LESSON STRUCTURE IN DIFFERENT SCHOOL SUBJECTS IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC

The paper presents the results of an analysis that was carried out within the CPV Video Study research project. It aimed to investigate di erences in lesson structure in the every-day teaching of di erent school subjects in Czech lower-secondary schools. Video recordings of 249 lessons of physics, geography, English and physical education were analysed with respect to two dimensions: the organisation of classroom activities and the nature of the content. The  ndings show that there are manifest di erences in teaching in the school subjects analysed. In classroom organisation, teachercenteredness was found to be signi cantly greater in English than in geography and physical education. Concerning the purpose of lesson segments, the focus lay on developing new content in geography but on practicing the content in English and on applying the content in new situations in physics. Due to methodological limits inherent in the approach used, these  ndings must be interpreted with caution.


Introduction
Formal education in di erent academic disciplines has been shown to produce di erent e ects on everyday reasoning.Lehman, Lempert and Nisbett (1988) investigated the e ects on reasoning of graduate training in di erent disciplines.They found that training in psychology and medicine (representing probabilistic sciences) had a positive e ect on statistical, methodological and conditional reasoning about problems of everyday life, while training in chemistry (representing deterministic sciences) did not seem to a ect any of these kinds of reasoning.
If academic disciplines indeed require and therefore enhance di erent ways of reasoning then it is only reasonable to expect these di erent ways of reasoning to be re ected in the school subjects that represent these disciplines in schools.Stodolsky (1988) noted that "it is likely that certain types of knowledge and goals are associated (or even require) particular instructional approaches" (p.4).She claims that school subjects di er from each other in perceived or inherent sequentiality, in their scope and coherence, and in their status within the school and larger community.Mathematics, for example, being a structured and sequential discipline, is also -unlike many others -a highly structured and sequential school subject.She found evidence that how teachers taught depended on what they were teaching.
This paper presents the results of a video-based analysis of how teaching di ers in di erent school subjects in Czech lower-secondary schools.

Theoretical background -Lesson structure
We see school subjects as complex phenomena the natures of which re ect the natures of their parent academic disciplines.We claim that di erences between academic disciplines in uence not only what is taught within the respective school subjects but in particular how teaching is organised.We seek to understand the aspects of teaching that are common to the whole range of subjects in the curriculum (domain-general aspects) as well as those that are speci c to each school subject (domain-speci c aspects).
Towards the end of the 20 th century, many researchers began to abandon the strictly behaviourist perspective of concentrating on the form of instruction.Rather, they sought a balance between the form and the content of what happens in the classroom, investigating both of these dimensions (e.g.Kuusinen, 1991); the resulting analyses built on the concepts of teaching patterns, teaching scripts, lesson patterns or lesson structure.What is implicitly inherent in di erent approaches summarised below is that it is by analysing the structures of lessons that we come to understand the patterns of teaching.
Recent attempts to capture the complexity of classroom processes tend to focus among others on two distinct observable dimensions: 1) the way teaching is organised and 2) the nature of content being processed.Pointing out the complex nature of classroom processes, Průcha (1989) investigated 82 lessons taught in Czech lower-secondary schools with respect to a number of aspects of teaching.He measured the time pupils spent working individually to nd great variability among the classes investigated (41% -73%).To illustrate the ndings concerning various temporal aspects of lessons, Průcha introduced the so-called lesson pro le to summarise individual lessons.He also focused on the kinds of content processed, distinguishing old content (i.e.content introduced in previous lessons) and new content (i.e.content introduced in the particular lesson).He found that in regular basic schools 42% -45% of lesson time was dedicated to old content while 21% -28% of lesson time was spent on new content.
Hiebert, Stigler and their colleagues advocated a range of concepts at the turn of the century, from lesson scripts via lesson patterns to lesson signatures (Clarke et al., 2006c).The TIMSS 1999 Video Study, within which an international comparison of teaching was carried out, considered structure of the lesson as concept that comprised the coincidences of lesson length, time spent studying mathematics/ science, role of mathematical/science problems and two important dimensions: grouping (whole-class, independent activities) and instructional purpose of lesson segments (reviewing old material, introducing new material, practising new material) (Roth et al., 2006;Hiebert et al., 2003).The authors claimed that they identi ed signi cant culture-based di erences in the structure of lessons between American, German and Japanese teaching scripts.In later work members of the team sought ways of quantifying these di erences (Givvin, Hiebert, Jacobs, Hollingsworth, & Gallimore, 2005).
"We focus on the purpose, classroom interaction, and content activity of lessons.Lessons were coded with respect to each of these three dimensions, and shifts were noted during the lesson sequence.This methodology allows us to examine the points in a given lesson when a particular feature had occurred and how many lessons exhibited this same pattern.We de ne the resulting 'pattern of teaching' as the duration and sequence of particular kinds of activities and events during daily classroom lessons" (Givvin et al., 2005, p. 316).
Some researchers however thought that this approach to international comparison was awed in some respects.Clarke et al. (2006c) rejected the identi cation of nationality with culture and argued that variations within the teaching of individual teachers and within individual lessons make it very di cult for general patterns of teaching to emerge unless further aspects are addressed, such as the location of the lesson within the instructional sequence of topics, the independence of the dimensions of lesson structure and greater sensitivity in de ning analytical categories.Moreover, the purpose of the comparison ought to be inspiration rather than evaluation.
Other researchers build on the approaches inherent in TIMSS Video Studies, often carrying out other large-scale video-based surveys of classroom practices.Within the IPN Video Study, for example, the stability of teaching patterns in teaching physics was investigated (Seidel & Prenzel, 2006).The authors considered three dimensions within a teaching pattern: 1) organisation of classroom activities (as an example of sight structures), 2) quality of teacher-student interaction, and 3) the students' perception of supportive learning conditions.
Building on these approaches, attempts have been made to justify the concept of teaching patterns by analysing the e ects of particular teaching patterns on student achievement.Hugener et al. (2009) pose a question as to whether teaching patterns follow geographical boundaries or whether they are part of what they refer to as pedagogical cultures of teaching, which are independent of country boundaries.
However, analysis of teaching patterns -especially those based on video studies -have been so far carried out almost exclusively in mathematics and natural sciences (physics) classrooms.We feel that in order to develop the concept of teaching patterns, a wider perspective should be introduced.This paper draws on those analyses carried out within the CPV Video Study project that were aimed on the similarities and di erences in lesson structure (in the sight structures) in di erent school subjects (physics, geography, English as a second language and physical education).In these analyses, lesson structure was considered as comprising two main dimensions: 1) organisation of classroom activities and 2) the purpose of lesson segments with respect to the content.

