Educational Psychology – Yesterday and Today

Yesterday: Trivia in the Classroom

In the late nineteenth century, a visitor to the public schools concluded that most classroom activity consisted of what he called a game of recitation. The pupils and the teacher followed a systematic question-and-answer exercise. The teacher would ask a series of short, factual questions with the rapidity of a machine gunner: “Now class, pay attention. Tell me, who discovered America?—What year?—-How many ships were there?—-What were their names?—-How long was the voyage?—-Each question was followed by a brief pause, and then students with hands raised were called on, again with the speed of light, until one student said the correct answer. At this point the teacher would fire the next question and skip around the class calling on pupils with hands raised until the next right answer was called out. The observer in the nineteenth-century classroom noted that the interaction between teacher and pupils seemed exclusively mechanical. The process seemed to emphasize rote learning, the repetition of facts memorized from the teacher and the textbook. Inquiry was unknown. “In several instances when a pupil stopped for a moment’s reflection, the teacher remarked abruptly, ‘Don’t stop to think, but tell me what you know.’”

These impressions of what we might call trivia in the classroom were given further credence by other observers. An English educator in 1908 noted the “time-honored” tradition in American classrooms of question and answer recitation in distinct contrast of Europe. A study of classroom interaction further substantiated question and answer as the predominant approach to teaching in this country. Using stenographic notes of actual classroom discussions (this was in the days before tape recorders) a researcher in 1912 found that over 80 percent of all classroom talk consisted of asking and answering brief factual questions—questions that called for a good rote memory and an ability to phrase the answer in the same terms the teacher used. The teacher asked between one and four questions per minute, much like today’s TV quiz games where contestants (pupils) are given a few seconds to come up with the right answer; if they don’t have the answer at the tip of their tongue, they lose their turn, and the quiz master (teacher) moves on. The researcher noted.

The fact that one history teacher attempts to realize his educational aims through the process of “hearing” the textbook, day after day, is unfortunate but pardonable; that history, science, mathematics, foreign language and English teachers, collectively are following in the same groove, collectively are following in the same groove, is a matter for theorists and practitioners to reckon with.

William James, one of this country’s first and perhaps greatest commentators on the problems of teaching and learning, provided the following example of the recitation quiz game in the classroom.

A friend of mine, visiting a school, was asked to examine a young class in geography. Glancing at the book, she said, “Suppose you should dig a hole in the ground, hundreds of feet deep. How should you find it at the bottom—warmer or colder than on top?” None of the class replying, the teacher said: “I’m sure they know, but I think you don’t ask the question quite rightly. Let me try.” So, taking the book, she said: “In what condition is the interior of the globe?” and received the immediate answer from half the class at once: “The interior of the globe is in a condition of igneous fusion.”

Today: Trivia in the Classroom

In the 1990, fully one-half century after the above observations were made, educational researchers studying classroom interactions between teachers and pupils made the following comments: (1) The teachers tend to do about 70 percent of all talking in the classroom. (2) Most of this talk is in the form of asking questions. (3) Between 80 and 88 percent of all these questions call for rote memory responses. (4) The teachers typically ask two questions per minute.  (5) Pupil talk is almost exclusively a short response to the teacher’s question. (6) Inquiries and suggestions from pupils are virtually non-existent.

You may be struck by the remarkable similarity in the results of these two studies—after 50 years the same mode persists. This state of affairs raises two questions: Is question-and-answer trivia an effective educational method? If it isn’t, then why does it persist?

You are there: Trivia in the Classroom

Perhaps the best way to begin understanding the effect of rapid fire question-and-answer procedures would be to ask you to remember such a situation in your own experience. You are in the third grade, sitting in a class of 30 children. The teacher towers over you physically, a difference exaggerated when she stands in front of the seated class. The class has been studying a unit on the American Indian. After a series of questions on Indian lore and myths which you know but didn’t get called on for (she had scolded you sternly, saying that you were to remain seated when you raised your hand), the teacher suddenly wheels around and looks directly at you: “What did the Navaho call their houses?” In the confusion, for you are still thinking about a previous question, you don’t have the answer. The class falls silent. Twenty-nine children turn toward you. The teacher waits a few seconds that seem like years, and then says, “Well?” “Tepee?” your say, hoping that it’s right, but mostly wishing there were a place to hide. “Hogan,” the teacher replies. “Hogan—oh, that’s what I meant to say,” you add in a near whisper. The moment does pass as the girl two seats away from you expertly fields the next question about how a Hogan is constructed. A few minutes later recess mercifully arrives, and you manage to sneak our as unobtrusively as possible. So much for the question and answer quiz and the promotion of learning.

A series of studies has shown, perhaps not as dramatically or as personally as the above incident, that the classroom trivia quiz does not promote learning unless we really think that the recitation of textbook facts is equivalent to learning. If we view the objectives of teaching and learning more broadly, then we can only conclude that a form of “Button, button who has the button?” or Hogan, Hogan, what’s a Hogan?” does not help students learn except in a negative way. You do learn to play the game after a while; that is, you learn to say the right thing and to act out of reflect. You do remember the acceptable phrases and terms, whether they concern the method of transportation used by the Phoenicians, the kind of a house a Navaho lived in, or the state of igneous fusion in the center of the earth. But is this the process of inquiry we consider desirable? Is this the goal of human thinking? Is this the excitement of seeing new relationships among ideas? Is this the process through which we learn about ourselves?

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Category: Psychology