Community Approaches to

Classrooms Management
Claudio Terán
Jacob Fraccola
Professor Richard Bair
 Definitions of School and Classroom
Communities

Concepts of Communities

Table of
ALFIE KOHN: Beyond discipline

JEROME FREIBERG: Consistency

Contents management and cooperative discipline

Child Development Project Model

Activity: Question time

What is a school community?

In the beginning, it was meant to keep students under control so students could learn from
teachers' structured activities (Wattson, Battistich). Then, there were different views on the
perception of school communities. For instance, Piaget and Vygosky, among other
scholars, thought about the shift in control from the teacher-centered to a school or
classroom community based on their ideas of working on social relationships, all of this in
order to increase students’ internal motivation and self-control.
What is a school community?

Watson and Battistich (2006), identified six classroom management programs

that focused on the community, for instance; Moral/Constructivist Community
(DeVries, Zan, 1994), Democratic Community, Wolk, 2000), etc.
What is a school community?

In spite of having different perceptions on the concept of community, there are some
common ideas that most scholars share.

● Educators take a positive developmental view of students and work with them instead
of trying to control them.
● A common set of activities builds and sustains the community. These include
activities to help students and educators to know and understand each other, to
teach students to resolve conflicts and to work together respectfully, to involve
students in establishing class rules, to provide opportunities for students to work
together, and to use literature to foster empathy and to create shared experiences.
 ALFIE KOHN: BEYOND DISCIPLINE

New perceptions about the concept of school communities:

Alfie Kohn challenges some commonly accepted beliefs about students and discipline
and encourages educators to move beyond traditional concepts of classroom
management.

His ideas of “deep modeling,” encourage teachers to help children to see what is
behind or beneath ethical decisions.
 ALFIE KOHN: BEYOND DISCIPLINE

Definition of community:

“In saying that a classroom or school is a “community, ” then, I mean that it is a place in which
students feel cared about and are encouraged to care about each other. They experience a sense
of being valued and respected,’ the children matter to one another and to the teacher. They have
come to think in the plural: They feel connected to one another’ they are part of an ”us.”And as a
result of all this, they feel safe in their classes, not only physically but emotionally, (Kohn, 1996).”
 ALFIE KOHN: BEYOND DISCIPLINE

Ideas:
● “Children need to be told exactly what the adult expects of them, as well as what will happen if
they don’t do what they’re told”.
● You need to give positive reinforcement to a child who does something nice if you want him to
keep acting that way”.
● “The idea for the teacher is to think about what these students need (emotionally speaking) and
probably haven’t received”.
● “Accepting students for who they are, rather than for what they do, is integrally related to the idea
of teaching the whole child”.
 Jerome Freiberg

Jerome Freiberg argued that traditional discipline should be

replaced with Consistency Management and Cooperative
Discipline.
Jerome Freiberg
The child development model

This model uses many of the aspects from both Kohn and Freiberg.

- Focuses on universal human needs (Kohn).

- Students need to feel that the belong.
- They need to be competent.
- The need a sense of autonomy.
- Consistency management and cooperative discipline (Freiberg).

In other words, this model strives to create a caring community.

Aspects of a caring community
Question time!

Do you feel that you are part

of a school, college
community? Explain…
Thanks!