story by Claire Miller
Studies on classroom interactions between K-12 teachers and their students often focus on the teaching methods and the language they use at different times during the lesson.
But some researchers are developing a new method for classroom research called interaction geography, which not only maps how teachers and students interact over time, but also how they physically move around the classroom.
In a paper published in Educational Researcher, Assistant Professor Ben Shapiro, CEHD doctoral student Sierra Gilliam and colleagues from Vanderbilt University and the University of Denver propose interaction geography to map and study classroom participation over space and time.
“The physical design of classroom spaces and the way teachers and students move within them plays a crucial role in teaching and learning. Yet, researchers and practitioners don’t have good methods to study and reflect on how physical space and movement shape teacher sensemaking,” Shapiro explained. “Interaction geography offers one such method, integrating work in learning sciences, information visualization and computer science.”
Shapiro, Gilliam and their colleagues used videos from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) – where researchers recorded eighth grade mathematics and science classes across seven countries – for their paper. They selected six classroom videos of mathematics and science lessons from the U.S., Japan, Czech Republic, and New Zealand, and used qualitative research software they developed called Mondrian Transcription to transcribe teachers’ movements on a floor plan of their classrooms.
Then, they used a visualization tool called the Interaction Geography Slicer (IGS) to create 2D and 3D representations of teacher/student interactions, based on physical movements and recorded transcripts from the TIMSS videos.
These tools allowed Shapiro, Gilliam and their colleagues to identify and define four categories of movement in a classroom: Trails, or the pathways that teachers take during a lesson; landmarks, or the places in a classroom where teachers frequently stop or spend a lot of time; material routines, or how teachers repeatedly use and interact with desks, whiteboards or digital tools to focus students' attention and support classroom discussion; and circulation patterns, which occur as teachers move around to observe, engage with, and support students’ work.
The research team also noted specific movement examples in each category. For example, a highway trail is a route the teacher frequently travels during a lesson, while a detour trail indicates a time when a teacher makes a noticeable change to their classroom movement that might indicate a temporary shift in the lesson.
Establishing these four categories and explaining specific examples gives researchers a shared language for studying classroom interaction geographies.
From here, Shapiro, Gilliam and others can consider how educators’ physical movements encourage or hinder meaningful interactions with students, and how teachers can design their lessons with this in mind. Which tables of students receive more (or less) attention? How does the physical layout of a classroom encourage or discourage teachers from interacting with students? Where do teachers typically stand to address the whole class?
“Educators can use this method to dynamically visualize and experience how teachers, students and even materials move and interact with one another in classrooms,” Shapiro said. “In doing so, we hope teachers can consider new ways to design their classrooms and teaching practices to support activities like groupwork, which rely on how they move about their classrooms.”
To see a video of the 2D and 3D models Shapiro, Gilliam and colleagues created for this study, click here.