(CZ) Interakce učitel — žáci ve zjednodušeném modelu hromadného vyučování
(EN) The Teacher-Pupil Inter Action in the Traditional Model of Classroom Instruction

The aim of this study is to clarify how the model of classroom Instruction, simplified by practice, functions and how it influences the activities of teachers and pupils. The author concentrates on a more detailed analysis of selected characteristics of the process and points out that the data quoted are partial results of researches still going on. First he presents the results of a time analysis showing that the active verbal participation of pupils in the course of a lesson is strongly 1 milted in this model. By means of Flanders's method of Interaction analysis it has been found that in the first to fifth year the teacher's utterances take up 51 per cent of the time, while those of all the pupils 35 per cent, the remainder being made up of non-verbal activities, silence, noise and the like. In the 6th to 9th year the pupil’s ratio is even more unfavourable (the teacher’s utterances 74 per cent of the time, the utterances of all the pupils in the class 13 per cent of the time; the rest is again taken up by silence, nonverbal activities and the like). The analysis is based on simultaneous coding during the teaching process in three-second intervals and the data are processed by the ODRA 1204 computer in off-line or on-line regime. The most frequent activities of the teacher in the 6th to 9th year are exposition of the subject-matter (which takes up 47 per cent of the lesson), then questions (12 per cent), agreement, commendation (9 per cent), disagreement, criticism (4 per cent), orders, instructions (3 per cent). The pattern of the teacher’s activities at a national school is somewhat different. These results are based on the study of the activities of a woman-teacher with seventeen years of teaching experience for a period of five months. The results are now being verified on a greater sample of teachers. It appears that a teacher’s pattern of activities differs considerably according to individual subjects (the subjects compared were arithmetic and the mother tongue). The activities of a national school teacher change even in the course of a school year (only one third of all the activities under research remained constant in all the lessons). There was no change for instance in the amount of positive and negative reactions and in the amount of positive and negative affectivity. Questions put by the teacher to the pupils in the 6th to 9th year were studied in more detail. For this purpose the author created a typology emphasizing the logical-semantic point of view. A frequency analysis revealed the one-sidedness of the teacher’s questions, which were not very demanding. Teachers prefer questions requiring pupils to give either one quality of the object presented or to find just one object which has the qualities presented. The number of questions requiring an explanation or accounting for the answer is minimal. A more detailed time analysis of the latent periods of some activities of teachers and pupils in the traditional model of classroom instruction has brought interesting results. The pause between the teacher’s question and the beginning of the pupil’s answer is relatively short. At the beginning of the first year it averages about 5.25 seconds, three months later it is shortened to 4.17 seconds. The length of this pause appears to be getting shorter in the higher grades. Thus in the 8th year in history lessons it averages 2.25 seconds (there is, however, considerable fluctuation between individual pupils). The latent period of the teacher’s responses to pupil’s answers is even shorter. The teacher starts appraising the quality of the pupil’s answer 0.7 seconds after the end of the answer in the first year, and in the 8th year 0.4 seconds after the end of the pupil’s answer. Which shows that the teacher takes important decisions in basically stress conditions. The latest research concerned pupil’s answers in history lessons in the 6th to 9th year. The assumption that in history pupils would answer questions at greater length was not confirmed. On the contrary, in the pupil’s answers statements of up to five words predominated (57 per cent of all answers). Statements of 6 to 12 words had a relative frequency of 26 per cent. Longer and more complex answers occurred very rarely. It was found that it was the teacher himself who prevented the pupils from expressing themselves more richly, who led them to giving short, telegraphic answers. A large number of pupil’s answers were utterances which did not form complete sentences; they were only isolated words linked together by meaning (these constituted 37 per cent of all answers). In conclusion the author points out that classroom instruction simplified by the traditional practice has its limitations given for instance by the limits of the person i charge of the teaching process, by the limits of the organizational model used (one teacher and several dozens of pupils), by the limits of frontal work with the class as the prevailing teaching method and the like. A more detailed analysis shows retarding elements in the functioning of classroom instruction understood in a simplified way and the negative consequences of these retarding elements for the work of teachers and pupils alike. The research has also indicated in what respects the existing state should be changed.