ABSTRACT
Classrooms are exceptionally busy places, so observers need to be on their toes. Every day in classrooms around the world billions of events take place: teachers ask children questions, new concepts are explained, pupils talk to each other, some of those who misbehave are reprimanded, others are ignored. Jackson (1968) reported a study in which it was found that primary teachers engaged in as many as 1,000 such interpersonal exchanges in a single day. This means, if the pattern is repeated, 5,000 in a week, 200,000 in a year, millions in a professional career. In another study of videotapes by Adams and Biddle (1970), there was a change in ‘activity’ every 5-18 seconds and there was an average in each lesson of 174 changes in who talked and who listened. The job of teaching can be as busy as that of a telephonist or a sales assistant during peak shopping hours.
