem solvers, competent workers, empowered learners, effective users of technology, and responsible citizens. This same poster was also affixed to the principals’ office door inside the office area. The Classroom. The class selected for this study was a first period U.S. History class for juniors that met once daily from 8:00 to 9:00 AM. (See Appendix B for diagram) The classroom in this study was located three doors down the hall from the high school office. Other than the teacher’s name, there was nothing that distinguished the pale green door from
any of the others in the red brick-lined hallway. The entrance to the room was located in
33
the left front corner of the classroom (in this case, the “front” is where the whiteboards are located). There were 13 student desks arranged in an open semi-circle facing towards the front. This arrangement ensured that students could see each other and the teacher at all times. In front of the semi-circle was a large teacher’s desk with a smaller table adjoining it to give a large surface area. This desk was almost always covered with short stacks of paper, which usually consisted of an ever-changing assortment of student reading packets, homework and other similar materials. Between this desk and the white boards that covered the entire front wall, was a space where the teacher stood and traversed during most of the time she was teaching. Underneath the whiteboard on the left side near the door was a small table with a stack of letter trays for homework submissions and next to it a small hanging file for homework handouts for absent students. The rest of the space under the whiteboards towards the right was occupied by bookshelves filled with history books. Two small tables at right angles to each other occupied the right front corner of the room. These tables were covered with a computer, a row of reference texts and an assortment of papers. This was where the teacher conducted her paperwork and planning. The left and right side walls of the classroom were covered with bulletin boards except for one-third of the left wall, which had two closet-sized cabinets. Under the bulletin board on the left wall was a row of small tables covered by an Indian cotton tapestry. Lined along these tables were white loose-leaf binders with student names on their spines. All student work was kept in these binders. The right side wall was undistinguished except for two large color maps of the U.S. and the world on the bulletin board. The back of the room had tall ceiling height windows all along its entire length with an exit door near the left side of
34 the room. All of the windows had white horizontal blinds, which were kept drawn most of the time to keep the heat out. Under the windows were wood countertops and cabinets. The countertops were covered by a wide assortment of materials in no particular organized pattern including books, crates, and a few rolled-up rugs. There was a television/VCR mounted on the wall at chest-height in the right rear corner of the classroom. In terms of wall décor, aside from the normal official school schedules, announcements, and memos, there were colorful posters and laminated bumper stickers around the room in various locations. Most of these had quotations on them. A large horizontal poster at the top of the whiteboard stated “Learn from the past, live in the present, plan for the future.” The other poster on the left wall stated, “You are the author of your own life story.” Some of the bumper stickers posted on the coat cabinets had quotes such as “Got Brains?” and “Minds are like parachutes, they only function when open.” On the front of the teacher’s desk was a small poster of the cartoon character Garfield that stated “Reading makes life a lot easier.” Lying on the teacher’s desk were several other bumper stickers and posters with inspirational quotes that the teacher was planning to put up later. In all, the classroom generally had a general atmosphere that I would call ‘busy’. The only areas that seemed to remain static were along the back of the classroom and on top of the closets. Participants Description of the teacher. After making inquiries among the parents, staff, and students as to which teachers they thought were most effective, I received nominations for several teachers. I got permission to observe them and would have liked to do a comparative study of all of them. However, due to time limits and the amount of effort that would be required in comparative analysis, only one could be selected for the study. The one I chose was very
35 willing to participate and had a good comprehension of what would be involved. She also understood why the true purpose of this study could not be revealed until after I had done my observations. It is my intention to make clear in this study why she was an exemplary teacher in terms of expectations of her students. The teacher who volunteered for this study was Deaf1, a fluent user of ASL, married to a Deaf man, and a member of the U.S. deaf community. This teacher whom I will call Ms. Geils, had more than 7 years of teaching experience at K-12 residential schools for the deaf. At the time of this study she was teaching U.S. history at the 11th grade level. She taught at two other residential schools for the deaf before moving to her current position. At the time of this study, she was in her second year of employment at the school. Her previous teaching experience had been in Language Arts. Ms. Geils remarked to me that she had been initially hired to teach her current subject, but that the teacher at the time decided to postpone his retirement one more year. Thus she spent the previous year teaching English classes. She said her heart has always been in the subject of history. In fact her undergraduate degree was in that discipline. She was excited to finally be teaching her favorite subject that year. In some ways, her school year seemed to be like that of a first-year teacher in terms of getting material ready to teach. However, she did not have an air of inexperience with teaching skills, dealing with students, and managing her time wisely. As will be described below, she also had good classroom communication skills. It is worth noting here is that the mode of communication used between the teacher and students was ASL. Selection of an ASL-signing teacher was an effort to reduce complications of communication and cultural discontinuity
1
The use of the capitalized term Deaf denotes a member of the deaf community while the use lower case deaf refers to those individuals with hearing loss.
36 that could be caused by someone who is not a fluent user of ASL or aware of the norms and values of the Deaf community. Lack of knowledge of these factors could distort a teacher’s communication of expectations and confound observations and were avoided by recruiting the Deaf teacher used in this study. Once the model proposed for this study is refined, it should be applicable to hearing, signing teachers of the deaf also. Description of the students. The focal class had been selected because it was deemed ‘average’ in ranking by the teacher. This was to reduce the possibility of distorted expectations behavior shown toward higher or lower achieving classes as seen in the literature. As it turned out, it was a first period class which was convenient in being able to set up video recording equipment and talking to the teacher before school started. The class had seven students and was a rather diverse population that was somewhat reflective of the surrounding region from which they come. All of the students were observed as having fluent ASL skills as determined by myself, and my research assistant. Four of the students were Latino, and one of each of the remainder were African-American, Asian-American, and European-American. All were between the ages of 16 to 18. What follows are brief descriptions of the students using their pseudonyms: Arturo. He described himself as Deaf and proud of it. He was born to hearing parents and lived in the local community in which the school was located and had been enrolled at the school since kindergarten. His ethnic background was Mexican-American. Brenda. She described herself as Deaf. She was born to hearing parents and resided in the dormitory at the school during the week. She just recently enrolled at the school for the second time right before the study commenced. The first time she enrolled, she was a student at the school during 7th and 8th grade in the middle school department. The rest of
37 her schooling had been in mainstreamed settings at schools that provided teachers of the deaf and sign language interpreters. Her ethnic background was Mexican-American. David. He described himself as Deaf. He was born to deaf parents and lived with Deaf family members in the local community. He had been enrolled at the school since kindergarten. His ethnic background was Mexican-American. Jose. He described himself as hard-of-hearing but culturally Deaf. He was born to hearing parents and lived in the local community in which the school was located. He had been enrolled at the school since Kindergarten. His ethnic background was MexicanAmerican. Tony. He described himself as Deaf. He was born to Deaf parents, and lived in the local community. Even though his mother worked at the school, he was just registered for the first time as a student there. Prior to that, he had been enrolled in local mainstreamed settings with support services for deaf and hard-of-hearing children. His ethnic background was African-American. Robert. He described himself as Deaf. He was born to hearing parents and was enrolled at the school since 7th grade. Prior to that, he had been enrolled alternately in another residential program in the same state and in mainstreamed settings with support services for deaf and hard-of-hearing children. His ethnic background was ChineseAmerican. Amanda. She described herself as Deaf. She was born to hearing parents and her father was in the military. Prior to enrolling at the school as a sophomore, she had attended both residential and mainstreamed programs in the Midwest. Her ethnic background was European-American.
Research Design
38
This investigation was a field study conducted using case study methods in the focal classroom. This is a preferred strategy when “how” or “why” questions are being posed, when the investigator has little control over the events and it involves a phenomenon that takes place in a real-life context (Yin, 1994). What follows is a description of the data collection and analysis. Data Collection Data collected includes videotaped observations and interviews, observation notes, and photographs of the setting. The participant class was observed and videotaped daily for two weeks in mid to late September to establish regular features of instruction, followed up by two more weeks of observation a month later in late October. Observation notes were kept in a journal to record events, dates and times as well as interpretations of these events. Also in this journal are written notes and brief transcriptions of the videotaped events that were written immediately following classroom observations. Digital photographs were taken of the classroom, contents of the classroom walls and the hallway outside the classroom. When observations were nearly complete, the teacher and each student were interviewed. Two semi-structured interview protocols were developed, one for students, and the other for the teacher (Appendix C). Interviews used open-ended questions based upon the four factors and perceptions of appropriate classroom behaviors of a teacher. Interviews were summarized and given back to participants to validate and clarify the researcher’s interpretations. All observations and interviews were videotaped both for later analysis and coding as well as to enable intercoder agreement with a research assistant during data
analysis. All videotapes were converted to into a digital format using iMovie
®
39 and
Quicktime® for ease of handling and analysis. Data Analysis Units of analysis. Because this study seeks to identify teacher behaviors that mediate expectations, the major unit of analysis was communication behavior patterns (Yin, 1994). A pattern consists of teacher-student communication events from the raw data, which are coded and sorted into thematically related sets (e.g. question and answer sequences, disciplinary actions, etc.). Initially, the boundaries of these communication events were not obvious. As it happened, my own intuition, and that of my research assistant2 about the boundary markers of these communication events were quite similar. After some investigation, the boundaries turned out to be what linguists term “utterances.” Allan (1994) confirms the intuitive nature of utterances. He notes that people recognize utterances on the basis of brute perception regardless of the language or communication modality used. There is some debate among linguists as to what exactly an utterance is. However, for the purposes of this study, a definition from The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (Asher & Simpson, 1994) was used. It defines an utterance as any stretch of speech by a single speaker preceded and followed by silence or pause. Transcription and coding of utterances. The research assistant and I transcribed all of the videotaped data from ASL into written individual utterances. These were mostly rough translations, which were adequate for the purposes of this study. This was done in chronological order much like a transcript. Each utterance was given at least one code using categories developed from one or more of the 16 areas in the matrix on Table 2-2. A 2
Heidi, my research assistant is culturally Deaf with a Deaf family and is a native user of ASL.
40 codebook was written to document the coding process as it was developed and refined (See Appendix D). A summary of the coding process is described here. Determining which code to apply depended on who performed the action and what the perceived intent of that action was. Many were clear-cut, such as the teacher asking a question about the Civil War, which was coded as Input (factor) and Content (focus).
However, it quickly became
apparent that many other events were occurring to which more than one, or even several codes could be applied. One extreme example was the teacher telling her students what kind of appropriate language is used by Deaf people in the classroom. This topic covers at least three focal areas related to the Input factor alone: Social/cultural, Classroom Behavior, and Language/Communication. Most of the multiple code situations were sufficiently covered by two codes. An example of one common situation was the students chatting when the teacher was not watching them. This was coded as both classroom behavior and social/cultural focus areas crossed with the output factor. It also became apparent that some of the initial definitions of the codes would have to be modified. For example, Output was originally defined only as student opportunities to respond to the teacher. After analyzing interviews with the students, this category was broadened to include their perceptions of the teacher and classroom. All coded data were organized in loose-leaf binders by type (e.g. video, interview, codes), date, and time for later retrieval and verification as needed. A sample of a data-coding sheet is in Appendix E. Table 4-1 in the next chapter shows the frequency of each of the utterances identified in the data. This is provided only for purposes of establishing the frequency of each behavior type. No other statistical analyses were done. Finding behavior patterns. After the utterances were coded, they were categorized by the code assigned to them. Within each of these categories, themes within the behavior
41 patterns were noted. One example is the utterances in the category of Content focus/Input factor (See Appendix D). Communication behavior patterns were noted for direct teaching, elicitation from students (e.g. questions), provision of work, and role modeling. These and other patterns are more thoroughly described in the results below. Verification and Reliability To verify the theoretical constructs of this project and increase objectivity, several tactics are incorporated into the project design. Triangulation. One approach is the use of triangulation, where at least three sources of evidence are used to corroborate a theme or pattern (Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Creswell 1998). The sources of corroborating evidence used here (i.e. the three ‘legs’ of the triangle) include the classroom observations, teacher statements, and student statements. Each of these kinds of evidence has been used in constructing the descriptions in the results section of this study. See Figure 3-1 below. Figure 3-1 Diagram of Triangulation Observations
Pattern Teacher Statements
Student Statements
One example of triangulation presented below consists of teacher statements during the interview about being friendly but having role boundaries in the classroom, the students saying the teacher is friendly but “strict,” and my observations that show she has a pattern of
42 friendly but professional demeanor in the classroom. Here we see two other sources of evidence to support the first leg of the “triangle” which was the teacher’s statement. Inter-rater Agreement. Another tactic was to use two coders and establish inter-rater agreement on the coding. There was a training period during which the research assistant and I worked together to identify what constituted significant utterances and which code to apply to them. The data used for training covered two of the last class periods that had been videotaped. After this, we independently coded two randomly chosen class periods that represented at least 10% of the data. Agreement on the identification of significant utterances was measured by dividing the number of significant utterances agreed upon by both raters by the total number identified by both. This was multiplied by 100 to give a percent rating. Agreement on assigning codes to utterances was measured by noting the application of the same code by both raters divided by the total number of utterances coded and then multiplying by 100 to get a percentage. Ambiguities or conflicts in the coding were clarified and resolved before coding proceeded further. Coding agreement data.
The two randomly chosen class periods that were used in
coding agreement analysis had a total time of 68:17 minutes which represents just over 11% of the total observation time of 611:50 minutes. Together, both raters coded a total of 682 utterances3 in these randomly chosen class periods. The number of utterances that both raters agreed upon was 510. This gives us an agreement of 74.8%. Of the 412 utterances that both raters agreed on, 405 were given at least one of the same codes for an agreement rate of 79.4% (The probability of this happening by chance is P (Dave picks 1 out of 16) times P
3
The total number of utterances includes utterances that both raters identified and utterances that only one or the other rater identified
43 (Heidi picks 1 of 16) = 1/256 = 0.4 %). Since more than one code could be assigned to an utterance, it may be noted that 249 of the utterances in the coding agreement data had all codes the same for a 48.8% agreement rate. It needs to be noted that an analysis of where the disagreements in coding lay and the types of these disagreements revealed some patterns. The majority of the disagreements had to do with whether to code an utterance from the teacher as Input or Climate regardless of the focus of the topic. This suggests the difficulty of separating the communicative acts of climate from the verbal acts of the teacher. The global effect of Climate in the classroom will be discussed further below. The second most prevalent disagreement had to do with Input and Feedback. As we will later see, this was due to the transitory nature of feedback followed immediately by input. This increased awareness of the brief nature of feedback helped us to recognize it better. Another area of disagreement that stood out was with Content and Language/Communication reflecting the difficulty of separating instruction on language from content. An added area of disagreement was with Classroom Behavior and Cultural/Social. The frequency of these disagreements suggested some modifications for the preliminary model as will be seen in Chapter 8. Others. The use of the preliminary model by raters as a source of codes helped to increase objectivity in analysis of the data rather than rely on subjective categories developed independently by the raters themselves. Next, having key informants review a draft of the investigator’s narrative interpretation of events aids accuracy. The model of teacher expectations developed in this study will be made available to other researchers as a design for future research on this topic in other DHH classrooms. This, plus the dissemination of coding strategies and definitions will bolster the replicability of the research.
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Chapter 4 Input Overview of Arrangement
The results of this study have been organized into four chapters, one for each of the four expectation factors: Input, Output, Feedback, and Climate. They have been placed in order of the frequency of their occurrence in the data (See Table 4-1). Table 4-1 Frequency of Utterances by Factor and Focus
Factors
Areas of Focus Content Area
Input
1,374
Language and Communication 497
Cultural and Social 488
Classroom Behavior 141
Output
994
180
463
182
Feedback
767
110
265
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Climate
463
91
245
71
The chapters are organized around each of the four foci of expectations: Content, Cultural/Social, Classroom Behavior, and Language/Communication. Within each of these focal areas, I will describe the communication behavior patterns that were identified as a result of the coding of data. At the end of each chapter there will be a summary of communication behaviors. Introduction Input is defined as the amount and quality of teaching effort given to child, including opportunities to learn new material and its difficulty level. Also, efforts to elicit student responses (e.g. questioning) are included under Input although it was originally under
45 Rosenthal’s Output classification. Teacher questions are not natural questions. Teachers use questioning for several purposes. For example, students are challenged by frequent and higher cognitive levels of questioning resulting from increased teacher input. The student’s responses and opportunities to answer these questions are still classified under Output (see Chapter 5). Here we will take a look at what Ms. Geils’s Input. The descriptions that follow are organized around Table 4-2, which shows the Input communication behavior patterns identified. Table 4-2 Input Behavior Patterns Across Focal Areas Content Direct Teaching Interesting and Detailed. Uses real life examples. Follows State Standards. Elicitation Knowledge Questions. Asks for Expansions/ Defend. Discussions. Provision of work Daily homework and quizzes. Make-up work and Extra Credit. State Standards. Students feel challenged.
Language/ Communication Direct Teaching & Elicitation Use of ASL to explain written English. Three strategies to teach vocabulary. Emphasis on root words from other languages. Simplification of reading materials. Compels students to read aloud from text to get help. Will not “spoon feed.”
Cultural/Social
Classroom Behavior
Direct teaching Connects lessons to real life. Uses popular culture. Boundaries in Deaf culture. Role Modeling Social registers. Deaf culture. Gallaudet. Student/teacher roles.
Direct teaching Boundaries. Respect. Ignores negative behaviors. Attention control.
Input and Content This cell of the model has the largest number of coded entries from the data. There were three communication patterns noted in Ms. Geils’s input and content behavior; direct teaching, elicitation, and provision of work.
