EDF 5807 Week 3: Classroom leadership

• Building a good classroom environment

• Building metacognitive learning• Classroom management

Big Idea 1

Classroom leadership and management involves a mix of tactical tips about management and a strategic agenda to build a good learning environment.

Building a good classroom environment

Two groups of teachers were given a list of 76 “Teacher Behaviours” all of which had been agreed as being good and asked to select their most important 10. Taking each group as a whole, how are the classroom environments created by the two groups likely to differ?

Group A (n = 115)

1. Encourages and supports students 65 2. Provides clear purposes/instructions for work to be done 52 3. Demonstrates enthusiasm for subject and the work done 40 =4. Maintains class discipline 38 =4. Doesn’t “put down” any student 38 6. Uses language that students can understand 37 7. Regularly monitors students’ understanding and gives regular, appropriate and prompt feedback on progress 33 =8. Employs a range of teaching strategies 29 =8. Has high (but potentially achievable) expectations of students 29 10. Applies discipline fairly 29 =11. Demonstrates concern for individual students and their needs 28 =11. Moves around classroom, actively interacting and participating 28 13. Demonstrates personal mastery of subject 24

Group B (n = 107)

1. Takes risks in teaching in order to trial better techniques 42 2. Employs a range of teaching strategies 39 3. Promotes a reflective attitude by students to themselves and 38 their work. =4.Promotes linking of ideas in learning (e.g . through concept maps) 36 =4.Actively promotes conditions where students can ask questions 36 6 Caters for individual differences among students; tries to extend their learning and understanding 35 7. Is flexible – changes teaching approach/strategies as required 34 8. Encourages and supports students 33 9. Shows respect for students and their needs and concerns 31 =10. Demonstrates enthusiasm for subject and the work done 29 =10. Uses strategies that foster students’ self-esteem and 29

confidence =12. Values and acts positively on students’ contributions 28

(questions, ideas) =12. Engenders trust by students; fosters a climate of trust 28 =12. Encourages open-mindedness and introduction of different 28

ideas and perspectives (e.g. brain-storming)

How you behave and the kinds of tasks you set determines the type of classroom environment you get; how students see you/the work/learning:– do they try and engage, or try and avoid, or try and

disrupt?– are they learnt helpless or relatively independent?– Are they fractious group of individuals or a

collaborative community?– Will they take a deep or surface processing approach?

Achieving a good classroom environment is crucial to teaching being rewarding and not too

stressful

Classrooms vary with many being a pleasure to be in, but classes at the low end are characterised by a lack of intellectual respect for students, lack of interest in or engagement in tasks, students well off task or unaware of the purpose of the tasks, students totally dependent on the teacher etc. This is stressful, sometimes highly stressful, I am focusing on how to avoid this and develop good classroom environments

Quality learning involves the regular use of a range of cognitive strategies –types of

thinking

In week one I referred to a list of Aspects of quality learning, many of these could be called cognitive strategies

Some cognitive strategiesProcessing• Looks for key ideas• Checks personal understandingPlanning/Preparing• Plans or reflects on the overall strategy –does not just dive in• Checks the purpose of the taskLinking• Links different ideas, activities and/or lessons• Links ideas in different topics or subjects• Links school to outside life• Retrieves and links schoolwork to relevant prior views

• Baird found that it did not occur to many learners to engage in thinking like this. Rather they had developed a range of what he called poor learning tendencies (habits).

• Collectively these described learning that was passive, dependent and unreflective

Some “poor learning tendencies” (teacher concerns)

• Student don’t think about the meaning of what they read or hear

• Students don’t think about why or how they are doing a task

• Students don’t read instructions carefully- they overlook some aspects

• Students dive into tasks without planning• Students have no strategies when stuck• Students don’t learn from mistakes in assessment tasks

• These can be framed as a lack of monitoring by students

• The mirror image of each of these provide descriptions of what monitoring can involve

Bree and Sarah’s students were engaged in some of these

• Thinking about the meaning of what they read or hear

• Thinking about why or how they are doing a task• Reading instructions carefully• Planning how they might tackle a task before

beginning• Showing strategies for getting unstuck themselves• Learning from mistakes in assessment tasks

A lack of linking

• Students don’t link different lessons• Students don’t link school work with outside

life• Students don’t believe that their own beliefs

are relevant and so do not link schoolwork to these

• Hence students’ existing beliefs are not easy to change

Big idea 2

Having an articulated list of aspects of poor (and hence good) learning is crucial to planning teaching for quality learning. “get students thinking” is not helpful advice

To change how students were learning Baird argued they need to learn about what learning could be –become metacognitive

Metacognition - Knowing About One's Knowing

• Cognition refers to knowing and learning; metacognition refers to knowing about one's own knowing

• Metacognition involves the knowledge, awareness and hence control of one's learning. Cognitive strategies may be used tacitly/unconsciously (and hence erratically in most cases). Someone who is learning metacognitively, deliberately, purposefully and systematically uses a range of appropriate cognitive strategies.

