| Summary: | The thesis presents empirical studies and reviews that support a shift from traditional classroom practices in the Primary school to those based in a teacher-child partnership developed through negotiation. The opening Chapter looks at the ontology of the contemporary classroom of the Primary school. It holds that reasons for the presence of largely directive practices can be found in teachers background and training and in society's dependent model of childhood. This focus is continued in Chapter Two in respect to research into motivational processes. Chapter Three presents two empirical studies looking at the nature of the directive classroom and the types of strategies that children use to cope with this phenomena. In Chapter Four negotiation is examined across a variety of domains, developing in Chapter Five a model of a negotiating classroom and examining the extent to which it can be said that children negotiate. Chapter Six presents three studies concerned with children's negotiating behaviour, the detailed nature of child-teacher classroom negotiating interaction and a sociometric perspective examining how children prefer to organize themselves. Study Six presents transcripts of negotiations between teacher and child with interpretive commentary. Chapter Seven follows a class examining the effects on children's academic performance while moving from a directive to a negotiating environment. Chapter Eight presents a study combining three classroom components to create eight classroom environments. It highlights poor independent teacherchild agreement on the elements within the classroom organization that produce the best / worst match on different criteria. It also outlines data indicating poor agreement between In-situ and later questionnaire data collection methods. Chapter Nine suggests that individuality of the child is a persistent theme throughout, particularly in types of curricular interaction and behaviour and that a movement is needed toward developing the negotiating philosophy into traditional classrooms.
|
|---|