46 Direct teaching. Ms. Geils spent a good deal of her time involved in direct teaching on content topics. She was often able to expand upon and make the topic interesting for her students and liked to use current real-life examples and stories from her family and friends to make the topic more relevant to her students. As an example, one day Ms. Geils was talking to her students about immigration at the turn of the century and the experiences of people who left Europe and went through Ellis Island in New York. She shared stories from her own grandmother about being a Jewish immigrant.
In another lesson about business
monopolies, she told students of two of her Deaf friends whose small video rental store had been driven out of business by a major corporation. I have to say as an observer, I found many of Ms. Geils’s short lectures interesting and often had to resist the temptation to join in with my own comments. Of course, that didn’t prevent her from engaging me a few times to suit her teaching purposes. One time she told the class that the number of states had not changed since 1960 and asked me when I was born. When I replied 1961, she remarked to the class that “Dave and I are old, not OLD, but old, and the number of states has not changed since we were born.” The students were attentive and responsive to Ms. Geils while she was speaking. As we will see later under the Classroom Behavior subtopic in Chapter 5 (Output), students were rarely off task or inattentive while direct teaching was taking place. As for the students’ perspective, I got the following comments during interviews with them: She’s a good teacher, the first teacher I had who lectures well. She’s detailed. Other teachers are boring. I like her way of using ASL and explaining things deeply.
She wants us to be more interested in history, not read about it and be
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bored. It’s more fascinating when she tells it to us to make sure we understand. I like that she teaches and explains events clearly, expands more. I can imagine it more. In terms of the difficulty of the content level, Ms. Geils stated that she tries to follow the state standards, but she also said that she felt “stuck” with the standards. She remarked that she would rather use a more literary-based approach to teaching history and work with the language arts teachers in such an approach. Although the standards may have limited her, very little of what she taught directly could be described as watered down. As we saw above, Ms. Geils likes to use detailed descriptions, and connect with the student’s real life experiences. Some remarks from the students: I like that she knows what she is teaching, and is a very strict teacher. She requires students to work. Gives us experience what the outside world is like. We need to follow everything the way it’s done out there. When she teaches, she wants to make sure we all understand history. Before as a freshman, I had Mr. Brown. He taught us nothing. Just let us play games, sit and chat, laugh, walk around the classroom. As a sophomore, Ms. Vasquez didn’t show and explain history, it was just lecture, movie, lecture, movie. I was lost and learned nothing. Now as a junior, Ms. Geils shows,
explains, uses movies, a variety of things. I have learned a lot. I’m happy I
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have her. Ms. Geils remarked during her interview that if she encountered difficulty in getting students to grasp a concept after several tries, she would ask another student who has a grasp to explain. I observed this in the computer lab when she had her students prepare a project for presentation using discussion points rather than lengthy descriptions. After telling the teacher his own perspective, Ms. Geils asked Robert to explain to the class what “discussion points” meant. Ms. Geils’s approach to direct teaching was not limited to one-way communication. She was open to student participation and also tried to get her students involved in a dialogue via elicitation attempts, as we will see below. Elicitation. A second communication pattern was Ms. Geils tendency to pepper her direct teaching with elicitation attempts. Elicitation is the use of questioning and other conversational cues to get students to expand on their contributions. Many times while introducing new topics, she asked simple knowledge-comprehension type questions. This appears to be a pre-evaluation strategy that guided her teaching. They usually were not followed by more questions to get students to expand on their answers. She also used knowledge questions when reviewing previously covered material. In this context, they were often followed by expansion attempts. One frequently occurring event where students were reviewing previously covered material was during the post-quiz discussions. Quizzes were given almost daily to the class followed by discussions. As Ms. Geils herself stated, she tries to have more discussions and to ask students to defend their answers:
I want them to become independent, because that’s what their lives will
49
really be like. Not depend on their moms, dads, or teachers. So I really try to step out of it as much as I can. Have more discussions, or ask them how to do that, give them quizzes and then discuss it later. Ask them for the answers. “Oh? Why answer that way?” Then explain and give them some more background. Then try to have them do it on their own. Mostly I push them to be independent. I can fill in the gaps. Sometimes they’re passive. I will say, “Why support that? What do you (really) think? Come on.” I think that’s the only thing I really expect from them. To think for themselves. Even if it’s related with school. They say, “I don’t think this is good, I think this is boring.” I reply, “Fine, come on, tell me more. Fine what can I do to make this better for you?” That’s neat. I enjoy that. I want that from them. I asked some of the students what Ms. Geils does during questioning; two of them replied that even if they gave a correct answer, she still wanted more details and for them to expand upon the answers. A third student remarked that she would repeat the answer back to the class to make sure they saw it. Yet another student made the following statement about what happens if she does not get involved: Me…if I’m not involved, she will ask me why, “What do you think?” Makes me feel a bit “on the spot.” While some students might have been able to avoid getting into discussions or answering questions, they could not get out of doing the work that Ms. Geils gave them.
50 Provision of work. One of Ms. Geils’s most obvious behaviors was assigning course work for students to complete. Homework was assigned on a daily basis, even on Fridays. Students were expected to be prepared to take a quiz on the homework material almost daily. Besides the daily homework, one long-term and one short-term project were assigned during the observation period. The long-term project involved role-playing as a late 19th century European immigrant and making a scrapbook about the “experience.” Students had to come up with an authentic name from the country that they “immigrated” from plus include details of daily life during the trip and after arrival in the U.S. The short-term project was an assignment to cover some historical aspect of the Spanish-American War era. This project did not turn out very well for the students, as we will see later. When asked about how much work she tried to give her students, this is what Ms. Geils had to say: I give them homework almost everyday to keep them on their toes. I try to figure my homework will take up to one hour or less. I really want 20 minutes but I think for some students it takes 15 minutes, other students 30 minutes, some students take longer. Now that I’m a history teacher, I try to limit reading to one chapter at a time. For example, today, I gave them one reading page, with an outline. They have to answer the outline. It is maybe ten questions no more than, a maximum of 15 to 20 questions. That’s enough. While the teacher likes to give homework on a daily basis, she also tried to be reasonable about it:
They have other classes. I try to not give too much. If I give them a big
51
project, it’s always more than a week because they need a life. I don’t want their lives to be about homework. I don’t know. It’s hard to give you an accurate number. Depends on what’s happening and sometimes, yes, I pile on the work if they’re really awful in class. If they’re not cooperating, I stop teaching and say, “OK you have more homework, here’s what I want you to do.” But that almost never happens. She also gave her students some opportunities to keep their grades up. Written at the top of the board in front of the class was “Reminder: you can redo any assignment.” Ms. Geils also said she provides extra credit opportunities: Also, I give them a chance to keep their grades up by giving them extra credit. Understand that extra credit is things that they should do on their own like puzzles, research, whatever. They have up to a week to do it. I asked the students for their perspective on the amount of work they got; these are some of the responses I received: I learn a lot, she tends to give us outlines, paper worksheets related to what she is talking about today and … she’s not easy and I learn something, a lot. And I have to remember many, many things because we will have a quiz everyday most of the time. Yes I learn a lot…and she sometimes gives me crosswords…if I fail a test or something. Gives me extra credit, sometimes she uses the textbook for homework, things like that.
She gives me enough homework. She knows how we feel if she gives a lot.
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There are other classes with lots of homework. She gives us a limited amount of homework. It’s fine. Gives us paperwork about what she recently explained to see if you can remember, or to prove that we did pay attention in class. Besides the quantity of work, I also inquired about the quality of the work provided to the students. During interviews, this is what Ms. Geils had to say: I’m stuck. My hands are tied. I have to follow state standards. So now I’m going through changes myself as a teacher. I have a lot of experience as a reading teacher… and I think the biggest thing I try to do is to teach them to be independent in whatever subject they are. Reading, history, English, it doesn’t matter what subject. I want them to not feel like they can’t make mistakes. To realize that we all, all make mistakes. I sometimes make mistakes. “I learned something, I realize I want to change that” So they see “Ms. Geils is not perfect, she realizes she needs to improve herself” I want that habit put into them. Of course, I have to follow the standards, so a lot of what I do is to ask them to read whatever, or write. I struggle with that because I want them to become critical thinkers. I’m trying different avenues, still haven’t really found a perfect way. I think the biggest thing is to teach them independence. Nearly all of the students seemed to find the course work challenging and made these comments to me:
I like her way of teaching, gives us more challenging work and provides
53
work, one chapter with a quiz, I like her way of doing things. I feel challenged. It’s a good reading level, comfortable. I learn the meanings of words, and draw pictures. I feel challenged. All the work she gives me is very challenging, whew, I learned a lot from her. Ms. Geils’s homework is my very, very first challenging class. More than my other history teachers. However, during the latter part of the observations, Ms. Geils was trying to make some adjustments to the work, particularly in terms of the reading material. She also made comments about the perceived difficulty level of the text to her students. This had an impact on some student’s perceptions of the course work: But now she is changing things. If not all the students understand she has to go lower, like she is teaching us at a lower level. I want more challenges but it seems like now she’s giving us easy work, almost daily, not sure. Now we don’t use the textbook. Why do I have to carry it around? Should leave it at school if we do nothing with it. I want more challenges and…what I don’t like, gives me easy worksheets. I would rather have them only once in a while. Since reading issues fall more under the Language and Communication focus, I will use this reading issue to commence the next section of this chapter under that heading.
Input and Language/Communication
54
There were two major communication pattern areas noted in Ms. Geils’s behavior related to Language and Communication Input: direct teaching and elicitation. These are similar in nature to the previous sections albeit more directly related to instruction on language as well as how language is used to teach. However, unlike the previous use of direct teaching and elicitation, which could be distinguished more easily, the lines become blurred here. This was due to Ms. Geils’s approach to teaching language where she often helps her students derive meaning via elicitation from the text rather than just telling them through direct instruction. So rather than treat these as separate entities they have been combined here. Because this was a classroom where ASL was the primary face-to-face language, and the reading and writing was in English, there were many interesting situations where the teacher used ASL to clarify concepts in written English. However, the teacher did not limit herself to English. She also liked to teach her students about foreign language phrases. Direct teaching and elicitation. It may be of interest to note that in addition to history, Ms. Geils has a strong background in reading instruction. It is apparent that some of her habits as a reading teacher have carried over into her history classroom, especially in discussions of the meaning of vocabulary. She had three behavior patterns for doing this. One was to write the word on the board, break it down into its smaller meaningful units, and have students construct the meaning of the word based on their knowledge of its parts. The second pattern was to use context to help students derive the meaning for the word themselves. The third pattern was simply to define the word and expand on its use. Because the first two strategies required more cognitive effort by the students and reflect higher
55 expectations, I will illustrate each of them. The first example below shows the “break down and reconstruct” approach: Ms. Geils: (Writes CONFEDERATION on board and draws a vertical line between CON and FEDERATION) Federation means what? Student 1: Government Ms. Geils: (nods, points at Student 1) Government (writes “Gov’t” under the word FEDERATION) Ms. Geils: (points to CON) Spanish, Latin word (looks at class expectantly). Student 2: Revolt? Student 3: With! Ms. Geils: (nods) Ah! (writes “With” under CON) Ms. Geils: So remember the spelling for Confederation, “with government.” In the above example the use of ASL and English overlapped, and Ms. Geils used the ASL signs WITH and GOVERNMENT to translate the written English word “Confederation.” She also made the remark that knowing Latin, Spanish or Greek will help students understand English better. In fact, to emphasize this point, she then went on to explain that the Spanish phrase “Vaya con dios” translates to “Go with God” in English.
56 The next example shows Ms. Geils using context to help students derive the meaning of the word “cram” in a text passage: Ms. Geils: (Writes on board “The students crammed for their exam.” and “Wiser students studied a little each day and did well on their test.” Looks at class expectantly) Student 1: Hurry? Student 2: Study at the last minute, study in a hurry? Ms. Geils: What’s the difference between the two sentences? Student 2: Study at the last minute, right? Ms. Geils; (Nods) Study at the last minute all night long. Then finish taking the test the next day. Again we have the confluence of ASL and English where Ms. Geils used the ASL statement STUDY LAST MINUTE to illustrate the written English word “cram.” Not coincidently, she was lecturing the class about not cramming for their examinations while using the situation to teach them a new word. While “confederation” and “cram” may seem to be common English words, I think this example shows some of the vocabulary difficulties that deaf and hard-of-hearing high school juniors may present. We will see in some of the following paragraphs how Ms. Geils tried to deal with this issue.
As mentioned before, I observed her making statements to the class about the
57
quality of the text materials. One day, she announced to the class that she had made copies from a book for them: I made copies from a book I bought a very, very simple book…its a little lower (level), but I think it will be easier for you to read. Several of the students admitted to having difficulty with the reading material for the course. Here are some excerpts from interviews with the students about reading: I really hate to read anyway. It’s not easy for me to read these books, but it’s a good thing to learn it… that’s books. Reading is hard. Reading, understanding it, how it’s explained, what it (text) means is hard for me. So far, if read I understand the book. If most of the class doesn’t understand, Ms. Geils will read to class from the book. Summarize it in ASL. Then I read it again that night. Sometimes I go ahead and read the next thing. Reading is OK, OK. Fine. If you don’t understand it, ask her and she will explain it. We have to, it’s our responsibility to ask. Sometimes, people, students have problems with reading. Sometimes it’s hard for us, so she picks a book that’s the same, but less difficult and easier for us to read. We read it, “Oh I see,” read the textbook again. We will
understand. Sometimes the teacher reads from the book, shows us maps, and so forth. I asked Ms. Geils about picking “easier” reading materials. This is what she said: Textbooks are hard. With a reading class, (shakes head) I don’t support the use of it at all. Except if students are really competent, comfortable with reading, fine. Textbooks are artificial to me. With US History, the problem with the textbooks is not all the information is there. The writers can’t include everything. But, there’s so much information, and they cut some out. The questions themselves aren’t always good. I think textbooks are OK, I think easier for me to accept in US History class because it’s there. But, I think the best way for students to learn from textbooks is to read on their own. I would rather, if I had my dream, I could teach US History any way I want, I would require them to read historical novels. Watch historical movies, compare them with the textbook, discuss what happened and how much is true and how much is not true, because that way, they force their minds to work in a different way, see things in a different way, experience a different way. With textbooks, that happened, this happened, this happened, turn the page, questions, questions, turn the page. That’s very traditional. But now I’m stuck with state standards. I can’t do a lot, I need to follow them. I’m now working on my lessons for the year. I don’t know how I can meet all these standards and make it interesting for them. One chapter a day, teach ten years in one day, move on to the next. Whew, that’s a problem. I
58
don’t know if textbooks are the only problem, I think the state’s
59
expectations of what we should teach, that’s also a problem. As we can see from some of their previous quotations, the students often enjoy watching ASL translations of written text to reading it themselves. Ms. Geils did on occasion read from the text to the students, but she had some reservations about doing it too much. Also, one day we were in the library and some of the students were getting frustrated about finding books, but the teacher was only willing to help so much. This was when the term “spoon-feed” first came up. When I asked her later to explain further, not only did she apply it to finding books but also to reading: OK. Spoon-feeding. It’s the same with reading, could be students don’t think for themselves. Wait, it’s different if they don’t know how to do something or if they don’t think for themselves. These two are different. I want them to investigate, find a book. I’m willing to help them. Like, if they’re working hard and can’t find a book, that’s when I’m willing to get books, to help them search. Not just find it for them, “Here’s the answer,” no. They need to understand that life is about that. It’s never about, “I understand. The answer is right there!” like magic. Same with reading. A lot of them will hold the book and ask me “What’s this say?” (Shakes head), I’ll say, “Tell me what’s it say?” They tell me and I check, “Wait, you missed one part, let me explain that part.” They say, “Oh, I see.” Let them make mistakes. I’m tired of hearing that they’re not allowed to make mistakes. That’s what I mean by spoon-feeding.
60 I had observed Ms. Geils on several occasions helping students with their reading and her behavior pattern of asking students to recite the text and helping them with difficult words or passages matches what she described above. As we have seen, her teaching style particularly in terms of language requires students to derive meaning and actively learn rather than be “spoon-fed” passive recipients. Input and Cultural/Social Since the teacher and all of the students consider themselves culturally Deaf we have at least one common link in an otherwise ethnically diverse classroom. In fact, Ms. Geils was most concerned that her students conduct themselves as morally responsible Deaf citizens. She also liked to make connections between her classroom and the outside world. Two communication patterns that appear here are direct teaching and Role Modeling. Direct teaching. As mentioned before, under the subtopic heading of Input and Content, Ms. Geils liked to connect her lessons to events in the real world. The fact that she teaches history with all of its cultural and socially relevant issues provides a lot of opportunities to do so. I don’t think I ever observed Ms. Geils teaching about some topic without making some sort of social or cultural connection to the student’s lives or her own. As noted before, her students found her lessons interesting and liked the way she expanded on the topics. The data are replete with many examples of this happening. I will share a few that I feel are illustrative because they covered such a broad spectrum of cultural and social issues. One of them was the lesson on immigration during the turn of the century. As I mentioned before, Ms. Geils shared her grandmother’s stories of being on an immigrant ship and passing through Ellis Island. Also, she remarked that people who had health problems or who weren’t considered “fit” were rejected and sent back to Europe. She made a point of
61 emphasis that deaf people were among those considered “unfit.” Then, on a tangential issue, Ms. Geils stated that Hitler had killed many deaf people because they were considered mentally deficient. Indirectly, she was making a point that over history, deaf people have been a persecuted group. On a positive note, Ms. Geils would also frequently insert interesting anecdotes or facts about deaf people into her history lessons. Ms. Geils was also able to make use of popular culture to teach history. When talking about what year California became a state, instead of telling them directly, she asked her class if any of them liked football. She then asked what was the nickname of San Francisco’s professional football team. It may have seemed like she was going off on a tangent, but it eventually became clear to the students that there was a connection between the name of the San Francisco “49ers” football team and the history of the state. Ms. Geils then went on to talk about the gold rush of 1849. Another way that Ms. Geils liked to use popular culture in her classroom was to suggest that her students rent and watch videotapes of movies. One day she suggested watching the movie “Gone with the Wind” to get an idea of what life was like during the Civil War. She also suggested the movie “Andersonville” when talking about the infamous POW camps. As I mentioned before, she had told her students about two of her friends losing their video store business. She encouraged her students to watch the movie “You’ve Got Mail” which tells the story of a woman fighting to keep her bookstore open while having an anonymous on-line relationship with the very man whose big business was making her struggle. Although Ms. Geils would promote watching videos that had some sort of link to the topic she was discussing, she made a point of telling her students that these movies were fictitious but good for getting information of historical significance.
