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Classroom management

See also: acu-rtt

Fifth module in the ACU Return to Teaching course. aka Student Management and People Skills. APSTs 1 and 4

Classroom management#

Defining challenging behaviour#

Emphasises value of seeing behaviour as part of design for learning.

Minimising behavioural issues in the classroom#

  • It is important to build a relationship with your students. Learn their names as quickly as possible.
  • Become an active listener.
  • Students are responsive to teachers who listen carefully to what they have to say.
  • Encourage collaboration and discussion amongst your students.
  • Ensure that students listen to each other and that everyone's ideas get a 'fair go'.
  • Be watchful for anti-social behaviour such as exclusion, teasing, and bullying that might occur within the classroom or outside and take steps to quickly stop such behaviour.
  • Be equitable and positive. This is particularly important when questioning students. When a student gives an incorrect response, give credit for the aspects that are correct and acknowledge when a student is headed in the right direction. Provide lots of positive feedback, but vary the way in which you provide praise so that it is never seen as empty, patronizing or automatic.
  • Establish a sense of academic trust. This means that the students consider the tasks you set to be valuable because they trust that the teacher only assigns tasks that are valuable.
  • Don't set mindless tasks. Ensure that every task is working towards some sort of goal. It is also important that they believe they have the ability and resources to complete the tasks.

Some models of classroom discipline#

Glasser - 7 deadly/connecting habits#

Deadly habits Connecting habits
criticising caring
blaming listening
complaining supporting
nagging encouraging
threatening trusting
punishing rewarding students to control them befriending

Rudolf Dreikurs - Democrating Discipline#

Misbehaviour is a result of a student assuming it's a way to find a place/status

4 premises

  1. Students are social beings that want to belong.
  2. All behaviours are purposeful and goal orientated.
  3. Students are decision-making beings.
  4. A student's truth is their perspectives of reality. A student's reality may not match the teacher's reality.

Definitions

  • Praise - reward for achievement
  • Encouragement - acknowledgement of effort to reach achievement

Ed Ford - responsible thinking process#

Based on perceptual control theory. Make students responsible and refelctive.

6 responsible thinking questions

  1. What are you doing? -- This makes the student aware that they are doing something wrong.
  2. What are the rules? -- Students need to be aware of predetermined rules for misbehaviour.
  3. What happens when you break the rules? -- Students think about the rules in relation to the consequences.
  4. Is this what you want to happen? -- Is the short-term gain for the student (talking in class) worth the consequence (detention)?
  5. Where do you want to be? -- The students have a choice to make an active decision based on their behaviour.
  6. What do you want to do now? -- The teacher takes further action.

Bill Rogers - Positive Behaviour leadership (PBL) - 3Rs#

3Rs: rights, respect and responsibilities

5 principles of PBL

  1. Rights and Responsibilities of all -- these are evident in classroom rules.
  2. Confrontation and Embarrassment should be avoided -- also established in the classroom rules.
  3. Offer choices -- to students about their behaviour consequences.
  4. Model respectful behaviour -- by the teachers and other students.
  5. Communicate standards -- use open communication and set high standards for behaviour.

Ed Queensland - Essential skills#

  1. Establishing expectations -- Making rules.
  2. Giving instructions -- Telling students what to do.
  3. Waiting and scanning -- Stopping to assess what is happening.
  4. Cueing with parallel acknowledgement -- Praising a particular student to prompt others.
  5. Body language encouraging -- Smiling, nodding, gesturing and moving near.
  6. Descriptive encouraging -- Praise describing behaviour.
  7. Selective attending -- Not obviously reacting to certain behaviours.
  8. Redirecting to the learning -- Prompting on-task behaviour.
  9. Giving a choice -- Describing the student's options and likely consequences of their behaviour.
  10. Following through -- Doing what you said you would.

School-wide approaches#

Focus on Ed Qld - Student behaviour - very generic and limited - simply identifying school code of conduct

PBL video - Positive Behaviour for Learning - very descriptive at a high level. Not a lot of detail (so far)

PBL site

  • whole school framework
  • behaviours are taught
  • Positive relationships - breaking down into tactics
  • classroom organisation
  • differentiated teaching and learning
  • behavioural expectations
  • explicit teaching of social skills
  • positive reinforcement
  • active engagement
  • active supervision
  • consistent and fair consequences
  • Three tiers of intervention
    1. Whole schools support
    2. Focused interventions (~15%)
    3. Intensive interventions (~5%)

Record keeping#

Summary of need and practice (brief)

Reflective task#

Module 5 highlighted how important it is to keep a record of behavioural incidents in the classroom.

Share your experiences... what system do you (or your school) use for record keeping? Could it be improved

  • I don't have the experience directly, but have observations and draw on the Selwyn paper
  • significant improvement in systems since last in schools
  • but still appear to suffer from implementation issues
  • observed teachers being seen as the expert on how/what to record, rather than that being obvious to all
  • some teachers not consistently doing it
  • difficulty of doing it timely

Again the paucity of my experiences shine through. Hence the following is based not on first hand experience but experiences reported in Selwyn (2016) and on observations from my professional experience (2011), and at the school I'm teaching at in 2024.

Selwyn (2016) reports on observations of how two Melbourne schools made use of digital data from December 2013 through November 2014. While not specifically focused on recording behavioural incidents the study does resonate with my observations. One of the four themes arising from this work was the perceived limitations of how this data was generated and used. In particular, the nature of the digital technologies used for collecting and analysing data created issues such as:

  • Increased effort to recollect and record data.

