Classroom Management Context In Turramurra High School
The practicum was taken place in Turramurra High School (THS) for six weeks. According to Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA] (2017), Turramurra High School is a government school that is located in the South Turramurra. THS has 1243 students in total, 692 are boys, and 551 are girls which gives the ratio to be 56:44. Amongst all the students, 40% of them have language background other than English. Therefore, THS is a multicultural school. The school index of community socio-educational advantage value is 134 points higher than the average. There are almost 60% of students that fall into the top quarter and only 3% in the bottom quarter. Hence, academic results of THS are strong. THS has typically four periods a day which lasts for around 80 minutes.
The class that was chosen for this classroom management is a year 8 class called 8MATA. THS has more boys than girls, and my 8MATA class can easily reflect this situation. There are 30 students in total, but only 9 of them were girls. There are no students with special needs, but quite a lot of them have language background other than English. THS has a system of recording misbehaving students ranging from colour green to red. Four of the students in 8MATA are on orange book which means constant and severe misbehaviours. Due to some management issues, I was not informed that I would have this class until half way of the practicum. Usually, this class is shared between two teachers with very different teaching style, none of which is my supervisor, teacher R usually has them on Monday and Tuesday whereas teacher E has them on Friday. Due to the short notice, I only got to observe teacher E in the last period of Friday and teacher R the following Monday period one. Friday period 4 was chaotic, two students were sent to head teacher’s office, and yet the class was still boisterous and unable to be managed. Since school policy strictly forbids teacher keeping students in after period four as they all need to catch school buses, teacher E’s approach to this class is to minimise the lecturing and give them lots of worksheets to do. To quote teacher E ‘this class is too challenging even for me, they really should not have given it to a student teacher. ’ On the following Monday, due to miscommunication, teacher R was not notified by teacher E that they have finished all the worksheets on Friday, so that period turned out to be a playing lesson. Therefore, after observing two lessons, the only impression 8MATA strikes down in my memory is their constant talking about math and unrelated topics.
Indication of management principles applied
Operant conditioning could be used to promote a productive, fair and enjoyable classroom environment (Skinner, 2014). In operant conditioning, there are two approaches to manage behaviours. Reinforcement is used to strengthen behaviour whereas punishment is used to decrease the likelihood of an act (Skinner, 1963). Positive reinforcement means presenting something pleasant, so the subjects are more willing to repeat the behaviour that triggered reward. In managing classrooms, positive verbal reinforcement is used the most often. Praising a student for achievement and encouraging students to reward their effort. However, judging on 8MATA’s circumstance, it would be hard to give verbal reinforcements as the class was always noisy and loud. A more suitable tactic for this class would be giving them time for desired activities. For example, if the teacher was able to go through everything in class, then students will not be given any homework. There was no contingency between teacher R and teacher E in giving out homework and setting the expectation for them to finish, this approach would probably not work either. Since THS allows students to bring electronic devices to school, allow students to use their electronic devices for subject unrelated purposes could be a reward for the students. Negative punishment means removing something pleasant to emphases on weakening the undesired behaviour. For 8MATA, if students keep talking to their neighbour, removing their neighbour would be an option.
A classroom should be calm and nurturing, so the students could have an efficient environment to study. However, talking to neighbours is the highest disruptions in classroom management problems. If the classroom is structured well, this problem can be decreased or eliminated. In Jones’ model, he mentioned seating plan should be organised in a way which teacher’s proximity to students was maximized because classroom structure has an influence on classroom discipline. While restructuring the classroom, teacher’s deck should not be between students and board because this creates proximity and teacher might lose their potential power of proximity control. Combining classroom structure with operant conditioning would be the tactic that I applied to manage 8MATA. Report on management program8MATA did not have a set seating plan except the four students that were on orange book. They were placed in each corner, alone, to minimise the disturbance. For the Monday and Tuesday classes, students were placed in a traditional classroom structure where there were four rows and four columns, and students were sat in pairs. However, for Friday class, the room is generally for senior students, so the classroom is structured in a U shape. According to Jones (1995), U-shape classroom structure best suited for discussion or debate. For 8MATA, this seating would only aggregate and provoke talking. Therefore, I copied down their seating plan during observation lesson on Monday and emphasised students have to sit according to my seating plan.
In the first lesson, almost all the students showed up, so I was facing an issue on where to seat them. Since there was an odd number of girls, I had no choice but pair a girl with one of the naughty kids. I paired J with J. They worked so well together that it was beyond my expectation. After two lessons, the constant talking finally got to me. I used seating plan as a punishment to break the ones who like to talk. Hence, I moved D and O to the back row, so they can’t speak to T and J because E and M are in between of them. I also moved V and K one row back, so the girls can keep them apart from P and V. I explained my adjustment to the class to let them know this is a punishment for those who talk too much about math unrelated topics. I kept the seating plan like that for two lessons, but the students were sneaky, they would go to their friends and pretend to ask them questions. The students could always find a way to talk to someone, so I thought since punishment is not working then use rewarding from operant conditioning.
In order to create a learning-friendly environment, this time, I used a seating plan as a reward for those who have been behaving well. Instead of building on from the last seating plan, I started from scratch. I tried to keep the pairs together because they do work great together despite the fact they talk too much. I selected the ones who had been engaging and was way ahead of the content that I was teaching and put them into one column. In that column, they have the privilege to use laptops and phones without getting into trouble under the condition where they have to finish and correct the worksheets from that lesson. However, they could be replaced by the students from those three columns working harder and behaving better, so they have to keep up the right behaviours. As for the rest of three columns, I moved D and O to the last row of column two as I did not realise that D and O are friends with E and M, so my first attempt did not work. Since I moved the girls between V and K and P and V to the reward column, I replaced them with S and S. After explaining my complete change of seating plan to the class and rules of getting into that column, some students claimed that I was unfair and biased, I encouraged them to work harder to get into that zone.
Evaluation
Moving V and K one row back, so the girls can keep them apart from P and V worked because removing them from their neighbours served as a negative punishment. However, moving D and O to the back row, so they can’t speak to T and J did not work. Later on, I found out that D and O were friends with E and M as well. Therefore, moving them back did not break the talking to neighbour chain. That is why in the final move, I moved them to the last row of the second column. What’s more, I did not immediately move them after continually disturbing the class which makes it hard for them to link the punishment to their behaviour.
Scott, Anderson and Alter (2012) suggested seating should be flexible to suit the curriculum. The reason why pairing up J and J worked might be because they could work in pairs in solving and helping each other as most of the curriculums I used in class involve teamwork. Getting J to work and not talk is also a breakthrough of breaking up the talking chain of the four corners which significantly decreased the disruptions.
Jones (1995) criticised traditional classroom structure as getting from one end of the class to the other end of the class takes time and energy. Once the teacher could not get to the students as soon as students wanted, students will take advantage of it. Then classroom management will be hard. Jones's criticism explains why after using the final seating plan, there were still times where the class was noisy and loud. Jones’ suggestion of improving is to form a U-shaped room, and unlike the one for senior classes, all the desk should face front. On the other hand, this would not work for 8MATA because of the number of students and the size of the classroom. Therefore, a different way of approach might be needed.
Jones (1995) pointed out a seating plan should be used in the first day of class as first-come first-choice arrangement would impair teacher’s power, especially the ones with behaviour problems would sit together and cause more significant troubles. Therefore, if I started by assigning them a seating plan the classroom management might have been entirely different.
In conclusion, the tactic of combining operant conditioning with a seating plan works to an extent. Contingency should be closely monitored, and a better seating plan would be necessary.