62 In terms of teaching her students about cultural issues, Ms. Geils’s first response had to do with culturally appropriate behavior as Deaf people. This is some of what she said: I like teaching them where the boundaries are. I think in the Deaf World, I think it is more important because they think, “You’re deaf, I’m deaf, we’re the same.” I need to draw the line. Teach them about what it’s like when they go out into the world. With their boss, can they swear? They need to know their place, what is acceptable in Deaf culture, what’s acceptable language. Deaf culture has levels of what language you can use. Like, if they say “shit.” That’s a hot topic in Deaf culture. Is it permitted, is it acceptable? Is saying “pissed off” acceptable? While discussing it, I say I’ll accept “pissed off.” The word “shit,” exchange it for another word. “Bullshit,” exchange that for another word. I have had students after school for vocabulary lessons. I explain, “Fine, use the word ‘bullshit’, but how else can you say it? How else? You can say, ‘You’re making it up,’ or ‘That’s silly,’ or ‘You’re Kidding!’ ‘Oh, please!’ ‘Yeah, right!’ there’s a whole list. Now to your boss, would you say ‘bullshit’ to your boss? No, you better not. Have to know your friends.” Give (the students) education. Teach them something. Maybe their parents never did teach them that. I always explain, you know, that ASL has levels (language registers) the same as English. You need to expand your vocabulary. I did not get to observe very many situations where the teacher was providing direct teaching on culturally appropriate behavior for Deaf people other than a few remarks to one of the students who had a tendency to swear in class. It may be noted that one cultural
behavior that was tacitly enforced was making sure the visual lines of communication were
63
kept open. This is reflected in a few ways. One was how the students’ desks were set up in a semi-circle so that students could see each other clearly. Another was the way that Ms. Geils made sure students knew when she was ready to speak and the way she directed their attention to other speakers. Also she would repeat student comments either for emphasis or for the benefit of others. In another tacit way of expressing cultural behavior, Ms. Geils did try to conduct herself as a Deaf role model for her students as we will see below. Role Modeling. One of the noticeable behaviors about Ms. Geils was the difference in her conduct inside and outside of the classroom particularly with her students. She did in fact use different social registers in language and demeanor depending on either who she interacted with or where. With me and other teachers who were her friends, she was quite open and frank in her approach. With her students she was professional, polite, and frequently used the words “please” and “thank you.” Without any prompting from me, Ms. Geils herself brought up the topic of role modeling during her interview: Oh, I show role modeling a lot more than, really, many Deaf people who are adults have to be role models. There are varying levels (role models), so it’s hard to teach. But I do what I can within my limits. So that’s how I teach them about culture, by action, showing. In terms of advocating Deaf culture, one of the topics that she was really enthusiastic about was her alma mater, Gallaudet University. This school is the only liberal arts institution in the world solely for the deaf. It is considered to be a “Mecca” for the Deaf community. It was not unusual for her to be wearing something with “Gallaudet” on it or to talk about it in the classroom.
Sometimes I’m supporter of Gallaudet and Deaf culture. I can’t help it.
64
It’s my crowd; I always encourage students to go to Gallaudet. They can go to (other schools), but that’s my crowd. Sometimes students ask me about Gallaudet, I’m open to that, because that’s educational, something I can share with them. But most of the time I think cultural issues come up with language, or with something that they know around them. To me, it’s those more than anything else. Some students commented about Ms. Geils attitude towards them inside and outside the classroom: She is neutral, calm, tells us “Do your job,” she’s friendly. Out of class she is friendly! In class, less so. She will listen to our feelings. We can express anything we like. She will listen and share her thoughts with us. She’s not like, “No, I disagree, too bad, I have the authority.” She will always try to discuss topics, use balance with the student’s and teacher’s feelings, back and forth. I did get to observe a rare moment where Ms. Geils made a comment about her role as a teacher and that of the student’s role. During one of the last class sessions I observed, she was lecturing the class about her disappointment and frustration with their lack of effort on a project that was due to be presented in class that day. She made the following remark to the class about her role and their own roles: You’re lucky you are not working in a job and I can fire you. I can’t, lucky for you right? I work hard! I don’t work here because I like to work, no. I work
because I want to see you get something. You all need to work a little bit,
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too. It should be noted that Ms. Geils’s demeanor while saying the above statements was generally calm if a bit emphatic. She carried herself with decorum at a time when some others might be sterner. This is similar to how she usually approached issues related to classroom behavior, as we will see in the next section. Input and Classroom Behavior During my observations, Ms. Geils’s class was generally well behaved. I did not observe any incidences of egregious behavior inside the classroom. There was not a lot of coded data related to Input and Classroom Behavior. However, that does not mean that the classroom was devoid of any need for behavior control. Most of this was done by direct teaching, which is the only real behavior pattern noted here. Direct teaching. The majority of input that Ms. Geils provided was related to directing the attention of her students, mostly to herself when she was ready to teach. Most of other kinds of classroom behavior management were usually reprimands either for violations of classroom and school rules or inappropriate behavior. One other area had to do with procedural issues, such as where to put completed homework upon arrival in the classroom. I will cover each of these areas briefly but before I do so I would like to share Ms. Geils’s perspective on what she tries to teach and what she expected from her students in terms of behavior: I don’t like setting too many rules, but I also like teaching them where the boundaries are. I also want them to be motivated to learn, to enjoy this. It’s not supposed to be a place where you get punished and scolded but a place
where they have enthusiasm. But, I’m very strict about a few things like
66
being on time. How I do that, by giving quizzes. Train them to know how to keep up with their work. I try to give them a lot of empowerment with becoming more responsible. I think that’s most important in a learning environment. Once they, the students, feel they have control over a lot, they will probably be open to learning more. If I say “No, no, no,” they will become resistant. I need to let them be themselves. The first day of school I always say, “I will treat you the same as you treat me.” Respect each other. It’s fine. I’ve always had a good relationship with most, if not all of my students in eight years of teaching because I give them their room, they’re people too. They have their lives and they have their experiences. Can’t always expect them to be perfect. But I always try to take advantage of their positive energy, wherever they can find it. Take advantage of it. I try to redirect those who are negative. I often ignore negative behavior because I know really they take advantage. I don’t want to encourage them. I always focus on the positive. We can see how the teacher wants to empower her students to be independent thinkers and show respect for other people and how she accentuates their positive aspects over the negative. During my interviews with the students, I asked for their perceptions of Ms. Geils classroom manner and both the words “strict” and “friendly” showed up several times: If I’m not serious, her attitude is “Well, what’s that?” She is serious, strict. Tells me to be serious.
67 Really, she can be strict if we don’t follow her expectations She seems to be a good teacher, but she is like strict, very strict about homework and tests. I like that she knows what she is teaching, and is a very strict teacher. She smiles, is friendly, a little bit strict, no big deal. She’s friendly. I feel comfortable with her. Had her in summer school, friendly. She is still the same to me.
While the students were speaking mostly of Ms. Geils’s attitude, this can also manifest their perception of how she enforces her classroom rules.
The aura of the
classroom and the approach to students’ behavior is one of mutual respect. One repeatedly observed kind of incident that reflects this has to do with chewing gum. Chewing gum was not permitted. At least three different times with different students, I saw Ms. Geils ask them that they throw their gum away. Her tone was simple, straightforward, and she did it with a smile. In every case, the students quickly and quietly complied without protest or showing a negative attitude. Note that Ms. Geils said that she tends to ignore negative behaviors and this was generally true as I observed. However she does have her limits and was observed reprimanding her students quite sternly after repeated behavior violations. Such outbursts were rare.
68 For attention control, Ms. Geils was observed using four approaches, depending on how much eye contact the class already had with her. If they were already pretty much attending to her, eye contact and the use of discourse markers such as “now” or “okay” was sufficient to get their focus. Hand waving for attention was used when only a few students were not attending when she was ready. A “tapping” motion was a much more emphatic approach than hand waving and appears to be used more for situations where she wanted to make sure they did not miss what happened next. The last approach she used for gaining attention was to flash the lights once. This was usually reserved for situations where the students were absorbed in reading or where it would have been more difficult to gain their attention by hand waving. In general the class was attentive to the teacher and I did not ever observe her rebuking students for not paying attention in class. Summary of Input Communication Behaviors Going back to the definition of Input as the amount and quality of teaching effort given to students, including opportunities to learn new material and its difficulty level, let us look at what Ms. Geils did in terms of these criteria. We saw that she consistently tried to provide her students with grade level coursework as required by state education department standards. Homework was assigned daily as well as at least two long-term projects. Students were given quizzes almost daily. She was described as “challenging” by the majority of her students. She provided a lot of direct teaching input. Her teaching was interesting and often peppered with real life anecdotes and examples that the students could relate to. She asked frequent questions of her students and attempted to get them to expand on their answers. She encouraged dialogue among the students. Ms. Geils was a strong advocate for Deaf culture and appropriate behaviors and norms that she felt her students should follow. In
69 terms of classroom behaviors, outside of setting some procedures, she did not need to provide her students with much input other than occasional corrective reminders. There was some disconfirming evidence related to higher expectations. One was the switch towards the use of “easier” textbooks and reports by some of the students that the homework was becoming easier during latter part of observations.
Chapter 5
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Output Introduction As seen in Table 4-1, output had the second most frequently observed and coded utterances from the data. Output is defined as the opportunities provided by the teacher for the students to express their knowledge either by course work, question and answer sessions, or via verbal interactions. Below, we will look at the Output communication patterns identified under each of the four focal areas of expectations in their order of frequency. See Table 5-1 for an outline. Table 5-1 Output Behavior Patterns Across Focal Areas Content
Language Cultural Social Classroom Behavior Communication Written Coursework Bilingual Freedom to speak Good Behavior Homework. ASL/English. Cultural control Quizzes. Word choice in ASL of classroom talk. Projects. Reading Topics of Use of multiRead-aloud for discussion. media. help. Social Chatting Verbal expression Freedom of participation. Extended answers encouraged.
Output and Content As we have already seen, Ms. Geils tried to provide an adequate amount of coursework for her students on a daily basis. We have also seen that she tried to elicit responses from her students in the classroom and allowed her students to freely ask questions and provide comments. Since the content category mostly entails subject areas to
71 be taught, it makes sense that the two major communication patterns identified here involve written coursework and verbal expressions about topics under discussion. Written coursework. Ideally, I would have liked to analyze samples of the students’ written work. Ms. Geils had provided her class with loose-leaf binders to make student work portfolios, and I had permission to see them. But first they needed to be filled with work and organized. Then, before that could happen, Ms. Geils took an earlier than expected maternity leave. However, I have sufficient data in the form of observations and interviews to describe what the students produced. Based on observations, most of the written work consisted of homework questions that required short answers, and quizzes that required one word answers or were multiple choice. Ms. Geils mentioned something about starting weekly journals and essays, but I never knew for sure if she had implemented those before her leave. There was one long-term project, a European Immigrant “scrapbook” as described above. Also there was the short-term project where students had to prepare a presentation for the class using multimedia sources. I observed three of these short-term project presentations. Two of them were done using Power Point and the third was done using Microsoft Word. The Power Point presentations showed a lot of creativity on the part of the students Arturo and Jose, although they were sparse in terms of content. The Word presentation done by Tony was verbose in comparison to the first two. When Tony admitted that he was not familiar with Power Point, Ms. Geils made the suggestion that the three boys combine their talents to make a presentation that was informative as well as creative. What needs to be said about this project, as we will see later in the chapter on Feedback, is that Ms. Geils was not happy with
72 the results from the class as a whole. However, the point here is that she encouraged the use of technology and multimedia as a form of expression by her students. When I asked Ms. Geils about what she tried to get out of her students related to output, this what she said: First, critical thinking skills. Can they think for themselves? Do they have ideas? It doesn’t matter what kind. Related to academics, like this happened, comparing this event with that one. They’re not robots, sitting there. Letting the teacher “Tell me, tell me, tell me.” I teach five History classes right now. Two of my classes are frustrating. For example, right now, I have a project where they imagine, visualize, they create themselves as immigrants from a certain country, and move to America. One student in one of the nonacademic classes doesn’t get it. Still, the state requires I teach to standards. I try to give them a chance. I asked that class today to write a “letter” to their “parents” in their European country. I explained it, went through the list, “You’re on a ship, is it a good experience or bad experience? You vomited, you saw others vomit, is the food good? Did you fall in love with someone? Did you meet someone?” I threw out ideas at them. “The ship arrives in New York, you see the Statue of Liberty, you see it, do you feel ‘Finally!’ or do you feel ‘That’s what I heard about’ or you finally see land and not water all around. You go into NYC. Is it easy to find a job or frustrating, going from place to place? Where do you live? Do you join your sister, brother, aunt, uncle? Or share an apartment with three strangers you don’t know, et cetera.” One girl just did not get it. I said no, that’s not it, I had to explain it
again. That’s my biggest struggle. I want to see students themselves come
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up with wonderful ideas, like they could write it. Ms. Geils was talking about another class that she taught, a “non-academic” class. It needs to be noted here that the project she just described is virtually identical to the one she gave to the focal class in this study. This provides an insight to some expectations she holds for her lower-achieving classes. This was her comment about what she does when she feels she is not getting the kind of output she wants: Often I will ask another student who seems to have a grasp to explain to the first student. After that, I ask the first student to re-explain to me in her own words.
That
often
works.
Sometimes
it’s
their
language,
their
communication, maybe the vibes are better. But, I do find a few students (shakes head) well I accept it. So much I can do. When I was a first year teacher, I had my “sleeves rolled up.” I was going to change the world. Today, I accept that there are certain students who will never be able to be the students I want them to be. No, not student, the person. Because their minds have a limit. And I don’t feel I failed. I try, if it doesn’t work, oh well. Their future, they will be, I always feel they’ll all do fine. Their lives will be different from what I’m used to. Their work, they’ll be satisfied cleaning houses or- satisfied, fine. I’m not used to that, that’s not who I am, but I can’t change them. That’s all. Those students, well, I teach and teach and teach and nothing happens. Other students, I feel they have potential. I push and push them, pull answers from them. Really it depends on the student. I can’t save everyone. I finally accepted that a few years ago. I realized that,
well, I will always have several students, that’s just them. I try to find
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something that they enjoy, not make them so miserable, and go with that. I’ve had students that said, “I hate history, hate this, hate reading, I don’t understand it.” I understand, I know, I feel bad because, really, those students should not be here, those students should be learning more, practicing for the outer world. So it’s frustrating. It’s a Catch-22 type of thing for me. We can see from the above that Ms. Geils has a good sense of teaching efficacy, that she can make a difference for students if she tries hard enough to find a way. But we can also know that she is realistic about the potential of some students to be the kind of achiever she wants them to be. For these students, she thinks there should be alternative educational choices. I asked the students about what kind of written work they produce for the class. We saw some quotations above related to Input that they had to do worksheets and quizzes nearly every day. There were similar interview responses from several other students as well. They also had to write answers to review questions in the text after reading from it. Some of the students certainly did have opinions about the course work that Ms. Geils was providing, which I will share later, and which leads us to our next theme on verbal expressions as Output. Verbal expressions. Note that the term “verbal” here refers not to speech only, but also to any use of language face-to-face including ASL. One notable characteristic of Ms. Geils’s classroom was the relatively open flow of communication. Many educators are probably familiar with the kind of classroom where no talking is allowed except at the discretion of the instructor. That did happen in Ms. Geils class when she had the floor, but
students were free to add comments or ask questions during pauses between her
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utterances. In addition to comments, opinions, and questions, students also responded to questions and other elicitation attempts by the teacher. As noted above, Ms. Geils tended to pepper her direct teaching with elicitation attempts. She had some success in getting students to respond. The kind of response she got depended on what kind of question she asked. Not surprisingly if she asked a “who” or “what” question, the answers were short. If she asked “how” or “why” questions the answers were more elaborate. As I noted before, there was a relationship between the type of question and whether she was presenting new information or reviewing. She posed more concrete type of questions to assess previous knowledge of new topics. The script below illustrates of this type of questioning, when Ms. Geils was introduced the concept of business monopolies: Ms. Geils: (Points to word “monopoly” written on board, looks at class expectantly with eyebrows raised) Robert: It means take over, take over. Jose: It’s a game Ms. Geils: (points to Jose) He said it’s a game. What’s the goal of the game? The goal? Robert: To take over the board. Jose: Take over and get money.
