Behavioural adjustment in the open classroom 1

SUMMARY The purpose of this investigation was to discover whether 47 discreet, overt classroom behaviours shown to relate to academic achievement in regular and psychoeducational classrooms would ( a ) be organized into behavioural factors or dimensions in a similar fashion, and ( b ) relate to academic achievement, in a typical, open classroom in England. The results indicate there are five behavioural dimensions of significance crossculturally and in all classroom settings studied. It would seem universally true that a child learns better die more he exhibits independence of mind (i.e., lack of reliance upon externals for direction in learning), the more he shows personal involvement (i.e., a bringing together of experience from outside and inside the classroom), and the less he exhibits impulsive irrelevance (i.e., inability to co‐ordinate his own drive and interest with the demands and limits of the task), inattentiveness, and excessive anxiety about achievement. In contrast to the regular and psychoeducational classroom settings studied earlier, the open classroom provides an environment which demands that the child be able to work independendy and participates actively in the learning process. This demand may be too much for certain children to handle, causing excessive anxiety in those who are reliant upon others or the educational setting for direction. The results also indicate that obstreperous and physically intrusive behaviours, and behaviours reflecting a child's negative feelings about learning do not interfere with the learning process in the open classroom as they do in regular psychoeducational classrooms.