Management of transitions in the classroom - An expert-novice study about classroom management

Classroom management is one of the most important factors regarding the quality of teaching, because effective classroom management contributes to maximizing time on task. In an expert-novice study, strategies and interventions of effective classroom management were explored. Videotaped lessons of eleven experts and six novice teachers were analyzed comparatively, sequence by sequence. The study focused on transitions between seatwork or groupwork and two-way-presentations. The results strengthen the hypothesis that experts' performance differs significantly from the performance of novices. Experts not only notice students' difficulties in following the program of action at an early stage, but they also use many different strategies and interventions to direct the activity flow continuously and to activate the whole class. In comparison, novices often disrupt the timeflow themselves, they focus their attention selectively on parts of the class, and they are more prone to becoming absorbed when interacting with single students. An important aspect of experts' competence is that they are able to intertwine single interventions. To put it another way: experts orchestrate their interventions virtuously.