Alena Hospesová, České Budějovice, Czech Republic

Learning Tasks and Classroom Communication

1. What affects the learning outcomes of the children?

The curriculum describes almost the knowledge of the children. Level and ways of their obtaining are not described. These are influenced mostly by experience of the teachers, tradition and teaching materials. These develop the curricular task into school problems and give them other special features picking up various ways of interpretation, visualisation, and order. The teacher in the classroom communication comes out of the curriculum tasks and tries to fulfil it through the solving of problems with children. This part could change the intention of the author of curriculum and textbooks considerably. On two examples of classroom dialogues dealing with addition and subtraction, we can guess the influence on the children reasoning and strategies of problem solving.

2. Unintentional influence of classroom communication

First transcript of classroom communication shows that teacher by questioning simple question lowers the demandingness of the tasks [1]. The teacher posed the question 24^th with certain purpose. She was not satisfy with children’s answer and clued the right answer.

Step num.	Dialogue	Activities
23.	Teacher: I have got 3 stones. I shield one. I put down 3 minus and let a space.	The teacher showed in one handbreadth 3 stones. She put off 1 stone and shielded it in second handbreadth. The teacher wrote on the blackboard: 3 - ___.
24.	T: What should I write here?	She pointed on the space in the expression.
25.	Pupils (aloud together): Two.
26.	T: How many do I shield?	She shows a finger.
27.	Pupils (aloud together): One.
28.	T: I put down 1. I have to write the sign "=".	On the blackboard: 3 - __ = 1

The problems in communication were potentiated by the fact that the expression did not fit to the presented activity. In the 23^rd step the teacher modelled taking off that could be expressed as 3 &emdash; 1= ___. It is not clear what her intention was, but expression used here could be described e. g. in these words: "I had got 3 stones, I took off some of them and I 1 stone left. How many stone did I take off?"

This example illustrates the fact that teachers have usually an idea about child’s answer. Often they regret the right solution (in next dialog step 90^th) or do not accept the lower strategy from the cognitive point of view (step 83^rd). On the dialog could be illustrated other essential feature, the fact that in the classroom a in-language is created comprehensible only for teacher and children in her classroom. Teacher’s question 81^st "How many animals are in the picture together?" could be answer .by counting one by one, there is no special reason for addition/subtraction sentence.

Step num.	Dialogue	Activities
77.	Teacher: How many cats are in the picture, Venda.	On the blackboard is red the circle with 2 pictures of cats inside. In green circle are 5 pictures of dogs.
78.	Venda: Two.
79.	T. How many dogs?
80.	V: Five.
81.	T: How many animals are in the picture together?
82.	V: Three, four..
83.	T (vigoroso): No, we count one by one.
84.	V: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
85.	T: Say the sentence.
86.	V: Two plus five is seven.
87.	T: Now it will be difficult. I am curious who say me the sentence.	The teacher shows the children a domino card with 7 point on one half and empty second half. .
88.	T: Try it, Romana.	About one half of children take hands.
89.	Romana: Seven minus seven is zero.
90.	T: I am not satisfied. We have not still subtracted. Try it, Linda.
91.	Linda: Seven plus zero is seven.
92.	T: Excellent.

3. Discussion

It is a question whether such misunderstandings in school dialogs influence the creativity of the children and the behaviour of the children as a whole. To answer this question is difficult. Practical establishment is entirely not possible from evident reasons. Some research results bring conclusions that could hold with the "illness" of school dialog. E. g. it is approved that some children during the school attendance lost their trust in the correctness of own reasoning. The ability of independent work is not very good. The children are not to read with understanding the text of the problems. The understanding is reduced on procedural knowledge (it is to use the procedure in concrete problem situation). Some of if is influenced by school dialog, not promoting understanding of concepts.

To change this situation is not simple. It seems that the pre-service or in-service schooling of teachers do not lead to the cultivation of school dialog. The "accidents" described are for school dialogs typical [2]. The change demanded new view on the pupil’s attitude in the process of educational, greater respect to his independence, intuitive strategies and responsibility to his own work.

References:

1. Tollingerová, D.: K pedagogicko-psychologické teorii učebních úloh. (To the pedagogic psychological theory of the educational tasks.) Socialistická _kola, 1976/77, č. 4, pg. 156 &emdash; 172.
2. Voigt, J.: Patterns and routines in Classroom Interaction. Recherches en Didactiques, vol. 6, 1985, č. 1, pg. 69 &emdash; 118.