Developing your personal philosophy of classroom

management
John De Nobile
School of Education, Macquarie University
With adaptations by Roberto H Parada, School of Education, Western Sydney University

This resource consists of a series of linked activities chapter-by-chapter to the De Nobile et

al 2017 course text Positive learning environments: Creating and maintaining productive
classrooms. These activities enable you to progressively work on and develop your own
philosophy, plan and style of classroom management.

A classroom philosophy, simply put, is a statement of what you believe about how to best
manage a class and how you will go about achieving that vision. This resource will help you
build it bit by bit. Complete the activities linked to each chapter of the text and by the end
of chapter 10 you should be able to bring your work together to form your classroom
philosophy.

FINAL PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY FOR ASSESSMENT 2

Insert in the box below your final personal philosophy (max 1000 words).

Personal Teaching Philosophy:

As a teacher, I will influence the the academic, moral and ethical upbringing of my
students. When my students look back on memories of our interactions, I want to be a
teacher who:
- Always tried to be fair to students, and never displayed favouritism;
- Was very knowledgeable and skilled in their content;
- Had stories and life lessons to share, and made student life experiences relevant to
class;
- Was genuinely interested in students’ lives, who cared about their happiness and
mental health;
- Had clear rules and was respected as being consistent;
- And had a zero tolerance for bullying, or inconsiderate behaviour.
Students learn best in a positive learning environment. Communication is paramount in
creating this environment, as key in building relationships. Communication quality is a
determining factor of these relationships’ authenticity and will impact the quality of student
learning, student-teacher interactions, and the teacher’s ability to promote positive
behaviour expectations. Acknowledging this, I will ask new classes to write me letters
introducing themselves, their interests and preferred learning styles. Good communication
also suggests an awareness of non-verbal communication, and the negative effects
misinterpretations can cause, compared to the benefits micro-techniques yield. Good
communication starts with clear classroom expectations. In my classroom learning
communities, I expect students to:
- Bring all materials to class;
- Raise their hand when they want to speak;
- Respect each other’s voice and do not talk over one another;
- Actively listen to one another so they can contribute to class discussion;
- Allow others to participate equally in class discussions;
- Respect each other’s opinions and belongings;
- Always talk to the teacher if they are struggling with school work or assessment
deadlines.

A quick introductory activity for teaching the importance of this, would involve students
pairing up. Partner A turning and talking to Partner B about what they did during their
holiday – while Partner B avoids eye contact and turns away from them. Partner B then has
to recount Partner A’ story. Partner A’s experience demonstrates the importance of body
language in active listening, while Partner B’s experience demonstrates how little
information is received when listening is not active. This becomes a class-wide opportunity
to define active listening, and link this to expectations.

These expectations will be modelled by myself in my interactions with students and other
teachers and is informed by a ‘social and emotional learning’ (SEL) framework, defining
these expectations as essentially respecting and looking after the people around you
(CASEL, EDT & AIR, 2009) . The integration of SEL and its skills-based content within
curriculum, assessment and class tasks will support my classes as positive learning
environments, while challenging and supporting students’ growth as respectful, tolerant,
self and socially aware citizens. For this reason, I believe teaching is one of the most
powerful and noble professions in existence, due to its transformative capacity to model
effective problem solving, confrontation management and negotiations of difference to
students (Delanty, 2006; Rivzi, 2009; Snauwaert,2009) . This empowers students to
evaluate information, situations, underlying contextual factors, and their own
understandings with a critical and relational lens, thus empowering students to make
informed judgements on their own situatedness and the world’s political complexities.
Therefore, as a teacher I wish to equip my students with a critical reflexivity, in an
environment that supports and challenges them in their learning experiences.

The manifestation of these values as central to my positive learning environment will be

tested during the management of ill-structured problems, which are complex and student-
specific. Therefore, vital to my teaching philosophy is a dedication to pedagogical
reflexivity and adaptiveness. This involves an awareness of and regular reflection on lesson
success, contextual factors influencing the lives of my students and therefore my
classroom, my own personal beliefs which ultimately define class culture and climate,
elements of the pedagogical environment that impact student behaviour, potential unmet
student needs or lagging skills manifesting in behaviour, and how problem solutions are
monitored and adapted – the interplay of which is necessitated by social cognitive theory
and choice theory (DiNobile, Lyons & Arthur-Kelly, 2017a; DiNobile, Lyons & Arthur-
Kelly, 2017b). In each scenario, the way I respond to these events in real time and during
reflection will ultimately impact my partnership with the students – and our ability to
create and maintain a positive learning environment.

