Patterns of classrom participation as teaching styles. a comparison of six natural sciences classes

Abstract

The article proposes a classification of teaching styles on the basis of the description, analysis, and comparison of the patterns of participation of six Natural Sciences school teachers in their classrooms. The classes were recorded on audio and video, and later transcribed and divided into statements. The participation patterns of the six classes were compared with respect to three parameters: distribution of the use of speech, average length of statements made by the professors and discursive density in the class. Results showed a polarity between lecturer and conversationalist teaching styles, which are then discussed in relation to similar categories proposed in the literature on the subject.