Teacher Education, Educational Leadership & Policy ETDs

Publication Date

7-3-1973

Abstract

The purposes of this study were: (1) to change the behavior of selected children by training their mothers to implement an interaction style known as the professional response through providing corrective feedback, pointing out salient attributes, supplying elaboration and extending knowledge and (2) to assess the effects of those behavior changes on teacher-child language interactions. The null hypothesis stated that following the training of experimental group mothers, their children's interactions with the teacher would not differ significantly from those of control group children whose mothers received no training. Ten "low interaction" pupils were identified through observations of teacher-child language interactions in a public school classroom of 23 first, second and third-­grade children where the teacher had been trained to implement the interaction style in which mothers would be trained. "Low interaction" pupils were those who least often initiated interactions with the teacher, received the majority of the teacher's punitive responses and received the fewest teacher professional responses during teacher-structured small group periods and during child­-initiated self-selection periods. These 10 children were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Experimental group mothers were trained in their homes over a four week period. Informal conversations, an Etch-a-Sketch toy task and a sorting task were employed to elicit mother-child language. Correlated t-Test analysis of pre- and post-training observation data showed that the training of mothers was most clearly an influence in teacher-child language interactions during teacher-structured small group periods. Experimental group gains for that period on all variables were significant at the .05 level. The null hypothesis was accepted for differences between experimental and control group gains on child­-initiated self-selection period data. Gains for both groups were significant at the .05 level for that period. In general, the results of this study showed that the training of mothers can influence children's behavior and ultimately teacher-child language interactions. However, the influence of the investigator and his expectations of the teacher were viewed as a greater contributing factor to the change ln teacher behavior toward all children during the child-initiated self-selection period.

Document Type

Dissertation

Language

English

Degree Name

Elementary Education

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

Teacher Education, Educational Leadership & Policy

First Committee Member (Chair)

Marie Morrison Hughes

Second Committee Member

Mavis Doughty Martin

Third Committee Member

David Wayne Darling

Fourth Committee Member

Catherine Ellen Loughlin

Download

Share

COinS