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Objectives: At the end of this training session, the participants will be able to
10. Understand why students like particular teacher in maintaining classroom or school
discipline
School discipline is a form of discipline appropriate to the regulation of children and the
maintenance of order in schools. Where as class management is what teachers do to ensure that
children engage in the task in hand, whatever that may be.
The term refers to students complying with a code of behavior often known as the school rules.
These rules may, for example, define the expected standards of clothing, timekeeping, social
behaviour and work ethic. The term may also be applied to the punishment that is the
consequence of transgression of the code of behavior. For this reason the usage of school
discipline sometimes means the administration of punishment, rather than behaving within the
school rules. The aim of school discipline is, ostensibly, to create a safe and happy learning
environment in the classroom. In a classroom where a teacher is unable to maintain order and
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discipline, students may become unmotivated and distressed, and the climate for learning is
diminished, leading to underachievement.
School discipline has two main goals: (1) ensure the safety of staff and students, and (2) create
an environment conducive to learning. Serious student misconduct involving violent or criminal
behavior defeats these goals and often makes headlines in the process.
It is important to keep the ultimate goal in mind while working to improve school discipline. As
education researcher Daniel Duke (1989) points out, "the goal of good behavior is necessary, but
not sufficient to ensure academic growth." Effective school discipline strategies seek to
encourage responsible behavior and to provide all students with a satisfying school experience as
well as to discourage misconduct.
Throughout the history of education the most common form of school discipline was corporal
punishment. While a child was in school, a teacher was expected to act as a substitute parent,
with all the normal forms of parental discipline open to them. In practice this meant that children
were commonly punished with the birch or cane.
Most modern educationalists in Europe and North America advocate a disciplinary policy
focused on positive reinforcement, with praise, merit marks, house points and the like playing a
central role in maintaining behavior.
School disciple practices are generally informed by theory from psychologists and educators.
There are a number of theories to form a comprehensive discipline strategy for an entire school
or a particular class.
• Reality Therapy involves teachers making clear connections between student behavior
and consequences in order to facilitate students making positive choices. Features include
class meetings, clearly communicated rules, and the use of plans and contracts are
featured.
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• Discipline with Dignity supports the idea that good discipline starts by keeping student
dignity intact by providing practical strategies for teachers to share responsibility for
discipline with students themselves by tailoring discipline to each individual. Created by
Drs. Richard Curwin and Allen Mendler.[1]
• Transactional Analysis works for students with behavior problems to learn to use
terminology and exercises to identify issues and make changes within the context of
counseling programs. The notion that each person's psyche includes child, adult and
parent components is basic to the TA philosophy. Research has been conducted (e.g.,
Cobb and Richards) has found the TA counseling approach beneficial (McIntyre,
2005)[citation needed].
• Assertive Discipline focuses on the right of the teacher to define and enforce standards
for student behavior with clear expectations, rules and a penalty system with increasingly
serious sanctions are major features. Research (e.g., Mandlebaum and McCormack) is
supportive, but inconclusive about the effectiveness of the AD approach (Emmer and
Aussiker, Gottfredson, and Render, Padilla, and Krank) (McIntyre, 2005)[citation needed]
.
Developed by Lee Canter.
Challenges
Methods of maintaining discipline in schools are not always successful. The misbehaviour of
children is common in all schools, although most schools manage to keep this within tolerable
limits. Occasionally, however, poor disciplinary management within school can cause a more
general breakdown in order. In modern years this has been popularly characterized by violence
against teachers and other children. This is, of course, not a new problem.
Effective discipline requires the consent, either explicit or tacit, of parents and pupils. Whilst few
children will enjoy punishment, most will submit to it providing it is perceived as being
equitable. Moreover, to be effective, punishment should never appear arbitrary. School
hierarchies award teachers great power over their students and the perceived abuse of this power
to punish children in arbitrary ways can be the source of much resentment and hostility.
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STAGES OF DISCIPLINE
They can be seen as having an individualistic morality and self-centered. These students
behave either because they will receive some sort of reward such as candy, free time, etc., or
because they do not like what happens to them when they do not behave. Most children are
moving beyond this stage by the time they are eight or nine years old. Older students who still
function at this stage do best in classrooms with assertive teachers.
