Tasks, Group Management, and Teacher Control Behavior: A Study of Classroom Organization and Teacher Style

Although classrooms are places where teachers and pupils work, few studies of classroom differences have examined the consequences of distinctive types of work organization for the emergence of social relationships within classrooms. Examinations of teacher authority, like all leadership research,' have tended to focus on the consequences of certain teacher "styles" for group productivity, cohesiveness, pupil achievement, and moral socialization without sufficiently exploring the conditions under which authority is differentially exercised and the consequences of this for teacher-pupil relationships (Durkheim 1961; Lewin et al. 1939; Waller 1932; Flanders 1960; Lippitt and White 1962; Gordon and Adler 1963; Bidwell 1970; Spady 1974). Even though Hughes (1959) and Gump (1967) found a relationship between task activities and teacher authority and Larkin (1973) noted an association between classroom structure and type of leadership, characteristics of the classroom work organization and their effects on teacher behavior have not been sufficiently detailed.2 In studying the organization of instructional tasks in four elementary school classrooms, I found that the task organization greatly influenced the types of control exercised by the teachers. In this paper, I will describe the structural characteristics of instructional tasks and their influence on the types of control teachers exercise. Hence, I will try to detail the relationships between task organization and leadership behavior in the classroom setting.