Influenced by these of theoretical frameworks, I will keep a teaching journal to map

successes, failures and challenges in my classroom. This will be specifically useful for
behavioural management when a new strategy is being trialled, for instance shortened task
duration, helping me measure shifts in pedagogical and student variables influencing this
behaviour. Actively participating in a professional group within my school, to be able to
discuss and brainstorm challenges we are experiencing in a professional environment –
could perhaps facilitate collegial observation and feedback as forms of professional
reflexivity.
At the planning and pedagogy level, I believe students best learn through varied levels of
engagement, ranging from individual reflection, short group work (Think/Pair/Share and
‘You speak – I listen’ activities), sustained collaborative learning, and teacher-directed
cooperative learning (joint construction activities), with tasks varying in duration. These
will range from introductory tasks for conceptual understanding, investigation tasks for
experimentation with analysis of ideas, or core tasks that involve evaluation and reflection
on information. Knowing my students’ interests, and how they learn will allow planning
for tasks to engage student interests and real-world events as frequently as possible, with
feedback, debate and writing opportunities to maintain and express interest. The efficacy of
this collaborative, student centred, social learning environment will be dependent on and
maintained by the implementation of multiple ‘assessment for learning’ tasks to maintain
my awareness of needs for difficultly differentiation, clearness and timing – so that
students will constantly be creating. This will be in an attempt to maximise student
performance in ‘assessment of learning’ tasks.

Sustaining this positive working environment using a teaching model less focussed on
teacher-direction and more focussed on a lead teacher model requires regular maintenance
of clear classroom expectations and relationships. Supporting scaffolding of group roles,
micro-techniques to maintain on task-behaviour in students, which include proximity,
inclusion, secret signals and calling on adjacent students, and actively being alert to
desirable behaviours – specifically those who may not have been displaying desirable
behaviour earlier in the lesson, can allow for teachers to ‘chain’ simple positive behaviour
to tasks and maintain student self-regulated work.

These strategies and academic understandings, in addition to continually taking

professional learning opportunities to extend and challenge my professional identity and
personal philosophy, are supported as a genuine way of manifesting success in my
classroom.

Acknowledgements:
My views on education as transformative, with moral and ethical consequences on student
development as tolerant active citizens; and the value of reflexivity…Influenced by a
Cosmopolitan Learning Approach (Education in a Cosmopolitan Society 101661) in;

Delanty, G. (2006). The cosmopolitan imagination: Critical cosmopolitanism and social

theory. The British Journal of Sociology, 57(1), 25-47.
Rizvi, F. (2009). Towards cosmopolitan learning. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural
Politics of Education, 30(3), 253-268.
Snauwaert, D. (2009). The ethics and ontology of cosmopolitanism: Education for a shared
humanity. Current Issues in Comparative Education, 12(1), 14-22.

My views on ‘social cognitive theory’, ‘choice theory’ and the lead teacher model… In;

De Nobile, J., Lyons, G., & Arthur-Kelly, M., (2017). Positive learning environments:
Creating and maintaining productive classrooms (pp. 185-212). South Melbourne,
Australia: Cengage.

De Nobile, J., Lyons, G., & Arthur-Kelly, M., (2017). Positive learning environments:
Creating and maintaining productive classrooms (pp. 213-254). South Melbourne,
Australia: Cengage.

My views on social emotional learning, originates from lecture content found…In;

Casel, Education Development Centre, American Institute for Research. (2009). Social and
emotional learning and bullying prevention. Collaborative for Academic, Social
and Emotional Learning. Retrieved from https://casel.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/01/3_SEL_and_Bullying_Prevention_2009.pdf
(Week 1) Pedagogy for Positive Learning Environments: A problem based
approach
Reflection of the week’s Lecture, tutorials and readings.
The following activities are designed to get you thinking about your own model of teaching
and classroom management.

