Kissel MEd 2012

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Elements of Community 1

Running head: ELEMENTS OF COMMUNITY

The Elements of Community and Long Term Learning

Matthew Kissel

University of California Santa Barbara

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Table of ContentsAbstract ..................................................................................................................................................... 2Framing the Inquiry .................................................................................................................................. 3

Chapter 1 Artifact Analysis..................................................................................................................... 12

Chapter 2 Artifact Analysis..................................................................................................................... 28Chapter 3 Artifact Analysis..................................................................................................................... 53

Concluding Thoughts.............................................................................................................................. 77

References............................................................................................................................................... 78Appendix................................................................................................................................................. 79

Abstract

Classroom communities have an effect on a students ability to learn (evaluated in this work by

their long term retention of information) and on whether or not a students experience of school is

positive or negative. In order to help students learn well and as a moral imperative because school

attendance is compulsory teachers need to understand how classroom communities are created, what

influence (if any) a teacher has on the community, and what kinds of communities there are and how

they affect learning. Types of communities and methods of establishing them are discovered and

analyzed using classroom observations and surveys from teachers and students. Findings show that the

teachers significance in establishing classroom communities that facilitate long-term retention is lower

than what one may expect and teachers should consider working with students to achieve a community

of shared values rather than expect students to accept their own.

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The Elements of Community and Long Term Learning

Framing the InquiryIntroduction

While pursuing doing observations at various school sites in which I was placed I became

interested in seeing ways classroom communities formed and what resulted from the varying styles of

communities that came about. Throughout the process of observing classes, gathering artifacts,

analyzing and discussing my findings with peers, and reading literature on the subject I refined my

notion of what a community is, what the teachers role in developing the classroom community can be

and what effects different communities can have on the learning process.

I will begin explaining my inquiry process by providing a summary of the main stages of the

process highlighting my changing views about classrooms. I will then go into details about how and

why I developed my concept of community and what exactly I mean when I use that word.

Summary of the Process

The inquiry process for this work had four main stages that correspond to the three rounds of

artifact analysis and the review of the literature. The following paragraphs will summarize what

happened at each stage and show areas where my thinking changed. In addition to the generic name

for each stage (e.g. Artifact Analysis Round 1) I will give them a title that describes what the stage was

like for my inquiry more explicitly.

The Exploratory Stage: Artifact Analysis Round 1

This was a point at which my overall goals for my inquiry were not clear. I was at this point

free to look around at whatever interested me as if I were perusing an eclectic art gallery. While

looking over notes I had been taking from observations I noticed that I seemed to focus less on the

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lessons themselves and more on the interactions in the classroom. A good reason for this was that my

greatest concern at this point was in managing student behavior. I was unsure of how I would be able

to convince students to follow classroom procedure and respect my authority which conventional

wisdom seemed to suggest were good things for teachers to be able to do.

What specifically drew my attention was the forms of communication between teacher and

student some of which was overt and some of which was subtle. Observations became a game where I

would observe an event in the classroom and try to note what was being communicated. This led me to

conclude that the ways teachers communicate with students can be very subtle and often times things

that could go unnoticed in the classroom may have a significant influence on the events that do get

noticed.

My artifacts were various pictures that documented classroom procedures, decorations, and

instructions as well as observation notes accompanying them. The process generally involved taking

notes on a specific event and looking to different things in the classroom that could have influenced it.

This process left a lot to be desired and through peer discussion I found that knowing something has an

influence on something else is not very useful information. Knowing how much influence something

has or in what way it influences other things is useful but was very hard to establish. For my next

stage of inquiry I would have to develop a better method than looking at events and influences.

At first I thought my inquiry was going to cover behavior management and focus on things like

Say You need to sit down instead of I want you to sit down to make an instruction seem more

authoritative. I quickly realized that many teachers all had their own method of behavior management

and some things that worked for one did not work for others and some things that did not work for

some worked for others. Everyone has their own theory of classroom management and they can all

prove to you why theirs works and others theories do not. If I was going to find something of

substance to make my inquiry about I was going to have to dig deeper than just behavior management.

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I asked myself what behavior management was trying to do in the first place and my answer was that it

was a way of modifying the classroom culture. Eventually I found out that I would be better off using

the word community. That is explained later in the inquiry framing.

How Communities are Created: Artifact Analysis Round 2

For this stage I was able to incorporate my initial interest in behavior management techniques

into my newfound curiosity with classroom communities. All of my artifacts at this point were

observation notes I had made of classrooms. What I did was observe a classroom setting where I noted

some behavior management technique the teacher seemed to use and what interactions it created. I

then asked the teachers about the technique to understand what their goal was in using it, though I

relied mostly on my own observation of events because my status as an outsider gave me a more

objective look at the interactions in the classroom.

At this stage of the inquiry I defined community as a unified body of students and a teacher

with overlapping values. In my mind behavior management was a technique that teachers used to

establish overlapping values. A technique could be a way of incorporating initial student values into

the classroom or getting students to adopt values the teacher brings into the classroom. For the analysis

part of this stage I noted which kind each technique I observed from teachers was. I adapted popular

language from Lev Vygotsky and showed where the technique fell on a visual continuum called the

Zone of Shared Value. The community is what exists in this zone by definition at a point between the

teacher and the students. If the behavior management technique is of the first kind (incorporating

student values into classroom) then the Zone falls closer to the student, if the technique is of the second

kind (getting students to adopt teacher values) the Zone falls closer to the teacher.

After classifying each technique I was left to wonder why any of it mattered. Does the

community have any effect on the learning process? At this stage I was analyzing community due to a

moral imperative I had (which will be explained after the summary) but was now interested in seeing

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what kinds of communities there could be in classrooms and what relationship they had to learning. At

this point I had to come up with a means of determining what learning is so I picked something that

was important to me. Students will remember the class better, which I use as a way of testing how well

the class interested them in the subject being presented.

Breaking Down Community: Review of the Literature

In pursuing literature related to communities in classroom I was trying to get tools I could use

to classify different kinds of communities. While my second chapter was about getting to a community

I wanted my third chapter to be about what kinds of communities there are. I came across research that

broke communities down into 5 components and tested each one with a 5-point likert survey (Royai.

2002) and chose to modify the survey for my purposes and use it to analyze those five components in

middle school classrooms.

The literature also showed me other rationales for studying community including research that

suggested a link between emotion and learning (Maren 1999) and suggestion that community in

schools is an inherit good (Sergovianni xiii. 1994). It provided me with a means of testing my

definition of community against the definition of others. I concluded that my definition either included

the one thing common to other definitions (the concept of shared values or something synonymous

with that) or it got the heart of community better than other definitions.

The Types of Communities

From my review of the literature I concluded that types of communities can be classified by

how strongly they emphasized the different components of community. I borrowed five from the

literature and added a sixth. Then I created my own likert survey and gave it to teachers and students

to see the different kinds of communities there are.

This stage showed me that often times the kinds of communities teachers think are important

are not the kinds of communities they get based on aggregated student surveys about the community.

