children do not have much to aid their memory which, as was discussed earlier,
would appear to be much less effective in younger children.
It is also possible that some children did not remember much because they
never really understood in the first place but simply copied and imitated their
peers. This is likely to have been the case with some; on occasions when only
few children volunteered an appropriate response to a question the number of
correct responses increased as the same question was repeated again and
again. Nevertheless, the very same children who produced correct answers
after several repetitions were the same children who kept asking the observer
how to formulate precisely the same questions or answers in later lessons.
This suggests that these children might have been interacting 'socially' rather
than 'cognitively'. Alternatively, it is possible that some children do not expect a
question to change and simply do not listen carefully enough. Listening skills
seemed much more problematic in School Two where many children found it
hard to concentrate and pay attention to what was going on. Quinn (1997: 68)
suggests that in primary schools there is great underachievement in listening
skills usually by children who display either 'low self-esteem, limited skills of
social interaction or an inability to transfer skills across subjects'. Observations
in School Two indicated that all three might have been the case.
Holmes (1978) suggests a number of possible explanations forthose instances
in the primary school classroom where no response s forthcoming from the
learner:' the child does not know the answer1, 'the ch id is uncooperative',
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