1.1 What is a ‘good teacher’? Think about the teachers from your days in primary and
secondary schooling. What qualities did they have that made them ‘good’? Make a list
in the box below.

If I could take all of the best qualities from my high school teachers, they would be:
- Always tried to be fair to students, tried not to display favouritism
- Were very knowledgeable and skilled in their content
- Were open to sharing their life stories and lessons they had learned
- Genuinely cared and tried to make sure students were not too stressed
- Yet there was a clear line – they were still strict and were not our friends.
- Had a zero tolerance for bullying or inconsiderate behaviour.

1.2 Using the what you have learnt about ill structured vs structured problems in relation to
classroom behavior, what do you think are the key considerations when a teacher is
planning their strategy for classroom management? list them below.

Planning for ill-structured problems needs to be an adaptive and design-based process,

not a pre-defined system process. Therefore, the context in which problems emerge to
determine what the nature of the problem is must examined, to inform a plan which may
include:
Step 1: Articulating problem space and contextual restraints
Step 2: Identify and clarify alternative opinions, positions and perspectives
Step 3: Generate possible problem solutions
Step 4: Assess the viability of alternative solutions by constructing arguments and
articulating personal beliefs
Step 5: Monitor the problem space and solution options
Step 6: Implement and monitor solutions
Step 7: Adapt solutions.

1.3 With your responses to the last two activities as a source of ideas, complete the
sentence in the box below.

I believe a positive learning environment is about …

Positive learning environments, to paraphrase Tricia – rely on relationship building with
student that allows the teacher to make real and relevant judgements and contributions
to their class environment.
(Week 2) Review of classroom management theories
This week you have been introduced to some theories of behaviour/classroom
management. Your readings (Ch 8 & 9 of the text and De Jong in tutorials) introduced you to
different views on why young people misbehave and particularly what to do about it. Some
of these might have caused you to react in some way, either negatively or positively. Of the
ones you developed a positive feeling about, was there a particular theory that stood out?
Was there a theory or approach that you felt might fit your view of how children should be
treated and how teaching happens? Think about this before responding to the activities.

2.1 In the box below, list the theories that you think are ‘not for you’ under the heading
‘Not me’, and the theories that you think are more favourable under the heading ‘More
like me’.

Not me More like me

Assertive framework Social cognitive theory

I see elements of truth in the:

- Psychoeducational Model
- Choice theory (especially at whole
school level)
- Cognitive behavioural theory

2.2 Now take a closer look at the theories you placed in the ‘More like me’ column. Read
the suggested readings provided in this chapter and the online companion. Get to know
the theories more intimately. Use this new knowledge, specifically the key philosophies
behind the theories (or theory), to develop your own statement of belief about the sort
of places classrooms should be. Complete the following sentence and perhaps add
another to accompany it.

I believe classrooms should be places where … teachers are in a powerful social position
to model to student’s effective problem solving, disagreement management and
negotiating difference, while empowering students to consider underlying contextual
factors in these interactions – all modelled in the way teachers deal with misbehaving
students.
(Week 3) Relationships, communication & professional reflexivity
Effective communication is a key component of effective classroom management, and
quality teaching depends on it. The lecture, tutorial readings as well as Ch 2 & 3 of the
textbook describe some very useful skills for dealing with inappropriate student behaviour
in a non-confrontational and positive way. Being aware of non-verbal cues will lead a
teacher to be more sensitive to how their messages are being received as well as how to
send messages and provide feedback more effectively. Active listening allows teachers and
students to interact with minimal interference from underlying emotional factors. I-
messages provide the teacher with a tool to convey to students how their behaviour is
affecting the class in a non-submissive, informative and positive manner.

Teaching philosophies often describe the way a teacher will interact with their students and
this, in turn, provides a window into the classroom climate that a teacher is trying to
establish. The following activities should help you to identify your preferred way of
communicating with the class generally as well as in dealing with inappropriate behaviour.
After completing them you should have a better idea of how your classroom philosophy will
describe your communication style in the classroom.

3.1 Using your readings of the chapters, in particular the Relationships and communication,
Interference, Communication process and Non-verbal communication sections,
complete the sentence in the box below. You might need to add a second or even a
third sentence.

