Understanding the myriad complexities of the teaching-learning process consumes enormous amounts of time, effort, and energy on the part of those devoted to improving the process of education. For many observers, however, the relationships between students, teachers, subject matters, and environments seem so highly interactive and complex that any efforts to systematically describe the elements of the process are viewed circumspectly and deemed inadequate or reductionist. In fact, many who have found it impossible to construct explanations that can predict learning outcomes with any precision, instead ha\e declared teaching an "art" that, as such, comprises ineffable qualities that are not amenable to empirical investigation or operational definition (Dawe, 1984; Eisner, 1983; Gage, 1984: Rubin. 1985).
    Admittedly, anyone who has attempted to operationally define any single aspect of the teaching-leaning process and to assess its relationship to other variables in the mix %%ill find arguments about the "artistic" nature of teaching persuasive. Unfortunately. however. our inability to identify and describe with accuracy the relevant variables associated with teaching excellence diminishes our ability to assist novice teachers in improving their skills in the classroom or rehearsal hall.
    Years of systematic investigation have resulted in the identification of important variables that seem particularly germane to successful, productive changes in student behavior (Madsen & Duke, 1993); yet, the systematic assessment of specific variables that are associated with effective teaching seems no more reliable an indicator of effectiveness than are more global assessments in which observers simply rate the overall experience on a single scale of quality, for example (Madsen, Standley, Byo, & Cassidy, 1992). Broadly framed definitions of effective teaching certainly have helped narrow the focus of observers' attention, which has proven to be highly idiosyncratic (Duke, 1987; Duke & Blackman, 1991; Duke & Prickett, 1987; Madsen & Duke, 1985a, 1985b; Prickett & Duke, 1992; Standley & Greenfield, 1987), but the precise identification of the critical attributes of effective practice seems more elusive. Although the relative reliability and stability of global evaluations may adequately serve the purpose of identifying exceptionally high and low quality performance among practitioners, there remains the problem of accurately describing the essential qualities of exemplary teacher behavior, both for the purpose of better understanding the instructional process and for the purpose of providing more meaningful prescriptions for the improvement of practice among novices and professionals in need of remediation.
    Methods of systematic observation applied in music research and elsewhere include (1) a wide variety of time-sampling observation instruments designed to record specific aspects of teacher and student behavior and instructional progress (Duke & Madsen, 199 1; Madsen & Madsen, 1974; Madsen & Yarbrough, 1980), (2) written typescripts of verbalizations that include event timing and behavior categorization in terms of sequential patterns of instruction (Byo, 1994; Jellison & Wolfe, 1987; Price, 1983; Yarbrough & Price, 1981, 1989), (3) coded analyses of scripted curricula in which teacher and student behavior are categorized in terms of "learn units" (Greer, McCorkle, & Williams, 1989; Ingham & Greer, 1992), (4) calculation of timing and event probabilities associated with patterns of teacher and student behavior (Hawkins, Sharpe, & Ray, 1994), and (5) computerized recording of teacher and student behavior and the timing of progress toward instructional goals (Buckner, 1997; Duke, 1991; Siebenaler, in press; Younger Flores, 1995). Still other research has approached the observation and analysis of teaching and conducting from what is perhaps the broadest perspective possible, considering overall, or global, evaluations of effective teaching and rehearsing (Byo, 1990; Cassidy, 1990; Madsen & Geringer, 1989; Madsen, Standley, Byo, & Cassidy, 1992).
    Observers for decades have searched for elegant methods to describe the critical attributes of effective teaching, and their efforts to capture the process of education have viewed teachers and learners through many different lenses, each focused on different aspects of the process itself and obtaining varying degrees of clarity and resolution (Duke, 1994). Although it has been demonstrated that more- and less-effective teaching can be identified with a high measure of consistency, specification of the precise nature of effective teaching behavior-precise in the sense that the information is useful for the purposes of prescription-remains an elusive goal.

