A structural analysis of elementary school teachers' and children's utterances in Japanese classes

The goal of the present study was to clarify the characteristics of teachers' utterances in actual classroom situations. A category analysis was done of teachers' and children's utterances in 54 elementary school Japanese classes (first to sixth grades). Correlational analysis of the teachers' utterances in the same class by school day showed very high correlations in all classes. Within-class correlations were not significant, using an equivalence test. These results suggest that the individual teachers' class stability and teaching strategy did not change. Moreover, cluster analysis showed that the teachers' utterances depended on their individual styles, rather than on the grade level that they were teaching. Finally, cluster analysis based on categories of the children's utterances suggested that the children's utterances could be classified in terms of their grade level.