"I seek to understand what students do in a fourth-grade math classroom, and in particular, their academic work, to conceptualize the tasks involved in that academic work and its relationship to achievement differentiation. The first goal of the study is to develop an analytical framework capable of identifying what is happening in a fourth-grade math classroom as it might bear on academic achievement. My second goal is to use the framework I develop in order to explore the mechanisms by which achievement differences are produced in one classroom. Drawing on Walter Doyle's (1981) conceptions of task structure and ""academic work"" and Paul Gump's (1967) ecological perspective, and applying these conceptions to a fourth-grade classroom, I am hopeful that this research will lead to ways of thinking that can improve teachers' understanding of, and practice of, their school work."
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign