The performance of children (56 boys and 36 girls) with different motivational and cognitive characteristics in three "open" and three "traditional" fourthgrade classrooms was assessed. Cluster analysis of factor scores representing child orientations, motives, and prior achievement produced six "types." Three-way analyses of variance investigated the effects of child type, classroom type (open vs. traditional), and sex of child (and various interactions) on several outcome measures, including academic achievement, creativity, inquiry skill, social-educational attitudes, and teacher ratings of children's classroom behavior. Main effects appeared for each of the three independent variables, along with several Child-type x Class-type interactions. An approach using child types or clusters rather than abstracted dimensions may facilitate future Attribute x Treatment interaction research and applications.
Although a great deal has been writtenabout "open education" in the past several years (e.g., Blackie, 1971;Featherstone, 1971;Kohl, 1969;Silberman, 1970), little evaluational research has been reported until quite recently. The most relevant research which has been done to date (e.g.,
Teachers described the classroom behavior of 205 3rd-and 4th-grade children with a 30-item rating scale. Factor analysis of the scale produced four factors, which were called: democratic, cooperative behavior; autonomous intellectual orientation; responsible perseverant striving behavior; and involvement in class activities. Correlations of factor scores with measures of achievement test performance, creativity, inquiry skill, and various orientations, motives, attitudes and values were investigated. Patterns of correlations with the two achievement-related factors suggested that teachers can validly discriminate between "perseverant'* and "autonomous, intellectual" approaches to achievement.
Compared teachers' disciplinary activities in traditional and open classrooms. Measures of teachers' discipline and criticism and children's misbehavior were derived from observations of 3 traditional and 3 open elementary school classrooms. The teachers' discipline and criticism scores were significantly higher (p < .05) in traditional classrooms, while the child misbehavior category did not show a significant difference between class types. It is suggested that the 2 settings may create different norms and standards which cause teachers to perceive and react differently to objectively similar child behaviors.
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