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This is true even for teachers whose classrooms students chose to do a survey on the community on

based on their long term retention of the subject matter. The implications of this seemed to be that

teachers are not in control of the community as much as many might think and therefore techniques

that focus on establishing community closer to students values would be more effective since the

teacher cannot effectively change those values very well anyway.

Why Community?

One interesting and sometimes depressing aspect of public school is that it is a compulsory

institution. There are not very many other places in America that require an entire segment of the

population to attend basically there is the army during a draft and prison. In certain ways public

school resembles these institutions. Like the army students receive training and then are sent out to

serve their country, not on the front lines of battle but in being productive members of society who

increase the aggregate well-being of the nation. Like prison students are held against their will in an

institution that corrects their behavior to something that is fit for civil society. Also like prison many

students feel trapped at school.

This makes the environment of the school very important. One maxim many took away from

the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment is that if you treat people like prisoners they will act like

prisoners (Zimbardo, n.d.). It is not a stretch of the imagination to assume from this that students

feelings of being trapped in school can have a negative effect on their self image the same way that

locking college students in a mock jail cell had on theirs (not to mention the effects of the teachers

should they start to see themselves as prison guards). If school is to have a positive effect on students

self image it has to create an environment that does not feel like a prison to students, which can be a

challenge because, like a prison, students are forced to go there.

A schools environment is composed of many things. There is the neighborhood in which the

school is built, the makeup of students, the attitude of the administration, the climate of the region the

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school is in and even elements of popular culture that students enjoy. Most of these things are not

within the control or reasonable influence of a teacher. One part of the school environment that is,

however, is the community of that teachers classroom. It seems necessary for a teacher to create a

classroom community that makes students feel like they are empowering themselves for their future

and not simply trapped there serving a sentence that ends when they are 18.

From this mindset I looked at the setting and dynamics of different classrooms to see this

different kinds of communities established in classrooms and methods teachers used to influence those

communities.

Getting to Community

During the inquiry process it took me time to find out that the topic I wanted to examine was

classroom community. While it became clear to me that my interest for this work would not focus on

basic pedagogical matters like assessments or instruction methods I did not have a word for the type of

thing I wanted to find while observing classrooms. I knew that my attention often drifted toward the

interactions that happened in the classroom and how teachers would facilitate these interactions mostly

through direct and indirect communication with students. While many would consider the topic I was

interested in at this point to be classroom management I was not ready to commit to that being the

focus of my inquiry. Classroom management seemed like the tip of a larger, much more important

iceberg. I tried to look to the infrastructure beneath management.

Teachers work very hard to promote a classroom environment that allows students to focus on

the tasks they give them, think deeply, and cooperate with other students and the teacher but the

environment is not just determined by the teachers behavior management plan. This kind of

environment ultimately rests on the nature of the interactions between the students and between the

students and the teacher beyond the teachers direct means of communication of expectations to

studentswhat this inquiry calls classroom culture. It is the larger picture that encompasses within it

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the routines or norms developed through behavior management or classroom management. This bigger

picture concept can get lost when teachers focus solely on routines and norms. This inquiry is

intended to analyze the influences on classroom culture to give a more complete view as to what affects

it and how teachers can engineer it (from a bigger perspective than behavior management) to

something they prefer. At this point my inquiry was intended to analyze the influences on classroom

culture to give a more complete view as to what affects it and how teachers can engineer it (from a

bigger perspective than behavior management) to something they prefer.

My classroom culture concept was very broad. Classroom management, student social roles

(class clown, taskmaster, teachers pet) and classroom layout are all features of classroom culture

because they involve how the members of the classroom interact. The pyramid shape of the iceberg

I mentioned earlier helps illustrate what I was thinking.

There were two problems with using classroom culture. One was that the term ended up being

too broad to use for my inquiry. The more I tried to define classroom culture the bigger the word

became. I used a visual representation of the concept in order to show what kinds of things were

incorporated into classroom culture and came up with the following:

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While the

shape of this object is at this point clear new terms started getting added to culture and the bubble kept

growing. It seemed to have no limits and therefore not help clarify any of my ideas. Like some kind of

monster it kept eating up new components and getting bigger and bigger until its shape could no longer

be determined because it was impossible to get a clear outside view. It was like trying to tell someone

the shape of the universe. Whatever term I used for my inquiry was going to have to be something that

could take clear shape. It would have to have some sort of boundary.

The second problem with classroom culture is that the term is misleading. What most people

seem to think of when they hear the word culture is the specific variant of ethnic culture. Even without

bringing ethnicity into the mix culture seems to suggest some aspect of students that exists outside of

the classroom that they bring with them when they go to school. While studies of ethnicity or home

life and education are interesting and worthwhile I wanted to keep the focus of my inquiry fixed

squarely inside the classroom.

In the same way when someone asks how they got hit on the head by a rock their interest is in

knowing who threw it and not getting a lesson on the law of universal gravitation if I want to

Decorations

Classroom layout

Classroom Culture

Classroom management

Classroom layout

Behavior management

Decorations

Student social

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understand an event that occurred in a classroom I am going to start with the preceding events in the

classroom and not follow the actors in the event home develop a psychological profile of them. Such

things have their place, but it is an entirely different method of inquiry than the one I am interested in

which is more direct.

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Chapter 1 Artifact AnalysisWhile observing classes I naturally tend to focus on the teachers method of classroom

management. Classroom management is the putting of teaching. When people think of golf they think

of guys with thick clubs hitting golf balls very far away, they do not know that putting is actually

eighty percent of the game and therefore a more accurate picture of what golf is. Likewise, when we

think of teaching we think of a person lecturing in front of a class (search for teacher on Google

Images and most of the pictures will show something like this) while for many teachers classroom

management is most of what they do.

I did not, however, just go around taking photographs of posters of classroom rules or record

teachers getting students quiet to start the class. As I observed class sessions I noticed how student

assumptions about the class, individual attitudes and outside influence seemed to be setting the scene

that the teacher would often have to adapt their behavior management techniques to. Classroom

management is part of a larger picture. What we often use that term to describe has to do with

intentional, direct manipulation by the teacher of the classroom culture. In order to really understand

classroom management techniques and be able to adapt them to individual classrooms and assess their

effects it helps to be aware of the classroom culture that one is trying to manipulate. If a teacher tries a

method of classroom management without being aware of the classroom culture it is impossible for her

to know what the real effects of her strategy are. A teacher might be at a school where the student

assumptions about class conduct are to walk into the classroom and wait for the teacher to tell them

what to do, she assumes, however, that her seating chart and strict demeanor (her main strategies) are

successful in bringing about desired student behavior. She is then confused six months later when she

discusses classroom management strategy with a teacher whose students wait for his input when they

get to class, yet he has a friendly demeanor and lets students chose where they want to sit. In order to

have a fuller picture of the variables influencing their interactions with their students teachers need to

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be aware of the varying affects classroom culture can have when trying to isolate what techniques are

effective for what they want.

For the purposes of this document classroom culture means the interactions between all persons

in the classroom. It is influenced by interactions, student-to-student, student-to-teacher and teacher to

student as well as the classroom setting (decorations, desk placement, outfits people wear, etc.).

