Managing to Survive in Classrooms The Setting An Alternative Seating Arrangement Teacher- and Learner-Centered Classrooms A Teacher-Centered Classroom

Pointing to a mark on the blackboard, the teacher inquired, ‘What is it’? The kindergartners came up with fifty different ideas, including ‘a squashed bug’, ‘an owl’s eye’, ‘a cow’s head’. The high school students unanimously agreed it was ‘a dot on the blackboard’ (vonOech, 1989, no. 30). To understand how this superficial response develops, we need to look at what happens in classrooms. To obtain this perspective I will sketch two representative experiences, drawing the more typical one from materials collected with my colleagues, John Mayher and Jo Bruno (Brause, Mayher and Bruno, 1982).