ABSTRACT
Having established in the previous chapters the strategies which are required in order to promote effective collaboration in the primary classroom we now turn to look at some of the ways in which teachers who took part in the ORACLE II project initiated and helped to sustain these group activities. Although, as we have seen, teachers find it difficult to articulate the reasons why they choose to work in certain ways rather than in others they, nevertheless, have a perspective concerning the way in which children learn and this affects the way in which they structure their teaching. However, whereas a psychologist, who had a particular view of learning, might plan a lesson by translating this view into a series of pre-specified operationally defined objectives with both the content of the lesson and the method of instruction chosen to match these prescribed goals, teachers generally work from the opposite direction and select the content and the method to fit the context in which the teaching has to take place. Evidence to support this assertion comes from Calderhead (1984) who in his study of teacher decision making found that,
Teachers faced with a variety of factors such as pupils with certain knowledge, abilities and interests, the availability of particular text books and materials, the syllabus, the timetable, the expectations of head teachers and others and their own knowledge of previous teaching encounters have to solve the problem of how to structure the time and experience of the pupils in the classroom. Teachers, it seems, adopt a much more pragmatic approach than that prescribed for curriculum design. Rather than start with a conception of what is to be achieved and deduce which classroom activities would therefore be ideal, teachers start with a conception of the working context of what is possible.
