the developmental curriculum’. The fact that teachers have to move to different
classrooms to teach also deprives them of the chance to make decisions concerning
the sitting arrangement of their students. Thus, the findings show that students sit in
all possible combinations (see appendix IV, p. 113, table 16) according to what their
Greek teacher considers appropriate (see appendix IV, p. 113, table 17). As far as
student mobility is concerned, 84% of respondents stated that they allow students to
move around the class in order to do the activities (see appendix IV, p. 113, table 18).
This is something worth praising as it not only takes into consideration the fact that
young children have a shorter attention span and, therefore, they cannot stand still for
long (Andrews 2000: 28), but, also because by moving around the classroom in order
to solve problems, children engage in situations which simulate real life. Such a
simulation, which demands from children to behave beyond their average age, is,
according to Vygotsky, an appropriate way for them to develop within their ‘zone of
proximal development’ (see section 1.1.3.1). Concerning the use of technology, all
respondents stated that there is a tape-recorder available to them (see appendix IV, p.
112, table 13), while 95% of them make use of the cassettes in order to deliver the
listening texts (see appendix IV, p. 113, table 15). However, as only 86% of
respondents stated that they have access to these cassettes (see appendix IV, p. 112,
table 14), these two latter findings seem rather inconsistent. In some cases,
respondents who stated that they do not make use of the cassettes considered essential
to note that they avoid doing so because, after so many years of using them, their
sound quality has become very poor.
A central part to the questionnaire is the one which asks teachers to evaluate
briefly their teaching material (see questions 20-25 in appendix I, pp. 101-102), as it
was considered that such an evaluation could reveal the respondents’ implicit beliefs
about teaching and learning. However, as an evaluation of the teaching material is
above the scope of this book, the respondents’ answers are compared to the evaluation
which was carried out in a number of unpublished MA dissertations.
As it is shown in figure 3, more than half of the respondents (54%) either
disapprove or strongly disapprove of the methodology followed by the ‘Fun Way’
series, which is the official teaching material for the upper three grades (see appendix
IV, p. 114, table 20). Anastasiadou (2003), commenting on the methodology of the
particular series, claims that the books are written according to the traditional
Presentation-Practice-Production (PPP) model. However, PPP reflects behaviouristic
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