WAIT-TIME, CLASSROOM DISCOURSE, AND THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIOCULTURAL FACTORS IN SCIENCE TEACHING

Wait-time, a variable related to questioning in a teaching-learning si tuation, has been found to have implications for the inquiry mode of s cience teaching especially in Western classroom environments. Aside fr om the fact that the literature is very sparse in this area about what obtains in developing countries, nothing appears to be available with regard to how wait-time interacts with the sociocultural factors with in non-Western science classrooms. In a non-Western country such as Ni geria where most science programs in schools are inquiry-oriented, do teachers take notice of, and effectively use, wait-time in the teachin g-learning process? Are science teachers able to effectively use the m ediating role of sociocultural factors in science teaching in a tradit ional environment which expects children to be seen only and not heard ? The main purpose of this study was to investigate the wait-time of N igerian integrated science teachers in relation to the amount of stude nts' participation in inquiry. This study also investigated the relati onship between wait-time and sociocultural attitudinal factors prevale nt in traditional societies. The instruments used for data collection were the Hough's Observational Schedule and a modified version of the Socio-Cultural Environment Scale (SCES); a stop-watch was used to meas ure the wait-time of audio-recorded integrated science lessons of 37 i ntegrated science teachers from selected junior secondary schools in K aduna State, Nigeria. The results showed that the average wait-time TT and wait-time ST of the integrated science teachers was 3.0 seconds a nd 0.7 seconds, respectively. The study reported the amount of student participation in the student-teacher classroom discourse to be very l ow. Wait-time was also shown to have a strong relationship with socioc ultural factors of authoritarianism, goal structure, societal expectat ion, and traditional worldview. The pedagogical and curricular implica tions of the results have been highlighted. (C) 1995 John Wiley and So ns, Inc.