76 Arturo: To get money. Ms. Geils: Right, I want to get Park Avenue and Boardwalk, take over the yellow squares on the board. If I own just one or two squares, that’s not good. Ms. Geils: (points at “monopoly on whiteboard) Mono… (points at David) David? David: One Ms. Geils: (Nods) One! One business takes over. David: Means one owner? Ms. Geils: It doesn’t mean own a business, it means take over all of the business. Ms. Geils clarified for the class that monopolies are a control of a whole industry using MGM’s early control of the movie industry as an example. Another point of showing this observation is that one consistent behavior pattern Ms. Geils showed is that she often did not rely on classroom control tactics such as requiring students to raise their hands to be recognized. In the example given above Jose, Robert and Arturo answered almost simultaneously. Her nomination of David before asking him what “mono” meant was an exception to the pattern that I observed most of the time.
When reviewing previously taught topics, Ms. Geils tended to ask more “how” and
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“why” types of questions. Also, she would ask students to defend or elaborate on their answers, and generally try to have a discussion. This happened most often while reviewing the answers to quizzes right after they were finished. In most cases, if the majority of the students got the answer right the first time, she would move on to the next question. If there seemed to be some ambiguity or confusion, Ms. Geils would start probing with questions. In the example below after a quiz they discussed Upton Sinclair’s exposure of abuses in the meat industry: Ms. Geils: (Directs class attention to Arturo) Say it again. Arturo: He (Upton Sinclair) wrote about problems in the meat industry. Ms. Geils: (Nods) He wrote about what happened in the meat industry. What happened? Jose: Meat was cut up and some fell on the floor, and there were rats all over the place. Ms. Geils: Meat fell on the floor and got dirty. Would you eat meat if it fell on the floor? Several students answer no. Richard: I would wash it off.
Ms. Geils: You would wash it off? But the floor is very, very dirty! They
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wrapped it up any way. Bacteria got into the meat. Rats, too! Several students react with disgust. Ms. Geils: Meat industry was awful back then, it’s still bad today, still. But a lot of improvement now. Why has it improved? Why? (points at Tony) Tony: (out of video camera range, answer not seen) Ms. Geils: (shakes head) No, no.
Why improved conditions in meat
factories? Why? Robert: (answer not clear, something about cleaning up) Ms. Geils: Right, what law was passed? What’s the name of that law? Amanda: The Food and Drug Act! Ms. Geils: Right! In history, “Act” means law. Here, not only did Ms. Geils get the answer that Upton Sinclair wrote about abuses in the meat industry, but she also got students to tell her what the problems were and the law that was passed as a consequence. She was not hesitant to pursue answers and was persistent about getting them. However, she also got a good amount of output from discussing class readings with her students either individually or in pairs as we will see in the next section dealing with Language and Communication.
Output and Language/Communication
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Ms. Geils’s communication behavior patterns noted in this area are related to reading, and the student’s use of ASL to express their knowledge. This was a classroom where the written material was in English and the face-to-face interaction was done in ASL, creating a bilingual environment. With reading we can see this when students are asked to “read aloud” in ASL from an English text. Students read English print and try to translate it into accurate ASL. The focus here is more on reading rather than writing. Also, we will look at some incidents where the teacher and students discuss choices of appropriate ASL signs to use depending on the context. Reading. We saw above that reading was a difficult set of skills for the students to master and that some of them did not like to read. Nevertheless, they were still given reading tasks to complete. Also we saw in the last chapter that Ms. Geils resists doing the reading for her students. Instead, when they have trouble, she asks them to read aloud to her so she can distinguish what was giving them problems. One day I got a good look at her doing this with several students, mostly on an individual basis. In addition to helping students with difficult passages, she also tried to get them to read between the lines. Here she was asking David and Brenda about their reading on a workers’ strike in the early 1900’s: Ms. Geils: Why did Roosevelt help end it (strike)? Why? Brenda: For reform, he wanted change and improvement. Ms. Geils: Right, but why does that help? David: Because he’s President?
Ms. Geils: Why did that help end the problem, why? Why did the union
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want to strike? Brenda: (looking at text for answers) Better slavery? Ms. Geils: Slavery? (puzzled expression) Brenda: (looks at text again) Better salaries, silly me! Ms. Geils: Means what? David: Money Ms. Geils: What else did they want? Brenda: (looks at text) A shorter workday. Ms. Geils: Right, how did the President help them how? Brenda: By helping the labor unions! Here we saw that even though Brenda’s’ initial answer was right, Ms. Geils wanted more details and used how and why questions to get the desired output from her students. She also got Brenda to correct her reading error on her own.
This is what Brenda herself stated
when I asked her about reading: Reading is okay. It’s okay. It’s fine. If you don’t understand, ask her, she will explain. We have to ask, it’s our responsibility. Make sure that we understand if we have a test too.
81 Brenda’s admission of responsibility for her own learning was something that Ms. Geils would like to see more often. We saw this previously when she was talking about the issue of “spoon-feeding.” The more effort at output the students showed, the more she was willing to help them. I observed the same approach during a class visit to the library to do some research. When some students had trouble finding reading material, she helped them. If they looked, she looked. But when they stopped, she stopped also and did other things instead. We will look further at the kind of feedback or support she provided below. Choices in ASL. As in any bilingual environment, discussions translating between ASL and an English word were frequent. We have already seen that Ms. Geils likes to introduce new words or terms, break them down into components and ask students for their meanings. Students were often able provide at least one sign that matched the word meaning. The discussion in Chapter 4 of the word “confederation” is illustrates this approach. Like other languages, ASL shows lexical variation and I got to observe a discussion on the word “grey.” When Ms. Geils asked her class what color the Confederates used, Robert replied, with a sign that is commonly accepted as the sign for “green.” This caused a little confusion but led to students giving different signs for the word “grey” that they had seen. It did not stop there. There was a discussion of some regional variations in signs for words like “Halloween” and “hospital” and so forth. As an added twist to this discussion, Ms. Geils informed the class that there were also two English spellings: grey and gray. Ms. Geils was not always the final authority on ASL. One example was the time she signed “Philippines” and Robert, who is Asian, gave her the sign for Philippines as used by the natives of that country. She accepted his version readily and used it thereafter.
Output and Cultural/Social
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The relatively open flow of information in the classroom was remarkable. While Ms. Geils generally had control of the floor, she was not rigid about controlling student conversations and allowed some off-topic discussions to take place. Two communication patterns I noted here were freedom to speak in class and informal social chatting. Freedom to speak in class. Initially, I had planned to discuss this under the Output and Content topic area above, but how a teacher controls the flow of information in a classroom is more related to accepted social and cultural behaviors (see Cazden, 1989). The students in Ms. Geils’s class were often free to add comments or ask questions, usually during her pauses between utterances. Like all fluent signers of ASL she was able to control the flow of conversation with eye gaze. No interruptions were possible unless she was looking at a student and yielded the floor. Sometimes students would begin to sign or wave for attention. However, they started only when they had Ms. Geils’s eye contact. I asked students how they felt about being able speak up in the classroom: Ms. Geils lets me ask any kind of questions. If I don’t understand, even during a test, if I don’t understand a question, I can ask her any time. And she says don’t be afraid to ask her questions, go ahead and ask. Yes, I can interrupt her when I have a question. Yes we can, if you talk about students and her opinions. I can interrupt to give an opinion. She won’t stop us. She will listen to our feelings. We can express anything and she will listen and share with us. She’s not like, “No, I
disagree, too bad, I have the authority.” She will always try to discuss,
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balance the student’s and teacher’s feelings, and go back and forth. However, the classroom was not perceived as a laissez-faire environment either. Some students did not feel totally free to just interrupt at any time: Yes, it’s (interrupting) permitted, but she doesn’t like it until she finishes lecturing, and then we can ask questions. You have to wait until she’s finished, then you can add comments. Yes we can raise hands, but Ms. Geils always says, “hold it” while someone else is talking. We are not permitted to distract people, let them finish. Then when they look at you. It’s your turn. Don’t interrupt and start talking. Based on the number of incidents coded, students were generally free to provide output. However, it was not just limited to academic topics, Ms. Geils was open to almost anything on their minds as she says here: I want them to be able to share what they feel is right, what they feel is wrong. Sometimes they bring up some issues. As a teacher, I always have to be ready for the most interesting topics that could come up. I have had students discuss issues related to, uh, now, a hot issue is gays and lesbians. But, I applaud them because they’re thinking for themselves and debating topics. I always try to give them a neutral side, explain why things happen that way, why people feel that way. Teach them about things like, um, and the only thing I will teach them is like power versus pride. But basically, I
enjoy it more when they’re able to ask “It’s the same as what (other thing)
84
happened out there.” I want them to be able to say, “Hey, but you know I feel that’s wrong, this is right” and learn to stand up for themselves too. Sometimes they’re passive. I say, “Why support that? What do you really think? Come on.” I think that’s the only thing I really expect from them. To think for themselves. Even if it’s related with school. They say, “I don’t like this, I think this is boring” Fine, “Come on, tell me more. Fine what can I do to make this better for you?” Neat, I enjoy that. I want that from them. I will note that Ms. Geils was really emphatic during her interview about teaching students to be independent and able to think for themselves. Informal social chat. The students’ way of sharing social information in the classroom did not become immediately apparent when doing data analysis. Almost without fail, anytime Ms. Geils was not addressing the class or when she was writing on the board, several students would start chatting. Most of the chatting observed during this time was personal and social. Some of it was related to the educational topic at hand. Ms. Geils was never seen rebuking her students for doing so regardless of the reason for their chatting. All she had to do was either wave for attention or flash the lights when she was ready to take the floor. She stated to me that at the beginning of the school year she told the students she did not mind chatting in class as long as they paid attention when she wanted it. During interviews with students, I did not address this issue since it was not relevant to me at the time, but one student did say something about it: Sometimes we talk in class, but when she is trying to teach we will not talk. When she looks away we can chat.
85 Note that this student did not say we will chat, but that we can chat. Out of curiosity, I looked at a videotape of another Deaf teacher’s classroom from different study and noticed the same chatting pattern. My research assistant, who had Deaf teachers, also confirms that she remembers this phenomenon in her own classes. Most educators in general education would think this kind of behavior is rude. This might suggest that social chatting when the teacher does not have the floor is a culturally related phenomenon in the classroom for Deaf students. It may be noted that social chatting itself within the deaf community is seen not just as gossip, but as sharing information, which is highly valued (Lane, Hoffmeister, & Bahan, 1996). Output and Classroom Behavior Again, as noted before, the students’ classroom behavior was generally good. Additionally, two categories overlap here. Many utterances that were coded as Cultural and Social were also were coded as Classroom Behavior. There was one student, David, who was a bit of an instigator. He generated most of our coded data in this category. David was a very outgoing person and sort of a “class clown,” who liked to chat mostly with the two girls in the class and make jokes. He also had a penchant for using profanity. Generally, the teacher ignored his behavior when it was not disruptive. She did give him redirection from time to time, which will be described below under Feedback. Summary of Output communication behaviors Output is defined as the opportunities provided by the teacher for the students to express their knowledge either by written course work, question and answer sessions, or other verbal interactions. We saw that students provided written work on a daily basis through homework assignments and quizzes most of which were short answer, single word answers and/or multiple-choice selections. She encouraged her students to make use of
86 computer technology to produce work. Students were encouraged to ask questions anytime they felt the need and they were seen doing so. They were also able to provide comments and opinions on a variety of topics not limited to the academic content at hand. The teacher asked questions frequently while lecturing. During questioning, the teacher would pursue the topic beyond the concrete facts particularly during review. If the students wanted help with reading, they had to provide some output effort before the teacher would help them. In terms of the verbal output, whether it was responding to questioning, asking questions, and adding comments, students did not have to wait for nomination by the teacher. The students would chat among themselves when the teacher did not have the floor and with her tacit approval. Overall, the communication environment was open in this classroom and student output was encouraged in the ways described above.
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Chapter 6 Feedback Introduction
Feedback was the third most frequently coded category in this study. Feedback is defined as the teacher’s evaluations of student contributions, comments, work, or behavior. This can include praise, criticism, acceptance of ideas, answers to queries, or ignoring student contributions. We will look at communication patterns identified in each of the four focal areas of Feedback. See Table 6-1 for a summary. Table 6-1 Feedback Behavior Patterns Across Focal Areas Content
Language/ Communication
Praise Praise Brief comments Brief comments Restates student Restates student comments comments Expansion Expansion attempts attempts Criticism Criticism Brief and moderate Appropriate ASL comments registers Silence/Ignore Helpful feedback Disappointment about writing Answers Answers Expects students Students need to to struggle read aloud before Wants to see getting help effort
Cultural/Social
Classroom Behavior
Praise Praise Brief comments Brief comments Replies to Deaf Polite Culture Criticism Criticism Silence/Ignore Expects boundaries Mild sarcasm to be followed Silence/Ignore Shows tact in sensitive areas Answers Gives answers readily
Feedback and Content Being in a classroom necessitates the use of feedback by the teacher towards student output particularly in terms of academic content. Three behaviors that were identified here were praise, criticism, and answers.
88 Praise. Praise is defined as any positive response to student output. It can range from a quick nod to effusive comments. From my observations, Ms. Geils was quick to give praise for correct answers. This feedback was brief, usually in the form of a nod, or the comments “right” or “good,” with a smile. She did not normally give lavish praise. However, she would use a little more commendation if she thought there was a lot of deliberation or effort put into something. In general, Ms. Geils appeared to treat most of her students equally in terms of praise. There was however one student who was the target of more frequent praise than the others. He often did better work than the other students or provided a greater number of answers to questions. What was really interesting was that he said during his interview that he was not sure if the teacher liked him or not. At the risk of speculation, it may be he said that because he was in the presence of other students when he was asked that question. But generally, even if Ms. Geils praised him more frequently, it was still brief. The use of praising utterances, however brief, was often immediately followed up by input. We nearly missed this pattern altogether during the initial stages of coding because the pause between the feedback and input utterances was very transitory. A frequently occurring example would be a nod quickly followed by a comment or another question. The nod provides feedback, but then we get new input from the following comment or question. The follow-up input was one of three types: repetition, expansion, or questions •
Repetition was done for the benefit of all the other students, to ensure that they saw the original reply. In some cases rather than repeating, the teacher would rephrase. This is what Robert and Brenda told me: If we are right, Ms. Geils will say our answer again to make sure all of the students are watching, that they saw what I said.
89 She says “Right, right!” tells the class what I said, the answer. •
Expansion is where the teacher would elaborate further on the topic. This was something she liked to do frequently. We saw some examples of her expanding on topics and applying them to real life situations in the Input chapter above.
•
Questions following the feedback were usually an attempt to get the students to give more details. This is what Jose and Arturo told me together when I asked about Ms. Geils’s questioning patterns: Arturo: She says, “Right, but I need more specifics.” She always says that. Jose: Tells us to expand more on the answer As Ms. Geils stated above, she wanted her students to learn to defend their answers or to have more discussions as a way of encouraging independent thinking skills. Students also made comments about the positive kinds of feedback they got on their
written work from Ms. Geils: I would write something and give it to her. When I get it back, most of the time I have good grades and she writes “good” or “good job.” She says my work is good, that I’m caught up with everything fine. And she makes sure I put my name on the page so I can get full credit for it. What she says on my paper? If it’s good, she writes “good job!” or “Happy that you paid attention in class” or “I’m proud of you.”
90 Most of the students felt that Ms. Geils was kind and fair with in her feedback even if it was the negative kind, as we will see below. Criticism. Here criticism refers to negative feedback. In a classroom, it can range from simple silence to plain “No” to blistering denunciations to constructive comments. Her students generally saw Ms. Geils as the helpful sort with her criticism. As we will also see, even her most disapproving feedback struck a chord with some of her students. Most of the time, her negative responses were brief, such as saying “no” or “wrong.” She also used silence and looked around the classroom at different students when she was not getting the answers she wanted. I asked the students what sort of feedback they got when they gave wrong answers during questioning. Almost all of them had something to say: When she’s not happy with our answers, the feedback is still good. Never says bad things, never criticizes us, never. Her feedback helps, she tries to help us. I’ve had her since last year. She never puts me down at all. She says “No, that’s wrong” or “Wrong, sorry, thumbs down.” She will say “wrong answer” and she tells me and the others why it’s wrong. She says “wrong” or “right answer” If I give the wrong answer, she says “No. Close but…” If I’m wrong, “That’s not really the answer, does anyone else know the answer?” If not, she will explain the answer.
91 Observations showed that Ms. Geils was moderate in her negative responses. She tended to encourage students and pursue a correct answer. Silence was an effective way to encourage more attempts by the students. It would be inaccurate to say it was noncommunicative silence, as her eyebrows would be raised and there would be an expectant look on her face. Only after some unsuccessful attempts by the students would she give an answer. This will leads us to the behavior pattern we will see in the next section on answers below. However, before we do that I would like conclude this discussion with Ms. Geils’s most powerful feedback tool, expressing disappointment. One of the projects that Ms. Geils had assigned to her students required the students to prepare presentations to “teach” a subject related to the Spanish-American War and then give out a “quiz.” She thought it might be a really boring subject for the students and wanted them to do the project as a way of making it more interesting. However, in spite of having plenty of time and many opportunities to ask for help, the students were ill prepared on the day their presentations were due. Keep in mind that Ms. Geils’s pattern was to expect her students to ASK for help. She did not just offer it. Apparently, few students had asked for help. On the day of the presentations, it was obvious that students were still scrambling to get things done. What follows is an excerpt of the lecture Ms. Geils gave her students. Note that her demeanor while serious was very calm and straightforward: How do you think I feel right now?