Research aims, design and methods
The aim of the study presented here is to identify similarities and di erences in lesson structure across the four school subjects analysed.The data presented here was gathered within the CPV Video Study project, which aimed primarily to document and describe the teaching of four school subjects -physics, geography, English as a second language and physical education -as taught in Czech lowersecondary classrooms.It also aimed to develop our understanding of the nature of similarities and di erences in the teaching of di erent school subjects.Between   , 2001;Najvar et al., 2009).The large-scale video study approach was introduced to a wider audience in the TIMSS 1995 and 1999 video studies (Stigler et al., 1999;Hiebert et al., 2003;Roth et al., 2006), which sought to analyse teaching practices in mathematics and science in di erent countries.A number of further research projects based on video studies followednotably in the eld of mathematics and science education (Seidel & Prenzel, 2006;Clarke, 2006ab;Klette, 2007;Labudde et al., 2007; for a review see Janík, Seidel, & Najvar, 2009).
To carry out analyses of such complex phenomena as classroom processes, the video study approach seems suitable and appropriate.Jacobs et al. (1999) show the advantages of using video data as opposed to direct observation techniques, especially when combining qualitative and quantitative approaches.The main advantage of video data over other types of data lies in the cyclic nature of analysis.While the conventional research is linear in nature, video data allow for cyclic reanalyses, the reformulating of objectives and the applying of new codes which build on previous analyses (cf.Najvar et al., 2009).
In order to compare selected aspects of teaching in four di erent school subjects (physics, geography, English and physical education), an expert group was established, with one expert representing each school subject under analysis.Negotiations within the expert group were based on the observing of lessons in the four subjects and led to the establishing of a shared language to describe the phenomena observed.Only after a consensus on a particular aspect of teaching was reached could comparative analyses be carried out.The key principle that guided the work of the expert group was the combining of the comparative and the multi-perspective approaches (Najvar et al., 2009).The purpose of the negotiations was to describe, explain and justify inter-subject similarities and di erences that occurred as results of the analyses (Figure 2).Employing experience obtained from the TIMSS and IPN video studies (Jacobs et al., 2003;Seidel et al., 2005), the lessons were taped using the standardized twocamera procedure.One camera (trained on the pupils) was placed on a tripod next to the board, so as to record what was happening in the classroom as a whole.The other camera (trained on the teacher) was operated by a trained cameraman, and it recorded the teacher and the zone of his/her close interaction with the pupils.
In the next step, video recordings were transcribed using Videograph software (Rimmele, 2002) according to standardized procedures (Seidel, Prenzel, & Kobarg, 2005).Various coding procedures developed in the Leibniz Institute for Science Education (IPN) at the University of Kiel in Germany (Seidel et al., 2005) were adopted and used to analyse the video recordings (Janík & Miková, 2006).The observation schemes relevant for the present analysis covered two areas: a) modes of classroom organisation; b) purpose of lesson segments.Video coding was carried out by trained coders on the basis of time sampling (analysis unit = 10 sec).Inter-coder reliability (Cohen's Kappa: Min = 0,6; Max = 1,00; percent direct observer consistency: Min = 71%; Max = 100%) met international standards.