I believe that good communication between teacher and student is vital to a positive
classroom climate because …communication is the key facilitator of building relationships.
The quality of communication is a determining factor of the quality of these relationships
and will impact the interactions between students and teachers, and the teachers’ ability
to promote positive behaviour expectations. Good communication also suggests an
awareness of non-verbal communication, and how this can easily be misinterpreted and
create confrontation, or used to manage good behaviour, such as the active use of
proximity.

This week you also looked at how personal beliefs can help or hinder in your relationships
and communication with students.

3.2 Briefly outline your understanding of how beliefs can help or hinder your ability to
create positive learning environments:

Teacher personal beliefs affect the way we create Positive Learning Environments by …
Ultimately defining the experience of classroom culture. Beliefs regarding the teacher’s
role, educational values, classroom rules and rituals, operational routines and procedures
such as understandings of behavioural expectations and appropriate consequences, WILL
define class culture and may differ to students. Ultimately, how teachers choose to
 negotiate these differences will impact their ability to create positive learning
environments.

Your teaching philosophy should describe how and for what purpose you might engage in a
cycle of professional reflexivity, be it through critical analysis using various perspectives or
an action research model, or both.

3.3 Why should teachers engage in professional reflexivity?. Once you have given this some
thought and done some further reading, complete the following sentence.

I believe professional reflexivity is important to my teaching because … it is a teacher’s

professional responsibility to provide and receive feedback to/from students and
colleagues, and in doing so develop reflexivity in both student and teacher’s practice
(Klenowski, 2014; McLean, 2018). This is essesntial in maintaining a positive and productive
learning environment, as constant reflection is needed to consider all of the contextual variables
at play, to measure the effectiveness of behavioural management strategies, and compare
student situations to past experience. A key belief of my personal philosophy is that as teachers
we need to offer and train students in such critical reflexivity. This is so they are able to evaluate
information, situations, and indeed their own understandings somewhat objectively and
accurately for bias and contextual factors clouding their judgement. Reflexivity is therefore key to
education’s role as a transformative process (Delanty, 2006; Rizvi, 2009).

3.4 Having thought up a justification for it, how will you go about engaging in reflection
about your practice in your teaching career? Once you have thought this out, think of
some practical and achievable ways you can engage in professional reflexivity and
complete the next sentence.

As a consequence of this belief, I will …keep a teaching journal to map successes, failures
and challenges I am having in my classroom – this will be specifically useful for
behavioural management when I am trying a new strategy and will help me consider the
pedagogical elements influencing this behaviour, for example task duration. I would also
be interested joining or creating a professional group within my school, where we are
able to discuss and brainstorm challenges we are having in a professional environment –
which could perhaps facilitate collegial observation and feedback.
(Week 4) Classroom organisation and curriculum, assessment and pedagogy
Classroom management is not just about managing behaviour. At the heart of teaching and
learning are the curriculum taught, the pedagogy used and the assessment designed to
measure how well that curriculum was taught and how well the pedagogy worked. This
chapter takes you through these three areas one at a time.

The next part of your teaching philosophy will be about how you will deliver curriculum and
assess student achievement/growth. After reading this chapter, please reflect on the
following:
 What will you take into consideration when planning your teaching program?
 How will you know what to teach and where to start?
 What are the many ways in which your students could demonstrate achievement other
than tests and quizzes?
 What teaching approaches will you use and what philosophical views will your
pedagogies reflect?

4.1 Using the PIR Cycle (see Ch 5 p118) as a stimulus, explain how you will go about
planning your teaching program in the box below.

Planning will firstly be influenced by the school’s scope and sequence, and the syllabus
itself. Once the focuses have been ascertained however, my planning will be largely
influenced by the learning styles, experiences and interests of my class. Planning will
involve the implementation of multiple ‘assessment for learning’ tasks to maintain my
awareness of needs for difficultly differentiation, clearness and timing – so that students
will constantly be creating. This will be in an attempt to maximise student performance in
‘assessment of learning’ tasks.

4.2 Pedagogy refers to how you will teach the curriculum. Usually, the type of pedagogy
you implement is influenced by a basic belief about how students best learn. After
considering your pedagogical approach and strategies, complete the sentences below.

