Within-class Relationships Between Student Achievement and Teacher Behaviors

Data collected on 25 ways in which teachers interacted with first-grade students while the students participated in reading groups within intact classrooms were analyzed with class mean analyses as well as two types of within-class analyses: one that considered small groups within classes as instructional units, and one that examined effects on individual students within the small groups. The pattern of effects differed depending upon the level of the analysis. Particularly striking was the large number of statistically significant relationships that occurred only at the student-within-reading-group level. Apparently, some teacher behaviors took on different meanings for students in the context of a small group, implying that students were very much aware of and affected by their learning environment. The results demonstrate that a combination of within-class and between-class analyses provides a better understanding of the relationship of teacher-student interactions to student achievement than either set of analyses alone.