In our ABA lecture yesterday, Mike Beverly gave a lecture on classroom management. One of the pioneering psychologists in the field is Glenn Latham. Over a period of 16 years, Latham travelled around the US as well as 14 other countries observing 303 classrooms and interviewing the teachers. He published and discussed his findings in his book ‘Behind the Schoolhouse Door’. I’ll discuss the eight skills in this blog and how they can be implicated in the classroom.
- The ability to teach expectation: according to Latham, it important that students are made aware of what is expected of them in the classroom and this, in turn will improve the behaviour of the children. Classroom ‘rules’ should be referred to as ‘expectations’ and these should be made clear at the beginning of the lesson. For example, a teacher should start the lesson by explaining to the pupils that it is expected for them to raise their hand before speaking in the classroom. These expectation should be taught through an instructive language and not critically (‘I expect you to raise your hand’ and not ‘Don’t shout in the classroom’). Teachers should engage the pupils whilst discussing the expectations as pupils are more likely to follow the rules if they feel they have played an important role in the rule making. These expectations should also be modelled by the teacher so that the pupils are able to follow their lead. Reid (1993) found that if the children were taught specifically what is expected of them at the beginning of school then misbehaviour decreased by 40%.
- The ability to get and keep student on task: it is important that teachers are able to keep students engaged in the lesson to be able to teach them. The other skills link in this skill, for example, by making sure the pupils understand what is expected of them in the beginning, this should ensure that the class behaves and also has respect for the teacher. Teachers should also move around the class, keeping an eye on the student to ensure that everyone is on task. The children are more likely to be well behaved if they feel that the teacher is keeping an eye on them.
- The ability to maintain high rate of positive teacher to student interaction: again, I believe that this is important for the second skill. Pupils are much more likely to listen to a teacher that they like. It has been shown that behaviour responds better to positive than negative consequence. Teachers should praise good behaviour instead of singling out one child and using coercive methods. Latham’s data suggest that approximately 90% of desirable behaviour goes unrecognised and teachers were two to five times more likely to pay attention to poor behaviour.
- The ability to respond to noncoersively to inappropriate behaviour that is consequential: teacher’s should approach children calmly and approachable and not angry and reactive as the pupils will react to the teachers behaviour and the situation can worsen. After all, the teacher is meant to be full yin control of the situation.
- The ability to maintain a high rate of risk free student responses opportunities: when children are placed in a position where there is a low risk of punishment or failure, behaviour will improve as well as academic success (Pigford, 1995). This is probably due to the fact that it increases confidence in the student and increases respect for the teacher. If a teacher is over critical, then a child will be less willing to contribute to the class and engage in the lesson. For the people that are interested, I found this book which looks into the discipline method of teachers and how schoosl can support positive behaviour.
- The ability to serve problem behaviour student in the regular classroom: If a child is exhibiting behaviour that is disruptive to the other pupils learning, often the child is removed from the classroom. Latham argued that this method is only affective is the child want to be in the classroom. Otherwise, this method could act as reinforcement for the undesirable behaviour as the child gets a break from the classroom. Time out is most affective when the child is isolated. It could also be argued that removing the attention from the child will have the same results, which links in with the positive relationship. If the misbehaving child is ignored by the teacher, and a child that is behaving is receiving the teachers attention then the misbehaving child, in theory, will copy the behaving child.
- The ability to avoid being trapped: there were a few examples of the traps that teachers could fall into. I’m only going to discuss three of them as I am aware that my blog is quite long. The first trap that I’m going to discuss is criticism. As I have discussed before, criticising the child will only result in more opposition. Rather than criticising the child, the teacher could concentrate on the pupils good work as well as the poor and suggest how the pupil could better the work. The second trap is threats. It is easy enough for a teacher to say ‘if the work doesn’t improve then you are not going on the trip’ but the teacher is encouraging a hostile relationship between the student and teacher. Threats should be avoided by substituting with rewards. For example, instead of the threat mentioned above, the teacher could say ‘if you complete this work, then you will receive a star on your chart’. An obvious trap to avoid is force. Teachers shouldn’t exhibit any force on the pupil and the pupil will feel threatened and again, it will risk a hostile relationship between the teacher and pupil.
- The ability to manage behaviour scientifically: this skill links in to what we’ve all been blogging about for the last eight weeks. Teachers should be using proven methods to manage behaviour and how the pupils learn; methods such as direct instruction or precision teaching.
It’s interesting that these points were published in the 70’s, and all skills are based on theory and/or research, but I wonder if these are even mentioned on the teaching course. It does seem that there has been a problem with the educational system for a while with educators ignoring scientific research. When Latham was asked ‘why aren’t effective teaching tools widely adopted?’, he replied ‘myth and bigotry’ and said that the school system was ‘narrow minded and unwilling to change the way they have always done things’. Could the same be said today?
scienceoeducation 
I find it strange that these skills have been around for decades now and haven’t been picked up by the academic community. I think Snider’s myths and misconceptions relate well to why these skills haven’t been widely applied. I guess it’s that old notion of ‘this is what we’ve always done so this is what we’ll keep on doing’. It’s hard to change people’s views and opinions, especially when they’ve thought that way for a while and I think that the main problem is that some teachers may actually believe that what they’re doing is effective as they get a positive response from their students. It would be great for these skills to be taught in teacher training courses but, at risk of sounding cynical, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
I agree with you that most teachers probaly believe that what they have been doing is effective. I think that this is the reason why ‘fun’ curriculums that have little evidence in support of them are used, as teachers are reinforced by the children’s enjoyment and mis-interpret this as learning and that the method is working. I, too, am very cynical when it comes to the teachers training. The training can improve tenfold if the student attended a lecture given by an educational psychology once a week and learn about psychological theories and how they can be applied in schools, as well as topics in SEN.