B.Ed Notes

1. Flanders Interaction Analysis
M.Deivam
Assistant Professor in ICT in Education
Dept. of Education
The Gandhigram Rural Institute (Deemed to be University)
Dindigul district – 624 302
Email: deivammuniyandi@gmail.com

2. Introduction
• The term modification of teaching or teacher behaviour
stands for the attempts made or processes undergone
for bringing desirable improvement or modification in
the teaching or teaching behaviour.
• The modification of teaching or teaching behaviour is
possible:
• 1. Interaction analysis and transaction analysis
• 2. Action research
• 3. Micro teaching
• 4. Role playing (simulation) and gaming
• 5. Teacher Evaluation

3. Meaning
Interaction analysis refers to a technique consisting
of objective and systematic observation of the
classroom events for the study of the teacher’s
behaviour and the process of interaction going
inside the classroom. It helps a teacher bring
desirable modification in his behaviour and improve
his interaction with his pupils.

4. Definitions
• According to Dr. S.K. Thakur, classroom
interaction analysis may be defined as “an
instrument which is designed to record
categories of verbal interaction during, or
from, recorded teaching learning sessions. It is
a technique for capturing qualitative and
quantitative dimensions of teacher’s verbal
behavior in the classroom.”

5. Flander’s Interaction analysis categories
• It was developed by Ned.A.Flanders (1966) in the
year 1959, at the university of Minnesota, in the
form of a teachers training technique. It involves
categorization of all the sets of possible verbal
behaviours of a teacher in the classroom while
interacting with his students.
• In Flanders interaction analysis system, the entire
classroom interaction is put into three main
sections.
1.Teacher talk
2.Student talk
3.Silence or confusion

6. Categories of Flanders Interaction Analysis
System
A) Teacher Talk 1. Accepts feelings
Indirect Influence 2. Praises or encourages
3. Accepts or uses pupil ideas
4. Asks questions
Direct Influence 5. Lecturing
6. Giving directions
7. Criticising or justifying authority
B) Pupil Talk 8. Pupil talk response
9. Pupil talk initiation
C) Silence or Confusion10. Silence or confusion

7. 1.Accepts feeling
Accepts and clarifies an attitude or the feeling tone of a pupil in a
non-threatening manner. Feeling may be positive or negative.
Predicting and recalling feelings are included.
2.Praises or encourages
Praises or encourages pupil action or behavior. Jokes that release
tension, but not at the expense of another individual; nodding
head, or saying “Um hm?” or “go on” and included
3. Accepts or uses ideas of pupils:
Clarifying or building or developing ideas suggested by a pupil.
Teacher extensions of pupil ideas are included but as the
teacher brings more of his own ideas into play, shift to category
five.
4.Asking questions
Asking question about content to procedure, based on teacher
ideas, with the intent that a pupil will answer.
5.Lecturing
Giving facts or opinions about content or procedures; expressing
his own ideas, giving his own explanation, or citing an authority
other than a pupil.

8. 6.Giving directions
Directions, commands or orders to which a pupil is expected
to comply
7.Criticizing or Justifing Authority
Statements intended to change pupil behavior from non-
acceptable to acceptable pattern; bawling someone out;
stating why the teacher is doing what he is during; extreme
self-reliance.
8.Student talk responses
Talk by pupils in response to teacher. Teacher initiates the
contact or solicits pupil statement or structures the situation.
Freedom to express own ideas is limited.
9.student talk initiations
Talk by pupils, which they initiate. Expressing own ideas;
initiating a new topic; freedom to develop opinions and a line
of thought, kike asking thoughtful questions; going beyond
the existing structure.
10.silence or confusion
Pauses, short periods of confusion in which communication
cannot be understood by the observer.

9. Basic rules
• Observer should be free from personal biases
• If more than one categories occur during the three
seconds interval, all categories used in that interval
are recorded; therefore, record each change in
category. If no change occurs within three seconds,
repeat that category number
• For silence longer than three seconds, record 10 for
each three seconds.
• A teacher’s joke which is made at the expense of
children is recorded as 7.

