Abstract
A within-class design was used to study process-product relationships between the quality of classroom discourse and student achievement. Six communicative logic variables based on Grice’s Cooperative Principle were identified. Ten sixth-grade teachers taught a 1-hour lesson on light. Students were classified by level of academic aptitude, and lesson content was classified by level of cognitive complexity. For each of the 10 classes, the teacher discourse that was related to specific items on the posttest was analyzed. Statistically significant results in terms of consistency across classrooms were obtained. These results consisted of negative relationships between violations of communicative logic and high-aptitude students’ percentage-correct responses on the test items. The value of this design for process-product research is discussed.
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