Research with oral deaf classrooms as well as work with signed conversations between deaf adults suggested that the differences between spoken and signed language would lead to the loss of efficiency in communication between hearing teachers and deaf students. The purpose of the study was to describe the procedures that teachers in classrooms using manual communication employ in order to get and maintain student attention. Teacher attention-getting and maintaining in hearing classrooms consists of idiosyncratic phrases at the start of speaking turns, the use of questions or directives, or the selection of specific individuals. Four secondary school English teachers were videotaped on three occasions over a 2-week period. The teachers were volunteers, and the classes were teacher selected. All the teachers had at least 3 years of teaching experience, and most teachers had about 10 years of teaching experience. The use of a mixture of deaf adult signing behavior and spoken discourse markers is reported. A functioning but inefficient system is described.

A Preliminary Description of the Control of Interaction in Classrooms Using Manual Communication

Research into the process of preparing teachers rests on metaphors concerning the nature of the process of teaching. Is learning to teach like wheat growing in a field, or are classroom phenomena and the process of learning to teach at all similar to the behavior of other groups of human beings or other higher order animals? The answer to this question offers an alternate research metaphor which is more appropriate for classroom and school events. It is not difficult to make the leap from observations about the behavior of higher animals in groups or the behavior of groups of human beings to the behavior of teachers and students in school. Clearly in all cases you have a finite population that is mutually interdependent. Troops, tribes, and classrooms have organizational structures, rules for appropriate behavior, formalized ways of interacting, and processes for communicating these formulae to new members. By extension, the process of becoming a teacher is fundamentally similar to other kinds of passage from adolescence to adulthood. Because learning to teach is to become part of a complex social web, it is more accurate to think of troops or tribes than rows of plant life. A response to this different research metaphor is the development of cooperative or interactive research on learning to teach. Cooperative or interactive research first assumes that the teacher is a thinking individual capable of reflecting on his or her own actions, and second, adopts the research metaphors of anthropology and animal ethology. The application of this view of the teacher in the process of teaching is reflected in the structure of the research team. The more appropriate research metaphor is reflected in the process of doing research.

Cooperative or Interactive Research in English Education.

MF-$0.83 Plus Postage. BC Act Available from EDES. *Beginning Teachers; *ClassrccE Coamonicaticn; Discourse Analysis; Educational Research; *English Instruction; Interacticr7 *Interacticn Process Analysis; Secondary Educaticn; Speech Communicatio:-; *Teaching Experience This is en examination cf beginning teachers' acquisition of the structures of classroom discourse. Teachers were compared at the beginning and at the end cf their first teaching year using a discourse analysis system. Thirty-three hours of audintapes from 11 teachers were transcribed an ceded. Teacher initiations during informing, eliciting, and directive exchanges as well as follow-ups to pupil elicits and pupil zesperses were examined. eneTa_iy;-the more experienced teachers ensured acre opportunities for information transfer. This study establishes that the structure of classroom discourse is a learned behavior. (Author) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can he made from the original dccuaent. 714*44******************************************************************# U S. DEPARTMENT CW :1EALTH. EDUCATION A WELFARE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION THIS DOCUMENT HAS SEEN REPRODUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORsOINAINNO IT POINTS OF VIEW OR OPINIONS STATED CIO NOT NeceSSARIL . REPRESEaT OFFICIAL NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION POSITION OR Foucv TEE EffECT OF EXPERIENCE ON THE DISCOURS STRUCTURE OF BEGINNING ENGLISH TEACHERS "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE TrIIS MATERIAL IMICROFICHE ONLY HAS BEEN GRANTED BY Thomas N. Khrwin TO TIE EDUCATIONAL RESQuACES INFORMATION (*ENTER (ERICI AND USEPS OF THE ERIC SYSTEM'" Thomas N. numin Gallaudet College Model Secondary School for the Deaf Washington, D. C. 20002 Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Toronto, March, 3 978

/pdf/the-effect-of-experience-on-the-discourse-structure-of-19520egk1l.pdf

Thomas N. Kluwin

Papers

The Effect of Experience on the Discourse Structure of Beginning English Teachers.