A group of practitioners, an outside researcher, or another colleague may be included in the process, and they will work together to create an instrument to solve a specific pedagogical issue.

Scaffolding: strategies for shaping learner talk to elicit fuller, more accurate or more appropriate responses.

1. Reformulation (Rephrasing a learner's contribution)
2. Extension (Extending a learner's contribution)
3. Modelling (Providing an example for learner(s))

Provide the creation of a more adaptable instrument, which might be focused on a specific classroom issue or area of interest.

1. Participants will have more ownership in the research design process and will have a better understanding of the issues being investigated.

2. Focusing on the detail of the interaction allows practitioners gain access and understanding of complex phenomena which take years of class experience to accumulate.

3. Allows attention to be dedicated to the microcosms of interactions which may so easily be missed by the ‘broad brush’ descriptions provided by systems- based approaches.

Advantages of "Ad Hoc" Approaches

1.Permit a finer grained understanding of a selected feature of the discourse.
2. Teacher's involvement is to sensitize the user of the instrument to the various sorts of scaffolding which may be employed.

Accepts and clarifies an attitude or feeling tone of a pupil in a non-threatening manner.

Praises or encourages action or behavior in a positive way. Jokes that release tension, but not at the expense of another individual; nodding head saying um, hmm or go on are included.

Clarifying, building or developing ideas suggested by a pupil. Teachers’ extensions of pupil ideas are included but as teacher brings more of his own ideas into play, shift to category five.

Asking a question about content or procedures; based on teacher ideas, with the intent that the pupil will answer.

Making assertions regarding content or methods; expressing personal viewpoints; or citing sources other than pupils.

Directions, commands or orders to which a student is expected to comply.

comments meant to shift a pupil's behaviour from an unacceptable to an acceptable pattern; crying out someone; justifying the teacher's actions; self-references at their most extreme.

Flanders' interaction analysis system is an observational tool for classifying teachers' and students' verbal interactions in the classroom. Flanders' instrument is meant to observe only verbal communication in the classroom and ignores non-verbal gestures.

Pupils speak in response to the teacher. The teacher starts contact, gathers pupil statements, and frames the situation. The freedom to express one's own thoughts is restricted.

Pupils begin conversation. Self-expression; establishing a new topic; freedom to develop opinions and a stream of thinking, such as through asking insightful questions; transcending the established structure.

Pauses, brief intervals of quiet, and periods of confusion during which the observer cannot understand the communication.

Flanders interaction limitation

1. Not useful for non-verbal behavior
2. Narrow structure of teaching behaviour
3. No balance in categories
4. No information about content
5. No place for pupil-pupil interaction
6. No place for recording reactions
7. No value judgement
8. No classification of certain behaviour
9. Not economical
10. Non-availability of trained observers

Aimed to capture differences in the communicative orientation of classroom instruction and to examine their effects on learning outcomes.

considering such things as evidence of an information gap

the quality of display versus referential questions

Limitations:

1. Any patterns of interaction that occur have to be matched to the categories provided
2. No allowance is made for overlap

3. Inaccuracies and reductions will ensue and the complexities of classroom inter-

   
   

   action will be lost forever.

   
   

4. Observers may fail to agree on how to record what they see.

Enable the observer to make a connection between
teaching methodology and language use

The instrument is directly linked to communicative methodology and considers how instructional differences impact on learning outcomes

Bellack and colleagues developed one of the first system-based, structured observation instruments in 1966.

Foreign Language INTeraction (FLINT) is a form of extension from Flanders FIAC system based approach back in 1971 as a modification and an enhancement towards a system.

Moskowitz unveiled 22 category instrument specifically targeting towards foreign language classrooms.

The system took account of behaviorism learning theory as methodological considerations with the use of choral drills and tape recorders which encourages teachers to learn in a form of repetition.

FLINT is a much more complex system based approach than Flanders as it is a reform of modification and enhancement, Moskowitz advised learners to master Flanders system before approaching her 22-category instrument.

Three- part exchange:
solicit, respond, react – or as it is now more
commonly described: initiation, response, feedback (IR(F))

it represents a significant contribution to our understanding of the processes of
classroom interaction