The author: Sherrel Lee Haight, Professor, Department of Counseling and Special Education, Central Michigan University. This article originally appeared in the May 2000 issue of Strategram, a newsletter for SIM teachers.
Return to Article ArchiveNumerous research studies have shown that use of the Content Enhancement Routines developed by the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning results in increases in student achievement. Now, researchers want to know how this happens. To begin to understand, researchers are exploring the relationship of the use of these routines to the verbal interactions that occur between students and teachers in general education classrooms. Their preliminary findings provide a starting point for thinking about and discussing the interactions that occur in your own classrooms every day.
The following verbal instruction occurred in a classroom in which a teacher used a Content Enhancement Routine while presenting a lesson. Notice how many of this teacher's comments were statements of fact, as might be heard in a lecture, and how many were questions:
Now it's time to look at the other side of the coin. There's always two sides of a coin. What's on the other side? Who were they? Ranchers, farmers, hunters. That's where the opposition is coming from? Why did they oppose it? I want it right there, right there in the middle of the cause-and-effect table. What? They feared what, feared loss of what?
-Dave Taylor, Shawnee-Mission School District, Kansas
The teacher encouraged students to take two different perspectives by asking a series of questions to guide their thinking about cause-and-effect relationships. Six out of 10 phrases were questions when the teacher incorporated a Content Enhancement Routine into classroom instruction.
A look at this and other teacher-student verbal interactions raises several thought-provoking questions about questions as they relate to instructional practices and the use of Content Enhancement Routines: Have you ever thought about the questions you ask your students? How do your teacher-student interactions change depending on the questions you ask? What kinds of questions and structures get the best results from your students? How do your verbal interactions with your students change when you use a Content Enhancement Routine?
This article, which takes a closer look at the last question, describes results from prior studies of teacher-student classroom instruction. It also presents a sequence of research questions used to direct a preliminary analysis of teachers' verbal instructions. Researchers started with the first question, and additional questions naturally arose as answers became more clear. The following questions are addressed in this preliminary analysis:
The preliminary analysis resulting from this study began to offer answers to some of these questions. It also strengthened evidence of a possible link between teacher verbal interaction and the effectiveness of using Content Enhancement Routines to improve student learning.
Prior studies at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning (KU-CRL) tell us several facts about typical teacher-student interaction during classroom instruction. In a 1984 article, Schumaker and Deshler described one of the earliest observational studies of the demands of secondary settings, which was conducted by Moran (1980). She attempted to identify the oral language demands present in secondary school classrooms by audio-taping class sessions and coding the verbal utterances of secondary teachers in 12 categories. After coding the verbal interactions, Moran found the most prevalent type of teacher utterances were in the form of lectures (i.e., statements of fact). These statements by the teacher, requiring no verbal response from the students, were found to make up 75 percent of the utterances.
In another study using classroom observations of students and teachers, Schumaker, Sheldon-Wildgen, and Sherman (1980) found students had few interactions with their teachers. This study classified time-sampling intervals based on the activity occurring in the classroom. They found students spent about 1 percent of the class intervals speaking with a teacher. In addition, these researchers found teachers asking questions at the rate of one question every 28 minutes. During the entire observation period, which was about 50 hours, teachers gave 27 instances of praise (about one instance every two hours) and 35 instances of criticism (about one instance every hour and a half). Researchers in this study reported independent seatwork activities across several class periods made up the largest portion of class time (48 percent of the intervals), with lecture from the teacher comprising the next most prevalent activity (18 percent of the intervals).
These studies indicate that very little teacher-student verbal interaction occurs during classroom instruction. In fact, according to these studies, teachers very seldom use questions to engage students in classroom discussion, reasoning, or higher-order thinking.
In a number of recent studies conducted at KU-CRL, Content Enhancement Routines have been shown to successfully increase academic learning for students with learning disabilities, as well as students at risk for failure and students within the normal range of achievement (Bulgren, Schumaker, & Deshler, 1988; Bulgren, Schumaker, & Deshler, 1994; Bulgren, Schumaker, Deshler, & Lenz, in press). Researchers began to ask questions to understand what teachers who use a Content Enhancement Routine say or do differently in the classroom that might affect student learning. This preliminary analysis focuses specifically on the number of questions teachers ask in relation to the number of statements they make.
