The purpose of this dissertation, a year-long qualitative study involving action research, was to record and analyze the behavior of both a teacher/researcher and her tenth grade students when she eliminated judgmental language, grades, and punishment in a high school English class. Instead, she provided specific feed-back, engaged students in dialogue concerning their work, and used verbal strategies which did not allow development of the usual classroom roles of "teacher as Rescuer and Persecutor," and "student as powerless Victim."
The study describes the initial debilitating anxiety the students experienced as they created their own rules, examined qualities of excellence in writing and speaking, evaluated their own work, engaged in daily class discussion and performed a variety of cooperative learning tasks. The study further describes teacher responses to the students' behaviors, parental and administrative concerns, and the extensive time commitments involved. It concludes that most of the participating students did not know how to take responsibility for their learning, and that the teacher's primary role was to guide them through a process for learning to do so.
