ABSTRACT
As a negotiated environment, the teacher, students, and selected other adults shape a classroom culture. Collaboration, mentoring, building on the strengths of others, and other interactive processes become a part of the school culture as well as the classroom culture; it becomes part of the air they breathe. Classroom cultures that discourage acceleration adhere to the "conventional wisdom that focuses on what children lack and seeks to remedy these deficiencies by teaching discrete skills. This chapter describes how classrooms are bounded, existing as separate entities within a school culture. It explores that classroom culture is negotiated between the teacher and students. Because students are participants in shaping the classroom culture, they are part of the process of changing it to accelerate learning. The teacher and students negotiate a classroom culture through communication and discourse and, in so doing, define expectations for students, the teacher, other adults, and for appropriate educational practices.
