teacher; end of session/day comments and judgements by field workers; summative
judgements by field workers, all organised in terms of the main headings. This
component made use of experienced teachers as field workers. Quite deliberately, the
aim was to marry aspects of systematic observation (which emphasises the objectivity
of data), with professional and interpretative judgements by experienced teachers. For
further details see Blatchford, Moriarty, Edmonds and Martin (2002).
Pupil Behaviour Ratings (PBR)
The PBR was developed at the Institute of Education and was based on other behaviour
rating scales (particularly Ladd and Profilet's (1996) Child Behaviour Scale). Teachers
completed a PBR for every child in the study. The PBR comprised over 50 items rated
on a three-point scale ('certainly applies to this child', 'applies sometimes to this child',
'does not apply to this child'). Scores on conceptually and empirically linked items
that made up a set of factors were added. The factors measured were
hyperactive/distractible, aggressive, anxious/fearful, pro-social, asocial, and excluded.
(See Blatchford, Edmonds and Martin, in press, for full details).
Results
Classroom processes connected to class size differences
We summarise the main results under three main headings.
1. Within class groups
For much of their time in UK primary schools children are seated and work in groups.
The class and the group can be thought of as different environmental contexts, with
the group level nested within the level of the whole class. Logically the two levels,
that is class size and within class groups, have to be connected. If a teacher had 20
children in the class she could organise them into say four groups each with five
children. Faced with a class of 32 she could divide her class into four groupings of
eight pupils, but the size of group then becomes large. She could form eight groupings
of four pupils but then the number of groups might be unwieldy. She might choose to
teach the class as a whole but this might be of limited use, especially with very young
children. In each case, as class size increases the number of groups or the size of
groups must increase. But the conceptual, and educationally important, question
concerns how, in practice, class size and within class groupings are connected. To our
knowledge the connection between size of class and within class grouping practices
has not been looked at systematically before.
Results are described in detail in Blatchford, Baines, Kutnick and Martin (2001). The
predominant group size is 4-6 children, which indicates the ubiquity in these English
primary schools of classroom organisation in terms of small groups. These were
followed in frequency by larger groups of 7-10 and 11+ (which were mainly whole
classes). The results showed that size of class and the number and size of groups were
connected. Larger classes led to more and bigger groups in the class. In class sizes
over 25 there is more likelihood of a pupil being in a large group of 7-10. The
qualitative analyses indicated that larger groups were a less effective educational
environment. Teachers’ everyday experience was that with a large class there is often a
difficult choice between larger or more numerous groups, and that larger groups, at least