Instructional Strategy and the “Creation” of Classroom Status

Abstract

This paper argues that the teacher’s selection of instructional strategy can play a role in determining who participates and who is heard in class discussions, and that the teacher can, in effect, “create” new groups of pupils who are high in these “communicative status” variables by his/her choice of instructional strategy. Case studies of three classrooms where different types of instructional strategies were used illustrate and support the point. These classrooms also differed in the acquired academic and social status of the pupils who participated and the pupils who were attended to in class discussions; the cognitive level of pupil responses that were attended to by other pupils; and final reading achievement (entering reading controlled for). The case studies were developed as part of a year-long sociolinguistic study of 164 second-, third- and fourth-grade pupils in six classrooms in a single elementary school.