System of categories -organization of classroom activities
Modes of classroom organisation are an important element in the organisational structure of the lesson.They represent an organisational framework within which the activities of the teacher and pupils take place with regard to the teaching goals.The responsibility for some organisational aspects of dealing with the content (such as pacing) may rest with the teacher or may be distributed di erently.Wragg (1995) notes that "if the class is being taught as a whole, then the teacher can take direct control over the speed at which material is covered; ... when individuals and groups are working separately, the determination of pace is to some extent in the hands of the children themselves, and the teacher's role changes" (Wragg, 1995, p. 209).Di erent classroom settings therefore provide di erent learning opportunities for students.
For the coding of organisation of classroom activities, a coding system introduced by Seidel, Prenzel, and Kobarg (2005) was adopted (Janík & Miková, 2006).For the purposes of the present analysis, four modes of classroom organisation were considered 19 (see Table 1).
19 Other modes were coded (such as more modes at the same time, transition, other) but they were infrequent.For the purposes of further analyses, lesson segments coded in the lecturing by the teacher and teacher-class discussion categories were sometimes referred to as teacher-centred lesson segments; segments coded in the individual work and group work were sometimes referred to as pupil-centred segments.This distinction re ects the distribution of responsibility for the speed at which material is covered.

System of categories -purpose of lesson segments
Di erent lesson segments are used by the teacher for di erent purposes (Hiebert et al., 2003, p. 49).In the TIMSS 1999 Video Study, three such purposes were distinguished: reviewing, introducing new content and practising new content.We think that such a set of distinctions fails to include one important purpose which teachers may have in mind and which aims to support pupils' learning in the cognitive as well as metacognitive dimensions.For the purposes of the present analysis, we therefore considered four categories of lesson segment purpose (see Table 2).
Table 2: Categories of lesson segment purpose reviewing included lesson segments in which content was reviewed which had been introduced in previous lessons; the aim was very often for the pupils to recall factual information developing new content comprised lesson segments in which new content was introduced, developed as well as motivational lesson segments summarising comprised lesson segment in which new content was summarised in an organised manner, often using summarising dictation or visual aids (e.g. the over-head projector) practising comprised lesson segments in which content was practiced, strengthened, intensi ed or applied to new contexts, and lesson segments devoted to testing The original coding system that had nine categories and was based on a system for coding lesson phases introduced by Seidel et al. (2005) was later adopted by Janík and Miková (2006) for the purposes of the CPV Video Study.It distinguished for example two types of summarising: that of content, and that of the learning process.For the present analysis, these data were aggregated.

Findings
Below, the average percentages of 1) organisation of classroom activities and 2) purpose of lesson segments are given in overview.Lesson signatures are then composed for each of the school subjects under analysis.

Organization of classroom activities
For the purpose of presenting the results, the average percentages of the categories were calculated 20 for each subject and juxtaposed in stacked column graphs (Figure 3).Comparisons such as the one presented here help reveal similarities and di erences in everyday teaching practices in di erent subjects.The analysis of organisation of classroom activities presented produced some expected ndings, such as that which indicates that teacher-pupil discussion is rare in physical education while it is an important component of the teaching of English as a second language.Nevertheless other ndings suggest more subtle di erences, such as that which indicates that in geography, emphasis is laid on individual work -with maps and atlases, as other analyses show -whereas in the other school subjects, a group work setting is regularly introduced.There is the suggestion that physical education is exceptional in the sense that it provides pupils with signi cantly more time to work independently of the teacher than the other school subjects.The degree of teacher-centeredness found in English lessons was signi cantly higher than in physical education and also in geography lessons.

