Satoshi Kawashima

The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of the differences between a teacher's and his classroom students' recognition of "classroom rules" from the viewpoints of "importance", "priority", and "purpose". We surveyed a teacher and the students of his fifth grade classroom with following tasks: for "importance", a scale to measure the recognition of the classroom rules' importance; for "priority", a hypothetical scenarios task showing some situations of classroom rules' conflict; and for "purpose", an open ended question asking the purpose of the classroom rules. The results indicated that both the teacher and students scored high on the "importance" of classroom rules. However, for "priority" and "purpose", there were differences between the teacher's and students' recognition of "rules to respect their friends" and "rules to keep their class in order". These findings suggest that the differences between a teacher's and students' recognition of classroom rules may be explained not by the unawareness of the importance of the rules, but by the differences in the rules that they prioritize and the understanding of the purpose of the classroom rules.