I believe that students best learn through …varied levels of engagement, ranging from
individual reflection, short group work (Think/Pair/Share) more sustained group work,
with all tasks varying in duration and mode. This quality social environment is dependent
on regular student reflection and a positive learning environment. Additionally, students
learn best when class is relevant to their lives, and they are able to use ‘hands on
learning’.

Therefore I will use …

Multiple group work methods, including think/pair/shares, jigsaws, You speak– I listen or
teacher facilitated cooperative learning; with group roles elected and clear classroom
expectations delivered to maintain behaviour expectations. These will range from being
introductory tasks for conceptual understanding, investigation tasks for experimentation
 with and analysis of ideas, or core tasks that involve evaluation and reflection on
information.
Tasks that will engage with student interests, and real-world events and feedback/debate
opportunities to maintain interest.

As explained in Chs 3 & 4, there are several dimensions to classroom organisation. Each of
these put together become the manifestation of your classroom culture. Your classroom
culture is, simply put, the way your class operates and incorporates:
 rules and procedures
 organisation of the physical space.

It is now time to think about how your teaching philosophy will describe these two aspects
and explain them in terms of an overarching set of beliefs or approaches. After reading
these chapters, complete the next two activities.

4.3 What values do you hold as important to establishing an orderly, productive and
positive classroom? Answer this question below, then list the key rules/expectations
you think flow naturally from those values and which you want to stress in your class.
Complete the section by explaining how rules and consequences will be established in
your classroom.

The values I hold when teaching my junior taekwondo classes, are the values I was taught
by my taekwondo instructors and school teachers. This can basically be summed up as ‘Be
respectful of the people around you and look after them’. It’s important that students
listen to each other, respect each other’s opinions and contribute to class learning and
discussions.
Expectations:
Raise your hand when you want to speak – the teacher will never talk over students,
students must respect each others voice.
Allow others to have the chance to speak in class discussions.
Contribute to group discussions
Look after the people around you – respect other people’s opinions and belongings.
I like the method Tricia was explaining in our tutorial, rules and consequences can be
established as an agreement with students. As the teacher you come with a desired
consequence but build it collaboratively with students.
(Week 5 ) Principles of behaviour modification
This week we looked at fundamental aspects of behaviourism and learning (see Ch 6 & 7 of
your text) But also Ziporli from your references in the Learning Guide and Killu your tutorial
reading which provide examples of the application of such theory and research to classroom
management and behaviour change. Important concepts such as reinforcement, functional
purpose of behaviour and behaviour shaping are discussed

5.1 After reading Ziporli and Killu and reflecting on the lecture content what would you add
about aspects of your classroom management that have not been mentioned so far in
your philosophy? Add these in the box below in rough draft form. You can refine them
later.

Actively being alert to pro-social desirable behaviours – being able to award attention for
positive behaviour, and actively searching for opportunities to do so at a higher ratio than
that of negative or corrective feedback. This is especially relevant to students who may
have not been displaying desirable behaviour earlier in the lesson, which can allow for a
teacher to ‘chain’ such a simple positive behaviour to a task, thus creating a reinforced
desired working behaviour response within that student.

This is related to using microtechniques to maintain on task-behaviour in students, such

as proximity, inclusion, secret signals, private choice and calling on the adjacent student.
(Week 6) Applying behaviour modification in schools PBIS
Positive Behaviour Intervention and Support also known as Positive Behaviour Support (see
Text Ch 6 p168) has become an accepted and often implemented part of schooling in NSW.
A key aspect of PBIS is to teach students behavioural expectations.

6.1 Previously (see week 4) you reflected on what your classroom could be like. In the
section below pick 1 expectation (e.g., respect self and others) and list how you will
teach what this expectation looks like, is exemplified by and demonstrated in your
classroom. Give as many examples as you can.

Raise your hand when you want to speak and do not talk over other students – the
teacher will never talk over students, students must respect each others voice.

This expectation as a class culture ethos would fall into a PBS primary-tier intervention,
because it applies to the whole class.
This expectation would be demonstrated to students in the classroom by my own
interactions as a teacher with the class. In my lesson planning, made possible by my KLA’s,
group interaction has been a backbone of my lesson plans. The groups involve pairs that
are stationary or quickly moving in ‘You speak – I listen’ activities, or groups of 3-4 in
jigsaw activities or discussions, or cooperative learning between teacher and student
groups to come to analytical understandings through multiple points of view. I will make
it clear, verbally when I meet my class for the first time, before group work sessions, and
in my practice – that I will never talk over students because I respect what they have to
say, and that it is my expectation they will do the same.

