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Descriptors:
Educational Change; Elementary Secondary Education; Instructional Design; Partnerships in Education; Professional Development

Abstract:
This paper comments on three aspects of the educational reform movement in America: the current reform movement's aims and goals, community collaborations to assist systemic reform, and problems in pedagogy associated with school reform. An important accomplishment of the movement included collaborative partnerships among the corporate community, higher educational community, political agencies, and parents. Unfortunately, reform leaders threatened drastic consequences for comprehensive failure--an action that traumatized teachers, children, and parents. Education research was also adversely affected in that well-intentioned reform efforts were based on politics and uninformed social advocates instead of research-based investigations and results. The Pasadena College of Teachers is an example of educational collaboration where teacher members were selected from different school levels to modify principles and practices of instructional delivery within the Pasadena School District. Educators took responsibility for their professional growth and influenced instructional policy by collaborating with administrators, the union, and university faculty. Results are promising in that teachers have improved their quality of professionalism and grant funding has been obtained. It is recommended that the educational sciences, and principles and practices of educational research, be inserted into every school-change agenda to prevent tinkering by well-intentioned but uninformed social advocates. (Contains 25 endnotes.) (RT) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Bilingual Education; Classroom Communication; Classroom Research; Cultural Pluralism; Discourse Analysis; Elementary Education; Language Arts; Teacher Behavior; Teacher Student Relationship; Urban Education; Whole Language Approach

Abstract:
A study of whole language teaching in urban heterogeneous classrooms was undertaken to identify teacher student classroom discourse patterns. Using the Gutierrez Index of Coding Schema researchers identified three discourse scripts in the 14 bilingual and multicultural classrooms in Southern California under investigation. These were: the recitation script, the responsive script, and the responsive-collaborative script. Results of the study indicated that most teachers favored the responsive script when providing whole language instruction. There were educationally significant differences between experienced and novice teachers on selected variables of the scale. There were insignificant correlational results on the type of discourse pattern teachers used and the standardized California Achievement Tests language subsection. (Three tables of data are included; 43 references, the coding schema, and 9 graphs of data are attached.) (Author/RS) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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