3.

Methodology

3.1 Videostudy

For the research we made, we decided to use video study, structured observation and
micro-teaching analyzes.

As Šeďová, Švaříček and Šalamounová (2012, p. 32) say in their review of classroom
communication, video-study is a method that allows you to capture the action in a classroom
with a low degree of distortion of collected data. Through video study, we analyzed 8 teachers
of primary education in two lessons (together, we made a record of 16 lessons) using the
structured observation method and the analytical scheme for micro-teaching units analysis.

3.2 Structured observation and micro-teaching analyzes

As we mentioned, 16 units were analyzed through structured observation. The

structured observation method was used to analyze educational processes from the point of
view of pupils centered approach in communication using micro analysis of individual
lessons. According to Zelina (2006, p. 71) in micro analysis „...it is an analysis of small units,
activities, communication acts, but also movements, gestures, behaviors that occur at the
lesson, ... It looks at the details, in particular the microfacts from which it is deducted, and
considers the quality of the teacher's work, the behavior of the pupils. "The origin of the
method described is the creative-humanistic theory of education. THV Theory "... seeks to
resolve the dispute between quantitative and qualitative analysis of educational phenomena."
(Zelinová, 2004, p. 81) Microanalysis can detect and describe different psychological
manifestations and personality, behavior, directivity or non-directness of the teacher, etc. An
important condition for using this method is to select a suitable analytical scheme for
recording observed phenomena (so-called coding). For research purposes, we decided to use
the observation system, which Zelina says (2006, p. 74): "... verify a theory.", I.e.. an
analytical scheme that builds on previously proven knowledge from the field of
communication interactions between teacher and pupil "... based on the Rogers concept of
therapeutic and deductive relationships (congruence, empathy, acceptance and application to
teaching)." The authors of the mentioned analytical scheme, respectively the analytical
framework for detecting clasification of the verbal behavior of the teacher in the classroom
(in the original Classification of Verbal Behavior in the Classroom) are James B. Macdonald
and Esther Zaret (1964), who were based on Rogers's seven stages of psychotherapy. By
means of them, man strives for inner congruence, for expressing himself, his feelings. The
individual becomes empathic, free, authentic, and autonomous personality in the process of
non-direct communication, leading to a self-actualization tendency that is to personality
growth.

In order for these principles to be fully manifested, and therefore that a person should
move from an inelastic (rigid) and unchanged (closed) personality structure to change, in
other words, the personality of man is directed from static nature to dynamism, it is necessary
to create conditions of non-directivity and of open "openness" behavior before the directive,
closed "close" behavior, respectively closed communication (Macdonald, Zaret, 1964, p. 2).
Since the analytical schema for observing teacher and student verbal interactions has never
been translated nor published in Slovak or Czech language, our task was this taken over
observation system to translate and clarify the essence “of the openness in Classroom
Interactions” (Openness in Classroom Interactions) and also the essence of exploring these
interactions within the pedagogical communication process.
In the next chapter, we provide the basis for classifying verbal expressions of teacher
and pupil that we used to analyze teaching units. In addition, we note that despite the lifetime
work of C. Rogers and the exploration and application of the essence of humanistic principles
in professional practice in different spheres of life, the author did not create a classification to
observe these phenomena in communication. Therefore, we decided to use the following
research tool based on this model.

