Approaches to Behavior and Classroom Management

Integrating Discipline and Care

W. George Scarlett, Iris Chin Ponte, Jay P. Singh

"This book moves caring from being an object of study to being a professional practice. Thinking of classroom management in terms of relationships, learning, development, organization and accommodating diversity redefines discipline. No longer is it about rules and punishments-now it is about connections and meaning making. This is a book that a teacher can really do something with!"
—Professor George Noblit, University of North Carolina
 

Helping teachers use of a variety of approaches to create positive classroom environments and make good decisions about student behavior

Approaches to Behavior and Classroom Management: Integrating Discipline and Care focuses on helping teachers use a variety of behavior and classroom management approaches in order to make good decisions when faced with the challenge of creating positive classroom communities. This text provides educators with the frameworks necessary for understanding different approaches to behavior and classroom management, a deep understanding of each approach, and a toolkit of methods to meet the needs of various situations.

Key Features

• Organizes the literature, issues, and main theorists by approach to behavior and classroom management, providing context for the methods that are used within each approach
• Provides real-life teaching examples that demonstrate how to put approaches into practice
• Includes engaging human interest stories and cartoons to give meaning to concepts and points
  

Accompanied by High-Quality Ancillaries!

Instructor Resources on CD include a comprehensive test bank and PowerPoint slides for each chapter, video clips that correlate with important chapter concepts, and much more! Qualified instructors can request a copy of the Instructor Resources on CD by contacting SAGE Customer Care at 800-818-7243 (SAGE) from 6 am–5 pm, PT.

A Student Resource CD, bound into the back of the book, features video clips that correlate with important concepts in each chapter. They are accompanied by pre- and postvideo questions designed to facilitate classroom discussion.

A Student study site provides practice tests and flashcards to aid studying, as well as additional readings and resources for students to access.

PART I

Introduction

Most discussions of behavior and classroom management explain by focusing on methods, and when the word approaches is used, it usually refers to leaders in the field (e.g., the Canters’ approach, Glasser’s approach, Gathercoal’s approach). As a result, readers get the impression that approaches are the same as groups of methods and that history is irrelevant. More important, the impression is that one can easily construct a super, all-encompassing approach simply by taking the best from what various leaders have to offer, like a good chef sampling from a spice rack.

This introductory section explains behavior and classroom management quite differently. Chapter 1 explains the book’s main distinction between approaches and methods and shows why this distinction is so important and why almost any approach in its developed form can serve better than a superficial sampling of methods associated with different approaches. Furthermore, the chapter shows how the field is best organized in terms of a manageable set of core concepts, rather than in terms of a list of leaders. In short, Chapter 1 offers a framework and language for understanding the field of behavior and classroom management.

Chapter 2 shows why a historical perspective is essential for a full understanding of approaches to behavior and classroom management. While there is a lot that is “new under the sun,” most of what passes as “new” has roots in the past. Furthermore, despite our wishing we know more today than our predecessors knew, the facts often show otherwise. The facts show that many of our predecessors had wisdom that can help us today. Chapter 2, then, is about the roots of, and wisdom of, today’s approaches to behavior and classroom management.

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION TO APPROACHES AND METHODS

APPROACHES

Why a book on approaches to behavior and classroom management? Why not a book on just behavior and classroom management, giving straight talk on how to get the job done with a set of methods—those specific strategies or techniques needed to keep children and adolescents on task, developing positively, and contributing to classrooms and schools so that classrooms and schools become good communities? The reason is simple. Whenever we ask what it means to “get the job done” or what it means to “develop positively” or what it means to “become a good community,” we are confronted with a variety of answers revealing a variety of meanings and values and assumptions about what children and adolescents really need. In other words, whenever we get beyond the surface slogans and get to how slogans and terms are being used, we find behavior and classroom management inevitably is about approaches and not just methods.