Because classroom management techniques are intentional teacher-to-student interactions and ways

teacher intentionally set up their classrooms they are both attempts to manipulate classroom culture and

a part of the classroom culture.

Because of this my artifacts represent not only a teachers management techniques, but

classroom decorations that may influence the mood of the class, student interactions, as well as

documentation that explain certain outside elements that may be affecting the behavior of certain

students. This is an important distinction because humans can be unaware of what is influencing them.

If teachers can somehow control all of the input that affects the behavior of the students in their class

they would not need to work so hard on direct management techniques, unfortunately this may be

impossible, but teachers could lessen the need for direct management techniques by setting up their

classroom in clever ways that affect student behavior. While I know that teachers have no control over

the out-of-class elements that affect student behavior it helps to be aware of them so that teachers can

adapt their teaching style to the needs of individual students or address it in how they control the input

going into the students in their class.

I have classified my artifacts into two categories: the first is direct attempts at communicating

desired norms, rules or procedures to students (seating charts, posters with rules on them, recordings of

techniques teachers use to quiet their class), the second is indirect attempts at those things (classroom

decorations, teacher tone of voice, student relationships). Within these categories the artifacts can be

labeled either a student contribution or a teacher contribution. A student contribution would be an

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artifact representing classroom culture that is generated by a student or group of students, a teacher

contribution is generated by the teacher. Obviously all of the artifacts in the first category will be

labeled teacher contributions. I attempted to divide the second category into intentional and

unintentional artifacts but, while obvious examples could in theory be found, in many cases there is too

much ambiguity to tell if something is intentional or not.

Description of Artifacts by Category

The following are artifacts that relate directly to classroom control or setting classroom norms.

By this I mean they are direct attempts at communicating desired norms, rules or procedures to

students. While not a perfect method a good guideline to go with is that these artifacts relate to

management techniques that students are aware are management techniques without someone telling

explaining it to them. I will give each artifact a short name to more easily refer to them: a photo of

written instructions and questions on a whiteboard from an epistemology class Knowers, a copy of

the syllabus from a life science class Syllabus, a photo of The Wheel of Death from a U. S. History

class Wheel and a photo of different slides that appear in a computer program that tends to pacify

rowdy English learners in a Read 180 class Poster.

The next list is of artifacts that indirectly contribute to establishing classroom norms and

managing behavior. Something about them led me to believe they affected the environment of the

classroom, which in turn had some effect on student behavior, or were placed there to do so by the

teacher. This category would include things like encouraging posters (but none with rules or

procedures on them), seating arrangements or the way the teacher greets students as they enter the

classroom. There are two artifacts in this category: a photo of original abstract paintings made by the

teacher that were hung in the back of the room, I call it Paintings and a copy of A Skeptical

Manifesto from the website ofSkeptic Magazine that I call Manifesto. Both of these artifacts were

acquired in or due to observations of the epistemology class Knowers is from.

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Part 1: Direct Attempts

Knowers

The class from which I took Knowers involved a lot of group discussion without coercion.

Students were not cold called to give answers but instead were simply asked to raise their hand if they

had anything to say. Teachers often consider this a bad method of getting student participation. What

if no one raises their hands? they might say. Undoubtedly many teachers who would say that have

tried an entirely voluntary system of getting student participation and found that students would refuse

to raise their hands. Even questions that involve lower level thinking like What does the second

paragraph on the page say? can bring zero volunteers even though any student who is literate knows

the answer if students do not feel like participating.

It is counterintuitive then that the kinds of questions written on the board that Knowers displays

are very open ended and involve higher level thinking. These are questions that many adults would

have trouble answering. The question Is there a difference between believing something and knowing

something? would produce hours of hot debate in a graduate school class and the question What is

truth? has, to my knowledge, never been satisfactorily answered by anyone ever. Is this class just

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some sort of exception to the rule? How does the teacher get away with asking for volunteers? One

would expect from a class like this to see the, now all too familiar when taking teaching classes, scene

from Ferris Buellers Day Offwhere the teacher is attempting to get student participation while

explaining the Laffer curve and is failing completely. Yet while observing the class I noticed that there

was no lack of student participation.

While it is possible that this class is simply a fluke, the teacher has somehow acquired the

students sympathy or only students who want to participate choose this class one possible area of

inquiry is what kinds of questions stimulate students thinking and encourage them to participate in

class. I had believed through intuition that students shy away from open ended questions because they

seem so complex. Maybe the opposite is true. Students shy away from simple questions because they

are boring and are stimulated by open ended, complex questions because they are interesting. I

remember teachers asking open ended questions in school but do not remember how successful they

were at getting students to participate in answering them out loud in front of the class. My only

memories are coming from a family of engineers who refuse to participate in discussions around

complex questions and prefer questions with simple, obvious answers to which everyone, given a

certain proficiency level, will come up with the same answer. Perhaps this data set is skewed and not

representative of most students in school, still though I would like to know how to stimulate the

engineers in classrooms too.

Knowers is interesting to me because it represents a paradigm shift in my personal thoughts on

students willingness to answer complex questions, an optimistic example of the nature of student

curiosity in school (as in students actually are curious about class material) and a failing in the general

belief that student participation must be coerced through cold calling. This artifact shows that it is

possible to have a class with successful student participation that relies on the natural curiosity found

within students.

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Syllabus

My next direct norm-setting artifact is the syllabus for a life science class. Two things about

this syllabus made me want to get a copy of it. One has to do with something I observed occur in the

class when the teacher was reading the syllabus with the students on the first day, the second has to do

with the content of the syllabus. They lead me to wonder how upfront a teacher should be about his

own shortcomings with his students (when does it garner trust and sympathy and when is it

demoralizing?) and what sorts of things can change a students attitude about class.

In the syllabus the teacher admitted to the class that he tends to lose work. There is a section in

the syllabus that says DO NOT THROW ANYTHING AWAY UNTIL I SAY! The statement is

followed by a short paragraph that explains it which includes the following sentences: Everyone

makes mistakesincluding me. If a grade is entered incorrectly you can show me the evidence.

There are parts of the syllabus students and their parents are required to initial to show that they have

read it so this document is written for the students andtheir parents. The rationale the teacher gave for

the sentence in all caps was that he loses student work every year and students will want to hang on to

their work to prove that they did it when he does. His exact statement was I will lose your work.

This is an amazing confession for a teacher to give to his students. While it is nice to see a teacher

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admit he may lose work (I had teachers growing up who would lose work, refuse to admit it and give

students lower grades because of it) it seems like it opens up students asserting that he lost their work

that they just did not do using his confession as evidence against him. His warning to them to keep all

their work may come off as an attempt to make his students do his job for him by keeping track of their

work instead of encouraging them to take responsibility for their own grades and encourage teamwork

where they take into consideration each others shortcomings as he seems to intend it to do. I should

note that I am not accusing the teacher of doing this, simply noting a possible interpretation that

students and their parents may have after reading his syllabus.

In contrast to my opinion the teacher has been doing this for years. Either he is failing to learn

from his mistake or it actually works the way he wants it to. Because the former interpretation seems

excessively uncharitable I decided to assume the latter and got a copy of the syllabus to see how he

phrases his request for students to keep their work to get them to do it and to maintain his image as a

responsible adult to the students and their parents.

