The study examined teacher directive use in four secondary classrooms with different activities: group work, traditional lecture, and lecture with inquiry strategies. It found that group work resulted in the most redirection directives from teachers, while lectures using inquiry elicited the most questions for student response. Redirection was most common during transitions between activities and at the beginning of class for all teachers. Seating arrangements also impacted redirection, with grouped seating associated with more redirection during transitions than rows. The study concluded that inquiry-based lectures and reviews required the least redirection and produced the most student compliance and time on task.

1. Understanding Directive Use in Secondary Classroom Activities
Brandie L. Bohney, Department of English, IU School of Liberal Arts, IUPUI
Use of group work resulted in an increased use of directives functioning for
redirection. Traditional lecture produced slightly less redirection than group
work, but both review and lecture with a focus on engagement through use
of inquiry resulted in teachers using far fewer directives for redirection.
Teachers using reviews and lectures that engage learners through inquiry
strategies use question directives intended for response more than three
times more often than the teacher using a group activity and four to five
times more often than the teacher employing a traditional lecture lesson.
Transition periods between activities or topics in class are the hotbed of
redirection directives, with the settling-in period at the beginning of class
also being a significant time for redirection. The redirections that make up
the group work come from just one teacher; those comprising the lecture
total are from the other three teachers.
Because the settling-in period and transitions are common to all four
classrooms, it is worthwhile to compare them. Of particular note in this data
is that the two classrooms that had arranged students in groupings of four or
five rather than in traditional rows (Group Work, Q&A Review) reflected the
highest percentages of redirection during transitions.
What
Is Redirection?
Redirection is a
directive with the
purpose of
replacing an
unwanted student
behavior with a
more desirable
behavior or action.
What Are Questions
for Response?
Questions for
response are those
used for the
purpose of eliciting
responses from the
students for a
variety of reasons.
Focus on Redirection, Transitions, and Seating
Redirection is part of every teacher’s directive use. In this study, all four teachers used redirection, and its
use was most common during transitions between activities or topics and in the settling-in period at the
very beginning of class. This was true for all four instructors, regardless of the learning activity.
The settling-in period resulted in a high percentage of redirection directives among all four teachers, but
there was greater variance in the percentage of redirection during transitions among the four teachers.
Seating arrangements may be of interest in this data in addition to class activities. The two classes with
the highest percentage of transitional redirection were those wherein the students were arranged in
groups rather than rows, indicating that seating arrangement likely affects the necessity of redirection.
Further, the class with the highest percentage of transitional redirection was the one engaged in group
work, indicating that transitions during group work prove particularly challenging in the lower-level
classroom.
Therefore, teachers of struggling students should consider group seating arrangements carefully and try to
limit transitions with such seating. In addition, collaborative work in a lower-level classroom should not
only include as few transitions as possible, but also provide verbal direction prior to assembling groups,
directions in writing once the group work begins, and perhaps other scaffolds such as group role
assignments to avoid time-consuming redirection during group transitions.
Central Question
Do classroom activities affect teacher directive use?
Correlative Question
Are certain directive forms or functions more effective in the classroom than
others?
Methodology
The data used were collected using direct observation of two pairs of cooperating teachers of low-
achieving ninth-grade English and Geography students. The first thirty minutes of each teacher’s
class was recorded, and all teacher directives were transcribed with note of successful and
unsuccessful outcomes of the directives. All four observed classes meet at the end of the school
day, which eliminates variables such as time of day, proximity to a meal, and variances in daily
routines such as announcements over the public address system.
Findings
Group-work activities in the classroom resulted in an increased use of redirection directives.
Conversely, inquiry-heavy review and lecture activities resulted in an increased use of for-response
question directives, and students were more compliant to the questions for response (69 percent
compliance) than to those intended for redirection (54 percent compliance).
Conclusions
Although traditional lecture produces slightly fewer behavioral distractions than collaborative
student work, an interactive instructional setup such as the question-and-answer review or lecture
produces the least need for redirection, the most compliance, and the greatest time on task.
Redirection in group work settings is not only relatively ineffective, but it may also contribute to
disruption and non-compliance. Teachers using group activities with lower-level students should
consider adjustments to directive use paired with additional scaffolding for more success in
collaborative settings. Scaffolding strategies might include having group instructions in written
form in addition to verbal instructions, using a quiet writing task as an introduction to the group
activity, or use of questions for response in the explanation process.
For Future Consideration
It is possible that because the two classes with the greatest percentage of redirection directives
were the same group of students, some of the increased redirection in those classes may be
because of the group of students rather than inherent in the activities. Additional research
comparing group work, lecture, and Q&A within each of the four classes could eliminate or verify
that possibility. Another interesting route for research beyond this study would be to compare the
use of redirection and questions for response in the upper-level English and World History classes
offered to freshmen at the same school to compare responses and reactions to those here.
Directive
ExamplesDirectives for Redirection
“Tyler! Do not throw things in class.”
“I want to see your beautiful faces shifted this way.”
“We got a lot to go over to be ready for this.”
“Why are you not in your seat?”
Questions for Response
“Do you have any of it done? This?”
“What can we say about perspective in the poem?”
“If you ask, what am I going to tell you today?”
“Who ends up winning this war?”
54%
Compliance
69%
Compliance