What You See Is What You Get-Consistency, Persistency, and Mediocrity in Classrooms

Abstract

Based on data gathered from over 1,000 elementary and secondary classrooms, Kenneth Sirotnik finds that there is little variety in teaching practices across schools in this sample—the majority of class time is spent in teachers lecturing to the class or in students working on written assignments. After examining the literature of earlier classroom observation research and comparing it to the findings of this study, Sirotnik notes the persistence of such teaching practices over the course of the century. He then questions whether this type of teaching fulfills our idea of what functions schools should serve in our society.