4/27/2016

It should be strongly emphasized from the outset that no classroom management

strategies will prevent discipline problems if effective teaching is not taking place.
McInerney & McInerney (2002, p. 251) Educational Psychology.

By Waleed Shaker Jaseem

(a1702614)
UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE

Table of Contents

Introduction

Preventative Action Strategies

Strategies to support preventive action

Increase student motivation

Meaningful and enjoyable activities

Foster respectful relationship

Classroom practices and structure

Modelling appropriate behaviours

Praising and Rewards

Supportive Action Strategies

Vygotsky Theory: Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

Maslows Hierarchy of Needs

Fred Jones Theory (PAT)

Piaget Theory of Cognitive Stages

10

Corrective Action Strategies

Hierarchy of Classroom Intervention

11
12

Conclusion

14

Reference

15

Videos

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Introduction
Promoting a positive learning environment for students is a very important step for them to be successful in their
learning and to allow students to become a successful member of the class, school and the community. Maintaining
the students engagement with the class requires an appropriate curriculum and the use of innovative and
motivating teaching practice.
Managing student behaviour has been around since schooling ever started. It has also been and will be
the main concern of teachers around the world (Dunlap, Iovannone, Wilson, Kincaid & Strain 2010; Westling
2010). Ronald et al., 2012, suggested five reasons for behaviour management approaches not being effective.

Preservice teachers may not be trained well in behaviour management techniques.

Teachers may not be trained to analyse research on behaviour management approaches.
There is no unified theory of behaviour management
Schools often do not have a seamless and consistent approach to behaviour management.
Behaviour management is often viewed as a reactive approach to behaviour problems rather than proactive
one.

Noddings (1992) suggested four aspects of teacher behaviour which are critical for the encouragement of a caring
classroom environment.

Modelling caring attitudes towards others.

Searching for common understanding.
Providing confirmation to students that their behaviour is perceived and interpreted in a positive light.
Providing practice and opportunities for students to care for others.

This handbook will discuss three main and important strategies to promote a positive learning environment,
which should assist the teacher to manage and achieve the above. These strategies include:

Preventative Action
Supportive Action .
Corrective Action .

(green to go)
(prepared to stop)
(red to stop)

These strategies will be explained accordingly and video example will be given to show how important and
effective these strategies are in order to promote positive learning environment.

Preventative Action Strategies

It has always been believed that prevention is better than a cure. Preventing the student from misbehaving is the
best solution for an effective, positive class. Dr Fred Jones (2007) believes that the key to a positive learning
environment is the prevention of misbehaviour. Charles (2002) stated that you can prevent most misbehaviour if
you treat students sensitively, providing an interesting curriculum, and use helpful teaching style.
Strategies to support preventive action
There are various preventive discipline strategies. Charles (2002) stated some of these strategies as follow:
Attending carefully to student needs for security, hope, acceptance, dignity, power, enjoyment, and
competence.
Communicating effectively and regularly with students and their parents.
Making sure to give all students attention, encouragement, and support.
Making class activities consistently enjoyable and worthwhile.
Ensure that all students experience success regularly.
Establish agreements about how everyone will interact and behave.
Discussing and practising manners, courtesy, and responsibility.
Involving all students meaningfully in the operation of the class.
Dealing with misbehaviour by attending to its causes.
Increase student motivation
Martin has developed the motivation and engagement wheel. He used the five Cs (Control, Composure,
Commitment, Coordination and Confidence) as an indicator for the phycology influence on success or failure.
Positive attitude/thought normally leads to success, which also increases the resilience and ability to come back
from failure. Negative attitude/thought leads to anxiety and uncertain control, which leads to underachievement
and failure. Martin & Marsh (2003) suggested that four factors predict the academic resilience (self-belief,
control, low anxiety, and persistence). Then they proposed academic resilience to be underpinned by four Cs:
Confidence (self-belief), Control, Composure (low anxiety), and Commitment (persistence).

Figure 1. Motivation and engagement wheel.

Meaningful and Enjoyable lesson activities.

Having a class without enjoyable activities will encourage the student to misbehave or be disengaged from
the class activities. Using humour to lighten the class and remove the clouds in the classroom will help keep
the student on task and engaged with the activities.
Knowing what you are teaching and being passionate about it and having organised lesson plans with less
talking or writing but more interaction with students will provide an enjoyable class environment.

