Decision making in the Maltese primary classrooms

Abstract

Whilst organizing instruction, managing the class and dealing with the many and varied demands encountered during the course of the school day, teachers engage in varied thinking and decision-making. Hence, the study on decision-making sees the teacher at the centre of the decision-making process. The teacher continuously takes decisions about the choice of topic, method of presentation and use of resources, methods of motivating students and other management issues in the classroom. This study explored the classroom decision-making of Primary School teachers both in the pre-active and interactive phases of teaching. Data consisted of both videotaping and audio cassette recording of three lessons delivered by three novice and three experienced teachers in Year 2 and Year 3 in two State Primary Schools. Each teacher was interviewed after the lesson. From the observations and interviews it was found that novice and experienced teachers differ in their decision-making process both in the pre-active and interactive phases of teaching, but this is not the case for all the situations. These differences arise due to the fact that experienced teachers have come to structure their knowledge of pupils, situations and classroom contexts together with their repertoire of teaching practices, to enable classroom events to be readily identified and dealt with quickly and routinely. Furthermore it was found that the decisions taken by teachers are highly influenced by the way teachers perceive their environment in a unique and individual way.