Classroom Interaction in Lower Secondary School - A Mixed Methods Study

Classroom interactions either promote or inhibit developmental change to the extent that teachers engage with, and meaningfully challenge, students and provide social and relational support. In this sense, the interactions between teachers and students reflect a classroom’s capacity to promote development. This presentation provides preliminary result from teachers and classrooms at schools participating in a national initiative on improving lower secondary school in Norway.

The study investigate how teachers implement research-based knowledge regarding classroom interaction in their teaching practices and how student outcome is linked to teachers' knowledge regarding classroom interaction. The presentation will address students’ perception of teachers’ improvement in instructional support. General growth mixture models are applied in the analysis of student report to investigate trajectories of perceptions of instructional support. Also, the study draws on qualitative interviews of teachers addressing the implementation quality of the initiative at the school. The associations between implementation quality and students perception of improvement in instructional support are explored.