    Systems for recording data are not sufficiently usable or integrated into everyday teaching practice to enable the efficient recording of data as it is generated. I've observed how this has made some teachers question if/how to record the data.

  • Constrained by reductive or limited data structures.

    Digital systems for recording data are often designed to collect data that is easy to collect and analyse across an entire school system. Creating a tendency for data structures and interfaces that are generic and constrained. Making it difficult (more time consuming) to record meaningful contextual detail that extends outside that generic structure. It also leads to departments and schools developing personal workarounds to serve local needs. I've observed conversations between teachers talking through the local workarounds to a state-based system that has been accepted within the school.

As for improving these systems, Selwyn (2016) closes with a series of questions to be answered to achieve just that. In particular, asking what data, tools and techniques might enable more contextualised and meaningful data to be collected and used? Certainly a question I'll be exploring in 2024.

References

Selwyn, N. (2016). 'There's so much data': Exploring the realities of data-based school governance. European Educational Research Journal, 15(1), 54--68. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474904115602909

Engaging with parents and building strong partnerships#

Engaging with parents#

  • working in partnership with parents may not be straight forward due to variety in the goal held by parties, different expectations
  • assumptions about students "making choices" may be problematic, the student many not have the knowledge/skill to make better choices

Ed Qld parent and community engagement a framework with key elements

  • Communication
  • Partnership with parents
  • Community collaboration
  • Decision making
  • School culture

High stakes conversations#

Basically links to a book "Crucial conversations" - Book's site

7 steps

  1. Start with the heart (i.e empathy and positive intent)

  2. Stay in dialogue

    4 paths to powerful listening (AMPP)

    1. **A**sk to get things rolling - ask open questions, what's your opinion
    2. **M**irror to confirm feelings - reflect back what you think you heard - watch tone of voice
    3. **P**araphrase to acknowledge the story - restate what you think you heard
    4. **P**rime when you get stuck - encourage by suggesting something we're thinking
    5. Make it safe
    6. Don't get hooked by emotion (or hook them)

    Take care an use five tools STATE

    1. **S**hare your facts - what you saw and heard
    2. **T**ell your story - what you think it means
    3. **A**sk for other's paths - what they saw and heard
    4. **T**alk tentatively - use tentative language
    5. **E**ncourage testing - invite other to share their views

  3. Agree a mutual purpose

    Key steps to a mutual purpose CRIB

    1. **C**ommit to seek a mutual purpose
    2. **R**ecognise the purpose behind the strategy
    3. **I**nvent a mutual purpose
    4. **B**rainstorm new strategies

  4. Separate facts from story

    Three types of stories to watch out for: Victim; Villian; and Helples

    With diagreement employ the ABC

    • **A**gree - identify where you agree
    • **B**uild - build on the areas of agreement
    • **C**ompare - compare your views with theirs

  5. Agree a clear action plan

    Need a plan, not just agreement. Four approaches to decision making: command; consult; vote; consensus.

    When choosing ask four choices

    1. Who cares? - don't involve those that don't care
    2. Who knows? - who has the relevant expertise
    3. Who must agree? - who has the power to veto
    4. How many people? - involve the fewest possible

Reflective task - dealing with unhappy parents or staff#

Part 2 of Module 5 provided some advice on how to deal with angry/upset parents (or anyone for that matter).

I am sure that there is a wealth of experience in this group... this is a place where you can share some of your wisdom.

What works for you?

Ahh, for this reflection I am definitely feeling like the pauper of the course. I've no direct experience dealing with upset parents, though have certainly heard stories. Hence rather than share wisdom the following is more a sharing of planning (ignorance?).

  1. Build and maintain a positive relationship from the start.

    Reach out to parents early and appropriately. Be guided by the school's policies and processes, the student's needs, and knowledge of colleagues.

  2. Keep the ratio of good/bad communication far toward the positive (and far away from cookie cutter).

    Communication should be specific, not generic and focused more on hard work and meeting/exceeding expectations than on negative events.

  3. When needed, deploy practices like the AMPP approach to listening.

And even I can see how hard achieving anything close to all of this in the first year of teaching will be incredibly difficult. Raising questions about how to achieve something like this efficiently?

Assessment task#

Describe your personal philosophy of teaching as it relates to classroom management. How do you view students, your role as a teacher, and how students learn? Consider your current understandings of supporting appropriate and positive student behaviour and how this understanding may translate to:

  • Strategies you will use to reinforce appropriate behaviour.
  • Strategies you will use to prevent inappropriate behaviour.
  • How you will make clear your expectations for appropriate behaviour.
  • How you will address inappropriate behaviour.
  • Students learn through the quality of the activity
  • As a teacher, my task is provide them with learning tasks that are more likely to encourage them to engaged in effectively learning activities. This task of design for learning includes active consideration of how to create a learning environment in which students "behave" - "behave" is another word for productive academic and socio-emotional learning.
  • They have a lot of agency around the nature of the activities that they perform, hence self-regulation etc. is important.
    • but also the importance of flexibility/independence in what they do
  • Engagement and challenge, meaningful difficulty, extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, consistencty/familiarity

Strategies

  • Expectations are explained and modelled continuously

    • School has expectations our class builds on those
    • In class we should feel safe and respected
    • In class we are (becoming) mathematicians/digital technologists, we act like them
    • Focus on promoting/recognising positive behaviour
    • Following and productively building upon school policies and procedures

    • Seek to (co-)investigate on-going causes for inappropriate behaviour. is it behavioural, cognitive, affective, biological, developmental etc. (Powell and Tod, 2004)

    • reflective practice