4. Analytical scheme for the classification of verbal expressions in teaching

The purpose of the research study was to verify the validity of the "open
communication" theory on a selected sample of teachers based on the 1964 humanistically
oriented analytical scheme which is based on Roger's conception of a person-centered
approach in the process of teacher-pupil interaction.
The teacher behaves as a personality and acts in a certain way, exposes steady,
outwardly observable characteristics (interaction schemes). Only then can we analyze the
learning process if we have a clearly defined classification of observable phenomena that we
can identify in the teacher's speech and communication. J. B. Macdonald and E. Zaret (1964)
came up with the concept of "open and closed" behavior of teacher and pupils in verbal
communication. Openness, resp. the closure of the teacher's behavior (communication) in
interacting relationships results from his directivity and non-directivity, which influences the
nature of pupils' reactions (responses) in the classroom.
Authors characterize the open behaviors as something desirable, which produces
productive and positive pupils' reactions. Vice versa, the closed behavior or closed
communication of the teacher is manifested by defensive or compensatory manifestations.
The conceptual framework of the "OPEN-CLOSE" model of interaction sequences of teacher
with students presupposes that all replicas, reactions, questions or answers will be reflected in
one of the specified categories for Open (open) or Close (closed) Behavior. This behavior
then influences the character of the pupil's communication. Open reactions result in a
supportive environment, supporting communication, while closed responses create a
repressive character in the learning process. Supporting teacher signs and their interactions in
teaching Macdonald and Zaret also call Transaction-Oriented Decisions or decisions resulting
from non-directivity. In this case, the teacher is an open, facilitating element that encourages
pupils' productive reactions. Conversely, the authors put a teacher who reacts rigidly, closely,
directively to the Role-expectancy Oriented Decisions sphere. This means that the essence of
looking at the role of teacher in the classroom as an authority is based on the fact that he will
act and react from the position of holder of the formal power, superiority, that is, the
conductor of the teaching process, where pupils´ replicas will have rather reproductive
character. In the Role-expectancy Oriented Decisions sphere, the teacher's perusal to pupil´s
ability to respond openly - productively is limited and limits the variability of pupils' reactions
in communication. Conversely, a teacher whose communication falls within the scope of the
Transaction-Oriented Decisions is open to understand the broader reference frame of the
pupil´s personality and thus encouraging him to variability of reactions (responses) in
teaching.
Every communication or interaction is the process which has got its phases. The
described communication model has got the following three phases: 1. Input (Input), 2.
Evaluation (evaluation phase), 3. Output (Output). The evaluation phase is crucial and
determines whether the teacher will behave openly or closed in the communication. This
phase, however, is highly subjective and outwardly non-observable because it takes place in
an individual's psychological processes. However, what we can observe and analyze with
certainty are the outputs of this process. So how did the teacher decide to react (how did he
assess the situation) and how he subsequently reacted. Reactions that were evaluated as open
to the evaluation phase will show a lower degree of distortion of student reality in the
teacher's communication than with closed reactions. The evaluation phase takes place under
the so- Self-system, if the teacher will feel that his integrity is in some way threatened or
disturbed then the result of his decision will be compensating behavior. In other words, the
teacher will start to act defensively, closely against the pupil. The teacher evaluates the
situation in a distorted manner based on subjective negative emotions and starts the so called
defensive behavior. An open personality shows a minimal distortion of reality, so the teacher
does not try to get into a state of defensive decisions, respectively reactions because he
experiences the minimum degree of disruption of his own integrity. The evaluation
(evaluation) phase that is closely related to the teacher's personality and his needs and value
orientation is influenced by inputs (inputs). The outputs are then the result of these two first
phases. These are replicas, reactions that can be analyzed by the categorical system - the
analytical scheme (see Scheme in Annex I).

4.1 Evaluation of the acquired data

To record the categories, we have chosen so called natural coding. In this type of
coding, the researcher will make a record each time the observed category occurs (Gavora,
1999, p. 88). Teachers´and students´replicas contain concrete items that we code according to
how many times this phenomenon occurred in the teacher´s observed teaching unit. Their
occurrence (frequency) we recorded on the record sheet. The record sheet is preceded by a
protocol from microanalysis of interaction units. The protocol served us to analyze the
interaction units (sentences, reactions, replicas, teacher and pupil questions) and to subsequent
identification of the items under review. This means that we made a transcript from a 16-hour
video record - a transcript of the data (replicas) of teacher with pupil/pupils. Ten we searched
for the following characters – categories in them.
Every category has got a positive, negative, or neutral value. Thus, to each replica we
have determined a positive, negative or neutral value, depending on whether it fell into the
open sphere of teacher´s interactions – TOD or the closed sphere of teacher´s interactions –
REOD, respectively neutral sphere , and as well whether the replica of the pupil fell into the
sphere of productive or reproductive reactions. We have defined replica as any teacher or
pupil statement that could have been evaluated on the basis of the categorical system of the
analytical scheme. However, the replica did not necessarily have to be just one whole
sentence separated by a full stop. The replica had to have significant consistency, i.e. we
many times marked by replica either only a part of the sentence or several consecutive
sentences that have been meaningfully linked to each other. If the sentence had more
characters, we split it into the required number of replicas and assigned the appropriate
category to them. If several phrases were meaningfully related to the same communication
situation and during the teacher or pupil's communication the meaning of these phrases did
not change, then we identified them as one whole replica and assigned the appropriate
category to it. For eight teachers and their pupils we analyzed in average about 850 statements
– replicas from two 45 minute lessons. All together it consisted of approximately 6,500
replicas assigned to one of the observing categories. For each teacher, we examined the ratio
between open and closed replicas, the frequency – the occurrence of individual categories,
and the relationship between open and closed replicas in teacher – pupil interactions.
5 Research results

5.1 Testing of hypotheses

Proving of three hypotheses is mentioned in the study, the purpose of which was to
determine the dependence of the measured data and its significance for the research carried
out. Our task was to find out how the frequency of PCA features in teacher communication
impacts on frequency of pupils productive replicas, further more whether there is a correlation
between positive and productive communication in the T – P interaction blocks, and whether
the abundance of words in teachers´ replicas is positively related to the number of spoken
words of pupils.