What are the characteristics of verbal instruction when one teacher uses a Content Enhancement Routine?
To answer this question, researchers analyzed a transcript of the verbal instruction of a ninth-grade science teacher who was using a Content Enhancement Routine. They analyzed several samples of interaction in the transcript of a 40-minute class period and found questions comprised about 71 percent of the teacher's verbal instruction. In addition, they found the teacher used a wide array of questions to engage students in the process of learning content knowledge as well as in the critical thinking skills of cause-and-effect relationships. This teacher used more than 12 different types of questions when he taught about cause-and-effect relationships using the Content Enhancement Routine. These findings led to the second question.
What are the characteristics of verbal instruction when several teachers use a Content Enhancement Routine?
Researchers analyzed audiotapes of four additional teachers who were using a Content Enhancement Routine during whole-class instruction. Most of the teachers asked questions in more than 50 percent of their verbal interactions. The percentage of questions ranged from 26 percent to 90 percent. In this sample of teachers, the number of questions they asked in relationship to the number of statements they made when they were using the Content Enhancement Routine was much higher than in the verbal interactions of typical classrooms reported in previous studies. These data led to the last question in the analysis.
What changes occur in verbal instruction when teachers use a Content Enhancement Routine compared to when they do not?
To answer this question, researchers analyzed audiotapes of the same teachers teaching new information without using the Content Enhancement Routine. Although all of the teachers asked questions during their baseline lessons (when they were not using the Content Enhancement Routine), all of them asked substantially more questions when they used the Content Enhancement Routine. Although the types of questions teachers used were not routinely coded during this study, there were indications from a few samples that teachers were using a variety of types of questions.
The increase in the number and variety of questions asked does not seem to be the only change in instructional quality when teachers use the Content Enhancement Routine. In the preliminary data review, other questions for future research presented themselves: Was more class time spent on teacher-student verbal interaction? Was more class time spent on activities involving specific instruction about conceptual relationships? Was more of the instruction made explicit regarding the relationship of the event? Was more analogical and personal relationship information used during instruction?
Although research into why a Content Enhancement Routine might result in increases in student achievement is just beginning, the preliminary data provide one possible clue: How much difference does a Content Enhancement Routine make in teacher-student verbal interaction? A lot!
Bulgren, J.A., Schumaker, J.B., & Deshler, D.D. (1988). Effectiveness of a concept teaching routine in enhancing the performance of LD students in secondary-level mainstream classes. Learning Disability Quarterly, 11(1), 3-17.
Bulgren, J.A., Schumaker, J.B., & Deshler, D.D. (1994). The effects of a recall enhancement routine on the test performance of secondary students with and without learning disabilities. Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, 9(1), 2-11.
Bulgren, J.A., Schumaker, J.B., Deshler, D.D., & Lenz, B.K. (in press). The use and effectiveness of analogical instruction in diverse secondary content classrooms. Journal of Educational Psychology.
Moran, M.R. (1980). An investigation of the demands on oral language skills of learning disabled students in secondary classrooms (Res. Rep. No. 1). Lawrence: University of Kansas Institute for Research in Learning Disabilities.
Schumaker, J.B., & Deshler, D.D. (1984). Setting demand variables: A major factor in program planning for the LD adolescent. Topics in Language Disorders, 4(2), 22-40.
Schumaker, J.B., Sheldon-Wildgen, J., & Sherman, J.A. (1980). An observational study of the academic and social behaviors of learning disabled adolescents in the regular classroom (Res. Rep. No. 22). Lawrence: University of Kansas Institute for Research in Learning Disabilities.
* The author, Sherrel Lee Haight, spent the fall semester 1999 on sabbatical at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning. This article is one of the products resulting from her sabbatical work.
* Janis Bulgren, associate research scientist at KU-CRL, has been developing Content Enhancement Routines and conducting research on them for many years along with other associates at KU-CRL. Janis provided audiotapes and transcripts from her research in progress for use in the preliminary data analysis described in this article.
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