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Managing students' learning in classrooms: Reframing classroom research

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Abstract

Research on improving teaching typically focuses on the public statements of teachers and students. In the treatment of transcripts only the public “on task” utterances are usually coded and formally enter the research. In this paper the authors analysed Year 8 students' public and private statements to themselves and their peers collected in the course of their multi-year study of teacher management of communication in cooperative learning groups. The authors analysed the students' utterances as data about their cognitive and emotional responses to the management strategies The data reflect how the students perceived and responded to subtle features in the public enactment of the curriculum, the task and the setting during the ongoing lesson. The approach allows a better understanding of students' actual experiences, their responses to the overt and covert curriculum, their use of prior knowledge and their strategies for engaging with the science curriculum.

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Correspondence to Rod Fawns.

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Fawns, R., Salder, J. Managing students' learning in classrooms: Reframing classroom research. Research in Science Education 26, 205–217 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02356432

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