(Several students say, “Upset”)
Disappointed, a little disappointed, upset, no. Why am I disappointed, why? (Several students say, “Not ready”) You’re not ready, you don’t have a quiz, you had time to type up the quiz… No one asked me for help, not much. Very few asked me. Very, very few. I expected a lot more questions…I
didn’t see you use a lot of your textbooks. Didn’t see you use it a lot in the
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past few days, right? Yes, I know it’s frustrating for you. The library wasn’t the best place to find books. Frustrating for you, right? BUT, did anyone say to me “I don’t think I have enough, this is what I have?” Today, you’re still working (on projects).
Supposed to present them today, right? You’re
supposed to come in at 8:00, ready to speak, right? I see people still typing, saying, “I thought…” I don’t want to see this happen again… You can show me what you have. I will say some of what happened was not your fault…but I also don’t think you read what I write, I don’t think you really paid attention to what I said in class, what I wrote on the board. That’s a problem. I told you yesterday about the quiz, I wrote it on the board…I want you to understand I work because I want you to get something. You need to work a little bit too. Okay? Don’t feel bad, I’m not mad, I’m not upset, I’m disappointed. This was a frustrating project for you and frustrating for me too. Okay? As it turned out this lecture did have an impact on the students, as we will see from their interviews when some of them commented on what had happened: Really, she can be strict if we don’t follow her expectations. She will be upset, feel like “Come on!” Some kids did not finish their projects. They were irresponsible. She was disappointed. (Looks taken aback) That was the first time for me. I was thinking, “ I should progress faster, should have listened.”
So far seems her attitude’s pretty good. No problem with her attitude until
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recently, she was upset because we were not responsible about asking her questions. First time I saw her upset so far. Her attitude is fine. However, some of the students did not seem willing to accept what Ms. Geils said: She tends to do things last minute. We only had last Monday and Thursday in the library, then Monday in the computer lab. Feel like there’s not enough time to do research, finish my project. She should let us work three days in the lab, then we could finish it. It’s really not her fault, but she should have looked at which three days the lab was available and be prepared for it. During observations the two students who complained did not work very hard in the computer lab. Ms. Geils had also noticed and remarked to me that she doubted that they would be ready for their presentations. This reinforces observations of her pattern of expecting students to work without constant reminders and for them to ask for help. She follows a similar pattern with answering students’ questions. Answers. While Ms. Geils will give answers to student questions, she does not give them out freely without first getting some effort from the students. Recall that she does not like to “spoon feed” answers to her students. This is what she told me: I want them to feel the struggle and success, that experience of accomplishment. Spoon-fed, they will never feel that experience…I want students to experience frustration, but when they get to the point of too
much frustration, that’s when I know I need to get involved. Again it’s
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based on judgment, you know, human intuition. Her usual pattern was to reply to questions with a question of her own to see what students already understood. Also it encouraged students’ thinking in order to answer their own questions. This pattern was also apparent when she helps students with their reading, and during review questioning. Brenda commented on Ms. Geils’s answers: Yeah, at least we try. If we’re wrong she’ll still help us. She tells us the reason why we’re wrong, explains it. If you’re right, she will say you’re right and explain more deeply. For illustration, recall the description of how Ms. Geils worked with Brenda and David on their reading assignment in the last chapter. Ms. Geils employed the same pattern for helping students find materials as in the library and on the internet. One day she gave them a list of search engines to use on the internet such as Google to help them with their research. One student was asked her why there was so much work involved. She gave him a mild rebuke about being lazy and explained that research involves making sure he had more than one source of information. There was another reason she gave them information about internet searches. When students asked interesting questions for which she was not sure of the answer, she would tell them to look it up on the internet and share it with the class for extra credit. Sometimes she even did this when she already knew the answer. For example, one student asked about the connection Theodore Roosevelt and the “Teddy Bear.” She smiled and told him he could look it up for extra credit. This behavior pattern goes right along with her expressed beliefs about not spoon-feeding answers to her students.
Feedback and Language/Communication
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Most of the language and communication has been related to reading, vocabulary, and ASL. The same holds true here as well. We will look at these more closely in terms of feedback and the three patterns of praise, criticism and answers. Praise. In terms of reading and vocabulary, Ms. Geils’s feedback patterns are basically the same as described above with content area; mostly simple commendations. Again, she follows her positive comments with attempts for expansion or further questions. Recall the previous examples where she was working with the students on the words “confederation” and “reconstruction.” In both cases, she got the students to construct the meaning with her with positive encouragement. Another example was the word “immigrate.” After helping the students understand that migrate means to move, she again used positive encouragement to get them to figure out the difference of the prefix “im” (immigrate) as opposed to “em” (emigrate). In terms of reading, we can look back at the example above of Ms. Geils helping Brenda and David with their reading as her usual approach of combining positive feedback and further elicitation to help students with their interpretation of text. She was observed using this same approach with other students. We have already seen that the students respond well to Ms. Geils’s attempts to push them while using positive encouragement. Criticism.
Data from the observations and interviews indicate that Ms. Geils’s
negative comments related to language and communication were about the appropriate use of ASL social registers, and about writing. The former occurred with one of the students who had a tendency to use profanity in the classroom. Ms. Geils had low tolerance for inappropriate language, and she rebuked the student. Also recall her interview remarks about the after-school “vocabulary lessons” she gave to some students who she thought were using
96 inappropriate language. However, Ms. Geils was not “superior” about language in informal settings with her own peers. She was just as likely to use language on an informal social scale as anyone else. Since Ms. Geils previously taught English, it is not surprising that she would insist on her students using standard English in writing. Of the student comments about the kind of feedback they got on their work, one of them did directly address the issue of writing: Before in my classes, I didn’t do well on my essays. She explains, gives feedback, and explains how we should do essays. She’s not very (pause), not mad. Just, like the same thing as I recently said, willing to help, give feedback. “Do the right thing.” Writes on the board the right way to do an essay. She says, “Don’t worry you will do better next time.” Note that this student stated that she was “not mad” but willing to give help. I observed her explaining to the class the basics of writing an essay and she simply told them “I noticed most of you don’t know how to write an essay the right way. I noticed from your tests that you have some weak areas.” She also told them that they needed to support their thesis statements in their essays, that she was more interested in the supporting points than their grammar.
Basically, her pattern was to follow her “negative” comments with
constructive feedback on how to do their work better the next time. She encouraged her students to correct their errors and turn the work in again. This is what she said: Now, if related with a paper, if I don’t like something, I always write “You did good on this one, but where is this other point? What is that?” and they
always have a chance to make up their work, so that they’re
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communicating through writing. This is also reflected in a statement that she left written on top of the board: “Reminder: You can redo any assignment.” Answers. Again, as with the general content, Ms. Geils does not give easy answers to questions related to language, particularly reading. One interesting comment she made during her interview had to do more with content, but also reflects her ideas about how language is used in homework assignments: I plan to start doing outlining in a different way. Where they’re used to looking at the question, the answer is the same word in the text and they just put it in. But they have NO idea what it means. I say I could do that with Japanese, knowing nothing about Japanese language. If I see the same characters or letters, I can take it right from the text and fill in the answer. Right answer. I had students confess to me, last year, “But before, neat, we took answers from the text.” Now they look and the answer’s “not there.” I say, “You need to read through it, visualize, think!” Here she was referring to “fill in the blank” types of assignments where students simply had to find the word in the text and insert it into the answer sheet without any thinking or reflection on their part. We can see that when the students said they were unable to “take answers from the text,” that Ms. Geils simply told them they needed to think through the text for the answers. Also, we have already seen Ms. Geils’s approach to reading above where she tried to coax the answers out of the students before giving them one. For her students,
98 there was no getting an easy answer from Ms. Geils. Very little “spoon feeding” occurred in her classroom. Feedback and Cultural/Social Ms. Geils’s primary cultural and social concern for her students was that they learn to conduct themselves as good Deaf citizens who use socially appropriate behavior depending on the time and place. In addition to the language registers discussed above, she talked about boundaries: Related with deaf culture, sometimes I draw boundaries, like being pregnant. Since I’m Deaf, students tend to think, “You’re deaf too, neat.” They feel a connection. Maybe their parents know me, or whatever, many reasons. For example, a few weeks ago a student said, “I wonder you’re really growing (pregnant).” I’m teaching about immigration and she just said that. I just nodded and kept talking. I ignored her. Then afterwards I said “You can talk to me about my pregnancy at the right time. Now, we were talking about what? We’re not talking about personal lives. There’s a boundary.” Another time, last year, a student said, “I know that my uncle knows you!” I nodded and cut her off and went on with class. I don’t encourage that. Then later, I see her on the football field and she asked me again. Then I said nicely, “How is he?” The pattern seen above, and in the classroom is that Ms. Geils’s feedback tends to vary by the social setting in which the event is situated. Depending on the social context and its rules, the same student utterance could result in a positive or a negative reaction. In terms of
99 student questions, whether she ignored it or answered it also depended on the social context. We will take a look at the types of feedback patterns she showed. Positive Feedback.
Here again, the lines between feedback and input categories
overlap. Most of Ms. Geils’ positive feedback related to culture was brief, a nod or replying “right” perhaps with a smile. She did show a tendency to be more interested when the topic had to do with deafness or with something the students could relate to directly as we will see below. While Ms. Geils does declare an emphasis on “boundaries” related with personal lives she occasionally allowed this boundary to be crossed. This happened when the topic was related to content and/or personal lives as opposed to inquiries that came “out of the blue” or were off-topic.
One example, while discussing Health Department inspections of
restaurants, she mentioned a restaurant near her home that got bad ratings recently. Tony said he lived near there. Her reaction was positive and she also asked him about his mother as well. Another time, near the end of a class period, she allowed students to query her about her pregnancy and whether she would bring the baby to school and show them. Her response was pleasant and she promised to bring her baby. We see in both cases above involving her personal life, she has a pattern of giving a positive reaction either when she brought it up or when it was topically related to a current discussion. When students asked about deafness and Deaf culture, Ms. Geils’s replies were almost always encouraging towards students. Recall that she is a strong supporter of Deaf culture and Gallaudet University. One time during class, Robert told her and the class a story about two deaf soldiers who met during the Civil War, one from the North and one from the South. She smiled and she stated that she was sure that it had happened. Ms. Geils’s feedback was also more positive and animated when the students were discussing an
upcoming Homecoming Weekend against a rival school for the deaf. When talking
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about Gallaudet University she showed her pleasure by smiling and encouragement whenever a student appeared to know something about the school. Ms. Geils also tended to encourage with positive feedback student contributions about personal experiences related to content. During the lesson about business monopolies, some of the students were talking about the various small businesses and homes they had seen bought out and demolished by large corporate stores. Although Ms. Geils herself deplored such large business actions, her reaction to the students’ remarks encouraged others to share similar stories of such actions in their home areas. In another incident, the class was discussing the use of internet sources in research. Arturo started talking about how it could help with finding good prices on autos instead of driving all over town looking at cars for sale. Ms. Geils liked what he was leading to and had a little discussion about how research can have practical as well as educational applications. Her positive feedback in the above examples reflects her belief that students need to be able to apply their educational experiences to other social, cultural, and practical circumstances. Negative feedback. The type of negative feedback Ms. Geils used related to social or cultural issues varied from staring (i.e. “teacher’s glare”) to disagreement. No incidents of egregious faux pas that might draw a stern rebuke were observed. We have already seen that Ms. Geils tries to ignore negative behavior to avoid drawing attention to it. One student was observed making a rather tasteless joke. Ms. Geils noticed and ignored it. He continued repeating it to other students causing them to laugh, and she simply looked at them with raised eyebrows. The laughing came to an abrupt stop. She never mentioned a word about it then or later on as far as I could tell. If there were some social or cultural matters Ms. Geils
101 disagreed with, she would address the issue. During one class, she was encouraging her students to travel and see the country after high school. David was making some side comments to one of the girls. He was telling Amanda and Brenda that they would not be able to travel if they had a baby. Ms. Geils saw this and responded by saying that it is possible to travel with babies and small children. While this may not seem like a negative feedback situation, she was refuting David’s point about women not being able to travel with young children. No situations were observed where culturally or socially debatable topics were broached in the classroom. We do have comments seen above from Ms. Geils about discussions in class related to homosexuality. Her pattern appears is to provide alternative and sometimes thought-provoking views of a situation. David made the remark that Ms. Geils tends to give a balanced viewpoint even when she disagrees. As she said herself she tries to give students a neutral side and explain why different people have opposing viewpoints. Answers. So far, Ms. Geils’s pattern in giving answers has been to make students show some effort at those answers on their own. However, with topics related to culture or society, she would often just tell the students what they wanted to know. One day when students were asking about different names and surnames for various ethnicities, she came right out with the answers. She told them about the different translations of the names Michael and John in different languages. Anything that had to do with the possibility of continuing school into higher education (particularly Gallaudet University) was answered promptly and with encouragement. Ms. Geils did not shy away from giving answers about potentially controversial cultural topics. In discussions about cultures asserting themselves, she liked to talk about power versus pride. While it is not clear why Ms. Geils was so
102 forthcoming with answers, it is clear that her “No spoon feeding” rule did not apply to cultural or societal topics. Perhaps it has to do with her expressed desire that her students “will be good citizens in the world.” Feedback and Classroom Behavior In a well-behaved classroom, there is little need for feedback. Yet, there were enough instances where some behavior patterns could be established. We have here two basic patterns of positive and negative feedback. Positive feedback. There were few instances of positive feedback for classroom behavior. It is not that Ms. Geils was rude or that she did not recognize good behavior. A more likely explanation would be that she simply expected good behavior, and got it. All the same, Ms. Geils was polite towards her students. She thanked them if they took the time to show courteous behavior towards her or other people in the classroom. She used smiles and small compliments for obvious efforts to behave, or to correct their behavior. This reflects of her expressed goal to be the role model of a “good” Deaf citizen. Negative feedback. Of course, Ms. Geils was not always nice, especially when dealing the primary classroom “bad boy” described in the previous chapter. His behavior was that of a gossipy “classroom clown.” Most of the time she used humor or mild sarcasm to keep him in place. Many of her responses to him were rejoinders that reflected what he was doing and his attitude at the moment. Occasionally, there were outright denunciations like the one she gave him for his swearing episode. One other notable outburst I observed occurred when he and the two girls were discussing what to do for “Bad Hair Day” (part of a Homecoming Spirit Week theme). Ms. Geils seemed to tolerate it for a while, but then abruptly stopped class and told them to “Get it out of your system, now!” There was another student who had
a tendency to fall asleep in class (It might be noted that this tended to happened when
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our “bad boy” was absent). Ms. Geils had to remind her to stay awake several times. Once, she even called her “Sleeping Beauty” in a mildly sarcastic manner. She was rarely harsh with her feedback preferring instead to use humor mixed with a little sarcasm most of the time. Silence is another “tool” that Ms. Geils used. She was observed using an effective “teacher’s glare” as seen above. We also know that she has a tendency to ignore negative behaviors. I observed the “bad boy” and some other students telling off-color jokes a number of times. Ms. Geils usually ignored this, as well as some chatty behaviors by the other students. Again, this class was well behaved, so there was not much need for disciplinary feedback. The reader may also recall that she started off the school year with the admonition that if they respected her she would do likewise. Summary of Feedback Communication Here we looked at two modalities of feedback communication: Written and face-toface. Most of the data about written feedback was generated during interviews. Most of the students said the positive comments were brief but straightforward such as “good job.” If the work was not satisfactory to Ms. Geils, she would write encouraging comments such as “You need to study more” or “You can do better.” For face-to-face feedback, Ms. Geils’s positive comments, like the written ones, were brief and often followed immediately by Input such as repetition, expansion, or further questions. Ms. Geils did not use extravagant praise with her students, but if she saw a lot of effort put into something, she would give more praise. She did have a favorite student whom she liked to use as a model of what she wanted. He was often the target of more praise than most of the other students. Negative comments were usually also brief. She also used silence as a negative feedback strategy. The quality of
104 the comment depended on the severity of the offense. Expressions of disappointment were a favored form of criticism and evoked strong responses from the students. Humor and sarcasm were often used in Ms. Geils’s feedback on student behaviors if she went beyond more than a simple response. Minor transgressions were ignored in an attempt to avoid drawing further attention to them. When students sought feedback in the form of answers to their questions, the teacher avoided giving answers. This was an attempt to avoid “spoonfeeding” her students and to help them learn to seek answers for themselves. However, she was more generous about answering student questions related to cultural or societal issues. By and large, her feedback, regardless of its type, was well received by her students.