Approaches, then, have to do with meanings, values, and assumptions, as well as with methods. Because meanings, values, and assumptions are difficult to detect, let alone understand, approaches remain somewhat hidden, which is probably the main reason books on behavior and classroom management do not generally feature approaches. However, even when approaches are featured, it often remains unclear why it is important to understand approaches. The impression given is that understanding methods is all that really matters. This is regrettable because approaches are what generate methods in the first place. How else can we explain why experienced teachers often respond to problem behavior so quickly and effectively and in novel ways? Consider the following example to understand what we mean:

CHAPTER OVERVIEW

Approaches

Defining Approaches

Categorizing Approaches

Baumrind’s Styles of Control

Methods

Types of Methods

How Methods Relate to Approaches

Choosing Methods

When Jimmy jumped up during class meeting and started to dance, the observer visiting this second-grade classroom thought for sure the teacher would follow with a stern reprimand. But instead of a reprimand, the teacher turned to the rest of the children and said matter-of-factly, “Jimmy likes to dance.” Jimmy stopped, looked pleased, and then sat down. Later, when the observer asked this teacher why she said what she said to Jimmy, she replied she had no idea. (Scarlett, 1998, p. 26)

The method used in this example is that of reframing. Reframing happens when a teacher redefines a problem behavior (e.g., disrupting meeting time) by giving the behavior a different and positive interpretation or “spin” (e.g., “Jimmy likes to dance”). We will have more to say about reframing in later chapters, especially in Chapter 8, where it becomes a featured method in classroom (interpersonal) systems approaches.

Here, the main point is that what appeared to the outsider to be a method was, for this teacher, simply a natural response, one that flowed naturally (and unconsciously) from her emphasis on building positive relationships with children and accommodating their developmental stage. Put another way, what she said to Jimmy was more an expression of her approach than it was the result of her having chosen a particular method. Therefore, to understand where the method came from, we have to understand this teacher’s approach.

Understanding approaches is also necessary to ensure flexibility. When teachers teach as if they have no particular approach or with an all-encompassing, eclectic approach, they become rigid and dogmatic in situations calling for flexibility and creativity. Why, after all, should one change one’s approach if there is only one right approach to take or if one’s approach is all-encompassing and eclectic?

We see just how restricting this attitude can be when some teachers stick to one approach, to the detriment of those students from quite different backgrounds and cultures with different value systems and different assumptions about what children and adolescents need. We become truly eclectic not when we try to have one approach that fits all, but when we know when and how to switch to another approach when a child or group demands it—as was the case in the following example of a student teacher having to switch approaches and methods.¹

When Tried and True Approaches and Methods Fail

One student teacher had an excellent reputation as a graduate teaching assistant in the university’s laboratory school. There, she excelled in applying a constructivist approach to behavior and classroom management and using a nonauthoritarian approach and getting children to discuss and negotiate their conflicts. However, when she took a part-time job in a large, urban after-school program, her nonauthoritarian approach and guidance methods completely failed. The children ignored her and continued to misbehave. Eventually, she learned how to adapt by adopting a more authoritarian, but still caring, approach and by using methods designed to provide more direction and give her more control.

Defining Approaches

When speaking about their own approach to behavior and classroom management, wise educators everywhere are apt to speak about the need for building relationships, teaching students how to behave properly, supporting development, being organized, and accommodating diversity. That is, relationship building, learning, development, organization, and accommodating diversity are apt to be core concepts in almost any developed, effective approach to behavior and classroom management.

Meanings Given to Core Concepts

However, the meanings of relationship building, learning, development, organization, and accommodating diversity are apt to differ from one approach to another. For example, approaches that concentrate on having children behave in a certain way (raise hands at meeting time, follow the rule about no talking during study hall, etc.) are likely to use the term development to refer to the acquisition of “good” or appropriate behaviors. In contrast, approaches derived from a constructivist tradition, one that emphasizes finding ways to actively involve students in problem solving, are likely to use the term development to refer to mental processes and the acquisition of mental tools needed for a child to eventually become a responsible, caring adult. Adopting one meaning of development rather than another will, then, partially determine one’s approach to behavior and classroom management.

Values...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Brief Contents
• Detailed Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• PART I. INTRODUCTION
• PART II. RELATIONSHIP BUILDING
• PART III. LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT
• PART IV. ORGANIZATION
• PART V. ACCOMMODATING DIVERSITY
• Conclusion: Integrating Discipline and Care
• Glossary
• References
• Index
• About the Authors
• About the Contributors