Foster respectful relationship

Students work hardest for teachers they like and respect. When I am asked, How do I get students to like and
respect me? my immediate response is, like and respect them first. Silver (2015). Hattie (2003) found in his
research distinguishing expert teachers from novice and inexperienced teachers that expert teachers showed high
respect for their students. The manner of the expert teacher was treating the student with respect as learner and
people, and also showed care and commitment to the student. The picture drawn for the expert teacher was
involvement and caring for the student, an enthusiasm to be receptive to students need, and finally not attempting
to dominate the situation in the classroom (Hattie, 2003).

Figure 2. The major factors influence student achievement (Hattie 2003).

Classroom practices and structure.
Teachers could use Jones model to prevent misbehaviour, by rearranging the classroom furniture to allow the
teacher to move around freely (physical proximity), standing straight, displaying appropriate facial expressions,
using gestures such thumbs up for good behaviour and setting rules and procedures.
Modelling appropriate behaviours.
This emphasises the importance of learning from observation and imitating role models, for if the teacher uses
proper language and behaviour s/he will encourage the student to learn and imitate this behaviour. This modelling
eliminates unwanted behaviours and reduces excessive fear of teacher. Its also used to strengthen or weaken
previously learned behaviour (encyclopaedia mental disorder 2016).

Video 1. Michelle improving her present in class and the lesson structure.

Michelle's strategy to manage students misbehaviour was to restructure her lessons. Putting her activities in
sequence on the board help the students to know what is the learning activities and what they need to do. This
visual reminder is also helpful for students who have auditory processing concerns and struggle with lengthy oral
instructions. By doing this she managed to improve the classroom behaviour, which benefited both the students
and teacher. By changing her position and presence in the class more eye contact with the students was developed
and she was being a good model for the students.
Praising and Rewards

Video 2. Amy using praise and preparation in her classroom management practice.
Amy Alexander's strategy was preparing the class by using a routine structure of writing on the board all the
details about the class in colour co-ordination. By doing that she is helping the student to identify what need to be
written in the notebook and what for home work. She uses praises and rewards as a way to encourage good
behaviour. She emphasised that being well prepared for her lesson helped her managing minor misbehaviour. The
innovative use of technology will also engage students, but it is important to ensure that all equipment, programs
and videos are ready to run smoothly as required.

Supportive Action Strategies

Things that can be done to support the student in class (Matthews 2016).

Go through class rules at the beginning of the lesson.

Using Praise.
Let the student succeed.
One-on-one conversation with student (whisper + private conversation).
Show support (included in lesson design, feedback, etc.
Using humour.
Using group process, to allow social environment.
Wait time.
Use suggestion, hints.
Give a choice.

Rewards such as the giving of positive behaviour symbols or cards can also be helpful to reinforce positive
behaviour. These may be swapped for an extrinsic reward, or may simply represent an intrinsic reward in
themselves.
Vygotsky Theory: Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
Vygotsky theory suggested that the area where learning take place is the zone of proximal development. The
learning happens in the cognitive region, which is outside what the learner can learn alone. The potential for
cognitive development is dependent on the level of development achieved when learner engage in social
interaction. ZPD is the zone where learner can learn with help or support of another person and the instructional
environment is said to lie within the ZPD (Farris 2010).

Figure 3: Vygotskys Zone of Proximal Development.

Maslows Hierarchy of Needs

Figure 4: Maslows hierarchy of needs

Grossmans basic need using Maslows Hierarchy of need for student can be summarised as follow:

Physiological satisfaction, taking care of hunger, thirst and rest.

Safety, avoiding injury, physical attack, pain extreme temperature, disease and abuse.
Nurture, receiving love and acceptance from others and feeling of belonging to a group.
Sense of personal value, experiencing self-esteem, self-confidence and sense of purpose and empowerment.
Self-actualization, realizing ones full potential (Kaliska 2002).

Video 3. John video too much talk (classroom practice)

