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Understanding and Construction of Classroom Management
Classroom management can be defined as disciplinary actions and behaviors carried out by the teachers in order to curb misbehavior by students which in turn, ensure the smooth running of teaching activities and encourage students to work closely with the teacher and actively participate in learning activities. The purpose of classroom management is to create a conducive environment for students to be active in learning.
Classroom management involves many aspects. In my opinion, teachers and students are the most important aspects in classroom management, especially teachers who are both the organizer and the participants in classroom education. The teachers play the main and most important role in classroom management. This requires the teacher to have a clear understanding of their classroom management profile (authoritarian style, authoritative style, laissez-faire style or indifferent style), and continuously make adjustments to improve their ability in classroom management and upgrade their professionalism, letting classroom management skills and professionalism to complement each other.
Classroom management is not confined to the classroom environment. According to Brown’s bio-ecological theory (from the Internet, public resources),
factors affecting an individual’s growth, including family, peers, school and society form a complicated system. Within this system, there are students in general and students with special needs, each having a different growth environment. This requires the teacher to spend more time on students with special needs, and possess strong communication and coordination capability.
Classroom management and teaching time do not clash. Effective classroom management will improve the students’ participation in the learning process, increasing the amount of time that the students are focused, maximizing the students’ capacity of acceptance of knowledge, making a fuller and more effective use of the planned lesson time. All these will contribute to achieving the teaching goals and good teaching results.
After a period of time, I will go to a primary school for practical as a Chinese teacher. I will make use of the theories taught to us by teachers, and implement the following measures during the first two weeks of school, with respect to the reality of environment of a typical Singapore Primary School and classroom management.
1.Construction of the classroom environment
John B.Watson once said in the book “Behavioral”, you can shape a dozen of healthy infants into any type of person you want using the appropriate behavioral techniques. From this we can see that the environment has a huge impact on individuals. Hence, constructing a conducive classroom environment will promote the smooth running of lessons. The construction should take into account the classroom’s physical environment and the psychological environment.
Studies have shown that factors in classroom’s physical environment, such as the light intensity, mixture of cold and warm tones of color, layout of the classroom, will have subtle psychological effects on children who spend most of their time in classrooms. I will take note of these factors and make necessary arrangements such as use mainly cold color tones for classroom decoration and ensure that the students’ seating arrangement promotes communication between teachers and students and the atmosphere for active discussion.
For the psychological aspect, I will make sure that I remember every student’s name before the first lesson, so as to gradually close up the psychological distance between teachers and students. I will try to chat with students after classes, to know more about them, such as their lifestyle and their interest, treating the students as equals and communicate with them. The communication outside of class can promote the formation of an equal, democratic, relaxed and harmonious atmosphere in classroom during lessons.
2. Setting of classroom rules in classroom management
At the start of the school year, I will set the classroom rules for the students. The rules will be as clear and specific as possible, to tell the students what behaviors are acceptable and what are not. In the setting of the rules, I will take into consideration reasonable opinions and feedbacks from students and parents and keep on adjusting and perfecting these rules as they are practiced. At the same time, I will explain the rules when appropriate, so as to help the students to be more conscious in abiding by the rules. For certain rules and procedures, the students may not understand fully after one explanation, so I will explain it again and again whenever appropriate so as to reinforce their understanding.
3. Make full use of the art of praise and criticism
According to behavioral psychology, R (behavior)-S (reinforcement) studies have shown that if appropriate and specific praises are given to students’ performance in class, it will stimulate the students’ motivation for participation in classroom activities. During class, the teacher can choose to ignore students who misbehave and instead, praise those who are disciplined, so as to stimulate the craving of the misbehaved students for praises, resulting in Pygmalion effect and good performance. Firstly, I will not generalize the students. Secondly, I will praise the students based on specific behaviors. When the students’ enthusiastic response gain rewards, such behavior will be strengthened and reinforced. In the process of reinforcing, I will slowly transit from material incentives to non-material incentives. Lastly, to maintain the discipline in classroom, certain amount of punishments is necessary. I will be cautious when rendering punishments, taking note of the cause-effect relationship between action and punishment and try not to use it unless it is necessary. Also, when settling misbehaviors, the principle to abide by is not to affect the normal teaching.
4. Care for special needs students
The social advances and development highlighted the importance of special education and increased the difficulty of classroom management. I will find out who are students with special needs, classify them and treat them differently. More attention and encouragement will be given to these students, including seating arrangement, implementing one-to-one peer help and regular communication with the parents, At the same time, I will also take care of other students, making full use of classroom management techniques, such as body language hints, exchange of glances, walk to the student’s side, using close-distance control method.
In short, classroom management is an art. The special nature of the object of education determined the diversity and flexibility of the management methods. The teachers should flexibly choose and modify the methods according to object of education and the specific circumstances of the classroom environment, so as to achieve the purpose of classroom management and hence, ensure the successful completion of the teaching goals.
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