A quick introductory activity for teaching the importance of this, would involve:
Students pairing up, with Partner A turning and talking to Partner B about what they did
during their holiday/weekend – while Partner B avoids eye contact, turns away from
them, talks to themselves. Partner B then has to try recount what Partner A was saying.
Partner A’s experience demonstrates how unnerving it is talking to someone who isn’t
listening and the importance of body language in active listening, while Partner B’s
experience demonstrates how little information is received when listening is not active. I
would then bring the class back together, and establish the difference between listening
and active listening, and link this to why hands must be raised, and why we must not talk
over one another.

Depending on the class, a light hearted follow up activity may be to display ABC Q and A
on the screen so students can see how undignified and useless not respecting each
other’s voice is, as displayed by panel members!

Perhaps this expectation should be divided into three:

In our learning community we:
Raise our hand when we want to speak
Respect each other’s voice and do not talk over one another.
Actively listen to one another so we can contribute.
(Week 7) Social Emotional Learning in Schools SEL
Readings: Cohen, J. (2006) & Zins, et al (2007).
Social and Emotional Learning brings your attention to focus efforts on promoting students’
social and emotional competencies. Many leaders in the field underscore the importance of
skills-based teaching and learning to properly address this important facet of teaching the
whole child.
7.1 After reading Cohen and Zin and reflecting on the lecture content what would you add
about aspects of your classroom management that have not been mentioned so far in
your philosophy? Add these in the box below in rough draft form. You can refine them
later.

I think the SEL and its skills-based content is an umbrella term that informs the bulk of my
person teaching philosophy – which basically is focussed on making students respectful,
tolerant, self and socially aware active citizens. While I have recognised this, I haven’t
considered yet how I might actually incorporate these values in the management of my
class – how I might teach or connect these components to curriculum or tasks. Organising
and utilising school-community partnerships, perhaps within assessment that involves
seniors interacting and building relationships with lower high-school years or even years
7-12 interacting with primary, is potentially a useful way of practicing and developing
socio-emotional skills. My own learning as a teacher should be a focal point of my
practice, and I should take as many professional learning opportunities related to this
interest of mine as possible.

On a side note, the B.E. P.R.O.A.C.T.I.V.E. strategy is useful concept for positive classroom
that covers and develops further my realisation that acknowledging positive and desirable
behaviour is an effective and authentic strategy in itself, and a genuine way of
manifesting success in my classroom.
(Weeks 8 & 9) Drafting your personal reflection/philosophy
In the space below cut and paste each of the sections you have completed above and create
a (very) draft version of your personal philosophy

My personal reflection/teaching philosophy (Draft 1)

If I could take all of the best qualities from my high school teachers, they would be:
- Always tried to be fair to students, tried not to display favouritism
- Were very knowledgeable and skilled in their content
- Were open to sharing their life stories and lessons they had learned
- Genuinely cared and tried to make sure students were not too stressed
- Yet there was a clear line – they were still strict and were not our friends.
- Had a zero tolerance for bullying or inconsiderate behaviour.

I believe a positive learning environment is about …

Positive learning environments, to paraphrase Tricia – rely on relationship building with
student that allows the teacher to make real and relevant judgements and contributions
to their class environment.

Planning for ill-structured problems needs to be an adaptive and design-based process,

not a pre-defined system process. Therefore, the context in which problems emerge to
determine what the nature of the problem is must examined, to inform a plan which may
include:
Step 1: Articulating problem space and contextual restraints
Step 2: Identify and clarify alternative opinions, positions and perspectives
Step 3: Generate possible problem solutions
Step 4: Assess the viability of alternative solutions by constructing arguments and
articulating personal beliefs
Step 5: Monitor the problem space and solution options
Step 6: Implement and monitor solutions
Step 7: Adapt solutions.

I believe classrooms should be places where … teachers are in a powerful social position
to model to students effective problem solving, disagreement management and
negotiating difference, while empowering student’s to consider underlying contextual
factors in these interactions – all modelled in the way teachers deal with misbehaving
students.