John's strategy was to talk less and involve more of the less advantaged students in the class by directing the
question to them, giving clear instruction for the activities and rewarding them for their achievements with praises.
Rather than letting the student not being able to answer the question, he gave him an option to nominate another
student to answer the question. By doing this he allowed the student to listen to the answer from the other student
from the same level of thinking with a voice more salient to him. He also used scaffolding technique by following
up at the end of the class with the same student. This practice helped John to develop essential classroommanagement skills.
To ensure an even handed approach in engaging students, i.e. not always choosing only those with their
hands up, but also not "picking on" those students who seem disengaged, the teacher could use pop sticks on
which student's names are written and randomly select students that way.
Fred Jones Theory (PAT)
Jones believes there are many different ways to manage classroom and student misbehaviour. For example class
time management as students can waste time getting ready for the class. Teachers can promote less time wastage
by timing the student in getting seated and getting on task. This can also work for those students who refuse to
participate in an activity in which they need to get involved. Timing alone is not helpful unless the student has to
"pay back" the time wasted by talking to the teacher or doing a helpful job which takes up exactly the same amount
of time. It is very important to show the student a count down again on the stop watch so that they see that the
time wasted exactly balances the time having to be made up, otherwise they will feel unfairly treated. As incentive
for the student to waste less time, they will be given time for fun learning activities at the end of the class (PAT).
Preferred activities time is a way to promote student time management and responsibility by giving the student
incentive for positive behaviour in the form of time to have fun learning activities. Teachers should explain the
rules for the student to follow for them to be rewarded with PAT. Whole class on task or cooperative behaviour
may also be rewarded with an incentive scheme which allows for free time choices as a class. This encourages
whole class behaviour and caring for each other to succeed.

Piaget Theory of Cognitive Stages

Figure 5: Piaget theory of cognitive student

At the age of 7-11 years student will be able to reflect based on concrete information (objects) such as:

Evidence for organized, logical thought.

Able to do complex classifications and comprehend the principle of conservation.
Thinking become less egocentric. (Matthews 2016).

Formal operational stage starts at 11 years old through adulthood. In this period the full abstraction operational is
start developing. Thats the stage where the secondary school teacher's most important duty is in assisting the
students to develop their mind set from concrete operational into formal operational. However, this does not apply
to the current way of teaching which uses about 90% concrete information at high school to 10% conceptual
information. During this period student thought will be more abstract, includes principles of formal logic, has the
ability to generate abstract propositions, hypotheses and prediction. Also they can think through an argument in
their minds (Matthew 2016).
In the formal stage, teachers need to support the advanced student for more cognitive challenges. Students
can be grouped into teams to work on solving problems, each group should include a mix of students who think
at both concrete and formal operational levels. This will allow the advanced student to stimulate this thinking
in the less advanced student.
Kahoot
Program/website that can be as fun way to engage and get the student to refocus. Its a game based learning
platform where teacher can use it for presenting quizzes online. As the result can be saved with student using their
real names to join the game, kahoot can be used as a review formative assessment.

Figure 6: Kahoot platform that can be used for quick quiz and keep the student engaged

Video 4: French teacher Jayne Wright dealing with attention seeker students.
Jayne has some issues with controlling the class. After meeting with John Bayley, she started to use non-verbal
indications to restore behaviour in lesson. She used praise for well-behaved students while ignoring the
misbehaving one. She also use proximity technique by standing closer to a specific student, whispering to them
and reminding them of what they should be doing.

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Corrective Action Strategies

A corrective behavioural management sometimes is required, especially when there is a significant violation of
the rules and extreme misbehaviour is recurring. Teachers could apply corrective behavioural strategies inside
classroom where correction occurs in front of the class and identifying misbehaviour that is against the rules.
Outside the classroom private meetings with individual students could occur to allow informal talk and to save
face with his/her peers. Corrective strategies can be applied in two methods as follow:

Initial corrective, which involved mild and less disturbing strategies, examples (stand close to the student or
use non-verbal language).
Later corrective, which involved the use of more intrusive strategies, examples (time-out or behavioural
contract) (Reupert & Woodcock 2011).

Hierarchy of Classroom Intervention

Levin and Nolans Hierarchy of management showed the scale and levels of intensity in managing the classroom
behaviour. When correcting student misbehaviour, teachers need to take these levels of intervention and use them
in sequence starting from level one to level two then for the extreme situation use the third level. Dealing with
misbehaviour can start from just intentionally ignoring misbehaviour to the use of logical consequences depending
on the situation and the need to reinforce misbehaviour. Figure 8 shows few examples of verbal and nonverbal
intervention.

Figure 7: Levin and Nolans Hierarchy of Management

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Figure 8: Examples of nonverbal and verbal intervention.

Video 5: Amy Using proximity technique with student.

Amy Alexander used number to supportive strategy by praising her students regularly. She also used corrective
discipline by using wait-times to get the class attention. She applied Whisper-technique privately to restore the
behaviour of individual students without obvious confrontation.

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Video 6: Jenny using corrective discipline towards misbehaving student.

Jenny used various type of behaviour management such as wait-times, dropped student misbehaving name in her
presentation and asked off-task student questions. Jenny also used proximity by standing next to the misbehaving
student and giving him a choice and logical consequences if he continuing misbehaving. She used the i-message
technique by telling specific student to do something.