Chapter 7
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Climate Introduction Climate refers to the general mood of the classroom and the teacher’s provision of emotional support, warmth and attention through verbal or non-verbal cues indicating support and approval. This can include the attitudes, statements, and behaviors directed towards the student(s). Climate was the fourth and least frequently coded factor from the data. This is not to say that it was the least noteworthy of the four. In fact, it could be the most significant. The low number of coded utterances reflects the difficulty of distinguishing the pervasive nature of climate in the classroom. The Earth’s atmosphere is a useful metaphor. We have it all around us, barely perceive it, and rarely think about it, but this does not make it unimportant to us. Without it we cannot live. We notice it the most when there are changes in it. The same can be said for a classroom climate. It is there, but we do not notice it unless it changes. To that end, I will first describe the general everyday climate provided by Ms. Geils. After this the more specific details that were revealed across the four focal areas are discussed. Besides the observations, the perceptions of the students and the articulated beliefs of the teacher are reported The General Climate We will start by taking another look at the environment of the classroom setting described in Chapter Three. The room was often a busy place; papers and other objects on the teacher’s desk were in a continual state of flux. There were colorful posters and maps in the room. The students’ desks were arranged in a semi-circle so that they always had a view of one another suggesting the value placed on visual contact with others. The seating arrangement was also flexible. Students tended to sit in the same area but not necessarily the
106 same seat. There were no seat assignments. That the teachers’ desk crossed nearly the whole front of the semi-circle indicates that it served as a “boundary” of sorts. We have seen that Ms. Geils values the “boundary” between herself and the students. Her table served as a physical manifestation of that value. She remained behind it most of the time while teaching and her demeanor was more professional while in that location. When she came out from behind the desk, Ms. Geils behavior towards the students became more immediate and intimate. For example, several times that she talked about her personal life with students, she stood in front of the desk nearer to them. When I broached the possibility with Ms. Geils that this table served as a physical boundary, she remarked that she had not done it consciously but that I was probably right. She had always set up her classrooms that way and felt comfortable with it. Ms. Geils also remarked that during discussions she would be in front of the table and would sit or lean back on it to reduce her presence. She felt that being too much of a presence and standing near the students inhibited discussions. So, she would “hide” on the table to foster discussion. Some of Ms. Geils’s beliefs and philosophies were expressed on the walls around the room. There were colorful posters with motivational and inspirational quotations. Two of the larger posters said “Learn from the past, live in the present, plan for the future” and “You are the author of your own life story” encouraging students to take responsibility for their own lives. Several bumper stickers with intellectual or inspirational quotations were on the large cabinets as well as a calendar that said, “Dare to Soar.” The whiteboard in front of the room was also a significant source of some of the climate produced by Ms. Geils. A listing of homework assignments for each class, the agenda of the day, examples of how students should format both their homework and their class notes were on the board as well
107 as appointment or work reminders for some of the students. This area of the board, while remaining the same in layout, was updated daily. More important in setting the climate than the physical setting is the teachers’ attitude. My own perception of Ms. Geils is that she is an optimistic person who enjoys her job even with some of the stress and frustrations that come with it. One of the leading stressors was the limited time to accomplish many tasks, mostly paperwork, while having to prepare for and teach several classes a day. Every morning that I arrived to observe and videotape she was out of the room doing some errand in the office or copier room. She was usually on the go. Even so, she rarely started the class without stopping to give a smile and a “good morning.” This even happened on a few mornings when she said she was not feeling well. My research assistant and I agree about the climate and she also added the word “comfortable” as a description of the classroom. She added that Ms. Geils goes with the students’ “flow” rather than rushing through the curriculum. While Ms. Geils shows a generally pleasant attitude to each of her students, it is also differentiated depending on the individual. Like many teachers she had her favorites such as Jose, Arturo, and Richard. David had a talkative personality, managed to attract a fair amount of Ms. Geils’s attention, and inspired mildly sarcastic rejoinders from her. Brenda was regularly the target of some intellectual urging to get the most out of her potential. Amanda’s signed output efforts were often ignored, perhaps because she would respond with an answer, often wrong, to just about anything. Tony was frequently left alone although she responded warmly to him unless he made a mistake. In that case, she was just frank with him about it. None of the individual interaction patterns were truly negative. Overall, even with
108 the differential treatment, she was just as likely to work closely with any student during individual seat work. Clothes can make an impact on how someone is perceived by others. We have already seen that Ms. Geils wants to be a role model to her students. The way she dresses adds an element not just to her role as a teacher but her attitude. She was often dressed for teaching in what would be described as professionally casual clothing. Only once did she wear very casual clothing and that was on “Sportswear Day” during Spirit Week. She wore a neat sweatsuit with “Gallaudet” on the front of the sweatshirt. There was no professional dress code at the school and teachers were sometimes seen wearing very casual clothing, even shorts and sandals if the weather permitted. During a follow-up visit, when I was talking to Ms. Geils about the climate in her classroom, she brought up the topic of clothing and its impact on the students. She believed that it was important to dress professionally and deplored the wearing of overalls or blue jeans by other teachers. If there was anything Ms. Geils was openly negative about, it was the problems with some of the support services at the school. She would complain to students about the lack of good library books, the limited hours of the computer lab, the time it takes for the administration to take care of problems, and other affairs that were out of her control. However, she did not allow these issues to constrain her ability to teach. She showed an ability to be flexible and to work within the limits of the school. As we saw before, neither did she let the students use these limits as an excuse for not finishing their schoolwork. We also saw previously that she wants students to work for something instead of having it handed to them. When she was talking to me about students dealing with frustrations and success, she used the analogy of an obstacle course:
It’s like an obstacle course. A person can run and finish it, taking two
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days to accomplish it. Or, a person can work hard for four weeks to finally reach the goal, an experience that they will probably remember longer, and feel better about more. We can see that Ms. Geils was a person who believes in learning to deal with obstacles as well as to enjoy the rewards of hard work. While we have seen the physical indicators of climate in the classroom, we also can look at the comments of the people who reside within for insight on the climate. Students commented that Ms. Geils was generally friendly if strict in the classroom. When I asked the students if they thought she was friendly, all but one student answered “yes.” One student was ambivalent about her friendliness and generally agreed she was nice, but gave him a hard time about his grades. Below are some expanded student comments about Ms. Geils’s attitude: She’s a friendly teacher, she helps me when I’m behind, lets you know. Her attitude feels to me like smiling, friendly, a little bit strict, no big deal. Her attitude is more typical, simple enough. She is neutral, calm, says, “Do your job,” friendly. Out of class she is friendly! In class, less so. I think she is nice, friendly. Never heard before that she is nice to students. But I don’t like her giving us a hard time when she’s progressing fast. I’d rather she try to teach and progress slower, take the time.
110 From the last statement, we can see not all of the students agreed about the pace of learning in the classroom. While we have seen in general terms that the classroom offered a positive learning environment, we also will look at more specific climate issues related to the four focal areas. In every area, there were two types of communication behaviors noted: attitudes and body language. See Table 7-1 for a summary. Table 7-1 Feedback Climate Behavior Patterns Across Focal Areas Content Attitude Natural teacher Favorite subject US History Teacher not friend Body Language Enthusiasm Animated when interested Effect of opinions on students
Language/ Cultural/ Social Classroom Behavior Communication Attitude Attitude Attitude Appropriate Pro-ASL and Deaf Expects good language Culture behavior. Bilingual Sensitive to other Not a place for ASL/English cultures punishment. Importance of Expects deaf Body Language reading skills children to be Folded fingers Body Language treated like any Teacher’s glare Expectant looks other. when writing Body Language vocabulary on board. Animated about Animated about Deaf Culture and ASL, English and Socio-Cultural reading issues related to History
Climate and Content Attitude. Here I define attitude as a mental position with regard to a fact or state. Attitude data in this study were generated by comments made to the class and during interviews. Looking at attitude gives us a better insight about why Ms. Geils behaves the way she does in certain situations. We have some of the insights from previous chapters pertaining to such issues as language, culture, behavior, and academics. Since most of a teacher’s job is teaching content, her attitude about her subject area is important in climate
111 setting. Even more important is her general attitude about teaching. This is reflected in one of Ms. Geils’s comments: I started teaching from scratch but it felt natural to me. I think I always knew I would be a teacher. Teachers and adults would tell me “You will be a teacher.” I said no, because I didn’t want to teach. Because that’s what they wanted for me. I resisted that. But as I look back, in high school my elective was as a student aide, working, teaching 6th grade to high school. At Gallaudet I was a tutor. I tutored Spanish. I did tutor History a bit, but Spanish almost two years. Also, we had to do internships. My internship was at a school for the deaf. I didn’t really specialize in Education, but I preferred working in a school. Always was my thing. I kept coming back. I guess I really knew in the back of my mind that schools were my field. Anyway, I worked at my old High School. I started really liking teaching and the hours were neat. Lots of vacation time. But whew, I realized it was a lot of work. After a while, I felt I couldn’t imagine doing another job. Ms. Geils did take a short hiatus from teaching early on to try her hand at the business world but decided to check into a teaching position as she describes here: But I didn’t like that about the business world, people talking about money. That’s not me. I had mixed feelings. I decided to check out the local school for the deaf. I went to visit the school. I was just sitting in the principal’s office and I happened to see some teachers discussing education of the students. I got excited. I knew I should not have left. Teaching is my thing, period.
Ms. Geils had been teaching other subjects and different grade levels in the years prior to
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this one. This is some of what she told me about it: I was always teaching reading and English, but my BA degree was in History. I wanted to teach it. I moved here. Got a job here last year. They offered me a Social Studies position. I was excited, I thought “finally!” and I moved down here. Then I was stymied because teacher who planned to retire came back for another year. Oh well, I taught reading and English for another year. I enjoyed it. I was back at the high school level. Now, finally, I’m in where I wanted to be, a U.S. History teacher for high school students. I enjoy it. That’s my experience. That’s where the road was that I took to get here. As we can see Ms. Geils was a teacher who enjoyed working in the field of education and felt she belonged there. Her willingness to relocate to her present school from another part of the state and disappointment at having to wait another year reflects her passion for the subject she taught. One more area we can look at is Ms. Geils attitude about her role as a teacher and what she expected from her students. This is what she said: I’m not here as a teacher, to be like a friend. I always emphasize that to my students. We can be friends, we can. But, I’m your teacher first, your friend second. You don’t have to like me, don’t have to, but you need to do what I ask you to do. The reason for that is that I want them to understand that they’re here for a reason and I’m here for a reason. I’m here to make sure
they learn something and leave this classroom saying, “Oh, I really learned a lot.” Not, “I love that teacher, lets me do whatever I want in the classroom.” I don’t want to be remembered that way. I want them to remember me for hard work. And how I expect, that first, I don’t give “A’s” easily. You have to earn your “A.” Understand always, the first day of school, each student has 100 percent in the class. They have an A+ average so that they don’t have to work their way up to it. They have an A. Now I say, “Can you keep that A? It’s up to you. I will do whatever I can to help you keep that A, but that has to come from you.” And I expect them to know things that, they at that age, should know. So when they don’t know something, I expose them to it. So, the most important thing to me as a teacher and that’s the reason why I’m a teacher is knowledge, imagination. Either is the best answer to everything. If they don’t have that, who are they? They are my tomorrow; they will take care of me when I get old. I want them to be able to do that well. So, I set up those expectations that they will go to college, they will get good jobs, and they will be good citizens in the world. Doesn’t matter, college or work. They will do all these, be able to do as many of these things as possible, whatever their goals and dreams are. Learn to fit into the world as a better person. And with homework, I hated homework before, so I know. But if you don’t have homework, you forget, then you come to class (unprepared). So I give and give homework, “Let’s go, work. You want a good grade, be motivated, I need to see that you’re motivated for a grade.”
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Like for example, I was disappointed with the last unit test. Very, very
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disappointed. I gave them a chance to re-do their work, re-do parts of the test and gave it back. I would say half gave me back their tests, and the other half didn’t bother. That tells me how much I can push them. I can push them in many, many ways, but I’m not going to twist their arms, either, I’m not. I’m going to do what I can, but twist arms, no. If they have their minds set on not doing well, fine. And I always explain if you want an F, you can get that F. If you don’t want that F, you have to show me that you worked hard for that. And I’d rather be remembered that way. You know, be buried, with my obituary saying, “Sick of her, but you know I learned something.” We can see that Ms. Geils’s attitude is that students are in school to learn, and expects them to work for what they want. She would only push them so far, and if they decided not to do what she expected, they would have negative consequences. We already know she was friendly enough, but also students better be ready to do some work. This reflects the climate described by the students as “strict but friendly.” Body Language. Another way that we can see Ms. Geils enjoys teaching is via her body language. She showed a lot of enthusiasm, animation, and interest in the subject. People who have either seen her in videos, or live in the classroom have described her as an interesting teacher with an enthusiasm for history. One person who was with me to observe Ms. Geils on a follow up visit told me she wished her own history teachers had been just as fascinating. Also, the students themselves were rarely seen not attending to Ms. Geils during one of her talks. During my observations that I would sometimes forget to follow Ms. Geils with the video camera because I was so engaged with her lecture (That did not even become apparent
115 until I looked at the video shortly afterwards). Some people may think of an animated teacher as one who gestures a lot. That concept would be a bit difficult to apply here since ASL is made up of gestures that have linguistic structure and meaning. However, while she may have stood behind or in front of her table lecturing, she was rarely still for very long. The one exception to Ms. Geils’s generally positive interest was when she described to the class what the unit on the Spanish-American War would be like. She said, “It will be a boring unit, boring, very, very boring.” She signed the word “boring” with a lot of emphasis. She said she barely remembered studying it as an undergraduate history major. To her credit she did try to make it interesting with more activities, but her lack of interest in the unit was apparent and it may have backfired when the students did poorly on their presentation projects as we saw before. When I discussed this with Ms. Geils afterwards, she said she thinks she will keep her opinions to herself next time. Climate and Language/Communication Attitude. We have already seen that Ms. Geils has definite opinions about what kind of language is acceptable for use in the classroom and other social settings. But what we have not yet seen is her beliefs in how communication should take place in the classroom. She had originally enrolled in a teacher preparation program that was comprehensive in its communication approach with deaf children but she did not feel comfortable with it. So she transferred to a program that emphasized an ASL/English philosophy only, which is also known as Bilingual/Bicultural or “Bi-Bi” for short. This is what she said of her experience at Western Maryland College (now named Mc Daniel College): It was the right match; I felt I fit with the other students. We all felt the same about how we viewed deaf education, the values of deaf education. A strong
Bi-Bi philosophy. Not too broad. I did have to take some classes at
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Gallaudet. I knew there was a Total Communication philosophy there. They had a whole spectrum. I feel that’s confusing for a graduate student, that’s wrong. (At Western Maryland) Bi-bi is the philosophy. If you don’t like it, fine. If you don’t like it, fine, leave. There are other schools they can go to. Those teachers who subscribe to the “Bi-Bi” philosophy believe that ASL should be the primary mode of face-to-face communication in the classroom and that it can be used to teach deaf children how to read and write English (although at this time there is little outcome data to verify this belief). This was very much the way Ms. Geils taught in her classroom. We can see that she was unapologetic in her beliefs from the quote above and from the data presented thus far that she was very pro-Deaf. While she did not say so directly, it is not hard to infer that Ms. Geils sees good reading skills as a key ability to develop in school. One indicator of this is a poster in her classroom saying “Reading makes life a lot easier.” We have also seen that she does not “spoon-feed” her students with their reading difficulties. Instead she makes them read aloud in ASL from the text and helps them over the rough spots using questions to elicit their own knowledge. She also said she would rather have her students learn history through the use of novels rather than state mandated text books and then have them try to discern fact from fiction in these novels. As we have seen before her goal was her students’ independence, as readers and as citizens. Again, we also saw her either introduce new terms or check to see if students were already familiar with the term. One noticeable habit she had while doing this involves her body language, as we will see next.
117 Body Language. Nearly every time Ms. Geils introduced a “new” concept and wrote it on the board, she would turn to the class with a look that could only be described as “expectant.” She raised her eyebrows and looked around the room for a student to say something. This led students to attempt to contribute a possible answer. She was a bit more animated in her discussions about English word definitions, the ASL signs for them, and often brought up the root meanings of the word in Latin, Greek or some other language. She exhibited a real enthusiasm for these types of discussions. Ms. Geils dealt with reading difficulties by discussing them with her students. During these discussions she showed a high level of immediacy. She would stand quite close to the student and alternate between leaning over the text with them and only standing back to talk with them (This latter action is due to the need for space between people using ASL to be seen). Climate and Cultural/Social Attitude. By now we have seen several examples that show Ms. Geils was an advocate of using ASL in the classroom and of discussing topics related to Deaf culture. She was sensitive to other human differences, for example other languages, cultures, and sexual orientation. Her behavior towards her students was differentiated not on the basis of their cultural differences as much as with their academic aptitude. One thing not yet discussed here was her attitude about the kinds of people who work or teach in the social and cultural climate of Deaf Education, and her perceptions of the differences between mainstreamed settings and residential school settings for deaf children. First, we will take a look at what she feels about the people who work in the field. I had just asked her if her expectations of her students were related to her own experience as a Deaf person:
Expectations? Maybe because I’m deaf myself. I know that being deaf is
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no different. People act like it’s pitiable. That one student I talked about, the one who is smart, but lazy. She admitted to me and to the principal and her parents in a meeting we had one time, “Honest, I admit I begged for an A from other teachers” and they would give her an A because she was hard-ofhearing. I was disgusted. I know there are teachers like that. I would have never done that. I’m Deaf, maybe, I know what it’s like. But again, it’s not because I’m Deaf that makes me that way. It’s because, think, those people who say, “Oh, fine, I’ll give you an A,” have NO respect for deaf education. And I feel those teachers should not have any business being here, period. That is one part of deaf education that makes me angry. There are teacher education students I see who are in deaf education, because they can’t succeed in the hearing world. It makes me angry. They feel, “Deaf people are nothing, they won’t notice me.” There are a lot of hearing teachers that I admire and respect because they’re there for the same reason I am. Being fascinated with the deaf, fine, but there are a lot of hearing teachers who come here with sympathy, pity, who want to help. Makes my claws come out. It’s like screeching nails on chalk for me. I hope I didn’t end up sounding too angry. It’s not that, it’s just the fact that I’m frustrated for many deaf educators. Educators of the deaf who really have a vision of the deaf as being like anyone else. No matter. Any handicapped person can do it. Frustrating. She raised the societal issue of how deaf children are treated. She has nothing against hearing people who work in the field of Deaf Education as long as they treat the children as equals of
119 hearing children. Ms. Geils was mainstreamed as a child and she reports that she perceives a difference in how deaf children were treated in both settings: I got into Gallaudet and realized there are deaf people smarter than me. I wasn’t at the top of my class anymore. It made me mad that I didn’t use enough of my education, I see. But I didn’t have enough deaf people to compare myself to. I had more at Gallaudet, so I used them to compete with, “Bring it on.” Interesting I think, because I realized I missed the advantage, the importance of education while I was in a mainstreamed school. I lost that chance to really have a teacher who made me work hard. All my teachers said, “You’re deaf? Oh, you’re so smart!” Again, getting back to what I said about “She can write well, she can take notes better than some hearing people” It was not because who I was, “Look, good for you!” It was because I was deaf. Now my husband, he’s from a Deaf family, grew up attending a school for the deaf. He always tells me stories about the teachers he was sick of, teachers he picked on, teachers he loved. I noticed that most of the teachers he was sick of, he ended up liking the most. Because looking back, he said he had experiences where he had to work hard to meet the demands of those teachers. He wanted to satisfy their expectations. I look at that and realize I never had that. I was always lost in the crowd of a big classroom. I missed out on that experience of demanding teachers in school. Now I look at that, and I want my students to work hard. They have to be here anyway. And I do reach out to students I see working hard. Earn their respect. That’s
important. And I think because I never had that, I always wanted that.
