Academic Tasks in Classrooms

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the study of classroom that is, regularized patterns for conducting work and processing information in classroom environments (see, for example, Bossert, 1978; Doyle, 1979b, 1981; Gump, 1969; Hammersley, 1974; Kounin and Gump, 1974; Mehan, 1979; Sinclair and Coulthard, 1975; Soar and Soar, 1979; Yinger, 1982). In this type of inquiry, attention is directed to questions of how events in classrooms are arranged and interrelated in time and space and how organization affects learning. Most studies of classroom structures have emphasized social dimensions. One particularly active tradition has centered on participation structures, i.e., the organization of turn-taking in group lessons and the ways in which this organization affects access to instructional resources such as teacher attention or opportunities to practice academic skills (see Au, 1980; Mehan, 1979; Philips, 1972). These studies have shown that students need social or interpretive competence to participate successfully in classroom events. A second cluster of studies has emphasized perceptions of and attitudes toward subject matter (see Anderson, 1981; Bloome, 1981; Blumenfeld, Pintrich, Meece, and Wessels, 1982; Davis and McKnight, 1976; Stake and Easley, 1978). These studies have found that teachers' and students' attention in classrooms is often dominated by concerns for maintaining order and finishing assignments. As a result