Creating Classroom Cultures: One Teacher, Two Lessons, and a High‐Stakes Test

Abstract

Using activities as its analytic focus, this article compares the classroom cultures of two reading lessons taught by the same teacher. One was from a regular reading class and the other from a reading intervention class that was designed to help students pass the high-stakes state assessment. By developing fine-grained descriptions of classroom activities and participant roles, the article offers educators and policymakers a close look at the ways in which childcentered and test-centered classroom cultures are constructed and the different types of learning opportunities and relationships each provides. [literacy instruction, classroom culture, high-stakes tests]He sat down to take the test and tears were coming down his face and he looked up at me and he said-I was teaching third grade-and he said, "I thought I could read." And I thought, from that minute on, that's never going to happen to me again. My kids are all going to feel comfortable. No one is going to look at this test and start crying.

The scientific method and scientific inquiry: Tensions in teaching and learning

“…We draw on activity theory (Engeström, 1987) to establish classroom activities as connected, purpose-driven interactive processes, which calls for close examination of relationships among classroom participants' in-themoment attention and actions, and how that gets contextualized by previous experience and systemic environments. Similar analytical focus on activity has been presented by Valli and Chambliss (2007) in a study of two class periods taught by the same teacher.…”

Implementing the Common Core state standards for English language learners : understanding how high school content teachers experience the instructional shifts

“…This study (Valli & Chambliss, 2007) indicated that placing emphasis on the earlier standards negatively impacted instruction for ESOL students, as the standards put teachers in a position to lean toward teacher-centered instructional practices. The CCSS standards emphasize the kind of learning that is more conducive to a student-centered classroom; thus, it has been anticipated that teachers shifting to the CCSS would employ more student-centered practices, which are more conducive to the language development and learning needs of ELLs.…”

“…Overwhelmingly, these practices pointed back toward a student-centered pedagogy. Valli and Chambliss (2007) suggested that a child-centered pedagogy included such practices as active engagement in reading, writing, listening, and speaking for clear purposes; the use of a wide-range of strategies that allowed students to comprehend and produce texts; development of vocabulary; and respect for students' home language, culture, and prior knowledge. In a child-centered pedagogy, "teachers do more than implement a scripted curriculum.…”

“…Social learning structures that had been established in many classrooms were scrapped in favor of more efficient transmission modes of instruction. Teaching and learning became more impersonal and stressful for both teachers and students, causing some teachers to rethink teaching as a profession and leading some to leave the field altogether (Ravitch, 2010;Sloan, 2007;Valli & Chambliss, 2007). Such transformations had their largest negative impact on traditionally disenfranchised students, especially ELLs (Menkin, 2010;Sloan, 2007).…”

“…Researchers examining how pedagogical practices and curricular decisions were impacted by the earlier set of standards demonstrated that an increased emphasis on these standards undermined teachers' "knowledge of more complex, culturally responsive views of literacy" (Sloan, 2007, p. 26); they noted that teachers' literacy-based expectations for Latino students simultaneously decreased. Valli and Chambliss (2007) illustrated this in an ethnographic study where they observed the teaching practices of an exemplary teacher, Ms. Gabriel, in two settings: her regular reading class and her intervention reading class.…”