Hello Caleb,

The Flanders instrument is an old one (built during the sixties) and even though it was ingenious, it is not very utilized now. The instrument that you will use has to be closely connected with your research question. If you want to assess the quality of teacher-students interaction, the CLASS (Pianta and colleagues) is a good one.

Pascal

Dear Pascal,

How about The Instructional Environment Observation Scale (IEO) (Stipek, 1999)?  Do you have sufficient information about this scale to use it in classrooms?

I want to assess children's (primary school) attitude toward their learning, toward their teacher, which instrument could I use for more effective? Thank you so much!

Thanks very much Pascal and Khalid.

I will take time to look at your suggestions closely.

I want to focus on classroom ecology as in how much are students allowed to construct their own meaning in Math and Science lessons.

Thanks again.

Check out Nystrand's program, available online:  http://www.english.wisc.edu/nystrand/class.html

Nystrand has actually written about classroom ecology and dialogue.  I think his stuff could be a great fit.

Thanks very much Maren, your assistance is greatly appreciated.

Caleb

Ha Ngoc Le,

I have had a look at IEO scale and think that it requires a lot of input in terms manpower etc,yet most of us are doing action research as individuals or pairs.

I think it would be difficult to implement?

Looking over the Flanders (which I hadn't seen previous to your post) it appears that it was designed to meet the needs of practitioners more than researchers. Its primary advantage is the degree to which data collection and interpretation are "manualized". However, he quality of the observation tool is based on the quality of the operational definitions (and fit with the behavior that you are targeting), dimension of behavior measured (e.g., frequency, duration, latency), coding system used (e.g., partial interval, momentary time sampling), systematic training of observers, and inter-observer reliability. Therefore, I think that all of this needs to be considered when selecting an observation tool for something like classroom interactions. I have done several observational studies in K-12 classrooms and generally create my own observational code to match my research questions. When I find something that has been well-validated for behavior(s) of interest, then I use it. One potential value that I find in pre-packaged systems is that they sometimes code for contextual variables that I hadn't considered when developing a research question. But they often require coding of a lot of things that aren't central to the research question and therefore expend observer energy/focus on things that may take away from what I really want coded well. So, I suppose my advice is to consider creating your own observational system if you don't find anything that meets your needs.

Hi Caleb,

There are certainly alternatives to the Flanders Instrument. Are you taking a bottom up or top down approach? I feel that using survey instruments you are more likely to be top-down driven. Thus, you are confined to the theoretical framework of the instruments themselves, which may or may not be good depending on what your research questions and intentions are. 

Personally, I decided to use Conversation Analysis (CA) to study anatomy laboratory interaction in a university context. This is a bottom-up approach and very data driven. You will need to have audio- or video-recorded observational data. Perhaps, have a look at the literature. CA has been used extensively to study second language classrooms and interaction in a number of different settings.

Here are some references to get you started:

Stokoe, E., Benwell, B., & Attenborough, F. (2013). University students managing engagement, preparation, knowledge and achievement: Interactional evidence from institutional, domestic and virtual settings. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 2(2), 75-90. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2013.01.001

Parmeggiani, P. (2011) Visual sociology in the classroom: Fostering interaction awareness using video. 3rd COST 2102 International Training School on Toward Autonomous, Adaptive, and Context-Aware Multimodal Interfaces: Theoretical and Practical Issues: Vol. 6456 LNCS (pp. 116-133). Caserta.

Hellermann, J. (2005). The sequential and prosodic co-construction of a 'quiz game' activity in classroom talk. Journal of Pragmatics, 37(6), 919-944. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2004.09.009

Ford, C. E. (1999). Collaborative construction of task activity: Coordinating multiple resources in a high school physics lab. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 32(4), 369-408.

McHoul, A. W. (1978). The organization of turns at formal talk in the classroom. Language in Society, 7(2), 183-213. doi:10.1017/s0047404500005522

I will also refer you to my supervisor's work (Dr. Anna Filipi). I am not sure what classroom context you are studying, but hopefully the methodology will be of interest to you.

An interaction-focused pedagogy based on conversation analysis for developing L2 pragmatic competence. 

Chapter An interaction-focused pedagogy based on conversation analys...

 Thanks to both Kevins your input is valuable.

Dear Caleb, 

The following book is a very useful resource for supervising teachers. It offers a wide range of strategies and applications.

Acheson, K. A. & Gall, M. D. (2002). Clinical supervision and teacher development: Preservice and inservice applications. Wiley..

There is a newer edition.

Shukran Mohammed.

That's great. Thanks Nabil

The first question in on what level of granularity you want to work. It is important to your research question or objective a minute-to-minute following?

By other hand, I believe that those Flanders instruments let you know about classrooms interactions in general, but if you want to know better on teacher ways to direct and deliver lessons or their practices in classrooms, I suggest two techniques:

1. Observation registering the sequence of events, with a short interview with the teacher before and after about the goals of the activity. It lets you to know about how the teacher is organizing the space and how he or she reason to act to promote certain learning in students (this is taken or derived from some work inspired in Lee S. Shulman work).

2. Ask the teacher a question: If he or she needs to go away by a short time, and he or she must instruct a colleague on how to work on his/her class to reach the goals of learning proposed, what he or she recommend to the replacing teacher?