Students make up most of the youngsters in our middle and junior high schools. These kids have
started to develop a sense of discipline. They behave because you ask them. They care what
others think about them, and they want you to like them. These children need gentle reminders.
You ask them to settle down and they do. Assertive discipline works with these students because
they understand it, but they rarely need such a heavy handed approach to classroom discipline.
Stage 4: Self-Discipline
The Social Order Stage: "I Behave Because it is the Right Thing to Do."
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Students rarely get into any trouble at all. They have a sense of right and wrong. Although many
middle school and junior high school students will occasionally function at this level, only a few
consistently do. These are the youngsters we enjoy working with so much. You can leave these
kids alone with a project and come back 20 or 30 minutes later and find them still on task. They
behave because, in their minds, it is the right thing to do. Cooperative Learning activities
encourage students to function at this level.
1. Focusing
Be sure you have the attention of everyone in your classroom before you start your lesson. Don’t
attempt to teach over the chatter of students who are not paying attention. The focusing
technique means that you will demand their attention before you begin. It means that you will
wait and not start until everyone has settled down
2. Direct Instruction
Uncertainty increases the level of excitement in the classroom. The technique of direct
instruction is to begin each class by telling the students exactly what will be happening. The
teacher outlines what he and the students will be doing this period. He may set time limits for
some tasks.
3. Monitoring
The key to this principle is to circulate. Get up and get around the room. While your students are
working, make the rounds. Check on their progress. An effective teacher will make a pass
through the whole room about two minutes after the students have started a written assignment.
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She checks that each student has started, that the children are on the correct page, and that
everyone has put their names on their papers.
4. Modeling
“Values are caught, not taught.” Teachers who are courteous, prompt, enthusiastic, in control,
patient and organized provide examples for their students through their own behavior.
5. Non-Verbal Cuing
Non-verbal cues can also be facial expressions, body posture and hand signals. Care should be
given in choosing the types of cues you use in your classroom. Take time to explain what you
want the students to do when you use your cues.
6. Environmental Control
A classroom can be a warm cheery place. Students enjoy an environment that changes
periodically. Study centers with pictures and color invite enthusiasm for your subject.
Young people like to know about you and your interests. Include personal items in your
classroom. A family picture or a few items from a hobby or collection on your desk will
trigger personal conversations with your students. As they get to know you better, you will
see fewer problems with discipline.
7. Low-Profile Intervention
Most students are sent to the principal’s office as a result of confrontational escalation. Much of
this can be avoided when the teacher’s intervention is quiet and calm. An effective teacher will
take care that the student is not rewarded for misbehavior by becoming the focus of attention.
She monitors the activity in her classroom, moving around the room. She anticipates problems
before they occur. Her approach to a misbehaving student is inconspicuous. Others in the class
are not distracted.
8. Assertive Discipline
This is traditional limit setting authoritarianism. The teacher is the boss and no child has the right
to interfere with the learning of any student. Clear rules are laid out and consistently enforced.
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9. Assertive Messages
The teacher who makes good use of this technique will focus the child’s attention first and
foremost on the behavior he wants, not on the misbehavior. “I want you to...” or “I need you
to...” or “I expect you to...”
First, include a description of the child’s behavior. “When you talk while I talk...” Second, relate
the effect this behavior has on the teacher. “...I have to stop my teaching...” And third, let the
student know the feeling that it generates in the teacher.
Refer to your rules as expectations. Let your students know this is how you expect them to
behave in your classroom. When you see good behavior, acknowledge it. This can be done
verbally, of course, but it doesn’t have to be. A nod, a smile or a “thumbs up” will reinforce the
behavior.
These guidelines can lead to successful classroom management and discipline. These can also
help you cut down on discipline problems and leave you with fewer interruptions and
disruptions.
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2) Fairness is Key
Students have a distinct sense of what is and what is not fair. You must act fairly for all students
if you expect to be respected. If you do not treat all students equitably, you will be labelled as
unfair students will not be keen to follow your rules. Make sure that if your best student does
something wrong, they too get punished for it.