I believe that good communication between teacher and student is vital to a positive
classroom climate because …communication is the key facilitator of building relationships.
The quality of communication is a determining factor of the quality of these relationships
and will impact the interactions between students and teachers, and the teachers’ ability
to promote positive behaviour expectations. Good communication also suggests an
awareness of non-verbal communication, and how this can easily be misinterpreted and
create confrontation, or used to manage good behaviour, such as the active use of
proximity.
Teacher personal beliefs affect the way we create Positive Learning Environments by …
Ultimately defining the experience of classroom culture. Beliefs regarding the teacher’s
role, educational values, classroom rules and rituals, operational routines and procedures
such as understandings of behavioural expectations and appropriate consequences, WILL
define class culture and may differ to students. Ultimately, how teachers choose to
negotiate these differences will impact their ability to create positive learning
environments.

I believe professional reflexivity is important to my teaching because … it is a teacher’s

professional responsibility to provide and receive feedback to/from students and
colleagues, and in doing so develop reflexivity in both student and teacher’s practice
(Klenowski, 2014; McLean, 2018). This is essesntial in maintaining a positive and productive
learning environment, as constant reflection is needed to consider all of the contextual variables
at play, to measure the effectiveness of behavioural management strategies, and compare
student situations to past experience. A key belief of my personal philosophy is that as teachers
we need to offer and train students in such critical reflexivity. This is so they are able to evaluate
information, situations, and indeed their own understandings somewhat objectively and
accurately for bias and contextual factors clouding their judgement. Reflexivity is therefore key to
education’s role as a transformative process (Delanty, 2006; Rizvi, 2009).

As a consequence of this belief, I will …keep a teaching journal to map successes, failures
and challenges I am having in my classroom – this will be specifically useful for
behavioural management when I am trying a new strategy and will help me consider the
pedagogical elements influencing this behaviour, for example task duration. I would also
be interested joining or creating a professional group within my school, where we are
able to discuss and brainstorm challenges we are having in a professional environment –
which could perhaps facilitate collegial observation and feedback.

Planning will firstly be influenced by the school’s scope and sequence, and the syllabus
itself. Once the focuses have been ascertained however, my planning will be largely
influenced by the learning styles, experiences and interests of my class. Planning will
involve the implementation of multiple ‘assessment for learning’ tasks to maintain my
awareness of needs for difficultly differentiation, clearness and timing – so that students
will constantly be creating. This will be in an attempt to maximise student performance in
‘assessment of learning’ tasks.

I believe that students best learn through …varied levels of engagement, ranging from
individual reflection, short group work (Think/Pair/Share) more sustained group work,
with all tasks varying in duration and mode. This quality social environment is dependent
on regular student reflection and a positive learning environment. Additionally, students
learn best when class is relevant to their lives, and they are able to use ‘hands on
learning’.

Therefore I will use …

Multiple group work methods, including think/pair/shares, jigsaws, You speak– I listen or
teacher facilitated cooperative learning; with group roles elected and clear classroom
expectations delivered to maintain behaviour expectations. These will range from being
introductory tasks for conceptual understanding, investigation tasks for experimentation
with and analysis of ideas, or core tasks that involve evaluation and reflection on
information.
Tasks that will engage with student interests, and real-world events and feedback/debate
opportunities to maintain interest.

The values I hold when teaching my junior taekwondo classes, are the values I was taught
by my taekwondo instructors and school teachers. This can basically be summed up as ‘Be
respectful of the people around you and look after them’. It’s important that students
listen to each other, respect each other’s opinions and contribute to class learning and
discussions.
Expectations:
Raise your hand when you want to speak – the teacher will never talk over students,
students must respect each others voice.
Allow others to have the chance to speak in class discussions.
Contribute to group discussions
Look after the people around you – respect other people’s opinions and belongings.
I like the method Tricia was explaining in our tutorial, rules and consequences can be
established as an agreement with students. As the teacher you come with a desired
consequence but build it collaboratively with students

Actively being alert to pro-social desirable behaviours – being able to award attention for
positive behaviour, and actively searching for opportunities to do so at a higher ratio than
that of negative or corrective feedback. This is especially relevant to students who may
have not been displaying desirable behaviour earlier in the lesson, which can allow for a
teacher to ‘chain’ such a simple positive behaviour to a task, thus creating a reinforced
desired working behaviour response within that student.

