What are some of the behaviors of effective classroom managers as described in the Texas and Kounin studies?
In this article Arend uses two studies to describe effective classroom managers by some researchers from University of Texas and Kounin and his colleagues that were done in the 70's and 80's. Both of these studies show overall that the teachers who started out the year with a good approach to classroom management were able to continue to do this through out the school year. Teachers who did not have good classroom management tended to face trouble through out the year.
Something that was very interesting was that teachers who had great classroom management had great flow of smoothness through out the year. Due to the fact that the teacher had good classroom management skills was a teacher who had excellent instructional procedures for their classrooms. If a teacher has good flow, good activities, and good momentum in their classrooms meant that they had less classroom disruptions. Effective classroom managers were those who gave clear and precise instructions regarding homework, could handle classroom misbehavior quickly, and provide understandable presentations and explanations. Overall it is important that the teacher start out the beginning of the year with stability.
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Like all things in life, if you are managed by a good manager who keeps you busy you have less time to fool around and get into trouble. The main idea that I got out of this article was that you need to keep your students busy, not with busy work but with work that genuinely helps them learn. This doesn't mean that there isn't time to have fun in a classroom but there are times when it is appropriate to have fun and times when it isn't. An effective classroom manager lets their class know this from the first day and doesn't deviate from it. Students need structure and if you break from the structure you have established then you can't be a good manager. What the article is saying seems so easy and obvious but a lot of people don't want to be the bad guy and instead want to be friends with their students. Sometimes you are going to have to be a bad guy and keep your students on task but that doesn't mean that you have to be a bad guy all the time.
ReplyDeleteManagement is essential to providing a classroom where learning is possible. Too many teachers fall short on the management aspect of teaching and a lot of time is wasted in teachers yelling at the students or lecturing them about how they should behave. I think if a teacher wants to maintain a disciplined classroom, it's important they state clearly to the class about how thing should be done, and then stand by that without exceptions.
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