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Working hard. The point being made here is that Ms. Geils’s attitude was that there is a difference in the social climate between mainstreamed and residential settings and that the latter is often, if not always, a better place for deaf children to be treated more equitably. Body Language. Issues related to Deaf culture brought out liveliness in Ms. Geils actions and talk. In the previous example where Richard was talking about deaf soldiers from the North and South, Ms. Geils showed interest as indicated by an open posture and smiled. She followed with a story about Kentucky School for the Deaf during the same war, which she told with some zest. The same could be said for most other culturally related issues brought up in the classroom. We already know that she enjoys history, which of course relates information about culture and society. Ms. Geils enjoyed discussions with students if they could apply classroom topics with their own life experiences. The only time she was observed having what could be described as negative body language related to cultural/social issues was during the interview when she was describing the kinds of teachers she did not like, who “Have no business being in Deaf Education,” as in the excerpt shown above. The frustration was clearly visible on her face. However she might have felt about hearing people, especially those described above, she was not seen making disparaging remarks or any sort of body language to indicate negative feelings about them while she was with her students. Climate and Classroom Behavior Attitude. Ms. Geils’s class was generally well behaved. We saw in the chapter on Input that she does not like to set too many rules but does want students to know there are
boundaries. She did not believe the classroom was a place for scolding or punishment.
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She prefers giving them responsibility and empowering her students to make their own choices. She emphasized the importance of mutual respect with her students. We also know that she tends to ignore negative behaviors, preferring to focus attention on positive behavior. Ms. Geils shared her viewpoint about the behavior she expected from her students and how it related to her own experience growing up Deaf: As a mainstreamed student, I started neglecting school more. I felt aggravated because I was smart. All six of my friends were in were in another class, while I was alone in a higher-level class and I was aggravated. So I started neglecting schoolwork so I could be moved down and be with my friends in mainstreamed class because I was lonely. I wanted deaf friends to talk with. I sat with an interpreter all the time. It was boring. My principal back then bawled me out. She said, “You can do better than that.” She was right. I had a student like that last year. One student. Very bright, but, come on. I finally sat down with her. I told her my own experience. She looked at me. I said, “I see myself in you now.” Later she sent me an e-mail. She wrote “I’m sorry if I picked my friends over class, I’m sorry if I picked sports over your class” and so on. I told her, “I’m sorry if you feel that way, but, it’s your choice.” I can’t remember what I said, but the point is I finally got her to realize what she was doing. I said, “Fine, but it’s your life.” I explained to her when we finally sat down. I said, “You know that, I had an attitude and didn’t take school seriously.”
It is interesting to note the connection between a deaf child’s desire for socialization, and
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her classroom behavior and academic performance. We saw before that the students were often chatting when Ms. Geils did not have the floor to speak or was not attending to them. When I asked her about this behavior, she told me that she had explained to the students that she allowed it as long as they stopped and paid attention when she took the floor to speak and as long as their academic performance was satisfactory. Ms. Geils’s attitude certainly did work for at least one student. Recall that David had generated most of the data related to Classroom Behavior. We also saw that Ms. Geils needed to spend a little more time interacting with him than the other students. When I went back for a follow-up visit, David had dropped the class, reportedly because he had some difficulty with the substitute teachers during Ms. Geils’s maternity leave. He planned to retake the class the following year because he wanted to have a full year with Ms. Geils as his history teacher. Body Language. When she was not happy or satisfied with what she was seeing from her students, one habit she had was folding her fingers in front of herself while looking at the class. She would have raised eyebrows and corners of her mouth would be slightly upturned. This was the look she had when she admonished the class for their poor performance on the Spanish-American project described previously. There are only two incidents that stand out where she had an angry tone and a truly stern look on her face. An angry tone in ASL normally involves larger and more rapid signing movements and lowered eyebrows (Both of the incidents are already discussed in the chapter on Feedback). One was where she rebuked David for swearing and the other was where she told some of the students to “Get it out of
123 your system, now!” She also employed the practiced silent stare or “teacher’s glare” that was described above in the Feedback section. Summary of Climate Climate refers to the general mood of the classroom and the teacher’s provision of emotional support, warmth and attention through verbal or non-verbal cues indicating support and approval. This can include the attitudes, statements, and behaviors directed towards the student(s). Ms. Geils’s classroom was set up to enhance visual communication and the walls were covered with inspirational posters. She was well dressed, and treated her students with a professional and courteous manner. She was optimistic and took time to greet her students before class started. She genuinely enjoyed teaching and showed an enthusiasm for the subject of history. Ms. Geils was a strong advocate of Deaf culture and deplores people who are in the field of deaf education that disrespect deaf children by failing to challenge them. Students consistently perceived Ms. Geils as a friendly and helpful teacher who likes them. There were a few instances of negative or mildly sarcastic behavior. Disappointment was the most common attitude expressed towards students who did not achieve goals set by the teacher. Ms. Geils did show moderately differentiated behaviors towards her students, and had a tendency to favor her best students in her remarks. In terms of behavior, she expected students to show mutual respect and tried to empower them and give them room to make choices. On the whole there was a positive learning climate in Ms. Geils’s classroom.
Chapter 8
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Discussion and Conclusion In this chapter, a discussion of the findings and implications of this study will be presented. Limitations of this study and suggestions for further research will also be given. This discussion must include the caveat that this was a single case study and generalization to a larger population would be inappropriate. Where the findings are comparable with previously published research it will be noted. Summary of Findings This study examined a Deaf teacher’s communication behavior with her students particularly her expression of her expectations of them. The teacher, Ms. Geils taught a U.S. History class to high school juniors at a state school for the deaf. The class was considered of “average” achievement ability at the school. There were seven students of diverse ethnic backgrounds in the class who all identified themselves as Deaf. The primary modes of communication were ASL and written English. Data were presented about the school and classroom settings, about the students, their behaviors, and their interview remarks to the investigator. Data were also presented about the teacher, her communication and other behaviors, and her interview remarks to the investigator. Utterances from these data were classified or categorized using the 16 areas of the matrix in the Preliminary Model shown in Table 2-2. Communication behavior patterns were identified within these categories and described. Table 8-1 below shows a summary of the communication behavior patterns identified from the data.
Table 8-1 Communication Behavior Patterns by Focal Areas and Factor
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Areas of Focus Content Area
Language and Communication
Cultural and Social
Classroom Behavior
Climate
Attitude Body Language
Attitude Body Language
Attitude Body Language
Attitude Body Language
Input
Direct Teaching Elicitation Provision of work
Direct Teaching & elicitation
Direct teaching Role Modeling
Direct teaching
Output
Written coursework Verbal expression
Bilingual ASL/English Reading
Freedom to speak Social Chatting
Well behaved
Praise Criticism Answers
Praise Criticism Answers
Praise Criticism
Factors
Feedback Praise Criticism Answers
For this study, there was one focal research question with sub-questions designed to focus on various aspects of the communication of and interpretations of teacher expectations. Focal Question: How does a deaf teacher communicate her expectations to deaf students? Sub-questions: 1. What kinds of expectations does the teacher hold for the students? 2. What patterns of verbal and non-verbal cues does the teacher use? 3. How does the teacher exhibit differential behaviors with the students? 4. How do the students respond to these cues and behaviors? Using the focal question and the sub-questions of this study as an outline, major findings are:
126 1. The teacher, Ms. Geils expressed generally high expectations of her students and a good belief in her own teaching efficacy. She wanted her students to be able to think independently and to be able debate social issues well. She believed that they would accomplish more and have a better sense of that accomplishment if they needed to struggle to solve problems they deal with. Ms. Geils deplored other professionals in the field who let students get by with little effort or “spoon fed” them. Having her students behave as good Deaf citizens who know their boundaries and appropriate social registers was important to her. She stated that her students are her future and she wanted them to be able to care for her when she got older. While she wanted most of her students to be able to attend college she accepted that there are some students who have limitations or who have little interest in higher education. 2. The patterns of verbal and non-verbal cues used by Ms. Geils created a positive, friendly, and caring learning environment within the classroom. She showed an enthusiasm for teaching and for the subject matter as reflected by her animated and engaging approach to teaching. She often applied the concepts taught to her own and to her student’s lives. Ms. Geils emphasized the learning of written English and vocabulary skills. She effectively used ASL in English language teaching. Students were encouraged to make use of media and popular culture to further investigate or learn about topics. They were free to ask questions and make comments during appropriate pauses in Ms. Geils’ talk. Students were given homework and quizzes daily that followed state curriculum standards. Feedback towards students’ verbal and written work was brief and unambiguous. Students were expected to show some self-effort at finding answers before Ms. Geils would intervene. When they did have an answer, she would attempt to get them to expand further upon it. In terms of social
behavior, Ms. Geils would usually ignore or react with silence to anything she deemed
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inappropriate. She encouraged anything that had to do with promoting Deaf culture or her alma mater Gallaudet University. 3. Ms. Geils while generally positive and encouraging towards her students as a group, did exhibit differential behaviors towards individual students. She had a tendency to favor her higher achieving students Jose and Richard. While she also was favorable in her verbal interactions with Arturo during discussions, she gave him a hard time about his frequent tardiness and missing work. David was a bit of a talkative antagonist who inspired mildly sarcastic rejoinders from the teacher. Brenda was regularly the target of some intellectual urging to get the most out of her potential. Amanda’s verbal output efforts were often ignored, perhaps because she would respond with an answer to just about anything. It may be of interest that during a follow-up visit, Ms. Geils remarked that Amanda had improved over the year. Tony was frequently left alone, but she did respond warmly to him unless he made a mistake. In that case, she was just frank with him about it. None of the individual interaction patterns were truly negative. Overall, even with the differential treatment, she was just as likely to work closely with any of the students. Ms. Geils’s differential interactional patterns were almost completely tuned to each student’s particular needs or strengths. 4. The student’s responses to Ms. Geils cues and behaviors were generally positive. She was described as strict but friendly, fair in her feedback, and showed respect towards the views of the students. Most of the students said the class work she provided was challenging although some of them thought it was getting easier after she switched to an “easier” text. Students said they were free to contribute to discussions and ask questions when it was
appropriate to interrupt. Some students said they felt obligated to contribute to
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discussions and expand upon answers they provided. Most of them described her feedback about their work as positive or helpful and that they could do additional work to keep up their grades at their own discretion. One single incident that appeared to have an impact on the students was the day she expressed disappointment at their effort on a short-term project. Several of the students stated they felt they should have worked harder. A few of the students were critical of the way Ms. Geils handled the situation. Conclusions The teaching features used by Ms. Geils, as identified in this study, largely reflect those recognized as characteristic of teachers communicating high expectation behaviors towards their students (Brophy, 1985; Good, 1981; Good & Brophy, 2002; Rosenthal 1974, 2002; Weinstein, 2002).