10. Procedure of Flander’s Interaction
Analysis
• There are two process of interaction anaylsis.
• Encoding process
• Decoding process
• The encoding process is used for recording
classroom events and preparing observation matrix
by encoding the numbers of ten category system.
The decoding is process of interpreting observation
matrix.

11. ENCODING PROCESS
Encoding Process has three steps:
Memorize the code number:
The first step in the process of encoding is to memorize the code Numbers, in
relation to key phrase of words, which are indicated in capital in ten-category
system.
Place of sitting:
An observer sits on the last bench of the classroom and observes the teacher
when he is teaching.
Recording the category number:
At an interval of every three seconds he writes down that category number
which best represents or communication event just completed
for example
• when teacher is lecturing the observer puts 5.
• when he asks question he puts 4.
• when student replies he put 8.
• when teacher praises he puts 2.
The procedure of recording events goes on at the rate of 20 to 25 observations in
per minute

12. DECODING PROCESS
After encoding the classroom events into ten-
category system 10x10 matrix table is prepared for
decoding the classroom verbal behavior. The
generalized sequence of the pupil-teacher
interaction can be estimated in this matrix table. It
indicates, what form a pair of categories. The first
number in the pair indicates the row and the second
number shows the column for example (5-4) pair
would be shown by a tally in the cell formed by row 5
and column 4. For example the observer has written
down the code numbers beginning with 5 as follows:
5, 4, 3, 10, 6, 2, 6, 1, 8 and 2.
decoding:

13. Original Series Series for pairing Pairing
5 10 10-5
4 5 5-4
3 4 4-3
10 3 3-10
6 10 10-6
2 6 6-2
6 2 2-6
1 6 6-1
8 1 1-8
2 8 8-2
2 2-10
10

14. Category
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Total
1 / 1
2 / 2
3 / 1
4 / 1
5 / 1
6 / / 2
7 0
8 / 1
9 0
10 / / 2
Total 1 2 1 1 1 2 0 1 0 2 11

15. Interpreting the matrix:
• No classroom interaction can be ever recreated. It is
part of a moment in history. The purpose of interaction
analysis is to preserve selected aspects of interaction
through observation, encoding, tabulating and then
decoding.
• 1. The proportion of teacher talk, pupil talk, and
silence or confusion:
The proportion of tallies in columns 1,2,3,4,5,6and 7,
columns 8,9 and column 10 to the total tallies indicates
how much the teacher talks, the student talks and the
time spent in silence or confusion. After several years
of observing, we anticipate an average of 68 percent
teacher talk, 20 percent of pupil talk and 11 or 12
percent silence or confusion.

16. Contd.,
• 2. The ratio between indirect influence and direct influence:
The sum of column 1,2,3,4, divided by the sum of columns 5,
6, 7 gives this ratio. If the ratio is 1 or more than 1, the
teacher is said to be indirect in his behavior. This ratio,
therefore, shows whether a teacher is more direct or indirect
in his teaching.
• 3. The ratio between positive reinforcement and negative
reinforcement:
The sum of column 1, 2, 3 is to be divided by the sum of the
columns 6, 7. If the ratio is more than 1 then the teacher is
said to be good.
• 4. Student’s participation ratio:
The sum of columns 8 and 9 is to be divided by total sum. The
answer will reveal how much the students have participated
in the teaching-learning process.
etc.,

17. Advantages
• Helps to understand classroom interaction
• Observation after every three seconds ensured
observer records almost all the behaviour of
teacher and students
• Helps to determine the classroom climate
• It Can be used as a mechanism of feedback device
for the modification of teacher behaviour
• Used as an observation technique in pre service and
in service teacher education programmes
• system is employed as a researcher tool for
analysing and studying teacher’s behaviour.

18. Uses of Interaction Analysis to Teachers
• To improve classroom instructions
• To develop and control the teaching behaviour
• To investigate the classroom interactions

19. Limitations
• system cannot describe classroom activity in its
totality
• More emphasis is laid on teacher behaviour as
compared to student behaviour
• Major focus of the system is on verbal behaviour
• Tabulation of data pairs into 10×10 matrix is a time
consuming process
• system is content free ie; the technique provides no
information about the quality of the content.