Perhaps it is telling that the syllabus is not as confident as his statement to the class while

reading the syllabus that he will lose their work. The document simply admits the possibility that he

will lose work. Is this statement an exaggeration he made in the heat of public speaking? Is it in

response to students who did not take his request seriously last year? Is it simply that he wants his

students to hear this but not their parents who might file complaints? There may be a certain dynamic

between teacher and student that allows them to be more forthcoming that the dynamic between teacher

and parent. When he prepared the documents to be read by parents this teacher may have taken that

into consideration.

The teacher acknowledges that everyone makes mistakes. His request that students keep their

work to make up for his own shortcomings comes with a universal admonishment of every human

beings fallibility. In adding that statement to his request he is taking the focus off of himself and

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putting culpability for lost work on a quality all people have including the students. The statement

could just as easily have been written Remember that everyone makes mistakes. You make mistakes.

I make mistakes. You should keep all your work to be prepared for the times when I make a mistake

and forget to enter your grade in the books. This Were-Not-So-Different approach to confession may

get students on board with his decision to make them put in the effort to keep their work for him and

not write him off as lazy or incompetent.

Students benefit from keeping their work as well in this class. The teacher provides students

with two rationales that focus on the benefits to students. One involves a natural benefit. Students who

keep tests and quizzes have the ability to practice their metacognitive skills and figure out what they

need to study more. After the confession part of the paragraph in the syllabus the teacher writes

Furthermore, if you did poorly on an exam, keep it and learn from your mistakes!!!!!! In other

words, keeping assignments has the natural benefit of improving your test scores by helping you study.

The other benefit mentioned is artificial. The teacher writes I like to award extra credit for keeping

assignments. Students are not more willing to go along with the teachers request because he will

reward them for it. In listing these benefits to the students the teacher is providing additional reasons a

student ought to keep their work besides his potential for losing it. Therefore he has other reasons to

fall back on if his own shortcoming is an unconvincing rationale to the students.

The syllabus also interested me because of the change in behavior I saw from one student in the

class, who I call Cheryl, when the teacher started reading it to them. She had come into class late and

had a negative interaction with the teacher to the point where he told her to stay after class to talk to

him. From then on she had done two things that were geared specifically to disrupt class. One was

making a loud noise while the teacher was talking and the other was refusing to share piece of paper

with a student next to her. While it is possible that there were separate causes for her behavior the most

parsimonious explanation is that she was upset at the teacher and intentionally trying to be disruptive.

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Her change in behavior started when the teacher was going over the syllabus. On the page

where he admitted his penchant for losing assignments (but before he read the text) he asked the

students what the most important thing on the page was. While most students had simply been

shouting out at that point Cheryl raised her hand. She said that she thought the most important thing

was the Final Exam, probably because on the tests and assignments layout it was worth the most points.

The answer the teacher had in mind was the statement about not throwing work away. Still, the fact

that Cheryl raised her hand and attempted to answer the question (her voice did not sound ironic or

sarcastic when she answered, it sounded sincere) seemed either like a peace offering or simply that she

had forgotten that she was supposed to resist the teachers attempt to have a functioning class. This

behavior was only noticeable after the syllabus was shown. It seems unlikely that something as

mundane as a syllabus can have an effect on student behavior but I wanted to get a copy of it anyway.

Wheel

Another artifact that had a direct relationship to norm setting or classroom culture building is

Wheel. This is a circular piece of cardboard divided into sections like a pie chart. Each section has a

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cartoon illustrating some sort of disciplinary action. The varieties are: bring food for everyone, wear a

dress and do a fashion show, push-ups, write standards, detention, sit quietly in the corner the entire

period, detention and teachers choice. There is a spinner attached to it that students who are in trouble

can use to randomly determine their punishment. The idea of alternative punishments when detention

and suspension are ineffective interests me. Many students practically live in detention and do not

seem to mind while suspension seems completely ineffective (if the student hates being at school I

cannot imagine why he would regard not being allowed to go punishment).

Wheel uses public shaming as a disciplinary tool. Students spin the wheel in front of the entire

class and must accept the punishment the spinner lands on. Besides ethical concerns about

intentionally embarrassing students in front of their peers and having a disciplinary method that is fun

enough to create an incentive for the teacher to use it I was skeptical about the effectiveness of Wheel.

Will there be students who enjoy the attention who will intentionally break the rules so they have a

chance to spin for the fun of it? I can imagine myself in high school enjoying performing the fashion

show or doing push-ups to impress the girls in class. I asked the teacher about it and she said that the

main reason she adopted Wheel was because detention was ineffective at discouraging tardiness.

Perhaps she had other discipline methods for more severe rule infractions.

About one month later I observed a class session where the teacher used the wheel to discipline

a student who ridiculed another one. The student got teachers choice and she made him write

standards. While one student in class tried to draw attention to the event most students simply ignored

it, continuing to do their group work. The student who had to write standards was considerably

annoyed. He had a stunned look on his face that he had to spin a wheel for punishment. Perhaps it

seemed very arbitrary to him. A teacher should not base discipline entirely off of what students want

(that goes against the point of it after all) but there is only so far a teacher can push a student before

they blow up in class and turn what would normally be a minor incident into a major one.

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Is Wheel an example of clever alternative discipline or proof that diverging from detention is a

bad idea? I only observed one instance of it being put into practice and it did not seem to antagonize

the student more than publicly shame him. Perhaps that one instance was poorly executed or had

positive (from the teachers perspective) effects on the student I did not notice. Still, I am interested in

things teachers do to make their class unique so I decided to take a photo of Wheel for reference.

Poster

The final direct artifact is Poster which was taken from a Read 180 class. What I was really

interested in was the computer program students were using. The computer program showed students

slides with letters on them and pictures of things that use the sound of that letter. It reminded me of

visuals seen on childrens television shows like Sesame Street or The Electric Company. They wear

earphones and hear the words said out loud. The poster is a picture of the slides the computer programs

show the students, I thought it would show up better than photographing the computer screen and I did

not want to buy the software.

There was one student I was watching (who I called Vance) in class who had very disruptive

behavior. He would pick on other students, shout things at the teacher and refuse to do his work. The

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routine of a Read 180 class is for students to switch between three stations. One involves writing, one

reading and one the computer. Vances behavior issues ended when he got to the computer. He kept

his headphones on and watched the screen, clicking when prompted to. Why did a computer program

that appeared oriented to children hold his attention so well? The possible answers I can think of are

that he is a kinesthetic learner who is only interested in learning when he is interacting with it, the

computer program is very simple and allows him to zone out so that his mind is not active enough to

find ways to be disruptive or he really enjoys using computers so his behavior in the other stations is

designed to show how the computer program is the only thing he wants to do. I observed Vance while

at the reading station and though his behavior was disruptive he was smiling and asking questions

about the reading. These are signs that he is enjoying himself so I doubt he is maneuvering toward

more computer use, nor does he seem very interested in zoning out.