Not only does she have high expectations, but also the
characteristics of her classroom reflect those of an effective communication climate (Cooper & Simonds, 1999). Ms. Geils’ insistence that her students not be “spoon-fed,” that they show effort, and learn from their mistakes is somewhat contradictory to the idea that high achievers should not be seen to struggle. Weinstein (2002) made note of this trend and stated that students are not taught that, “the prize is in the struggle”(p. 37) and that smartness has come to mean the appearance of doing work effortlessly. The idea that teachers of deaf and hard-of-hearing children need the attributes given to Ms. Geils’ teaching is reflected in the following statement by Marschark, et al., (2002), “If there is a problem, it is much more likely to be found in the way that we teach and what we expect from deaf students than in the deaf students themselves” (p. 7). There is a need to stop “blaming” the limitations of the students and for teachers to realize that they indeed have the ability to influence student
129 achievement. In other words, as noted by Weinstein (2002), increased teacher efficacy, reflective of the belief that student aptitude is malleable rather than fixed, can result in increased student achievement. Of all the attributes of Ms. Geils’s classroom, the most pervasive was that of the climate particularly in terms of communication. While climate was the smallest category of coded utterances, the data reported here suggest that it was probably the largest, even though this was not detected in the analysis. Cooper & Simonds (1999) note that while climate is primarily non-verbal, all classroom communication interactions have a climate element to them. This brings into question the idea of climate as a separate entity from the other three factors we investigated. In fact Rosenthal (1989) himself later modified his four-factor model by reducing it to two factors. One is teacher effect, which is communicated more through behavior than language, and the other is teacher effort, which is mostly verbal. Reconsidering communication climate in Ms. Geils’ classroom as a pervasive element that was part of each interaction suggests an open climate, with a social constructivist basis. Note the friendly and warm demeanor of the teacher, the reduced constraint to student participation (but controlled by the teacher’s eye-gaze), the constant comparisons of the topic matter to student’s lives, and the ongoing social chatting while teacher does not have the floor. It was obvious that the students felt comfortable there. Other teachers would do well to emulate a communication and learning climate like this. Another important attribute of Ms. Geils was the moderated differentiation in her approach towards her students. While there was some differentiation in feedback and attention oriented along the lines of ability to contribute and successful completion of assigned work, all students received the same type of work and the same opportunities to do
130 extra work. Weinstein (2002) notes that in highly differentiated classrooms, the high and low ranked students received work of different difficulty levels, differentiated feedback (more negative and critical towards lows), and different opportunities to do extra or special assignments. We did not see this happening in Ms. Geils’s classroom. We did see her mention that she tried to give the same kinds of work to lower “non-academic” classes. However the question remains as to just how differentiated her approach is between classes as compared to within class. Also, it is known that the school tracked their students into classes based on both their perceived and their measured ability. By what exact criteria is not known. This begs the question: Was Ms. Geils’s behavior less differentiated because of the similar perceived abilities of her students within the class? Across how many programs for deaf and hard-of-hearing students is tracking a common practice? There needs to be some investigation into how the institutional practice of tracking or grouping students both within and between classes influences expectations practices towards deaf students. One of the remarkable issues about this study was the cultural consonance in the classroom despite the ethnic diversity of the students. Remember that all of the students and the teacher labeled themselves as Deaf. Even Jose who stated he was actually hard-of-hearing says he likes to call himself Deaf and Arturo stated that he was Deaf and proud of it. The impact of cultural differences on expectations is not to be underestimated. Irvine (1990) noted that in classrooms where both the teacher and students were African-American, the expectations were higher. When there was a Caucasian teacher, there was cultural dissonance taking place that created an unfavorable learning environment. Weinstein (2002) cited many examples in the literature of lowered expectations of students whose cultural background differed from that of the teacher. We saw that Ms. Geils emphasizes that her students will
131 not just be good citizens, but good Deaf citizens and that she sees herself as a role model. Whitesell (1991) notes that the Deaf teacher in her study says her deaf students do well because she expects that they will do well. Compton (1997) in an interview of four deaf women teachers noted a pattern that they had higher academic and behavioral expectations for their students because they knew what it was like to be deaf themselves. Recall that Ms. Geils made similar remarks in her interview. It can be seen that exposure to adult Deaf role models and to Deaf culture can have an empowering effect on students in terms of the kinds of expectations they will receive. It tells them they too can grow up to be well-educated and successful adults (Schirmer, 2001). Stewart and Kluwin (2001) advocate the exposure to Deaf role models as critical to the healthy development of deaf children. They also advocate the use of team teaching with a deaf teacher. While many hearing individuals may never be a part of Deaf culture, their knowledge of, and respect for it and its members would be helpful in fostering better expectations. One of the defining characteristics of a culture is the language used by the participants. In this case, it means the use of ASL. Many culturally Deaf adults strongly identify with and hold great loyalty to ASL (Lane et al., 1996; Schirmer, 2001). One of the characteristics of Ms. Geils was her love of language and reading. She was able to use ASL effectively to teach language concepts. She did not just emphasize ASL or English, but also the importance of knowing other languages. We also saw that she made her students put forth some effort in their reading by translating written English into ASL. Not only did she expect her students to be competent in ASL but also in the use of written English. This reflects the views of many Deaf adults that while ASL is important to them, learning written English is also important (Lane, et al., 1996; Marschark, et al., 2002; Whitesell 1991). Many
Deaf teachers use ASL in their classrooms as a means of instruction for content and
132
language (Marschark, et al., 2002). The issue of communication in deaf education classrooms has long been contentious, and currently there is debate over the effectiveness of using ASL to teach English (Marschark, et al., 2002; Moores 2001). We would be wise to look at not just the pedagogy, but also the social cultural aspects of language teaching by Deaf adults. The most provocative construct that arose from this study was Ms. Geils’s comments of “spoon feeding.” It needs to be said that spoon-feeding is a concept that is not new to me and I have seen it used among other educators of the deaf at the school. However the role of this idea in teaching practice, and its meaning among teachers of the deaf has yet to be investigated. As we saw, Ms. Geils uses it to express contempt for educators of the deaf who do not challenge their students and who willingly provide easy answers to problems. Another Deaf teacher at the same high school as Ms. Geils told me he uses the term “spoon feeding” with his students when they ask him to do things that he feels they should be able to handle themselves. His response is, “What for? Do it yourself, I’m not going to spoon feed you.” Apparently, some students try to take advantage of “spoon feeding” to get easy grades or avoid hard work as we saw with the student who begged her teachers for an “A” grade and got it. It is unclear at this point how widespread the phenomenon of “spoon feeding” is in deaf education, whether the phenomenon has other labels, whether it is used more among Deaf teachers than hearing teachers, and how students perceive it and make use of it. It has become increasingly clear that student perspective is valuable to this type of study. Nearly every statement that the students made during their interviews for this study was a comment on the different aspects of communication behavior of the teacher. This should not be surprising in light of the fact that they are the consumers of education. As
133 Weinstein (2002) noted there is a gap in most of the studies done on teacher expectations in that they focus mostly on the teachers and ignore student perspectives. She noted that students as young as kindergarten age are able to perceive and make astute reports about the kinds of teacher communication behaviors they see in the classroom. In deaf education, it would be informative to the study of teacher expectations (and other issues as well) if we were able to gain the perspectives and stories of deaf and hard-of-hearing people about the wide array of deaf education programs that they attended as youngsters. Revised Model The model as initially proposed (see Table 2-2) for this study is not sufficient for the purpose of looking at teacher expectations in deaf education classrooms. We will look at some of the problems that arose from the preliminary model and a revised model will be proposed that addresses these shortcomings. The most obvious problem with the preliminary model is with Rosenthal’s (1974) four factors of climate, input, output, and feedback. It is apparent that climate was not just a separate factor, but was the primary overarching factor that reflects teacher expectations and was inherent within any other factor present in the classroom. In regards to the other three factors, there was a consistent pattern in the study classroom where input was followed by output from the students followed by feedback from the teacher. This is no different than the Input, Response, and Evaluation (IRE) discourse pattern that has been shown to be the default pattern in American classrooms (Cazden, 1988, 2001; Mehan, 1979) This pattern has also been called Input, Response, and Feedback (Wells 1993). The same discourse pattern also existed with the course work in a written mode. The teacher gave the students work (Input), the students do
134 the work and hand it in for grading (Response), and the teacher grades and writes comments on the work (Feedback or Evaluation). There were four focal areas in the preliminary model. They were labeled Content, Language and Communication, Classroom Behavior, and Cultural and Social (See Table 2-2). There were times when the codes applied to utterances in the data would involve two or more of these focal areas. Many of these overlaps involved socio-cultural aspects such as classroom behavior and social chatting for example. Some of the other overlaps were between the areas of Language/Communication and Content. The line between language instruction and content is nebulous at best. These overlaps were also manifested in most of the coding disagreements as we saw in Chapter 3. Also, the overlaps become even more apparent when looking at the behavior patterns in Table 8-1. In light of these overlaps and for purposes of simplification, the four focal areas can be reduced to two. These are labeled Academics, and Social Cultural. The new Academic focus would include all of the original Content focus area, and the formal language curriculum component of the Language/Communication focus. The new Social Cultural focus includes the informal aspects of Language/Communication, and all of the Classroom Behavior and Cultural/Social focus areas. A visual concept of the model with the revisions suggested above is presented in three dimensions in Figure 8-1 below. First is the overarching dimension of Climate, which includes all affective behavior actions that are communicated in the classroom by the teacher. The IRE discourse pattern is represented horizontally. The areas of focus, academics and social cultural are laid vertically over the discourse pattern. This gives us a six-way matrix
135 with climate as the overarching dimension. Specific examples of each area of the matrix are shown below. Figure 8-1 Revised Model of Teacher Communication of Expectations
Climate: Established by affective actions of teacher Areas of Focus Discourse Pattern Input Response Evaluation
Academics
Social Cultural
Instruction of formal curriculum Student written or verbal response Comments about academic performance
Instruction on social and cultural norms Student behavior Comments about behavior
Keep in mind that in this study we had good communication taking place via a common language shared by the teacher and students. Few people would debate whether this is essential for successful learning in any educational setting. The reality in deaf education is that for various reasons, many deaf children arrive in kindergarten lacking language skills comparable to their hearing peers (Marschark, et al., 2001; Schirmer, 2001). There is also the problem of many teachers who do not have fluent skills in sign language communication (Lane, et al., 1996). It remains to be seen whether clear language communication is a necessary assumption for the model, or if it should be further modified to accommodate the language communication skills of the students and teacher.
Directions for Further Research
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Given the results and limitations of this study, there are several directions for future research. These directions and suggested research questions are discussed in the following paragraphs. The most obvious limitation to this single case study is the inability to generalize the results to a larger population within deaf education. To that end, there is a need to replicate this study across a variety of similar and differing deaf education settings. We saw in the literature that regardless of the heterogeneity of settings there is a concern about teacher expectations of deaf and hard-of-hearing students. The following questions are suggested for future research between and across deaf education settings: 1. How do teachers in deaf education settings communicate their expectations to deaf students? 2. How do teachers in mainstreamed settings communicate their expectations to deaf students? 3. What similarities or differences exist in teacher expectations between deaf education and mainstreamed settings? 4. What institutional practices are used to determine classroom placements, tracks, or groupings of deaf and hard-of-hearing students? 5. Are there differences in teacher expectations of deaf children based on institutionally determined academic placements? There is cultural and ethnic diversity within educational settings, and deaf education is no exception. There are also the added elements of hearing status and a Deaf culture with its own language, norms and values. We need to investigate the influence of cultural values
137 on the expectations placed upon deaf children. Thus, the following research questions might be addressed: 1. How do teachers communicate their expectations towards deaf students of differing cultural or ethnic backgrounds? 2. How do teachers communicate their expectations based on the gender of deaf students? 3. How do teachers communicate their expectations towards students of differing hearing status (deaf, hard-of-hearing, or hearing)? 4. How do teachers of different hearing status communicate their expectations to deaf students? 5. Are there differences in expectations between those teachers who have knowledge and respect of Deaf culture, and those who do not? 6. What are the cultural constructs in deaf education about the concept of “spoon feeding?” We have seen in this study and in the literature that personal and teaching efficacy has an influence on teacher expectations behavior. Here is a proposed research question: 1. How does a teachers’ personal and teaching efficacy influence her expectations of deaf student achievement? We saw that knowledge of student perceptions of the teacher was valuable to this study. Weinstein (2002) states that more attention should be focused on how students perceive and react to differential teacher treatment. Not only are deaf students who are currently enrolled in school a valuable source of this information but deaf adults who were students are also an important resource. We also need to gain insights from parents and
138 guardians of deaf children about their insights and experiences related to teacher expectations. The following research questions might be of benefit: 1. How do deaf students perceive differential treatment from their teachers based on expectations for their achievement? 2. How do teacher expectations influence academic and personal efficacy of deaf students? 3. What are the perceptions of parent/guardians of deaf children about teachers’ expectations? 4. How do parents react when their expectations of their deaf children differ from that of the teachers?
139 References
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Appendices Appendix A Institutional Review Board Approval Letter
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Classroom Parental Informed Consent Form
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Title of Project: Teacher Communication Behaviors Used to Elicit Student Responses You are invited to permit your child to participate in this research study. The following information is provided in order to help you to make an informed decision whether or not to allow your child to participate. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask. Your child is eligible to participate in this study because your child is a student at California School for the Deaf, Riverside. Purpose of Research: This is a research project that will examine the interactions of a Deaf teacher with deaf and hard of hearing children to identify types of communication patterns used by teachers to elicit specific behaviors from children. Procedures: This study will consist of videotaped classroom observations by the investigator in Ms._______’s class. Your child’s participation in this study will not require anything on their part other than to participate in classroom activities as they would normally happen. Your child may be asked to participate in a videotaped interview. We will ask your child questions about what is happening in the classroom, and feelings about the class, the teacher, and the school. This interview is expected to last approximately half an hour. Risks and/or Discomforts: Every effort will be made to maintain confidentiality of statements. There is a risk that if students and teachers talk frankly about their perceptions and feelings about each other, and the confidentiality of such talk is breached, that tensions may result. There are no anticipated physical risks or discomforts associated with this study. Benefits: The information gained from this study may help us to better understand how teachers can communicate more effectively with deaf and hard of hearing students to improve their academic performance. Confidentiality: Any information obtained during this study that could identify your child will be kept strictly confidential. All data and videotapes will be kept in a secure location. They will only be seen by the investigator, his faculty advisor, and research assistants working with the study. The results obtained in this study may be published and presented at professional conferences and workshops (not to include videos). However, your child's identity will be kept strictly confidential.
150 Opportunity to Ask Questions: You may ask questions concerning this research at anytime prior to, during and after the completion of this study. You may contact the investigator at any time at (402) 472-9666 or (402) 476-9414 v/tty or via e-mail at
[email protected]. If you have questions concerning your child’s rights as a research subject that have not been answered by the investigator, you may contact the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Institutional Review Board at (402) 472-6965. Freedom to Withdraw: You are free to decide not to let your child participate in this study or to withdraw at anytime without adversely affecting your relationship with the investigators, the University of Nebraska or your child’s school. Your decision will not result in any loss of benefits to which your child is otherwise entitled. Documentation of informed consent You are voluntarily making a decision whether to allow your child to participate in this research study. Your signature certifies that you have decided to allow your child to participate having read and understood the information presented. You will be given a copy of this consent form to keep. I give permission for my child _______________________________ to participate in this study. _______________________________________________ Signature of Parent(s)
___________________ Date
In my judgment, the parent/legal guardian is voluntarily and knowingly giving informed consent and possesses the legal capacity to give informed consent for their child to participate in this research study. _______________________________________________ Signature of Investigator
___________________ Date
Name and phone number of investigators David H. Smith, MA. Principal Investigator Office (402) 472-9666 tty Claire Ramsey, Ph.D. Faculty Investigator Office (402) 472-9380 v/tty
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Classroom Youth Assent Form
We are inviting you to participate in this study because you are a deaf or hard of hearing teenager, and we are interested in how teacher communication affects how well deaf and hard of hearing teenagers do in school Your class will be observed and videotaped for a total of three weeks. You may be asked to participate in a videotaped interview. We may ask you questions about what is happening in the classroom and your feelings about the class, the teacher and the school. This interview is expected to last approximately half an hour. Your participation in this study may help improve communication and teaching for deaf and hard of hearing students. What you do in class, who you are and what you say will be kept strictly confidential. We may publish the results of this study or present such a summary at a scientific meeting. Again, your identity will be totally confidential. Every effort will be made to keep your comments private. There is a risk that if students and teachers talk openly about their perceptions and feelings about each other, and other people find out, that disagreements may result. There will be no physical risks or discomforts associated with this study. We will also ask your parents for their permission for you to do this study. Please talk this over with them before you decide whether or not to participate. If you have any questions at any time, please ask one of the researchers. If you sign this form, it means that you have decided to participate and have read and understand everything that is on this form. You and your parents will be given a copy of this form to keep. _______________________________________________ Signature of participant
___________________ Date
_______________________________________________ Signature of Investigator
___________________ Date
Name and phone number of investigators David H. Smith, MA. Principal Investigator Office (402) 472-9666 tty Claire Ramsey, Ph.D. Faculty Investigator Office (402) 472-9380 v/tty
152 Appendix B Classroom Diagram
Front of Room Door
Closets
HW Table
White Boards
Teacher’s Desk/Table
Teacher’s Computer VC
Overhead Projector
Student’s Work Binders
Maps Student Desks
VC Counter Top
Counter Top and Cabinets Door VC = Video Camera
T.V.
153 Appendix C Interview protocol for Teacher Name _______________________________ Introduction Script
Date__________________________
I want to thank you for taking the time to talk with me today. I will be videotaping and transcribing what we say today. After we’re done, I will ask you to review my summary and notes of my interpretations of this interview. It is important that what I write in my study reflects what you actually mean. Your identity will not be revealed in the final written paper and the videotape will not be shown to other people outside of this research project. What I am interested in finding out in this study is how you feel about your teaching experiences with students who are deaf or hard of hearing. I’m particularly interested in the kind of school work you give, how you teach, your attitudes towards students and feedback you give to them and their ability to do school work, and chances you give to students to express themselves. You’ve had a chance to review the questions I am going to ask you today. I really want to know how you feel about these topics so feel free to discuss them with me. I may ask you additional questions to clarify what you’ve told me. If you have any questions about this interview please ask me. Are you ready to start? 1. What kind of learning climate do you try to project in your classroom? 2. What kind of feedback to you like to give your students when (a) what they do is acceptable (b) what they do is not acceptable to you?
Comments
3. What kinds of teaching input, academic and otherwise, do you try to provide for your students?
Comments
4. What kind of output do you try to get from your students to show what they’ve learned in your classroom? Don’t limit yourself to academic topics only.
Comments
5. What does it mean to you to have high or positive teacher expectations of students?
Comments
Comments
154
Interview protocol for Students Name _______________________________
Date__________________________
I want to thank you for taking the time to talk with me today. I will be videotaping and transcribing what we say today. After we’re done, I will ask you to review my summary and notes of my interpretations of this interview. It is important that what I write in my study reflects what you actually mean. Your identity will not be revealed in the final written paper and the videotape will not be shown to other people outside of this research project. What I am interested in finding out in this study is how you feel about your learning experiences as a person who is deaf or hard of hearing. I’m particularly interested in the kind of schoolwork you’ve been given, how it was taught, your teacher’s attitudes and feedback about your work and ability to do it, and your chances to express yourself as a student. You’ve had a chance to review the questions I am going to ask you today. I really want to know how you feel about these topics so feel free to discuss them with me. I may ask you additional questions to clarify what you’ve told me. If you have any questions about this interview please ask me. Are you ready to start? 1. How do you feel about your teacher’s attitude towards you in the classroom? (Climate)
Comments
2. What kinds of things does your teacher tell you about what you do in the classroom and your school work? (Feedback)
Comments
3. How do you feel about how you’re taught and the kind of work (homework, tests, projects, etc.) you get class/school? (Input)
Comments
4. How do you feel about the kinds of things the teacher lets you do or asks you to prove how much you’ve learned in school? (Output)
Comments
5. Is there anything else you want to tell me that you like or don’t like about school or your teacher?
Comments
155 Appendix D Code Book for Teacher Expectations See table below for codes to use based on criteria given below Factors Climate Type of atmosphere. Source: Teacher
Focus of Expectation LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION Teacher behavior towards language use by student Code: CL/LC
Content Area Teacher behavior to establish learning of subject matter Code: CL/C Comments about academic performance Code: FB/C
Classroom Behavior Teacher behavior relevant to classroom behavior Code: CL/CB Comments about classroom behavior Code: FB/CB
Cultural and Social Teacher behavior relevant to cultural or social norms Code: CL/CS Comments about cultural or social norms Code: FB/CS
Feedback Teacher reaction to student response. Source: Teacher
Comments about language skills
Input Quality and quantity taught. Source: Teacher Output Opportunities for student to respond. Source: Student
Instruction on language use Code: I/LC
Subject Lessons and Units Code: I/C
Classroom rule enforcement Code: I/CB
Instruction on Social/ Culture Code: I/CS
Student expression of language Code: O/LC
Student Academic response Code: O/LC
Student classroom behavior Code: O/CB
Student social behavior
Code: FB/LC
Code: O/CS
Steps in coding 1. Determine that a significant communication event took place. This is normally in the form of an utterance. While instinct will usually help the observer identify an utterance, it is defined here as a stretch of speech by a single speaker preceded and followed by silence or pause. This can also be marked in ASL by eye-gaze. 2. Note the time of the utterance on the video (or other ways to locate the event) on the code sheet
156 3. Determine the Factor: a. Source of the utterance: teacher or student. Student utterances may only be coded as output. b. Determine the function of the utterance based on the factor definitions in the table above. Note that feedback can only follow student output, may be very transitory (a brief nod or comment), and may be immediately followed by further input. 4. Determine the focus based on the definitions in the table above. In most cases, the topic of the utterance will clearly indicate which focus to use. 5. Use the code in the table above once the focus and factor have been determined 6. Write out the utterance (or event) under “Comments” with its code on the code sheet. In the event of significant coding disagreements or confusion, all coders will need to discuss the issue to resolve differences.
157 Appendix E Data Coding Sheet
Date of Incident
Data Source
Comments
Code