The purpose of lesson segments
For the purpose of visualising the ndings, the average percentages of the categories presented above were calculated 21 for each subject and juxtaposed in stacked column graphs (Figure 4).The results show (Figure 4) that di erent purposes are given di erent emphases in the school subjects under analysis.In geography and also in physics, a greater emphasis is laid on introducing and developing new content than is the case in English or physical education, whereas practising is the dominant purpose in English lessons.
Lesson signature: a complex view on the lesson structure In an e ort to illuminate the lesson structure typical of each of the school subjects under analysis, coincidences of the two dimensions of lesson structure were examined.Studying the coincidences of modes of classroom organisation and the purposes of lesson segments makes it possible to identify similarities and di erences between the structures of lessons as they appear in every-day teaching across di erent school subjects.Overlaying the analysed lesson features of all the lessons of the school subjects on a timeline, lesson signatures (cf.Dalehefte et al., 2009;Hiebert et al., 2003) were acquired for the individual school subjects (Figures 5 to 8    Discussion and perspectives for the future Using the concept of lesson structure, the practice of teaching physics, geography, English and physical education at lower-secondary schools in the Czech Republic was analysed within the CPV Video Study research project.The results indicate that teaching at lower-secondary schools in the lessons under examination is to a large extent teacher-oriented.This is in accordance with other analyses carried out on this sample which show that teachers speak on average four to six times more than all the pupils in the class put together.Due to methodological limits inherent in the approach used and the nature of the sample, however, these ndings must be interpreted with caution. Nevertheless, the results of the CPV Video Study are in conformity with the ndings of other research projects (e.g.Roth et al., 2006), which point out the dominating role of lesson phases focused on work with subject matter already taught (practising, application) in lessons taught by Czech teachers.In contrast to this, German teachers of physics have been shown to spend most of their teaching time on work with new subject matter (M = 31.5;SD = 7.7), dedicating much less time to revision, practice and applications (Seidel & Prenzel, 2004).The comparison shows quite a number of similarities and di erences.One of the similarities is the relatively strict control of the lesson exercised by the teacher both in Germany and in the Czech Republic.
Methodological discussions concerning the concept of lesson structure point to several issues that need to be resolved before any decisive arguments are accepted.Clarke et al. (2006c) argue for the interpreting of lesson structure in three senses: at the level of whole lesson, at the level of topic and at the level of constituent lesson events.They also call for an appreciation of the variation within the lesson of an individual teacher in order to understand variability in general teaching patterns.
It remains to be solved whether and how patterns of teaching translate from one school subject to another.It may be that there are general didactic aspects of teaching that take di erent forms in di erent pedagogical cultures of teaching (see Pauli & Reusser, 2003) and that are manifested across the boarders that separate school subjects in the curriculum.If content indeed serves as context of teaching (see Grossman & Stodolsky, 1995) then addressing these issues remains an important challenge for future research.
2004 and 2009, the Educational Research Centre (Centrum pedagogického výzkumu -hence CPV) at the Faculty of Education, Masaryk University carried out the CPV Video Study of Physics, CPV Video Study of Geography, CPV Video Study of English and CPV Video Study of Physical Education (Figure 1).

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: the CPV Video Study time line CPV Video Study projects employ the video study approach to capture the complexity of teaching and learning processes in a classroom context.With recent advances in technology that have brought new ways of collecting, storing, managing and analysing data, video has become a powerful tool in large-scale classroom research (Ulewicz& Beatty, 2001;Najvar et al., 2009).The large-scale video study approach was introduced to a wider audience in the TIMSS 1995 and 1999 video studies(Stigler et al., 1999;Hiebert et al., 2003;Roth et al., 2006), which sought to analyse teaching practices in mathematics and science in di erent countries.A number of further research projects based on video studies followednotably in the eld of mathematics and science education(Seidel & Prenzel, 2006;  Clarke, 2006ab;Klette, 2007;Labudde et al., 2007;  for a review seeJaník, Seidel, & Najvar, 2009).To carry out analyses of such complex phenomena as classroom processes, the video study approach seems suitable and appropriate.Jacobs et al. (1999)  show the advantages of using video data as opposed to direct observation techniques, especially when combining qualitative and quantitative approaches.The main advantage of video data over other types of data lies in the cyclic nature of analysis.While the conventional research is linear in nature, video data allow for cyclic

Figure 2 :
Figure 2: CPV Video Study Expert Group

Figure 3 :
Figure 3: Organisation of classroom activities in the CPV Video Study

Figure 4 :
Figure 4: The purpose of lesson segments in the four school subjects ).

Figure 5 :
Figure 5: Lesson signature for physics teaching

Figure 7 :
Figure 7: Lesson signature for physical education teaching

Figure 8 :
Figure 8: Lesson signature for English teaching