I took Poster because I wanted to see if there was something about the visuals that could have

changed Vances behavior. The conclusion I drew, however, from watching the visuals and observing

his behavior in another station was that it was the fact that the computer involved all learning

modalities and constantly kept him busy.

Part 2: Indirect Attempts

All of the previous artifacts involved some sort of direct attempt to set classroom norms or

maintain control. Generally they involve giving direct instructions, keeping students occupied or

disciplining them. While there will probably be situations in every classroom where the direct

approach is necessary I wondered what sort of indirect methods there were that teachers could use. In

what ways can they put students in the frame of mind they want them in? How do they guide students

to complying with rules without threats? I took the following artifacts because I either observed an

effect they had on students or believe they were an attempt by the teacher (either conscious or

unconscious) to indirectly affect the class environment.

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Paintings

As I mentioned when describing Knowers in this class the teacher was able to make students

feel very comfortable sharing deep thoughts. I decided to examine the classroom decorations and

thought it was interesting that the teacher displays original artwork. Could it be that she is simply vein

and wants to show her talents off to her students? A more favorable interpretation is that it somehow

aids the students learning. It could be something she communicates to the students in sharing her

work or it could be something about the paintings themselves. I asked the teacher why she put the art

up and she simply said she liked it in the class. Of course, she may be elusive about why she put it up,

afraid that the spell it casts over students may be broken if they find out about it, or she could be

unaware of the effect it has on her class.

Perhaps sharing her artistic talents with her students contributes to an environment where

students are open to the level of sharing necessary for her teaching methods. She shares something of

hers with her students to get them to share about themselves. Students learn to trust the teacher, who

has opened up to them with her art, so they feel comfortable enough to think and share in the class.

The possible rationale for the paintings that has to do with the content is the affect of their color.

According to an article in The Seattle Times Blue streetlights believed to prevent suicides street

crime Japanese subways have found that adding blue lights to their subway system decreases crime

and suicide. Companies throughout Japan are changing to blue lights and finding they result in less

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crime. The effect has also been observed with Glasgow streetlights. Does the blue in the paintings

have a calming effect on students so they feel more comfortable?

Manifesto

The following is an excerpt from The Skeptical Manifesto which quotes from Why People

Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time by Michael

Shermer:

A Skeptical Manifesto

ON THE OPENING PAGE of the splendid little book, To Know a Fly, biologist Vincent Dethier makes

this humorous observation of how children grow up to become scientists:

Although small children have taboos against stepping on ants because such actions are said to

bring on rain, there has never seemed to be a taboo against pulling off the legs or wings of

flies. Most children eventually outgrow this behavior. Those who do not either come to a bad

end or become biologists (1962, p. 2).

The same could be said of skepticism. In their early years children are knowledge junkies,

questioning everything in their view, though exhibiting little skepticism. Most never learn to

distinguish between inquisitiveness and credulity. Those who do either come to a bad end or

become professional skeptics.

But what does it mean to be skeptical? Skepticism has a long historical tradition dating back to

ancient Greece when Socrates observed: All I know is that I know nothing. But this is not a

practical position to take. Modern skepticism is embodied in the scientific method, that involves

gathering data to formulate and test naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena. A claim

becomes factual when it is confirmed to such an extent it would be reasonable to offer temporary

agreement. But all facts in science are provisional and subject to challenge, and therefore

skepticism is a method leading to provisional conclusions. Some claims, such as water dowsing,

ESP, and creationism, have been tested (and failed the tests) often enough that we can

provisionally conclude that they are false. Other claims, such as hypnosis and chaos theory, have

been tested but results are inconclusive so we must continue formulating and testing hypotheses

and theories until we can reach a provisional conclusion. The key to skepticism is to continuously

and vigorously apply the methods of science to navigate the treacherous straits between know

nothing skepticism and anything goes credulity. This manifesto a statement of purpose of

sorts explores these themes further.

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The final artifact I collected did not come from inside any classroom. It is a resource that is

relevant to a topic that got brought up in class discussion. In class students had already done a

quickwrite about knowledge vs. belief (shown in Knowers) and then shared their ideas with the class.

Unlike other instances I observed in other classes where students share in partners and groups before

anything is brought up with the class (in order to make them more comfortable sharing their ideas with

a large group) students were sharing immediately after they came up with their ideas. One girl toward

the front of the class, I call her Sophie, took the position that there is a difference between belief and

knowledge. An example she gave was I dont believe my best friend is not a psychopath, but I dont

know shes not. When she gave her viewpoint she identified herself as a skeptic.

Another student, Kyle, raised his hand, waited to be called on and then addressed Sophie

directly, not the teacher like all the other students were doing. He said, Do you really believe that?

The way he stressed the word really indicated that he was annoyed at her statement. Something she

said upset him so that he looked directly at her and did not converse through the teacher the way the

other students did. Also, his hand went up for the first time that class period immediately after Sophie

made her statement.

One girl labeled herself as a skeptic. I was unable to figure out if she meant that term in general

or if she meant that she was part of the skeptical community (the class discusses philosophy,

particularly epistemology). I had heard her use an advanced phrase personal continuity to describe

how she conceived of her own identity so I figured she chose her words carefully. I decided to go to

Skeptic Magazines website and downloaded an article to use as a resource to understand diverse

beliefs of students in class and how the beliefs of the communities they belong to enter the class and

affect discussion. Perhaps a teacher should familiarize themselves with the various belief systems of

their students in order to be prepared for the type of concepts that come up in discussion.

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Conclusion

Of the two kinds of artifacts I collected the hardest to interpret was the indirect ones. Coming

up with the likely effect required a lot of abductive reasoning which relies too much on the limits of the

possible explanations I can think of. The direct artifacts have the funneling effect of their obvious

reasons that helps narrow down the possible explanations, the indirect ones are much more open ended

and require more creativity. Also some of these artifacts, like the skepticism observation and Skeptic

Magazine involve elements form outside of the classroom which add more variables to my analysis of

classrooms than I can manage. In further inquiry stages I will try to keep things focused on elements

inside the classroom only. Not because I doubt external forces play a role in student behavior in the

classroom but because my main interest is in the classroom itself and to look at immediate factors that

influence student behavior.

Final Question

Because there is so much input that goes into the interactions that form classroom culture it

sometimes feels like an overwhelming element to deal with. There is a lot of uncertainty a teacher may

deal with planning on how they want to establish their norms because of the complex nature of

understanding what effect, if any, classroom management can have on the culture or vise versa.

Because of this my driving question is: What is the relationship between classroom culture and

classroom management and to what extent, if any, can a teacher influence and predict classroom

culture?

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Chapter 2 Artifact Analysis

For the next step of my inquiry I started searching for strategies teachers use to create a shared

set of values in the classroom between the teacher and the students. At some point there has to be

something that is important to both the teacher and the student if they are going to have a working

relationship with each other. This change in thinking came from attempts to define what classroom

culture is. One thing I had to come to terms with after completing my first round of artifact analysis

was that there is not a consistent look or thought process behind classroom culture. I thought that

teachers could use or construct it but the term is purely descriptive. Every classroom is going to have a

culture, even classrooms where the students and teacher hate each other. Instead my thought process

became about classroom community. The word community is stronger and describes something much

more specific than culture, it has to do with what the group described shares.

