1.

0 INTRODUCTION

Children’s behaviour often poses challenges to teachers. Sometimes such behaviour

causes irritation to the teacher teaching a large class with varying abilities. At other times the

behaviour of certain children disrupts the normal operation of the classroom or school for a

time. However, teachers may also have to deal with behaviour which challenges their ability

to provide an education for a child or their peers. This is where classroom management comes

into play. Classroom management is a wide term that consists of strategies for assuring

physical and psychological safety in the classroom; techniques for changing student

misbehaviours and for teaching self-discipline; methods of assuring and orderly progression

of events during the school day; and instructional techniques that contribute to students’

positive behaviours (Manning and Bucher, 2007). To manage a classroom means to manage

the students’ behaviour. In conjunction with classroom management, a number of models of

classroom discipline have been formed with the main purpose of instilling discipline or

eliminate negative behaviour and maintain positive behaviour. This essay will analyse Mrs

Geam’s classroom management which comprises of the models she puts into practice and

how effective they are. The shortcomings in her management will be looked into and

suggestions will be given in order to improve her ways of dealing with her students’

misbehaviours. Other models which are more practical and applicable, if there are any, will be

used as comparisons and also suggested to be used instead of the ones Mrs. Geam’s are

practising.

2.0 ANALYSIS OF MRS. GEAM’S MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES

2.1 Strengths

Mrs. Geam’s management strategies are actually quite effective but only to a certain

extent. The effectiveness comes in the way she identify and cope with the acting up of her

students not to mention her effort to maintain good behaviour. In order to control her
classroom, Mrs. Geam practises Canter’s Assertive Discipline, Kounin’s Withitness and

Organisation as well as Skinner’s Behaviour Modification in giving indirect motivation.

Obviously presumed from the name itself, Canter’s model principally revolves around

the elements of assertiveness and insistence. According to Myint, Lourdusamy, Quek and

Wong (2004), the heart of the Assertive Discipline Model is that students must take

responsibility for their own behaviour and choices. The teacher guides the students through

their choices and teaches them appropriate behaviour. It is essential that the teacher

recognize that there is no acceptable reason for misbehaviour and that ultimately students

choose to act a certain way. Teachers that can master assertive discipline techniques and

become skilled at positive reinforcement will have successful well managed classrooms

(Kaufenberg, 2012). In Mrs. Geam’s case, she ensures that her students would follow the

rules by reminding them. Being assertive, she makes it clear of what she expects from her

students by hanging a “Class Rules” board on the wall and firmly reprimand those who fail to

comply. Mrs. Geam carried out her class rules by using the star chart. Canter also suggested

that following rules should result in positive recognition and failure to do so will result in

consequences. Mrs. Geam applied this by giving a star to be added on the star chart whenever

a student does something well. However, a star will be taken off a student’s star chart if he or

she misbehaves.

The third model is Skinner’s Behaviour Modification. In this model, all behaviour is

defined as being externally controlled by aspects of the environment. In this sense, both inside

and outside of our body constitutes an environment. Like the definition of behaviour, the

concept of reinforcement and punishment is used differently in behaviour modification than in

everyday language. Anything that increases a behaviour is considered reinforcement and

anything that decreases behaviour is considered punishment. The tricky part is that both

reinforcement and punishment can be positive or negative. Positive refers to something added

to the environment and negative is something taken away (Candolin & Wong, 2015). Some

example of Mrs. Geam’s reinforcements are the star chart together with the grab bag. These
extrinsic rewards help in shaping her students’ behaviours in desired directions. This is proven

effective when Dominic made an effort to help out his friend Kevin who was unable to solve

the problem in order to gain a star from Mrs. Geam. With this, Mrs. Geam was able to work

towards her goal.

2.2 Weaknesses

As it was mentioned earlier that the effectiveness Mrs. Geam’s management strategies

are only to a certain extent, there are bound to be weaknesses in the ways she handles her

class. One of it is when she was tending to Maria who disobeyed class rule number four. After

asking for clarification, Mrs. Geam did remind her of the rules and consequences she had

imposed but she didn’t finish the job when she interrupted Maria as she was trying to explain

her actions. Next weakness is Mrs. Geam’s confrontation towards Siti and Maria about the

note passing in class. Mrs. Geam’s choice to punish Mary directly should have taken some

aspects into consideration such as the purpose of the note or the situation that Mary may have

been in.

Mrs. Geam portrays the hostile response style as her aversive techniques fails to meet

her students’ needs and this may have brought to the provocation of inappropriate behaviour

in both Maria and Mary. Instead of using punishment, which is quite frequently used, she can

give warnings or nonverbal cues to get her students back on track with the lesson or if worst,

she can choose to isolate the misbehaving students and assign ‘special’ activities and rules

for them (Marciniak, 2015).

3.0 SUGGESTIONS

It is clear that Mrs. Geam need to improve on her ability to manage her students. One of

the ways is by practising Dreikurs’s Confronting Mistaken Goals. Most of students’

misbehaviours are because of their yearning for acknowledgement, thus leading them towards

four mistaken goals which are seeking attention, gaining power, taking revenge and displaying

inadequacy. To avoid such problems, a teacher should be more democratic in his/her class.
Being democratic means guiding and leading the students to a level where they can understand

the consequences of the behaviour they choose. By not being too autocratic nor permissive,

students are able to learn inner control or self-discipline that serve as a conscience in thinking

of what to do or how to behave (Thompson, 2010).

Next, Mrs. Geam could develop more on Kounin’s Withitness and Organisation.

Withitness describes the need for the teacher to be aware of what is going on in all parts of the

classroom at all times while overlapping is the process of attending to two or more events at the

same time (Nasey,2012). One very important element of the model is ripple effect. It means the

holistic effect of an encouragement or reprimand where all the students in the class are affected

by it whether positively or negatively (Nasey, 2012). For instance, Mrs Geam sees a number of

misbehaving students and instead of calling their names or directly reproaching them, Mrs.

Geam could say something in general such as “I see a few of you may have to stay in after

class”. This indirectly casts a ripple of a reminder to the whole class and tells them to get back

to work. Even though its effectiveness can still be questioned, Mrs. Geam should be able to

control her students’ misbehaviours better when she confronts generally or as a whole.

4.0 CONCLUSION

Discipline and classroom control must be handled appropriately by the teacher. It is

also important for individual students to believe that their behaviour creates its own

consequences, both positive and negative. It is the teacher’s job to assist students to learn

self-discipline. The degree to which discipline actions are successful can be measured by the

degree to which the teacher is able to produce the desired behavioural outcome.

According to Canter’s Assertive Discipline, pupils must know beforehand what will happen

when they comply with the rules and vice versa. This will enable the pupils to learn that their

actions have different consequences and they themselves are the ones who control them.

Skinner’s behaviour modification can play a role as well. In common cases of misbehaviours,

teachers usually negatively reinforce students who misbehave and positively reinforce those
who behave well. Taking away privileges and giving rewards such as candy or prizes works

well with students. This strategy is typically effective but may lose its effectiveness over time.

As a whole, some models of discipline are applicable in the Malaysian classroom context and

can be further developed on.

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