Archived: The Educational System in the United States: Case Study Findings

Culture of Expectations with Regard to Students
The principles that organize a school are manifest in many ways, through dress
codes, status hierarchies and merit schemes, formal rules and informal norms, and
through stories told about what occurs within school walls. How individuals inter-
pret these phenomena, how they talk about their experience—what they believe
is possible for themselves and for their students—constitute the ‘‘culture’’ of an
organization such as a school (Martin 1992). A thorough examination and analysis
of the culture of the schools visited in the course of the Case Study Project is
beyond the scope of this inquiry, but several examples of classroom activities give
a sense of how teachers in typical and exceptional schools go about the business
of teaching in the United States.
In the schools visited during the Case Study Project, teachers typically taught 20–
30 students. Courses that are required for graduation tend to have larger enroll-
ments than more advanced courses. Students generally sit in rows facing the
teacher, whose desk is at the front of the room; in some schools, teachers occa-
sionally cluster student desks so that children can work in-groups. As the follow-
ing example illustrates, teachers often present a problem, allow class members
some time to work on it, and then reconvene the class in order to demonstrate
the answer was obtained.

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Teaching at East City High School
Mr. R. teaches trigonometry. The problem he poses for the students is to
determine the height of a large balloon observed by 2 person’s 2.32 miles
apart. The height of the balloon for Individual A is 24 degrees and for Individ-
ual B, 37 degrees. Mr. R. draws a diagram of the problem on an overhead pro-
jector and points out that the two angles are unequal. He continues with a
brief discussion of what it means to bisect an angle. He has been teaching
mathematics for 16 years and obviously has a good understanding of the basic
elements of the problem.
The students work on the problem in pairs. While they attempt to solve it,
Mr. R. moves about the room, asking students in each pair if they need any
help. After a few minutes, he returns to the front of the room and begins to
ask the class a series of questions: ‘‘How are we going to measure the height
of the balloon?’’ ‘‘How many feet are there in a mile?’’ ‘‘You haven’t any idea?
2,000? 5,000?’’ When someone in the class answers correctly, Mr. R. asks a
student named Julie to ‘‘take us through the problem.’’ As she writes the prob-
lem on the board, the class quiets down.
Julie’s explanation is not clear, and the teacher begins to question her. ‘‘How
did you get to angle B? Didn’t you have to get to angle C first?’’ They talk
back and forth, and the teacher tries to help the student clarify her expla-
nation. The discussion becomes relatively disorganized as other members of
the class begin to participate. Once the teacher is satisfied that the essential
elements of the solution have been covered, a different problem, using similar
principles, is introduced.
As this example illustrates, Mr. R. expected his students to be capable of solving
this problem and of providing an explanation of what was needed to solve it. It
was also clear that he expected that they would be able to transfer what they
had learned to another, similar problem.