Conclusion
Teachers need to use various type of student management strategies to promote positive learning environment.
Creating and maintaining can be achieved by knowing and understanding the behaviour management strategies.
There is no single successful strategies that can be used with all type of classrooms. Therefore, knowing the
student and their needs as well as having the teacher to be well organised will be very helpful in preventing
misbehaviour. In the experience of a teacher I have spoken to, the first time you meet a class is the most essential
time for behaviour management to begin. Even small signs of disrespect as the teacher introduces themselves
should not be overlooked, and need to be publicly highlighted. Once the teacher is sure of their stance within the
class environment some of these infringements can be relaxed if the class respects the teacher and the teacher
trusts the class. Small infringements will become large ones if they are not managed early while the class is still
unsure of the new teacher and while possibly powerful members of class have not yet organised their power base.

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References
Bafile,

C., (2009) Preferred Activity Time (PAT) is preferred by kids

http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/curr315.shtml. Viewed 18 April 2016.

and

teachers.

Charles, C.M. 2002 Finalizing a personal system of discipline, building classroom Discipline 7 th Ed. Peason,
New Jersey.
Dunlap, G., Iovannone, R., Wilson, K., Kincaid, D., & Strain, P. (2010) Prevent-Teach Reinforce: A Standardized
Model of School-Based Behavioral Intervention. Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, 12, 9-22.
Encyclopaedia of mental disorder, (2016). Modelling. http://www.minddisorders.com/Kau-Nu/Modeling.html.
Viewed 20 April 2016.
Farris,

D. (2010). Towards a Neo-Vygotskian Approach to 21st Century

http://dfarris.oia.arizona.edu/neo-Vygotskian_manuscript.pdf. Viewed 21 April 2016.

Learning.

Hattie, J. (2003). Teachers make a difference: What is the research evidence? Interpretations, 36(2), 27-38.
Retrieved November 23, 2007 from http://www.acer.edu. au/documents/RC2003_Hattie_
TeachersMakeADifference.pdf
Jones, F., Jones, P., and Jo Lynne J. (2007) Fred Jones tools for teaching: Discipline, Instruction, Motivation.
Santa Cruz, CA. FH. Jones & Associates. www.fredjones.com.
Kaliska, P. (2002) A comprehensive study identifying the most effective classroom management practice and
technique. http://www2.uwstout.edu/content/lib/thesis/ 2002/2002kaliskap.pdf Viewed 20 April 2016.
Matrin, A. and March, H. (2003) Academic Resilience and the four Cs: Confidence, Control, Composure, and
Commitment. University of Western Sydney. http://www.aare.edu.au/data/ publications/2003/mar0377
0.pdf
Matthews, R. (2016) Personal communication, student and teacher interaction lecture. University of Adelaide.
Ramsey, H. (2016) Class presentation. http://slideplayer.com/slide/8015959/. Viewed 23 April 2016.
Reuprt, A. and Woodcock, S. (2011). Canadian and Australia pre-service teachers use, confidence and success
in various behaviour management strategies. http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=
1680&context=edupapers. Viewed 23 April 2016.
Ronald, C. M., J. Ron, N., Nancy, E. M., & Mark O. (2012) Comprehensive Behaviour Management:
Individualized, Classroom, and Schoolwide Approaches.
Silver, D. (2015) Response in Ferlazzo, L. Response: Goal of Classroom Management is to have power with,
not over, Kids. http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa _with_larry_ferlazzo/. Viewed 18 April
2016.
Westling, D.L. (2010) Teachers and Challenging Behavior: Knowledge, Views, and Practices. Unpublished
manuscript, Western Carolina University
Wilkinson, J. & Meiers, M. (2007) Managing student behaviour in the classroom. NSWIT Research Digest,
2007(2). http://www.nswteachers.nsw.edu.au. Viewed 18 April 2016.

Videos
Video 1, the need for structure-teaching, schoolsworld TV. www.schoolsworld.tv/node/272. Viewed 23 April 2016.

Video 2, praise and preparation, schoolworld TV. http://www.schoolsworld.tv/node/273. Viewed 23 April 2016.
Video 3, too much talk, schoolworld TV. http://www.schoolsworld.tv/node/271. Viewed 23 April 2016.
Video 4, Attention seeker, schoolworld TV. http://www.schoolsworld.tv/node/1044. Viewed 23 April 2016.
Video 5, praise and preparation, schoolworld TV. http://www.schoolsworld.tv/node/273. Viewed 23 April 2016.
Video 6, Manage that class, schoolworld TV. http://www.schoolsworld.tv/node/1752. Viewed 23 April 2016.

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