Statement of Educational Philosophy and Classroom Management

Robert Bollard
To begin with I find the term classroom management problematic. My first
instinct would be simply to say that I am not interested in managing students; I
would rather teach them. I am aware as well, of course, that coming from a
background of teaching adults at university, where attendance by students
wasnt compulsory, and then having experienced a generally well-behaved and
well-taught Year Seven class on my placement, it is easy to dismiss discipline
problems. What would I do if confronted with rowdy and disruptive students?
However limiting my experience of teaching adults may be, it nevertheless
provides an interesting perspective from which to view the way we treat nonadult students. I am effectively viewing classrooms (in the case of my placement,
classrooms of twelve year olds) as an outsider, and an outsiders perspective can
sometimes illuminate aspects that are unnoticed by insiders. I have, for example,
found confronting the extent to which teachers wish to control the behaviour of
students in class. An extreme example of this is the following quote from an
American manual on classroom behaviour: I have tried to discipline students for
looking out the window, not being on the correct page, sitting with one leg folded
under and doing maths problem with a pen. 1
If an adult student in a university tutorial looked out a window when I was
talking, the automatic response would be for me to realise that I was clearly
boring them and that I should stop talking. I doubt whether it would even enter
the mind of a university tutor to demand their attention, let alone to consider
disciplining them.
While this is an extreme version of imposing discipline, I have been confronted
with differences in approach on my placement. The clearest example was when I
was delivering a history lesson to a class other than my mentors. The teacher of
this class was young and enthusiastic and clearly had a good relationship with
her students. The class went really well and the best part was when I asked the
students (the subject was the Terracotta Warriors in China) what they would like
to have buried with them if they were an Emperor. Hands went up all over the
room and once the students began answering they were so enthusiastic
(especially after one student suggested she would like One Direction) that they
began talking over one and other. In such a situation, its obviously necessary at
times to ask some of the more assertive and noisy students to be quiet and let
others have a say. I did this and was shocked when the teacher intervened to
give the whole class a stern lecture about how they were disrespecting me by
their behaviour. I was frankly bemused by her anger. I was enjoying their
enthusiasm and thought the class was a great success.

1 Howard Seeman, Classroom management training handbook: cues to

preventing discipline problems, K-12, Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield,
2014

There was an echo of this in the assessment by my mentor of another class

which involved a similar successful brainstorm. The assessment was that the
class was a success but a bit rowdy at times.
The point about the difference between how we treat adult students and
teenagers is particularly relevant when considering the theoretical question of
why adolescent behaviour is problematic in the first place. There is a debate
between those who argue that the problem is neurological the peculiar wiring
of adolescent brains and those who reject this argument. A convincing critique
of the neurological approach by Robert Epstein points out that through most of
human history (and still today outside the First World) the years of adolescence
have been years in which young people have entered the adult world have
learned to be adults alongside their elders. He argues that by infantilising
adolescents we create behavioural problems, of which disruptive classroom
behaviour is probably one of the more benign examples:
Today, with teens trapped in the frivolous world of peer culture, they learn
virtually everything they know from one another rather than from the
people they are about to become. Isolated from adults and wrongly
treated like children, it is no wonder that some teens behave, by adult
standards, recklessly or irresponsibly. Almost without exception, the
reckless and irresponsible behavior we see is the teens way of declaring
his or her adulthood or, through pregnancy or the commission of serious
crime, of instantly becoming an adult under the law. Fortunately, we also
know from extensive research both in the U.S. and elsewhere that when
we treat teens like adults, they almost immediately rise to the challenge. 2
What then does this theoretical understanding mean in practice? The starting
point would be to say that there is no reason to approach students at the
secondary level any differently to students at university. The first rule is that a
student who is engaged in a lesson is unlikely to be disruptive. My experience of
teaching history at all levels is that it is the easiest of topics to make engaging
as at a fundamental level it is the telling of stories about the past.
One particularly successful example involved a class I delivered to help the Year
Seven Class in my placement choose research topics for a project on the Ancient
World. I drew three headings on the whiteboard and asked the class to
brainstorm everything they knew about ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. Where
appropriate I added juicy details, prompted them where possible. Almost all the
students, to their surprise I suspect, were able to offer a topic or a detail and
they were extremely engaged. By the end of the lesson they had all chosen their
research topics and all were wortking diligently on them in subsequent lessons
devoted to creating their project (a website on the topic of their choice).
Of course, we dont live in an ideal world and even the best teacher will be
confronted with students who are hostile and disengaged due to their
experiences outside the classroom. How would I dela with such a situation?
2 Robert Epstein, The Myth of the Teen Brain, Scientific American, June 1, 2007.

The second rule is to identify what forms of behaviour should be discouraged.

The most important criterion is whether their behaviour interferes with the ability
of other students to learn, rather than their lack of respect for the teachers
authority. This then informs the way in which the message about their behaviour
is delivered. It should be delivered, not as a pronouncement of authority, but as
an argument about why they should behave differently. It also should be
delivered, as much as possible, in a calm and subdued manner, and, if possible,
not in front of an audience.
I have heard the phrase praise in public, criticise in private and agree with it as
it has in common the approach I learned to dealing with unruly clients in the
Commonwealth Employment Service. We were taught not to deal with angry
clients at the counter as they generally calmed down if taken away from a public
space. Confrontations with students in front of a class, even if the students dont
feel humiliated, make it harder for students to accept a teachers argument or
advice.
The general rule is that, if you treat students like little children to be controlled,
they will behave like little children. If you are lucky they will be good and quiet,
like good children, but they are just as likely to misbehave. Adolescents are
learning to be adults; they need to be given a chance to behave as such. More
importantly, the points made in diverse ways by thinkers such as Dewey and
Freire, about the need to create citizens (empowered and even rebellious citizens
in Freires case) underline the significance of this approach. 3 It is not simply that
a docile class of students cowed by an authoritarian teacher is less likely to be
engaged and hence to learn though this is the case. It is that they will be
taught to obey unthinkingly. Thats not as lesson I want to teach.

Bibliography
Baldacchino, John Dewey : liberty and the pedagogy of disposition, Dordrecht :
Springer, 2014.
Epstein, Robert, The Myth of the Teen Brain, Scientific American, June 1, 2007.
Freire, Paolo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York: Continuum, 2000.
Seeman, Howard, Classroom management training handbook: cues to
preventing discipline problems, K-12, Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield,
2014.

3 John Baldacchino, John Dewey : liberty and the pedagogy of disposition, Dordrecht :
Springer, 2014; Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York: Continuum, 2000.