Merriam-Webster provides a definition for the word community; A unified body of individuals

as a body of persons of common and especially professional interests from which I will use to

define classroom community (Merriam-Webster). A classroom community is a unified body of

students and a teacher with overlapping values. If the teacher's values and his students' values do not

overlap at all then there is nothing to motivate the student to participate in learning activities, hence the

relationship between the teacher and the students will not be a community. My guiding question for

this stage of the inquiry is What methods can teachers use to establish a common value with students

with which to build a classroom community and how much do students get to influence what those

values are?

For the purpose of this inquiry I will explain what I mean with the word value and what a

common value is. A value is something that someone thinks is important enough that it influences their

choices and actions. One example of a common value is money. Almost everyone who participates in

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the economy values money to some degree because acquisition of it motivates them to work. A shared

value that more than one person has and that influence how they interact with each other.

When students and teachers share a value they are agreeing to a common concept that they find

important. In many situations grades are that value. Both the teacher and the student see the grade a

student gets as important and are willing to put effort into improving the students grade, the student by

doing homework and turning it in on time and the teacher by working with the student during lunch or

providing extra study guides. Grades are established as a value because students are told a story about

how good grades in school means they will get into a good college which means they will get a good

job which then means they will make a lot of money and be a higher status member of society. When

both the teacher and the student value grades they also work as a reward and punishment to get create a

shared value of doing homework on time and studying for tests.

Already my concept has the problem of assuming that the onus is entirely on the teacher to

affect student values to bring about commonality. There is no reason why the teacher cannot allow

students to affect his values to reach the point of commonality. For this round of artifact collecting I

have collected notes and images from classroom observations of methods teachers use to establish a

common value between themselves and their students. The methods teachers use vary in how teachers

establish this commonality; I will describe how I analyze these methods in the next section.

Establishing Common Value

The different methods teachers use to establish common value fall somewhere on a scale

between the teacher changing or influencing the values of the students and the students changing or

influencing the values of the teacher. These different methods can be described spatially. There is a

place where the teacher can meet the students in a zone of shared values. Both the teacher and the

students have their own starting point. A stereotypical starting point (though surprisingly not always

true) for the values of the teacher is they want silence, punctuality and participation while the students

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want chaos, noise and entertainment. The teacher has various things he wants from his students and

students have various things they want from their teacher (even if it is to be left alone). At some point

the teacher and students have to work their way to a point where they share some values so that they

are not in constant conflict from each trying to get what they want from the other. Teacher can move

toward the students to get to this zone of shared values or he can bring the students into a shared value

zone closer to him. The following diagrams explain this.

A graphic representation of establishing common values:

Each figure shows a teacher and his students meeting each other in their zone of shared value.

The difference between each figure is who is expected to move more. There is an assumed starting

point where the students and the teacher do not have their shared values (the commonality of something

that forms their community and influences their actions). The lack of commonality is represented by a

ruler that shows the distance between the teacher and student. They all have their own values that

are independent of each other. At this point there are three methods that can bring about a classroom

community. The teacher can apply some sort of method that influences the students to accept the

values they want them to have, thus bringing the students closer to the teacher.

Distancebetweenvalues

Teacher

Students

Zoneofsharedvalue


Teacher

Students

Zoneofsharedvalue


Teacher

Students

Zoneofshared

value

Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3

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Figure 1 represents this situation where the students move toward the teacher to reach the zone

of shared value. This would be a technique where the teacher brings students into a zone of shared

value that is closer to his own starting point. The teacher is unconcerned with what the students value

at the beginning. An example of a scenario like this would be a military boot camp. The drill sergeant

yells at the recruits and punishes them with push-ups or extra duties which makes them value following

his orders. In Figure 2 the teacher moves toward the students to reach the zone of shared value. The

teacher is looking for things students value and is using those things to establish a commonality.

Because teachers have to change their value system to find a commonality with their students the

graphic shows the teacher moving toward the student to reach the zone of shared value. Figure 3

shows a situation in which the teacher is concerned with what students value and uses their values to a

commonality but also expects students to incorporate his values. The graphic shows the student and

the teacher meeting halfway. In this type of scenario teachers would combine different methods of

establishing common values, some of their methods would involve incorporating student values and

other methods would involve either appealing to students emotionally to adopt his system or adopting a

punishment and reward system that make students value what he does.

The following T-chart shows the differences between the methods the figures represent.

Figure 1 Method Figure 2 Method Figure 3 Method

-Teacher expects students toadopt their values.

-Tend to use punishment or

reward system to establishnorms.

-Might use other method to

change students values like

appealing to them emotionally.

-Teacher adopts the values of thestudents.

-Teacher is constantly working

to understand student values andincorporate them into lessons

and classroom routines.

-Teacher expects students toadopt some of their values but is

willing to incorporate student

values in other areas.-Teacher will use reward and

punishment system to establish

norms but will still work to

understand and implementstudent values.

In reality teachers will likely never be completely in line with Figure 1 or Figure 2. Most

teachers combine elements of the two extremes in something like what is represented in Figure 3.

Figure 3 can also be divided into three basic methods.

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A breakdown of Figure 3:

These new figures represent the different elements of compromise. In it the all-or-nothing

approach described earlier is replaced with areas that the common value is established in. Even though

both the teacher and students are adopting new values to find the zone of shared value therefore fitting

into the compromise figure (Figure 3) there are several ways this can be done. On this way of looking

at establishing common values rather than resorting entirely to one side or the other the zone of shared

value falls into one of three regions. When teachers tend to expect students to adopt their own values it

falls into region T (for teacher) and when teachers adopt student values it falls into region S (for

student).

Figure A shows an area that is closer to the teacher's initial value. The teacher considers what

students already value but leans toward values that he already has that he expects students to acquire. .

In Figure B the teacher, while still bringing in some of his own values, will ultimately find a

commonality that is closer to what students before school valued.

Point Economy

This artifact is an observation of an eighth grade Spanish class. The teacher of this class patrols

the hallway during the few minutes between classes as students are walking down the hall and sings to


Teacher

Students

Zoneofsharedvalu

eDistancebetweenvalues

Teacher

Students

Zoneofshared

value

Fig. A Fig. B

T T

S S

C C

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them in Spanish. The words that he is singing are Spanish words that are telling students to get to

class. The students inside the classroom can hear him and many are looking toward the door and

smiling, which I interpret as them finding humor in his behavior. I was interested to see what how this

teacher thought singing would affect his relationship with his students and what sort of outcomes he

would like to see.

The class had a lot of participation and signs of student involvement in the learning process.

Students demonstrated that the students value the learning process the teacher has established. The

teacher broke his class up into groups and each group gets points based on the behavior and

participation of the individual members of the group. The daily class routine involves a lot of

exchanges in this token economy between the teacher and students. Points are documented on a large

grid in the corner of class that most students can see.