• There are degrees of metacognition: there is a continuum not a dichotomy.

These “aspects of quality learning” are at least partly metacognitive

Reflecting• Restructures existing ideas as needed • Reflects on what has been learnt in a lesson, topic or term• Reflects on what can be learnt from a piece of assessment or feedback• Reflects on how they tackled a task• Reflects on better ways to learn in the future

Metacognition means knowing that these are useful things to do and deliberately engaging in them

Where am I going with this?

What could promoting metacognition have to do with building a good classroom environment and classroom management?

Promoting Quality Learning

• It takes energy to engage in quality learning and quality learning can only occur with the consent of the learner

• Building metacognition means taking the students with you and building a learning community that recognises and values quality learning

What Will You See: Good Learning Behaviours

Learning is a personal process and in very shy students quality learning may be invisible, however often the teacher will see one or more good learning behaviours (GLBs)

Some good learning behaviours

1. Requests further information if needed. 2. Seeks reasons for aspects of the work at hand.6. Offers or seeks links between:

-- different activities and ideas-- different topics or subjects-- schoolwork and personal life

8. Suggests new activities and alternative procedures10. Offers ideas, new insights and alternative

explanations.12. Reacts and refers to comments of other students.

• From a teachers perspective, good learning behaviours are signs of quality learning -they should be both fostered and used to help build students conceptions of the nature of quality learning.

• This makes a fundamental change in how teachers might respond to student behaviours they may previously have considered to be time wasting.

• Debriefing about a GLB are an important strategy in promoting metacognition.

• From a student's perspective, especially younger students, GLBs describe constructive and effective actions they can take to improve their learning, provided they are in a situation where these behaviours will be welcomed and appropriate

• GLBs vanish if the appropriate trusts are not present.

Big idea 3

Developing metacognitive learners is an evolutionary journey where teachers need to be consistent and persistent

Where can I start?

One useful strategy is to use procedures that stimulate good learning behaviours and then debrief on both the behaviours and the kinds of thinking stimulated by the procedure. In this way you are beginning to build a shared language for learning.

Classroom management/classroom leadership –the medium term perspective

• In one important sense classroom management is a bedrock skill of teaching, but the question is better framed as how well you interact with students –what sorts of relationships and what sort of classroom climate and culture can you build over a time scale of weeks

• From this perspective classroom leadership is the more appropriate term

Classroom management –the short term perspective

• Handling students and dealing with immediate management problems is complex and decisions needing to be made very fast and based on many factors: what is the best thing to do with this student on this occasion?

• This course can only make a contribution to in this area. There is a lot of craft knowledge which must be gained in situ (hence school experience) and which need a few years of practice

You cannot demand good behaviour and adequate motivation and interest as a right; you have to create it. BUT It is reasonable to expect that the vast majority of students will give you an initial go for a lesson or two.

Role play: List aspects of poor management

Some sources of management problems

• The behaviour of difficult students is often a symptom/outcome of very difficult home environment. It is important (and helpful) to be sensitive to this, but it can lead to some serious dilemmas: at some point a teacher has to draw a line and say this behaviour, however understandable, cannot continue in my class.

• Peer group issues often spill over into the classroom, especially in Years 7/8.

Another source: Low intellectual self esteem and an external locus of control

• Students with an “internal locus of control” believe that they can succeed if they make an appropriate effort

• A significant number of students in almost all classes will have a low sense of intellectual self esteem –they do not expect to succeed in what you ask them to do

• This leads to an “external locus of control” –they do not believe that it will make a difference if they make an effort

• This can mean they present as a management problem, but this can be turned around by perceptions of success

• I believe that most classroom misbehaviour is a symptom of factors which are largely controllable by the teacher: boredom, lack of cognitive engagement and low levels of intellectual self esteem.

• Unless the management is going very badly, the vast majority of the interactions you have with students are about teaching, learning and tasks. Hence these interactions are, in the medium term likely to be more important in their influence on classroom tone than the interactions you have over management (unless the latter are badly mishandled).

