The Study On Physical Teachers' Body Language In Classroom Instruction

During the process of classroom teaching, teachers use not only verbal language but also gestures, movements and expressions etc to communicate with students. Those non-verbal behaviors are helpful to strengthen the effects of expression and deepen the comprehension of knowledge to students. And also the insufficiencies of verbal language are made up by these. It is meaningful to study the non-verbal behaviors of physics teachers. These promote the theoretical research of teaching behaviors and improve the basic skills of physics teachers and also update the idea of teaching. From the practice of senior middle school classroom teaching, the method which combines the document study and classroom observation is used in this paper. Based on quantitative study, we focus on four problems about non-verbal behavior of teachers. Firstly, by reading and analyzing lots of research, the form and the function of non-verbal behaviors are sorted. Secondly, due to the lack of quantification of the non-verbal behaviors, and a research tool is needed during this research, developing a quantitative tool is the first priority. Thirdly, we observed the research using the observation scales and analyzed the obtained data. Finally, aiming at the present situation of non-verbal behaviors in physics classes, we proposed some suggestions on forming teachers'non-verbal behaviors.Through the theoretical analysis and observation, we came to some plain conclusions from the four problems. First of all, non-verbal behaviors of physics teachers are sorted into Emblems, Illustrators, Affect display, Instruments, Adaptors, Regulators, Distances and Experiments. The functions of non-verbal behaviors are sorted into support and polish the linguistic behavior in classroom instruction; substitute the linguistic behavior in classroom instruction; express the emotion or attitude which is not easily conveyed by language; meet the needs of physiology and psychology; regulate and arrange linguistic instruction. Secondly, according to the classification of forms and functions, and with the addition of time dimension, we designed the observation scales preliminarily. And then observed the effect with the scales and amend the scales by the feedback of the observation. In this way, the final observation scales of physics teachers'non-verbal behaviors are accomplished. Lastly, from the data analysis of the record by observing the classroom video, there are two kinds of behaviors more common among the non-verbal behaviors. They are Emblems and Instruments. However, the Experiments which is with physics characteristics is rarely used. This situation means that teachers do few demonstrating experiments. They give the chance for experiments to the students. In so doing, students can do the experiments themselves and get the experiment results directly from the experimental phenomena. Teachers mainly play a guidance role during this process. It can be seen that students experimental oriented is the tendency of physics teaching. At the end of this paper, we gave some advice by the result of data analysis about how to use the non-verbal behaviors in physics classroom instruction.