Jere Brophy

Teacher Praise: A Functional Analysis

Classroom-process data indicate that teachers’ verbal praise cannot be equated with reinforcement. Typically, such praise is used infrequently, without contingency, specificity, or credibility. Often it is not even intended as reinforcement, and even when it is, it frequently has some other function. The meanings and functions of behaviors typically included under the category of teacher praise are determined by the degree of congruence between verbal and nonverbal components and by the context in which the interaction occurs. Much teacher praise is determined more by teachers’ perceptions of student needs than by the quality of student conduct or performance. Considerations of classroom feasibility and probable student response to teachers’ attempts at social reinforcement suggest that teacher praise should remain infrequent, but that it could be made much more effective. Attribution theory is an important supplement to social learning/reinforcement theory for suggesting guidelines for praising effectively.

Educating teachers about managing classrooms and students

Abstract The author defines instruction, classroom management, student socialization, and disciplinary intervention as functions commonly performed by teachers, and suggests guidelines for educating teachers in the latter three functions. A knowledge base reflecting established scientific findings exists to inform teacher education concerning classroom management. No such knowledge base exists concerning student socialization and disciplinary intervention, but principles reflecting a consensus of expert opinion can be identified. The author argues for sustained focus on a single integrated approach, taught as an action system that includes attention not only to propositional knowledge (concerning principles of effective management) but also to procedural knowledge (of how to implement these principles) and conditional knowledge (of when and why to implement them). Other recommended elements include conceptual change teaching designed to confront and correct inappropriate attitudes or beliefs that students may bring with them; emphasizing the basics by concentrating on the most commonly occurring classroom teaching situations; and developing skills as much as possible through the apprenticeship approach (modeling, coaching, scaffolding/fading) but supplementing this as needed with didactic instruction in basic concepts and skills, structured classroom observation and student teaching experiences, and use of case materials and simulation exercises as substitutes for field experiences that cannot be included in the program.

Relationships Between Classroom Behaviors and Student Outcomes in Junior High Mathematics and English Classes

Sixty-eight teachers (39 English and 29 mathematics) were observed in two of their class sections with a low-inference coding system designed to record context, teacher, and student behaviors. Relationships among teaching behaviors and student outcomes in mathematics classes suggest that elements of both the direct instruction model and indirect influence model are supported. Results in English classes are less clear.

Activities as Instructional Tools: A Framework for Analysis and Evaluation:

Issues relating to the design, selection, and evaluation of learning activities have been relatively neglected in educational research and scholarship. This article identifies some fundamental questions in need of scholarly attention, reviews recent research findings, and then offers a conceptual analysis and a list of principles that might be used as a tool for designing, selecting, or assessing activities.

Motivational Patterns Observed in Sixth-Grade Science Classrooms

Drawing on theories of student motivation to learn and conceptual change learning in science, this article describes five patterns of student motivation observed in sixth-grade science classrooms: (a) intrinsically motivated to learn science; (b) motivated to learn science; (c) intrinsically motivated but inconsistent; (d) unmotivated and task avoidant; and (e) negatively motivated and task resistant. These motivational patterns were related in theoretically predictable ways with the learning strategies and other behaviors that the students exhibited in the classrooms. The study highlights the value of distinguishing motivation to learn from intrinsic motivation, and of distinguishing general motivational traits from situation-specific motivational states. The study also highlights the importance of considering subject-matter content in classroom motivation. Implications for motivation research and classroom practices are discussed.

Teaching Social Studies for Understanding and Higher-Order Applications

This article, one of 7 review/synthesis papers prepared to help frame the research program of the Center for the Learning and Teaching of Elementary Subjects, describes historical developments and current issues in curriculum, instruction, and evaluation in elementary social studies, with emphasis on teaching for understanding and higher-order applications of the content. I conclude that the higher-order goals of instruction in social studies are comparable to those of instruction in other subjects, at least if they are described in a few general terms (such as conceptual understanding, critical thinking, decision making, metacognition, and giving students control of accessible and usable knowledge) rather than subdivided into long lists of discrete skills. I also conclude that values, dispositions, and appreciation and self-actualization goals need to be considered along with more conventionally described knowledge and skills goals. Pending completion of needed research on almost all of the issues raised, I offer hypotheses about effective social studies instruction based on my interpretation of the scholarly literature.

Storytelling, Imagination, and Fanciful Elaboration in Children’s Historical Reconstructions

Interviews with fourth graders who had not yet received systematic instruction in United States history revealed that these students were interested in the past, concerned about human motives and cause-effect relationships, and able to construct coherent narrative (storytelling) accounts of historical events as they understood them. However, they lacked an experience-based framework for grounding and connecting their historical thinking, so that their accounts often mixed accurate information with naive conceptions and imaginative elaborations. This article provides examples of these historical accounts given by children at this beginning stage of learning about history and discusses them with reference to the work of Dickinson and Lee (1984) and Egan (1989). Also considered are issues involved in teaching history to elementary students and assessing their historical understandings. The discussion identifies both beneficial and problematic aspects of children’s reliance on imagination in constructing historical narratives.

Stability of Teacher Effectiveness.

A recent review of studies of stability in teacher effectiveness (Rosenshine, 1970) could locate only four long-term investigations which included stability coefficients reflecting teacher consistency across time in producing student gains. These four studies are difficult to compare with each other but, in any case, the stability coefficients were generally low. The median coefficients, when more than one test was used, were .34 (p < .001), .36 (p < .05), .20 (ns), and .09 (ns). How stable is the effectiveness of typical teachers? Are some teachers more stable than others? The present study addressed these questions by studying only ordinary teachers working with their regular classes (i.e., no experimental intervention), and by including a time period long enough to allow us to judge stability reasonably well (three full school years).

Research on Teacher Effects: Uses and Abuses

Research linking teacher behavior to student outcomes has direct relevance to practice, and if used appropriately, will have the same professionalizing and empowering effects (i. e., not deskilling effects) on teachers that the development of a knowledge base underlying medical practice has had on physicians. However, this assumes that certain common mistakes are avoided when deriving instructional principles from these findings and using them as the basis for preservice teacher education programs, induction programs for new inservice teachers, or teacher evaluation and accountability programs. Toward that end, this article offers guidelines for appropriately interpreting and using teacher effects research (and thus for avoiding its misuse). Ideally, teaching is a technology for producing learning, informed by scientific data linking teacher behaviors to student achievement measures. Schools will fulfill their missions most effectively when teachers are trained to follow scientifically developed guidelines for instruction and then monitored to ensure compliance enforced through rigorous accountability procedures. On the contrary, teaching is and always will be an art. Attempts to legislate instruction and turn teaching into a technology are doomed to failure. Schools work best when individual teachers use their professional knowledge and experience to decide what to teach and how to teach it to the particular students in their classes.

Teacher-child dyadic interactions: A new method of classroom observation

Abstract A new classroom observation system is discussed. The system is designed for studying the dyadic interaction between the classroom teacher and each individual child in the class. The paper explicates the rationale underlying the coding system, describes the classroom interaction variables subsumed within it, and discusses the special research and consultative advantages offered by this system.