Inexperienced teachers and teachers with poor management see management as a system of rules, rewards and punishment.

Experienced teachers with seamless management see it as an inextricable part of the values, morals and sense of community –part of the whole tapestry of teaching which cannot and should not be extracted as a separate construct (Fallona, 1999)

Using shared intellectual control and debriefing to build a positive relationship with a difficult

class

• This is the title of a reading I have posted for week 5• I also describe the lesson on which it was based in

the video on generating affective engagement

Some Principles of Good Management

1.Display consistently high levels of interest, enthusiasm and enjoyment for both teaching and your subject.

The students will mirror your mood, so it is in your interests to always appear to be looking forward to spending the next lesson with them

2. Increase students intellectual self-esteem and internal locus of control

A great deal of misbehaviour and lack of effort is due to students not believing that they can succeed, this is particularly true of many of the most difficult students. Look for opportunities for students to experience success

3. Build a learning community that focuses on quality learning and shares intellectual control• (With a known difficult student). Break the circuit:

create opportunities in the first lesson where you can use/praise a comment or suggestion of theirs. Being aware of GLBs is very helpful here

• Look for opportunities to praise both individuals and the whole class: for GLBs, for improvement, for a good lesson

• Use names from the start of lesson 1• Stimulate and work from students’ ideas, contributions

and questions

4. Minimise your reliance on the power route.

• Students/classes where you really need help are usually not amenable to the heavy power route.

• The basis of good classroom tone is that the teacher has built an environment where they very rarely have to use or refer to their power. When they do it is much more effective for being rare.

• Do not try and enforce unenforceable or (even worse) unnecessary rules; e.g. demanding silence while you clean the board or give out a handout

• Overtly accept blame for stuff-ups and errors, do not try and cover up or browbeat students into silence when you have made a mistake

Strategy: Establish total power and dominance

TacticsBehaviours• Do not smile for 3 months• Begin with a list of rules and punishments• Look for opportunities to show them that you mean

businessTasks• Copy notes from the board• Low level, short answer “busy sheets”

Strategy: Build a sense of shared intellectual control

TacticsBehaviours• Praise students for contributing• Use students questions and ideas• Look for opportunities for choices and decisionsTasks• What are some examples you have read about from

the PEEL database?

5. Build a relationship of mutual respect

• The more respect you give a student, the more respect they will give you back (Teacher interview)

• If possible, create situations where students have an opportunity to explain their behaviour and acknowledge its inappropriateness in ways that are not publicly humiliating. Be prepared to change a decision in the light of more data.

• Do not hold grudges, be proactive in re-establishing positive working relations as soon as possible with the disruptive student.

6. Try and avoid major confrontation

It is never constructive and often disastrous to allow an incident to escalate up. This can be easier said than done: sometimes a student creates a situation where confrontation is unavoidable. Try hard to avoid precipitating a major confrontation. Try not to back a student into a corner where they have to engage in major defiance to save face

7. Do not crank up the emotional temperature: Maintain an appearance of being relaxed,

unflustered and not angry.• Yelling at a class doesn't solve anything ... I want them to work

with me not against me (teacher interview)• Raising your voice, occasionally, can be effective, but this can

be done without a show of anger• Do not let yourself be overwhelmed by management, do not

show stress. Make your initial orders or instructions in a courteous, pleasant tone, where possible phrase them as requests. Use humour.

• Criticise and punish where appropriate student actions, but avoid sarcasm, humiliation and criticisms of their personal qualities

8. Give students choices and give them space to exercise that choice or do what you say without a

public humiliation

Bill, if you can work quietly here fine, otherwise I will have to ask you to move over there. If at all possible, offer these choices 1:1 and then move away to create space for the student

9. Anticipate and avoid problems

• Avoid lesson designs that are doomed to end in a fight. If the last four times you had 9E period 5 on Thursday you spent 28 out of the 49 minutes at the front of the class trying to get attention, then do not plan another lesson where you are trying to get them to pay attention to one person at a time. Get yourself away from the front of the classroom. Plan a lesson where they focus on (say) a written task, a practical task or a small group task.

• In general, do not ignore minor disruptions -they are far easier to stop than what they turn into. However go to some lengths to end these with a low key call to order. Keep minor rebukes pleasant and, if possible, humorous.

• Indicate from the outset the excuses that you will never accept (e.g. 'I forgot to write it in my diary').

You will have some less than ideal lessons, expect to learn from experience

Try not to get overwhelmed by a focus on management, keep a focus on quality learning, but you will learn from experience here as well