 H1: There is a positive relationship between the frequency of PCA features in teacher
communication and the frequency of productive pupil´s replicas.
 H2: There is a positive relationship between the frequency of non-directive blocks of
teacher´s replicas and productive pupil´s reactions.
 H3: There is a positive relationship between the productive pupil´s replicas and the
length of his replicas.

To test the first and third hypotheses H1 and H3 we used Spearman's statistical method
coefficient of order correlation. To test the second H2 hypothesis, we used the Good Chi
compliance test - Quadrate.

5.2 Testing of H1 hypothesis

Hypothesis H1: There is a positive relationship between the frequency of PCA features
in teacher communication and frequency of productive pupil´s replicas.
We formulated a hypothesis to prove whether there is a correlation between the
number of features/indicators of positive - plus teacher reactions and the positive - productive
pupils' reactions. We consider this relation as an indicator of open communication of T - P
interactions. Based on the theoretical analysis of positive communication and the features of
C.R Rogers's humanistic approach, we can claim that the multiplicity - the frequency of plus
occurrences of the teacher's replicas should result in a higher frequency of productive pupil´s
replicas. We put the measured data in a mutual relationship. We were interested in the degree
of dependence between the observed phenomena. If the absolute value of the correlation
coefficient r is 0.2 - low dependence up to 1.0 - full dependence, then we hypothesis H1 at the
level of significance from the coefficient rs = 0 to 1 (see Table 2) have confirmed. If the
absolute value of the correlation coefficient was rs = 0.2 and less, then we refused
hypothesized H1. Calculation - the Spearman's sequence correlation coefficient formula is
calculated as follows (Chráska, 2016, p. 96): Where rs is Spearman's sequence correlation
coefficient, d is the difference order for the pair values A and B (see Table 1) and n is the
number of compared pairs of values. Coefficient 0 tells us that there is no relationship
between the compared values. As this value approximates to 1 or k -1, then the relationship
between the values is narrower. In order for the measured values in the research to have a
relevant significance, this coefficient should have a level of at least rs = 0.40 (Chráska, 2016,
p. 98). The measured values in column A express the frequency of the plus features in the
teacher's communication, and in column B the frequency of the productive replicas of the
pupil. In the column A1, there is an order of teachers according to the measured values from 1
- teacher with the highest value to 7.5 teachers with the lowest measured value of open
communication. For teachers T1 and T7 were measured the same levels of "openness".
That's why their order is divided to 7.5. The values in column B2 are ranged analogously.
Pupils are ranked from the highest frequency of productive replicas to the lowest. In the case
of compliance of the measured values, as in the case of teachers, there was a split order. The
value d is the difference between these two orders. We appointed the measured values in the
formula and we obtained a correlation coefficient at the level rs = 0.488, which is a middle
(considerable) dependence. From H1 hypothesis testing resulted that there is a middle
(considerable) dependence that says the features of open communication at teacher and
productive reactions are in relation. If a teacher uses PCA features in his or her
communication, then pupil communication shows positive character, and to a greater extent
than to a teacher who uses these features in his or her communication to a much lesser extent.
We confirm the H1 hypothesis.

Table 1 Values for the calculation of the Spearman coefficient H1

Input Calculation
A data B data A1 B2 d d^2
0.15 0.21 7.5 5.5 2 4
0.24 0.17 3 7.5 -5 20.3
0.19 0.17 5 7.5 -3 6.25
0.52 0.66 1 2 -1 1
0.21 0.30 4 3.5 0.5 0.25
0.16 0.30 6 3.5 2.5 6.25
0.15 0.21 7.5 5.5 2 4
0.43 0.70 2 1 1 1

rs 0.488 Middle(considerable)
dependence

Tab. 2 Interpretation of results for Spearman coefficient

Interpretation of the results

Limit Result
0 Complete independence
 >0 Very low dependence
>0.2 Low dependence
>0.4 Middle (considerable) dependence
0.7 High dependence
0.9+ Very high dependence
1 Complete dependence