What teacher action is conducive to a disciplined classroom?

Some important factors that contribute to classroom discipline and are potentially within the control of, or influenced by, the teacher are:

– classroom management

– methodology

– interpersonal relationships

– lesson planning

– student motivation.

1. Dealing with discipline problems

1. Before problems arises

- plan and organize your lesson carefully

- Make sure instructions are clear, assertive, brief

- Keep in touch with what is going on

2. When problem is beginning

- deal with problem quickly; prevent escalation

- Keep your cool: don’t take things personality

- Don’t use threats (unless you are prepared to implement them!)

3. When problem has exploded

- ‘explode’ yourself (loud and assertive command)

- Give in

- Make them an offer they can’t refuse (postponement, arbitration, compromise)

1. Discipline problems: episodes

Episode 1

The teacher of a mixed class of thirteen-year-olds is working through a class

reader in an English lesson. He asks Terry to read out a passage. ‘Do we have to

do this book?’ says Terry. ‘It’s boring.’ Some members of the class smile, one says

‘I like it’, others are silent awaiting the teacher’s reaction.

(from E.C. Wragg, Class Management and Control, Macmillan, 1981, p. 12)

Episode 2

The teacher is explaining a story. Many of the students are inattentive, and

there is a murmur of quiet talk between them. The teacher disregards the

noise and speaks to those who are listening. Finally she reproaches, in a gentle

and sympathetic way, one student who is talking particularly noticeably. The

student stops talking for a minute or two, then carries on. This happens once

or twice more, with different students. The teacher does not get angry, and

continues to explain, trying (with only partial success) to draw students’

attention through occasional questions.

(adapted from Sarah Reinhorn-Lurie, Unpublished research project on classroom discipline,

Oranim School of Education, Haifa, 1992)

Episode 3

The teacher has prepared a worksheet and is explaining how to do it. He has

extended his explanation to the point where John, having lost interest in the

teacher’s words, begins to tap a ruler on his desk. At first the tapping is

occasional and not too noticeable, but John begins to tap more frequently

and more noisily, building up to a final climax when he hits the table with a

very loud bang. The class, startled by the noise, falls silent, and looks at both

John and the teacher to see what will happen.

(adapted from E.C. Wragg, Class Management and Control, Macmillan, 1981, p. 18)

Episode 4

The teacher begins by giving out classroom books and collecting homework

books.

Teacher (to one of the boys): This book’s very thin.

Boy 1: Yeah, ’tis, isn’t it.

Teacher: Why?

Boy 1: I’ve been drawing in it.

Boy 2: He’s been using it for toilet paper, sir.

(Uproar)

(adapted from E. C. Wragg, (ed.) Classroom Teaching Skills, Croom Helm, 1984, p. 32)

Episode 5

The students have been asked to interview each other for homework and

write reports. In this lesson they are asked to read aloud their reports. A few

students refuse to do so. The teacher tells these students to stand up before

the class and be interviewed by them. They stand up, but do not relate to the

questions seriously: answer facetiously, or in their mother tongue, or not at

all. The teacher eventually sends them back to their places, and goes on to the

next planned activity, a textbook exercise.

(adapted from Sarah Reinhorn-Lurie´, Unpublished research project on classroom discipline,

Oranim School of Education, Haifa, 1992)

 

1. The mainstream EFL style of language teaching

The mainstream style of teaching developed in British-influenced EFL from the 1930s up to the present day. Till the early 1970s, it mostly reflected a compromise between the academic and the audio-lingual styles, combining, say, techniques of grammatical explanation with techniques of automatic practice. Harold palmer in the 1920s saw classroom L2 learning as a balance between the ‘studial’ capacities by which people learnt a language by studying like any content subject, that is to say, what is called here an academic style, and the ‘spontaneous’ capacities through which people learn language naturally and without thinking, seen by him in similar terms to the audio-lingual style.

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