Project on Learning

Access to the Classroom Research Data Base

 This Database is not currently available due to earthquake damage to the Trust office.

Through the Project on Learning and the Understanding Learning and Teaching Project, Professor Nuthall gathered an enormous database of classroom research. The Trust manages access to this database, and looks forward to requests from researchers for its use.

Potential use of the Project on Learning database

 The comprehensive data covers all aspects of the reality of the classroom experience for individual students and teachers. The data lends itself to a variety of quantitative and qualitative approaches including individual case studies, analysis of teacher and student behaviour in small groups and whole class contexts, and discourse analysis. While not a definitive list, the data would be particularly relevant to researchers who have an interest in the following: 

Characteristics of individual learners: 

  • Factors relevant to individual students’ concept learning and understanding
  • Student compliance with task instructions
  •  Task engagement
  • The relationship between student interest and task engagement.
  • Analyses of subjects’ written work
  • Presentation of student work
  • Task and activity preferences.

Classroom discourse: 

  • Teacher and student questioning (content and non-content related)
  • Peer interactions in the context of the classroom
  • Student and teacher interactions
  • Student self-talk
  • Teacher language related to management of student behaviour
  • Teacher language – type and complexity
  • Teacher assumptions about students’ existing knowledge and understanding.

Teacher and student relationships: 

  • Student hand raising behaviour
  • Teacher accessibility to individual students
  • Social and academic hierarchies
  • Teacher and student perceptions of teaching and learning
  • Opportunities for students to be agentive in the learning process.

Teaching and Learning of science and social studies in middle school classrooms: 

  • Task and activity design, implementation and management by both teachers and students
  • The use of pre and post-tests to measure student understanding
  • Teacher and student use of resources
  • Individual, small group, and whole class tasks
  • Instructional and activity phases of lessons (purpose and structure)
  • Teacher monitoring of student behaviour
  • Constructivist practice.

General: 

  • Socio-cultural factors operating in the classroom
  • Influences and constraints on teachers’ practice
  • Teacher and student co-construction of classroom culture.