Grade Classrooms (grade + classroom)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Performing Race in Four Culturally Diverse Fourth Grade Classrooms: Silence, Race Talk, and the Negotiation of Social Boundaries

ANTHROPOLOGY & EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2009
Rebecca Schaffer
This article addresses how preadolescents produce and perform race through an ethnographic study of 8- to 11-year-old students in four fourth grade classrooms in the southeastern United States. Although Asian, Latino, and white students tended to avoid explicit talk of race, many white students constructed black students as disruptive "troublemakers." Black students were more likely to openly discuss race and racism and used race talk to silence or isolate certain students.,[race, identity, media, elementary school, multicultural education] [source]


A Perspective on Achieving Equality in Mathematics for Fourth Grade Girls: A Special Case

CURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 2 2001
Christine G. Renne
How can and do teachers create equal access within everyday classroom lessons and establish opportunities for girls to participate fully? What contexts contribute to equity? In contrast to classrooms where boys receive more attention, encouragement, and content-area instruction, Ms. Jeffreys conducts whole class lessons in her fourth grade classroom where girls participate equally and successfully with boys during mathematics. To ascertain what contributes to the equal participation, I use interactional analysis to closely examine two mathematics lessons. Part of Ms. Jeffreys' success lies in altering normative classroom discourse and in the assertive context created and sustained by the math, science, and technology magnet school setting. However, another layer of complexity is introduced: to teach her students at their instructional level, Ms. Jeffreys groups her students by their ability to pass timed multiplication tests. By instituting a form of tracking, Ms. Jeffreys also legitimates girls as knowledgeable, both socially and academically, by their membership in the top math group. While policy guidelines exhort teachers to provide equal access to curriculum, actually accomplishing a first step of access to participation in the routine day-to-day classroom talk remains extremely difficult. [source]


Individual and group meaning-making in an urban third grade classroom: Red fog, cold cans, and seeping vapor

JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SCIENCE TEACHING, Issue 9 2005
Sherry Southerland
We examined third graders' understandings of condensation using an expanded notion of the Emergent Perspective, a reflexive consideration of individual and group meaning-making situated in the culture of the classroom. Data were collected from two small groups of students in an inquiry-based, urban classroom during a unit on the water cycle. Measures included conceptual pre-/posttests, interviews, written work, and discourse analyses of a science lesson. Although we identified the supportive role of the teacher's explicit assessments of children's ideas, within the small groups, the force that most potently shaped meaning-making was students' persuasive power, which was in part influenced by the rhetorical moves employed. Specifically, students' evaluative comments (a type of rhetorical move) about contributions of other group members seemed to be particularly persuasive in these groups. Evaluative comments, apart from students' academic status, were shown to be an important influence in not only social knowledge production but also in individual internalization. Our explanation focuses on the particular discursive practices as intellectual resources of urban students, but we are also mindful of the cognitive complexity of the material and the developmental abilities of the students. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 42: 1032,1061, 2005 [source]


Why Doesn't the Creed Read "Always Be Critical"?

ANTHROPOLOGY & EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2001
An Examination of a Liberal Curriculum
Using ethnographic data collected in a second grade classroom over the course of a school year, this paper describes the ways in which one school's discourse of liberalism is deleteriously deployed. We view the school's discipline creed as emblematic of the school's liberal curriculum, and interrogate the effects on four African American boys in the classroom when the school enacts this creed. Despite the agency that these boys obviously had, they were unable to control the ways in which they were placed at a structural disadvantage and manipulated by a system far more powerful than they were. The results were that these four boys suffered. Not only did the intended liberal curriculum fail to be translated fully into the enacted curriculum, the liberal underpinnings of this curriculum precluded teachers and students from taking any critical stance. [source]


Teacher,child interactions: relations with children's self-concept in second grade

INFANT AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 4 2010
Geertje Leflot
Abstract This study examined whether teacher,child interactions characterized by teacher involvement, structure, and autonomy support at the beginning of second grade predicted children's global, academic, social, and behavioural self-concept at the end of second grade. The study was conducted in 30 second grade classrooms with 570 children and their teachers. Data included teacher reports of teacher,child interactions and child reports of self-concept. Results showed that, when controlling for the initial level of self-concept, children's social self-concept was predicted by teacher involvement, structure, and autonomy support. In addition, teacher autonomy support predicted high academic self-concept. Finally, these teacher,child interaction characteristics did not contribute to the behavioural and global self-concept. The results were similar for boys and girls. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


In search of well-started beginning science teachers: Insights from two first-year elementary teachers

JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SCIENCE TEACHING, Issue 6 2010
Lucy Avraamidou
Abstract The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore what aspects of two first-year elementary teachers' practices were most consistent with an inquiry-based approach, what PCK served as a mechanism for facilitating these practices, and what experiences have mediated the nature and development of these teachers' PCK. For each of the participants data included audio-recorded interviews, video-recorded classroom observations, lesson plans, and samples of student work. Data analysis illustrated that both participants engaged their students in question-driven investigations, the use of observational data, making connections between evidence and claims, and communicating those claims to others. Moreover, there was clear evidence in the findings of the study that a considerable degree of coherence existed between the two participants' knowledge on one hand and their instructional practices on the other hand. The participants perceived specific learning experiences during their programs as being critical to their development. The contribution of this study lies in the fact that it provides examples of well-started beginning elementary teachers implementing inquiry-based science in 2nd and 5th grade classrooms. Implications of the study include the need for the design of university-based courses and interventions by which teacher preparation and professional development programs support teachers in developing PCK for scientific inquiry and enacting instructional practices that are congruent with reform initiatives. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 47:661,686, 2010 [source]


Preventing conduct problems and improving school readiness: evaluation of the Incredible Years Teacher and Child Training Programs in high-risk schools

THE JOURNAL OF CHILD PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRY AND ALLIED DISCIPLINES, Issue 5 2008
Carolyn Webster-Stratton
Background:, School readiness, conceptualized as three components including emotional self-regulation, social competence, and family/school involvement, as well as absence of conduct problems play a key role in young children's future interpersonal adjustment and academic success. Unfortunately, exposure to multiple poverty-related risks increases the odds that children will demonstrate increased emotional dysregulation, fewer social skills, less teacher/parent involvement and more conduct problems. Consequently intervention offered to socio-economically disadvantaged populations that includes a social and emotional school curriculum and trains teachers in effective classroom management skills and in promotion of parent,school involvement would seem to be a strategic strategy for improving young children's school readiness, leading to later academic success and prevention of the development of conduct disorders. Methods:, This randomized trial evaluated the Incredible Years (IY) Teacher Classroom Management and Child Social and Emotion curriculum (Dinosaur School) as a universal prevention program for children enrolled in Head Start, kindergarten, or first grade classrooms in schools selected because of high rates of poverty. Trained teachers offered the Dinosaur School curriculum to all their students in bi-weekly lessons throughout the year. They sent home weekly dinosaur homework to encourage parents' involvement. Part of the curriculum involved promotion of lesson objectives through the teachers' continual use of positive classroom management skills focused on building social competence and emotional self-regulation skills as well as decreasing conduct problems. Matched pairs of schools were randomly assigned to intervention or control conditions. Results:, Results from multi-level models on a total of 153 teachers and 1,768 students are presented. Children and teachers were observed in the classrooms by blinded observers at the beginning and the end of the school year. Results indicated that intervention teachers used more positive classroom management strategies and their students showed more social competence and emotional self-regulation and fewer conduct problems than control teachers and students. Intervention teachers reported more involvement with parents than control teachers. Satisfaction with the program was very high regardless of grade levels. Conclusions:, These findings provide support for the efficacy of this universal preventive curriculum for enhancing school protective factors and reducing child and classroom risk factors faced by socio-economically disadvantaged children. [source]


Performing Race in Four Culturally Diverse Fourth Grade Classrooms: Silence, Race Talk, and the Negotiation of Social Boundaries

ANTHROPOLOGY & EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2009
Rebecca Schaffer
This article addresses how preadolescents produce and perform race through an ethnographic study of 8- to 11-year-old students in four fourth grade classrooms in the southeastern United States. Although Asian, Latino, and white students tended to avoid explicit talk of race, many white students constructed black students as disruptive "troublemakers." Black students were more likely to openly discuss race and racism and used race talk to silence or isolate certain students.,[race, identity, media, elementary school, multicultural education] [source]


Classroom and Developmental Differences in a Path Model of Teacher Expectancy Effects

CHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 5 2001
Margaret R. Kuklinski
A path model of teacher expectancy effects was evaluated in a sample of 376 first- through fifth-grade urban elementary school children. The roles of two moderators (classroom perceived differential treatment environment and developmental differences) and one mediator (children's self-expectations) of teacher expectancy effects on children's year-end achievement were examined. Significant differences in effects and effect sizes are presented. Both classroom environment (high versus low in differential treatment, as seen through children's eyes) and developmental differences moderated the strength of teacher expectancy effects. Generally, stronger effects were found in classrooms in which expectancy-related cues were more salient to children, but developmental differences moderated which effect was most pronounced. A significant age-related decline in direct effects on ending achievement was interpreted as evidence that teacher expectations may tend to magnify achievement differences in the early grades, but serve to sustain them in later grades. Support for indirect effects (teacher expectations , children's self-expectations , ending achievement) was limited to upper elementary grade classrooms perceived as high in differential treatment. In contrast to prior research that emphasized small effect sizes, the present analyses document several instances of moderate effects, primarily in classrooms in which expectancy-related messages were most salient to children. These results underscore the importance of explicit attention to the inclusion of moderators, mediators, and multiple outcomes in efforts to understand teacher expectancy effects. [source]