Review of Research on Classroom Communication Patterns, Leading to Improved Student Performance.

This is a review of studies designed to assess the attributes of teacher-student interaction predicted to be correlated with student achievement. The paper includes: (1) a summary review of the types of teacher characteristics found to be correlated with student achievement and attitude; (2) a summary of the research done using the Flanders Interaction Analysis Index; and (3) a final summary and conclusions section followed by an extensive list of references. The review of available research makes it clear that good experimental research in the area of student-teacher interaction has been relatively sparse. There are a number of problems with existing studies: primarily, nearly all studies to date have been correlational in nature. Many have used scales designed for use with all grade levels with no allowances made. Consequently, findings have been inconsistent across grade levels. A third problem is that many studies and systems of observations do not include reliability data nor is the rating scale specific to the subject matter. Probably the most important shortcoming of research in this area is that few scales take into account which students are interacting with the teacher and most use a total class mean as opposed to individual evaluations in determining academic achievement. Two final problems are that studies use a relatively low number of teachers and an inadequate number of observations of each teacher to obtain significant data. (DMT)