Chapter 3 Classroom Management I : Establishing the Learning Climate

Connecting with Students

With the advent of more diverse classrooms, teachers are faced with not only the many
academic challenges but also the challenge of creating a nurturing classroom and
connecting with each learner to provide the emotional support needed for all students to
learn.
Researchers have found three characteristics of a nurturing classroom:

• Mutual Trust and Confidence—created by alternating between lessons that were

aimed a presenting knowledge, skills, and concepts in a traditional teacher to student
format, while other lessons were learner-centered in which the teacher entered the
learner’s world by choosing topics that could be framed by their direct experiences in
collaboration with one another. Trust and confidence resulted from the shared mutual
contributions.
• Unconditional Acceptance of Every Learner’s Potential to Learn—developed
over repeated teacher questions and student answers, regardless of the nature of the
responses, the teacher persisted in helping the child to learn by adjusting the
question to the learner’s current level of understanding.
• Opportunity for Exploration and Discovery—because learners experienced
mutual trust and confidence and felt unconditional acceptance, they took the initiative
to explore and discover on their own.
Earning Trust and Becoming a Leader the Old-Fashioned Way

Social psychologists identify four types of social power or leadership a teacher can strive for:
expert leadership, referent leadership, legitimate leadership, and reward leadership.
Although each of these sources of leadership, when properly used, is a legitimate tool for
managing the classroom, teachers, especially new teachers, should work quickly to achieve
expert and referent leadership.

1. Expert leadership—Students see teachers as competent to explain or do certain

things and knowledgeable about particular topics. Because the body language of a
new teacher may suggest indecision and lack of confidence, they must quickly adopt
a confident manner to receive the respect of their students.
2. Referent leadership—Students accept teachers they like and respect and view
these teachers as trustworthy, fair, and concerned about them. Referent leadership is
earned in this way.
3. Legitimate leadership—the role of teacher carries influence and authority by its very
nature. This leadership gives a new teacher time to earn expert and referent
leadership.
4. Reward leadership—Individuals in positions of authority are able to exercise reward
power in relation to the people they lead. Teachers may use rewards, such as
privileges and approval, but should not use rewards as a substitute for expert and
referent leadership.

Establishing an Effective Classroom Climate

Classroom climate is the atmosphere or mood in which interactions between the teacher and
students take place. This section introduces two related aspects of an effective classroom
climate: the social environment, or the interaction patterns the teacher promotes in the
classroom; and the organizational environment, or the physical or visual arrangement of
the classroom.
The social environment of the classroom can vary from authoritarian, in which the teacher is
the primary provider of information, opinions, and instruction; to laissez-faire, in which the
students become the primary providers of information, opinions, and instruction. In addition
to creating the proper climate for a given instructional activity, the teacher must decide
whether each climate can be applied to the full class, to groups, and to individuals with equal
effectiveness. There are three types of classroom climates: competitive, cooperative, and
individualistic (see Tables 3.1 and 3.2). The key is matching the degree of leadership to
the instructional goals.

The organizational environment includes physical aspects, such as seating and room
arrangements, lighting and use of color, degrees of stimulation (bulletin boards, clutter, etc.)
and noise inside and outside the classroom (see Figures 3.1 and 3.2).

Establishing rules and procedures to prevent classroom discipline problems is one of the
most important classroom management activities. These rules and procedures should be
formulated before the first school day. Teachers need different types of rules and procedures
for effectively managing a classroom (see Figures 3.3 and 3.4); these fall into four basic
categories:

1. Rules related to academic work

2. Rules related to classroom conduct
3. Rules that must be communicated the first teaching day
4. Rules that can be communicated later, at an appropriate opportunity

Suggestions for creating classroom rules are given, as well as explaining the need to apply
them consistently. Recognizing why a particular rule is not consistently applied can help the
teacher in adapting or modifying it.

Problem Areas in Classroom Management

This section describes four events that are crucial for keeping students actively engaged in
the learning process: monitoring students, making transitions, giving assignments, and
bringing closure to lessons.

• Monitoring is the process of observing, mentally recording, and, when necessary,

redirecting or correcting students’ behaviors. With-it-ness is the teacher’s ability to keep
track of the many signs of engagement at the same time.
• Making transitions occurs when moving the class from one activity to the next.
Problems in making transitions often occur for two reasons: (1) Learners are not ready to
perform the next activity, and (2) learners have unclear expectations about appropriate
behavior during the transition
• In giving assignments, it is important for students to know why an assignment is made
before they are expected to do it. Effective classroom managers give assignments that
immediately follow the lesson or activities to which they relate, explain which lessons the
assignment relates to, avoid negative connotations, and promote motivation
• Bringing closure should serve a double purpose: ending the lesson and keeping
students actively engaged until its very end by combining or consolidating key points,
summarizing or reviewing key content, or providing a structure for remembering key facts
and ideas.

Culturally Responsive Classroom Management

Some suggestions for bridging cultural gaps in the classroom:

❖ Establish an open, risk-free climate

❖ Plan and structure lessons that meet the interests and needs of the students
❖ Implement lessons that allow all students to be active learners
 ❖ Differentiate instruction by
o Adjusting the pace at which assignments are due
o Creating assignments at graduated levels of difficulty
o Providing feedback tailored to an individual learner’s current level of
understanding

Some instructional strategies to keep at-risk learners engaged

❖ Develop some lessons around students interests, needs, and experiences.

❖ Encourage oral as well as written expression.
❖ Provide study aids.
❖ Teach learning strategies.

Planning Your First Day

❖ Keeping order before the bell (Apply “with-it-ness” before, during, between, and after
classes.)
❖ Introducing yourself (Let your personality unfold and invite students to do the same.)
❖ Taking care of administrative business
❖ Presenting rules and expectations
❖ Introducing your subject (Talk to the whole class and help everyone find early
success.)
❖ Closing (Allow three minutes before the bell and offer encouragement.)

Making Your Classroom and School a Professional Learning Community

A learning community is a shared partnership of ideas with the teacher and students
(and teachers with other teachers) arriving at some common beliefs, values or
understandings in the process of learning together. A primary tenant of education that has
been called “constructivism” is that every child has the potential to learn and never stops
learning. Constructivism and learning communities go hand in hand. In both, teachers and
students share an exchange of ideas eventually coming together to arrive at a mutually
satisfying belief, understanding, or attitude. When teachers collaborate in a Professional
Learning Community (PLC), classroom experiences, teaching techniques, and resources
that can impact and improve the entire school community are shared by all.