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Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Abstract

Probably the best known and most widely used technique for studying teaching in order to improve it is classroom interaction analysis (Dunkin & Biddle, 1974; Peterson & Walberg, 1979). The coding ot classroom communication (usually verbal) according to category schemes has been used extensively and successfully in preservice and inservice education as a way of making teachers aware of and subsequently improving their own teaching. Used for this purpose, interaction analysis has provided teachers with a method of obtaining specific feedback on their classroom practice and a firm basis for reflection, discussion, and improvement related to their teaching.

As an alternative to interaction analysis, student perceptions of their classroom environment can provide teachers with feedback on their teaching as a basis for guiding improvements in classrooms. Despite the potential usefulness of student perceptions for this purpose, surprisingly little attention has been given to exploring how educators might use feedback based on environment assessments to facilitate nvironmental change. The purpose of this paper is to describe a study in which information about students' classroom environment perceptions were used successfully as a basis for guiding improvements in the environment of a particular classroom. Prior to reporting the study itself, attention in the following sections is focussed briefly on (1) related literature, (2) classroom environment research, and (3) the instrument used in the present work to assess student perceptions of classroom environment (namely, the Individualized Classroom Environment Questionnaire).

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Link to publisher version (DOI)

10.14221/ajte.1982v7n1.3