201. An Experimental Study of In-Service Teacher Training to Promote Inductive Teaching and Creative Problem Solving.
- Author
-
Stone, Douglas E.
- Abstract
This latest in a series of studies (of conditions which support creative problemsolving activity of gifted children) attempted to assess the immediate impact of an inservice training program to promote inductive and nondirective teaching behaviors. Subjects were 160 teachers (124 who participated in the training program and 36 constituting a control group; half from disadvantaged and half from advantaged schools) obtained from Chicago grade schools through three processes of random selection and assignment. Trained raters using Flanders' interaction analysis were employed to assess each teacher's behavior, pre and post, as 15 to 20-minute lessons were conducted. In all three dimensions analyzed--teacher talk, indirect teacher talk, and content--experimental teachers showed significantly greater change toward inductive teaching styles than control teachers, whether they began the project with relatively high or low patterns. The same dimensions of teacher behavior were assessed when the teachers conducted a lesson which involved a problemsolving task of a non-academic kind using materials designed to encourage display of whatever inductive potential they might possess. All teachers showed significantly greater inductive tendencies in their behavioral response to the specially constructed lessons than they showed in reponse to the earlier regular academic ones. (Implications are discussed and hypotheses for further study suggested.) (JS)
- Published
- 1969