8) Be Consistent
One of the worst things you can do as a teacher is to not enforce your rules consistently. If one
day you ignore misbehaviors and the next day you jump on someone for the smallest infraction,
your students will quickly lose respect for you. Your students have the right to expect you to
basically be the same everyday. Moodiness is not allowed. Once your lose your student's respect,
you also lose their attention and their desire to please you.
This tip does not mean that you discount all previous infractions. However, it does mean that you
should start teaching your class each day with the expectation that students will behave. Don't
assume that because Julie has disrupted your class everyday for a week, she will disrupt it today.
By doing this, you will not be treating Julie any differently and thereby setting her up to disrupt
again (like a self-fulfilling prophecy).
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ACTIVITIES FOR PARTICIPANTS
Activity
1 Participants will write down on their note books about the problems related to
their school discipline individually. And then those problems will be discussed during session.
Activity
2 Participants will look at the picture on next page. It shows a class of children
entering the room in a boisterous manner. It is a picture we have used with hundreds of
trainee, expe- rienced and supply teachers. Each was asked to comment o n the situation
with the following storyline:
It is time for the second half of the morning on your first day with this class. They come
running back into the room, pushing each other, squealing and laughing. What, if anything,
do you do?
Teacher D
I’d use humour, but with an edge to it. I’d say something like, ‘I’m surprised you’re so keen
to come into my maths lesson that you’ve got to shove everybody out of the way. Are you
trying to get the best seats?’ Then I’d appeal to their reason and tell them Ilove them so
much I don’t want them to get hurt.
1 How do they differ?
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2 What do you think might be the likely consequences of each response?
3 Which do you most agree and disagree with, and why?
It is interesting to contrast the strategies chosen by the four teachers. Teacher A is prepared for
boisterous behaviour from adolescents, so his firm manner, cross voice and assertion of
principle are part of his annual armoury with a new class. The use of a louder or rougher voice
for emphasis, direction or warning is often a significant feature in class management.
By contrast Teacher B opted for an approach which involved pupils in becoming responsible
for their own behaviour. They had to learn to handle discipline themselves, not just regard it as
something imposed on them by adults. This approach seeks to involve rather than merely
alienate and is based on the view that children are capable of reasoning. If it works it can be
very effective and long lasting, but this teacher is aware of the need to persist, or ‘bung it in’.
Teacher C, like Teacher A and most of the experienced teachers we inter- viewed, opted for
making the class repeat their entry immediately. However, there is a strong assertion of
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authority, territory and moral disdain, with phrases like, ‘disgraceful, disgraceful’, ‘never again
shall you’ and ‘my class’. She was a supply teacher, conscious of the need to make her presence
felt early, as she met several classes for short periods, hence the phrase, ‘I am your teacher
today’, though many experienced teachers who were not supply staff also used the first person
pronoun a great deal, with emphasis: ‘my lab’, ‘my class’, ‘You
go when I tell you to’.
Teacher D was a student teacher. Her approach illustrates a noticeable differ- ence between
students and experienced teachers. Students were more likely in interview to favour a ‘talk
quietly’ or ‘change lesson opening’ tactic, whereas experienced teachers usually demanded an
immediate re-entry. She seeks a solution in the use of humour, cajoling, rather than reprimanding,
a strategy which may work well for those who are confident and consistent, but less well if the
humour degenerates into lack of credibility in the eyes of the pupils.
Activity
Look at the picture above showing a pupil fiddling noisily with his geometry
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instruments. The teacher finds that he often does this at the beginning of a lesson. Make a list
below of how teachers with different beliefs, influences and practices, as might respond, and then
consider what you think would be the consequences of the action or inaction. If you are working
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with a group of teachers, compare your responses with those of other participants. Decide what
this tells you about your own preferences and your likely response to actual classroom
behaviour. A sample (but not a model!) response has been entered in the pro-forma overleaf.
It has often been found that teachers who took action to deal with misbehaviour early were less
likely to have problems than those who allowed it to escalate. If you do not normally take action
early, try nipping misbehaviour problems in the bud and then reflect on the outcome.
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