Teachers' classroom knowledge as curriculum script.

Abstract

This study was designed to capture and portray a teacher's classroom knowledge as curriculum script. The task framework suggested by Doyle (1980, 1983, 1986) was combined with the descriptions of the activity organization and materials used to convey the content, to examine activities embedded within classroom events in order to determine the patterns which might suggest the content and character of the teacher's knowledge for one content area, mathematics. The teacher taught two math groups each week: a second grade, homogeneous group three days per week, and her combination second and third grade homeroom group two days each week. Data were collected over a period of six months. Daily observations were made in two phases: all day every day for the first week of school and every day during the one-hour math period for the first half of the school year. Five interviews were conducted with the teacher: one before the school year began, three during the first half of the school year, and one six weeks after the last observations were made. The data for this study were analyzed in four stages. First, task descriptions were constructed daily from the field notes that were taken during classroom observations and expanded shortly thereafter. Second, task descriptions for each unit of instruction were analyzed to generate summary statements which were used to compose letters to the teacher. Third, all task descriptions were analyzed to reveal patterns within and across the two math groups. Finally, the letters were sent to the teacher in advance of each interview, the interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed, then the protocols were analyzed to reveal themes in the teacher's dialogue about her classroom knowledge. This analysis resulted in the construction of a number of propositions which were then used in conjunction with the findings from the task description analysis to present the content, functions of, and influences on the teacher's curriculum script. The curriculum script model constructed from the findings of this study seems to account for both the complexity of teachers' knowledge and the complexity of the classroom context.