By Dale Mann, Ph.D. It’s no secret that teachers do a lot of talking in class. Since Ned Flanders’ documentation of classroom talk beginning in the 1960s, it has been widely understood that teachers talk about 80% of the time in a classroom for lower-achieving students and 55% of the time during classes for higher-achieving students. Flanders’ work can be summarized in the “rule of two-thirds”: during about two-thirds of the time in a classroom, someone is talking. Next, the chances are two out of three that the person talking is the teacher. Finally, when the teacher is talking, two-thirds …
Hearing is Believing