This system appears to cause students to value the classroom norms because during my

observation they demonstrated strong motivation to conform to the norms of the class. The teacher

appears to have successfully make the classroom norms part of the shared values between him and his

students by introducing a reward and punishment system through a token economy. The following are

examples of instances I observed that are evidence of this with the time they occurred during the class

(the class time went from 9:50 am to 10:35 am). I note the time because the sequence of when each

event happens can impact my interpretation of the events. For example, students may respond a certain

way to one event because of something that happened earlier in the class period. This way students

actions will have a context to place them in.

Observations Showing Effectiveness of Points:

9:53 The teacher asked students for a volunteer to write something on the document camera.

About three-fourths of the class raised their hands within one second of the teacher's request. When the

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teacher selected one student I could hear an audible groan from several of the students who were not

selected. It was clear that most of the class wants to participate in this activity.

9:58 The teacher called on students to answer a question. Again, the majority of students

raised their hands very quickly.

10:03 A quote from the teacher to a student who was looking away from the teacher and

talking, Calvin, you lost two points for your team! Calvin responded in a defensive tone, Why?!

While Calvin's behavior would indicate that he does not share the teacher's value of having a classroom

where students do not hold side conversations his value system meets the teacher's when it comes to

him wanting to earn points for his group and not lose them. His response to the teacher's comment that

he is losing points showed that he desired not to because of the defensive tone of his voice.

10:07 A student's cell phone beeped during class. Students all had shocked faces and looked

toward where the noise was coming from. It was unclear who the phone belonged to so the teacher

continued teaching after a silent pause during which students were looking around the room. I could

hear several students gasp at the sound of the cell phone. Students could have laughed or simply

ignored the sound seeing it as the teacher's problem but instead they seemed upset that a cell phone had

interrupted class. The teacher does not allow cell phones in class and allowing one to make noise was a

violation of the classroom norms. The teacher had recently removed points from Calvin who sits in the

general vicinity of where the noise came from so it is possible that students reacted the way they did

because they thought they were going to witness the teacher instigate a very severe penalty on Calvin

because they thought it was his cell phone that went off and he had already been in trouble once that

day only a few minutes ago.

10:08 Students had gained points for their groups by answering questions. One student said

to the teacher, You also need to add my points. This student was interested enough in gaining points

for his group that he wanted to make sure the teacher remembered to add them to the score board.

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Observations Showing Ineffectiveness

There were two events I observed during the class in which the points system did not appear to

be a shared value between the teacher and the students. In these instances either the teachers use of

the point economy did not have a noticeable affect on the student or students showed a sign of valuing

the learning process independent of points. I have included this part because it is important to consider

the limitation to how well the point system works. There do appear to be flaws in the system, for

example, some students simply are not motivated by points. Thought the point of the inquiry at this

stage is not to exhaustively show the effectiveness of any one method teachers use it is important to

note that no method is perfect and most teachers will have to resort to a combination of different

methods.

10:05 The teacher looked at a student and said, You lost two points for that. He had been

bothering another student sitting near him. The student shrugged casually indicating that losing points

did not bother him. The teacher then made him apologize to the student he had bothered. This

appeared to be a response. In previous situations like at 10:03 the students reaction to losing points

indicated that he was concerned about them. This students lack of reaction indicated to me that he did

not value his points, it apparently did to the teacher as well because the teacher then made him

apologize.

10:24 After going over an example of Spanish sentence structure one student said, Can we

do some more? I interpreted this as a student valuing the learning of Spanish syntax and not about

points because the class has filler activities if it finishes early where students can earn points but does

not have a way for students to earn points learning about syntax. This student wanted to spend more

time learning the subject matter and was willing to forgo the extra time at the end of class to do games.

In addition to these observations the teacher explained to me afterward that occasionally there

will be a student who does not value the points and other methods will have to be used like parent-

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teacher conferences or detentions because it becomes unfair to any student placed in a group with a

student who does not value points.

Classifying the Point System

(A photo of the point chart on display in class)

The students in each period are divided into groups and the behavior of individual members of

the group can earn or lose points for the group. During a three week period students are put into groups

which get their points totaled. They get points for classroom participation, conduct towards students

and the teacher, and starting work like Do Nows on time. Students can also volunteer to help with

classroom routines like passing out papers, cleaning and writing on the document camera. Volunteers

gain points for their group. Students lose points by disrespecting classmates or coming to class

unprepared. At the end of the three week period the group with the highest score is rewarded, the

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students have a new seating chart, and the points are reset to zero starting the system over again. Prizes

can be snack food, a homework pass or extra credit. Students often pressure their group members into

participating because they want to win. So while the teacher can enforce classroom rituals by giving

and taking points, students will enforce them among their peers in their groups in order to win the

points game.

While the fact that students help enforce the rules with the points system may make the

enterprise look like student values are incorporated into this method the truth is that this system leans

heavily toward region T. The teacher is using the point system to get the students to adopt the values

he had before class started. He wanted students to value the classroom rituals he came up with initially

and the points are an artificial attachment to the rituals to motivate students to follow them. The

teacher is not moving closer to something the students themselves value but is using a reward and

punishment system to bring student values closer to his.

The above diagram shows the point system located in region T. The students values that they

had before interacting with the teacher have been changed to the teachers from the point system

punishing and rewarding students adopting this behavior. Because ultimately it is the points and the

reward that comes from winning the point game that students value and following classroom norms is


Teacher

Students

Common Values

T

S

C

Zoneofsharedvalue

Point system

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simply a means to receiving points for a reward I consider this method an artificial means of

establishing shared values in a classroom. The teacher is unapologetically using this system to get

students to adopt values that are similar to his own coming into the classroom.

Inclusive Language

My second artifact is an observation of an English Language Development class for 8 th grade

students. This class uses a rotation system where some students are on computers, some are reading

and others are doing an activity with the teacher. The class is run on a very tight schedule because

activities have to be completed in a certain designated time for different rotations of students. The

teacher cannot have her group go overtime because the students who finish reading or finish with

computers will not have a rotation to move to. In this situation the teacher values activities being

completed in a timely manner.

This is a portion of the observation:

A student does not have his workbook open after the bell has rung. The

students sitting around him do. The teacher is standing in front of the class ready

to begin and is looking around at the different students. She notices Ivan does not

have his notebook open.

Ivan, she says, you are robbing your fellow students of their precious

learning time. Please open your notebook now. Ivan opens his notebook after

this.

The following is an incident that took place one week later in the same class with the same

student:

Students are sitting in desks moved to form a large table like a corporate

boardroom. In this group they are supposed to practice their test-taking skills.

Ivan has turned to a student sitting next to him (Lyle) and is talking with him. The

teacher looks at Ivan and says, Be considerate to those around you and work

quietly. Ivan quiets down after hearing this. He is quiet for five more minutes

then starts talking again.

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I need you to focus on the task. Ivan then is quiet for a few more minutes

until his friend Lyle starts talking to him. The teacher says to Lyle, Lyle, will you

switch [seats] with Eve? Then to Eve, Because he is not being mature enough to

sit with Ivan.