This is related to using microtechniques to maintain on task-behaviour in students, such

as proximity, inclusion, secret signals, private choice and calling on the adjacent student.

Raise your hand when you want to speak and do not talk over other students – the
teacher will never talk over students, students must respect each others voice.

This expectation as a class culture ethos would fall into a PBS primary-tier intervention,
because it applies to the whole class.
This expectation would be demonstrated to students in the classroom by my own
interactions as a teacher with the class. In my lesson planning, made possible by my KLA’s,
group interaction has been a backbone of my lesson plans. The groups involve pairs that
are stationary or quickly moving in ‘You speak – I listen’ activities, or groups of 3-4 in
jigsaw activities or discussions, or cooperative learning between teacher and student
groups to come to analytical understandings through multiple points of view. I will make
it clear, verbally when I meet my class for the first time, before group work sessions, and
in my practice – that I will never talk over students because I respect what they have to
say, and that it is my expectation they will do the same.

A quick introductory activity for teaching the importance of this, would involve:
 Students pairing up, with Partner A turning and talking to Partner B about what they did
during their holiday/weekend – while Partner B avoids eye contact, turns away from
them, talks to themselves. Partner B then has to try recount what Partner A was saying.
Partner A’s experience demonstrates how unnerving it is talking to someone who isn’t
listening and the importance of body language in active listening, while Partner B’s
experience demonstrates how little information is received when listening is not active. I
would then bring the class back together, and establish the difference between listening
and active listening, and link this to why hands must be raised, and why we must not talk
over one another.

Depending on the class, a light hearted follow up activity may be to display ABC Q and A
on the screen so students can see how undignified and useless not respecting each
other’s voice is, as displayed by panel members!

Perhaps this expectation should be divided into three:

In our learning community we:
Raise our hand when we want to speak
Respect each other’s voice and do not talk over one another.
Actively listen to one another so we can contribute.

I think the SEL and its skills-based content is an umbrella term that informs the bulk of my
person teaching philosophy – which basically is focussed on making students respectful,
tolerant, self and socially aware active citizens. While I have recognised this, I haven’t
considered yet how I might actually incorporate these values in the management of my
class – how I might teach or connect these components to curriculum or tasks. Organising
and utilising school-community partnerships, perhaps within assessment that involves
seniors interacting and building relationships with lower high-school years or even years
7-12 interacting with primary, is potentially a useful way of practicing and developing
socio-emotional skills. My own learning as a teacher should be a focal point of my
practice, and I should take as many professional learning opportunities related to this
interest of mine as possible.

On a side note, the B.E. P.R.O.A.C.T.I.V.E. strategy is useful concept for positive classroom
that covers and develops further my realisation that acknowledging positive and desirable
behaviour is an effective and authentic strategy in itself, and a genuine way of
manifesting success in my classroom.

Ready to roll …
Now, read it to yourself, and start editing to a maximum of 1000 words, it’s time to prepare
your final submission. Look at the Unit Learning Guide rubric and instructions and now write
your own personal reflection and philosophy You have to reflect on what you have learnt
and what you are still to learn. This reflection is an opportunity to provide your own
behaviour management philosophy/model.
Your personal model can be based on your personal experience and any of the theories and
research explored in PPLE or other Units which form part of your course. You need to
appropriately identify and credit these theories which influenced your thinking in relation to
the development of your personal approach within your text. You must provide at the end
(not counted to word limit) an ‘acknowledgement’ section where you may list the
theories/policies/ people that may have influence your model to date.

Into the future!

However, please be aware that your philosophy may well change as you gain experience in
teaching and are exposed to other ideas from your ongoing professional development, your
interactions with peers and other sources of inspiration. It will be an interesting task for you
to go back to this philosophy you have just completed in 10 years’ time and compare it to
the one you have then. Will it have changed much? How have your approaches evolved?
What kind of teacher have you become?

NOW WRITE YOUR FINAL DRAFT OF YOUR PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY (1000

words Max) IN THE SPACE PROVIDED AT THE START OF THIS DOCUMENT!