What Is Classroom Behavior Management?
Classroom behavior management is a teacher's plan for maintaining positive student behavior, motivating students, and establishing guidelines and expectations. The purpose of classroom management is to create an effective learning environment in which lessons operate smoothly, disruptions are minimized and students can flourish. Finely-tuned classroom management skills usually take years of experience to develop and often times differentiate outstanding teachers from mediocre ones.
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Importance
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Developing strong classroom management skills is crucial to preventing burnout in the profession. Student misconduct and teacher frustration with behavior issues often lead to work stress, job dissatisfaction, and loss of teachers. Ingersoll and Smith found in their research that behavior management issues can influence new teacher longevity and are a major reason for teachers exiting the profession.
Classroom Management and Student Achievement
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Classroom management has a tremendous impact on student achievement. By keeping students on task and preventing conduct problems, teachers can focus on teaching instead of disciplining. Research conducted by D. Berliner and by J. Brophy and T. Good and summarized by Carleen Reck in "Successful Instructional Practices for Small Schools," found that the time that teachers waste on correcting behavior problems caused by poor classroom management skills correlates with a lower rate of academic involvement in the classroom.
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Techniques and Styles
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There are a variety of educational philosophies and approaches to behavior management in the classroom. Many books have been published on the subject of managing student behavior, and there's a wealth of online resources offering management advice and ideas. Teachers usually adapt the methods that they agree with philosophically and feel comfortable using. Teachers commonly post their philosophy and classroom rules and consequences. Typically, management techniques involve having some type of consequence for a student infraction of a rule. The consequence could be a loss of recess, detention, parent notification, or a visit with the principal. Many frustrated teachers also resort to scolding and firm lectures, but this is the least effective method of dealing with student issues.
Rewards to Motivate Positive Behavior
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Although many teachers try to correct behavior problems with punishment for inappropriate actions, others try to prevent problems by motivating students with praise and rewards for good behavior. Teachers may track student behavior with behavior charts and then offer such prizes as stickers, pencils, fun treats, extra recesses or a special party. Others provide fake money or points that are accumulated and exchanged for prizes. Some teachers instill intrinsic motivation by teaching character education so that students develop such traits as respect, self-discipline, integrity and altruism.
Communicate Expectations Clearly
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No matter what classroom management strategy you use, clearly explain and model your expectations to students during the first few days of school. Many teachers make the mistake of briefly explaining the rules and consequences the first day of school and then not discussing them again. To have successful classroom management policies, you need to clearly teach and model the behaviors you expect. A good method is to discuss a rule or procedure, model what is expected and then have students role play a scene displaying the proper behavior. For example, something simple as walking in a straight line should be practiced and rehearsed until students know how to line up and walk without too much noise and horseplay.
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References
- Photo Credit student image by Ivanna Buldakova from Fotolia.com