In these pieces of dialogue the teacher shows that she is attaching respect for the classroom

environment and those inside it to her classroom norms in order to get students to value being on task

and punctual. I call her method inclusive language. When she uses inclusive language it suggests to

the class that an infraction of the class rules or rituals is an offense to the class and the people in it and

not just an issue between the offending student and the teacher. In her first reprimand of Ivan she said,

You are robbingyour fellow students of precious learning time. The teacher did not make Ivans

disrespect for the rules a matter between him and the teacher by saying You are taking my time

(which would mean Ivan has wronged only her) or even simply You are wasting time (in which Ivan

has not wronged anyone but is simply being wasteful of a vague resource). On this method of

establishing a common value the teacher has made smooth classroom rituals a common resource that

students share and contempt for the rituals is wasteful and therefore harmful to other students like

spilling water from a town well during a drought. The observation includes a portion where the

inclusive language did not end Ivans contempt for the shared classroom rituals and the teacher had to

resort to using punishment, moving students desks.

Classifying Inclusive Language

While use of inclusive language is a way of establishing a shared set of values for the classroom

the origin of those values ultimately rests with the teacher. Much like the point system the teacher

expects students to adopt her values. The major difference is that it does not use an overt punishment

and reward system. The teacher is using this language to convince students that acting in line with the

teachers value system (valuing students being ready to work on time and working at appropriate noise

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levels) is the best thing for them to do. There is also a subtle underscore of reward and punishment in

the fact that it supports the existence of social consequences as a form of punishment. If other students

buy into the notion that the classroom routine is a collective good and infractions are offenses against

them students will value the norms the teacher sets because they do not want to upset their peers.

Inclusive language ultimately ends up in region T of the spectrum because the zone of shared

values is closer to the teacher, in fact initial student values are not considered in this method but instead

students are convinced to adopt the teachers values. It is not as far into region T as the points system

because it uses the fact that students tend to value what their peers think of them in its method. While

students come over to the teachers value system it attempts to use support from peers to move

students.

Excitement

This next artifact is observations from a 7th

grade World History class. In this class the teacher

spends a lot of time finding things students will have initial interest in and incorporating them into his

lessons so that students prioritize learning what he is trying to teach them. The teacher in this class

uses conventions such as props, dramatic storytelling, cliffhanger previews, and references to pop

culture to accomplish this.

Distancebe

tweenvalues

Teacher

Students

Zone

ofshared

value

Common Values

T

S

C

Inclusive Lan ua e

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The classroom is completely covered in historical props. These items are used both for

decoration and to help students visualize places or people the class studies. When students learn about

a person the teacher can present them with a three dimensional image of the person they are learning

about. Students can even pass the image of the person around class to stimulate their tactile senses.

Props can also be used for dramatic presentations that teach content.

The following is from an observation of the teacher in a lesson about the Samurai:

The teacher is explaining the importance of the sword to the samurai warrior who

owned it.

Teacher: The samurai kept his katana with him all the time.

The teacher is reaching into his closet and pulls out his replica katana. There are

audible gasps from several students. All of the students are looking at the teacher.

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Teacher: If a samurai ever lost his sword he had to perform a ritual called

seppuku.

The teacher draws the sword out of its sheath. The following words are punctuated

by motions with the sword.

Teacher: He had to cut open his own stomach and show no sign that he was

experiencing pain until he died.

One of the students says whoa!

The use of props and dramatic storytelling are intended to be exciting to students. When this

teacher is able to present his props to students successfully then learning the material becomes

something that the students value. This also happens when the teacher is able to incorporate elements

of popular culture into a lesson. In one observation he used the show South Parkto teach students

about Islam.

In order to teach students about the Muslim ban on portraying the Prophet Muhammad this

teacher has students read an online CNN article about controversy over the show attempting to break

that ban. Because the show is popular among students (despite its adult themes) and is a subject of

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many conversations outside of school between them. The teacher is using the students value of

watching and discussing relevant popular culture to establish common values.

Classifying Excitement

Because the teacher is finding what students will get excited about in order to establish common

values this is an example of the teacher adopting values that originated with the students. He has to

take time to research popular culture to find references that the students will find relevant and has to

find out the kinds of things that excite students in props and dramatic storytelling.

This method of establishing common values falls into region S because of the fact that the

teacher uses values students start out with (the things that excite them) to reach their commonality.

Students take interest in learning the material because of the excitement and it becomes a priority for

them over things they might do that the teacher would find undesirable (like hold side conversations or

be disruptive). The only part of this method that involves the teacher influencing the values of his

students is the fact that there is a very implicit reward system behind it. Students can authentically

prioritize the learning but their behavior in showing that they are doing that is rewarded by the teacher


Teacher

Students

Zoneofshared

value

Common Values

T

S

C

Excitement

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when he continues to interest them. Because of this there is a small element of teacher values in

meeting in the zone of shared value.

Conclusion

My main assertion in this chapter is that there must be a hypothetical space that teachers share

with their students where they have similar enough values so that both can be motivated to work

together and get what they want out of the arrangement. I assert that a scenario in which such a space

is not reached would be chaotic because students have no reason to give the teacher what he wants and

the teacher has no reason to give the students what they want. In all likeliness classrooms naturally

reach this shared space unconsciously the only issue is how it happens and how comfortable it ends up

being for both parties. It is self evident to me that humans have values and naturally act in ways that

are influenced by those values so it makes logical sense that these values will come into play in the

classroom. The question is about the how and the who behind the values that dominate the classroom

and build community. How are these values expressed? Who gets to determine what values dominate

the classroom community?

The artifacts I collected gave different answers to these questions. The point system and the use

of inclusive language made the who primarily the teacher while the use of excitement made the who

primarily the student. While the how in the point system was the use of reward and punishment

through the giving and taking away of points to establish common values the how in the use of

inclusive language and excitement involved persuading students that they ought to adopt common

values (though there were smacks of punishment the use of persuasive language and reward in the use

of excitement).

One question not answered in this inquiry process is which of these sorts of methods is the best

method for establishing common values? In the end all of the classrooms I observed had reached a

point of having a classroom community and as I stated above it is very likely that any classroom

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naturally will develop into something resembling a community. Even though community is probably a

matter of destiny one can still consider what that community looks like and how it came to be. What

are the basic components of community and what do they mean for what I want my community to look

like?

The problem with answering this question is that the answer will depend on who is asking the

question. It is a question similar to Should I eat an omelet for breakfast? That question depends

entirely on what I want to get out of breakfast. I have to consider if I need a high protein diet, if I need

to consider how quickly I need to be able to make breakfast and what I feel like eating. To shape the

next stage of my inquiry I will need to determine what results from these different methods to find out

what actually results form the different methods of establishing common values or if they even have

different results from each other.

One starting point engage in the next stage of my inquiry would be to find out which methods

leave a positive impression on students about the class or subject. After all, if a student misses content

in the class or forgets it they have the rest of their lives to learn it over again. In life, however, they do

not have a teacher picking what it is they ought to be learning. If they have a positive impression about

the subject then it likely they will be willing to revisit the information.

In a class designed to give students homework support I interacted with a student who had taken

World History from the excitement teacher (Mr. Zed) the previous year. He complained to me about

how boring history is for him this year. T

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