The problem [in providing useful and meaningful prescriptions] does not arise because of difficulty in observing effective teachers in their natural settings and determining what it is they do that is effective or ineffective; nor does the problem arise because specific effective ingredients are not subjected to experimental testing and subsequent confirmation; the problem comes from trying to put the best of research findings together in order to instruct future teachers. (Madsen & Duke, 1993, p. 10)

    The body of research literature devoted to instructional feedback is expansive, as is the research base concerning issues related to instructional presentation (e.g., curriculum, sequence of instruction). Likewise, the planning and implementation of instruction and the delivery of feedback are prominent components of teacher education curricula. Less attention has been directed toward the timing of instructional variables, however, although timing is central to nearly all aspects of human interaction. Time has a great deal to do with what's funny, what's considerate, what's expressive, what's interesting, what's useful, what's reinforcing, and what's memorable. Of course, the list of human behaviors that are affected by timing is virtually limitless. Often, when things happen is as important as what happens (Madsen, 1996).    Much research in human and other animal behavior has focused on the issue of timing with regard to learning and behavior change. Systematic measurement of temporal relationships among various aspects of human behavior has revealed reliable principles of learning and behavior that have predictive as well as explanatory implications. The subject of reinforcement schedules and their effects on operant behavior is perhaps the most widely and systematically studied topic encompassing the timing of events and its effect on learning (Cameron & Pierce, 1994). The prominence of time as an element in all known theories and principles of classical and operant conditioning is instructive. To speak of relationships between conditioned and unconditioned stimuli, or between reinforcement, punishment, and operant behavior absent consideration of the timing of events is to ignore what is perhaps the most basic mechanism in the learning process. Most systematic measurements of individual aspects of teaching performance (e.g., questions, feedback), however, are expressed in terms of frequency or proportion; less often are rate and mean duration included as explicit components of measurement (Yarbrough, 1988).
    Observation instruments designed to record the behavior of teachers and students may be thought of as lenses through which observers view the teaching-leaning process. This issue is extremely important, because an observer is likely to see only what the instrument or methodology permits him to see. Since every observational procedure includes some a priori determination of what will be observed, the familiar adage, "When all you've got is a hammer, everything around you starts to look like a nail," seems particularly relevant with regard to the tools of observation.
    When it comes to observing teaching, in particular, this issue becomes highly problematic, because there are so many things to look at and so many ways of looking at them. Teachers and students do lots of different things. How should all this behavior be categorized? Once categories have been determined, how should the now-categorized behaviors be measured? According to frequency, rate, duration, magnitude, proportion? Should certain behaviors be measured in relation to other behaviors? If so, which ones? The complexity of the interactions between teachers and students engaged in the process of education precludes simple answers to these questions, but their critical nature is apparent. Whatever decisions are made concerning the definitions of observation will illuminate certain aspects of the process and obscure certain others.
    Clearly, defining the relevant variables associated with effective teaching and offering meaningful prescriptive information to teachers at all levels of expertise are daunting goals, which require considerably more research that takes account of the aspect of time in the teaching-learning process. It seems that research concerning these questions would be facilitated by the application of usable tools that permit researchers, pedagogues, and novice teachers to gather relevant timing data quickly and easily.
    For this presentation, we describe several applications of an observation program, SCRIBE, which was designed explicitly for recording event 
timings in teacher-student interactions (Duke & Farra, 1996). The design of the program affords teachers and teacher educators a view of interactions between students and teachers that, heretofore, has been impractical or impossible to obtain. Based on current work with this type of analysis, the information provided by the system can change dramatically teachers' perceptions of their interactions with students and provide a systematic means of analyzing progress in the development of teaching skills. The software embodies two major innovations in observation and analysis of behavior through the application of computer technology: First, the opportunity for observers (e.g., student teachers and teacher educators) to design and "draw" customized "observation forms" (on-screen input windows) that focus on pertinent aspects of teacher and student behavior and that permit the input of observation data using the mouse and keyboard; second, the ability to obtain a pictographic representation of a teaching episode displayed along a time line, so that the relationships and timing between teacher and student behavior may be studied in detail. The timeline graph depicts the sequence and duration of each recorded behavior according to codes selected by the user.
    We describe applications of the program in several classes over the past two years and in several recent research investigations here at our own institution. It seems likely that this program will be applicable to any field that deals with analysis of human interactions. including clinical and experimental psychology, sociology, and business, as well as education. Classroom interactions in music are multifaceted and complex, which makes the task of systematic assessment of music teaching difficult at best. The search for appropriate dependent measures that may serve not only as evaluative assessments but also as sources of prescriptive information remains one of the most important challenges for research in music education.

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