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Ecological Approaches to Classroom Management

Ecological Approaches to Classroom Management. Walter Doyle University of Arizona. Four Sections of the Article. Introduction to the ecological perspective Types of settings found in classrooms and program of actions that define order for these contexts

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Ecological Approaches to Classroom Management

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  1. Ecological Approaches to Classroom Management Walter Doyle University of Arizona

  2. Four Sections of the Article • Introduction to the ecological perspective • Types of settings found in classrooms and program of actions that define order for these contexts • Consideration of processes and strategies for managing classroom events • Appraisal of current status and future prospects for an ecological approach

  3. Introduction • The central idea surrounding the ecological approach is habitat, the physical niche or context with characteristic purposes, dimensions, features and processes that consequence • The ecological perspective emerged in the 1960s from Kounin and Gump

  4. Nature of the Classroom • Multidimensionalityis a large quantity of events and tasks that take place in a classroom • Simultaneity is when many things happen at once in the classroom • Immediacy is a rapid pace of classroom events • Unpredictability in classroom events often take unexpected turns

  5. Nature of the Classroom (con’t) • Publicness in classrooms are public places and events, especially those involving the teacher, that are often witnessed by a large portion of the students • History is when classes meet for 5 days a week for several months • There is a common set of experiences, routines and norms which provide a foundation for conducting activities for the rest of the term or year

  6. Classroom Management • Order in the classroom is about how order is established and maintained in classroom environments • Order in the classroom does not necessarily mean passivity, absolute silence or rigid conformity to rules • Within acceptable limits, the students are following the program of action for a particular event

  7. Classroom Management (con’t) • Classroom management is the actions and strategies used to solve the problem of order in the classroom • Misbehavior is any action by one or more students that: • Threatens to disrupt the activity flow • Pulls the class toward a program of action that threatens the safety of the group • Violates norms of appropriate classroom behavior held by the teacher, the students or the school staff

  8. How Life is Organized in the Classroom • A classroom is a behavior setting, an ecobehavioral unit composed of segments that surround and regulate behavior • The basic unit for classroom organization is the activity • Activities with different labels often have quite similar formats

  9. How Life is Organized in the Classroom - Involvement • Work involvement or engagement is the most widely used student behavior • Involvement is used to label student behavior that reflects active engagement in working • Noninvolvement or off-task behavior often includes passive withdrawal, mild forms of inappropriate behavior and more serious forms of misbehavior • Involvement was: • Highest for students in teacher-led • Lowest for pupil presentations • Whole class recitations was higher than independent seatwork

  10. How Life is Organized in the Classroom - Time • Contexts as programs of action as order is defined by the programs of action embedded in the classroom • Time • Does not just pass in the classroom • It is a rhythmic movement toward accomplishing an academic and/or social goal

  11. How Life is Organized in the Classroom - Programs of Action • Recitation requires calling on individual students to give brief answers to public questions before the rest of the class • Seatwork is “supervised study” during which all students are assigned to work independently at their desks • Small groups and cooperative learning teams study together • Transitions are points in social interaction when contexts change

  12. How Life is Organized in the Classroom - Pacing • Pacing, Signal Systems and Involvements • Involvement is higher in students who are externally paced (tests, recitation) than a student who is self paced • An emphasis is placed on the activity flow and the pacing of the lesson

  13. How Life is Organized in the Classroom – Signal Systems • Continuity: the flow of information or signals to the individual participant • Lessons high in this are teacher presentations • Lessons low in this are group discussions, projects, and role playing • Insulation: degree to which the individual student is isolated from signals for inappropriate behavior • Lessons high in this have low off-task rate • Lessons low in this are music and movement

  14. How Order is Achieved in the Classroom – Physical Design of Settings • The physical designs of settings is the compatibility between the program of action in an activity and the physical aspects of the setting • Classroom design and furniture arrangement have little effect on achievement but some effect on attitudes and conduct

  15. How Order is Achieved in the Classroom – Establishing Rules and Procedures • Rules are intended to regulate forms of individual conduct that can disrupt activities • Teachers integrate their rules and procedures into a workable system and deliberately teach this system to their students • Effective managers monitored classes closely and stopped inappropriate behavior promptly

  16. How Order is Achieved in the Classroom – Misbehavior and Interventions • Misbehavior is any behavior by one or more students that is perceived by the teacher to initiate a vector of action that competes with or threatens the primary vector of action at a particular moment in a classroom activity • Most misbehavior is related to attention, crowd control and getting work accomplished in classrooms

  17. How Order is Achieved in the Classroom – Misbehavior and Interventions (con’t) • High-ability students are likely to engage in misbehavior towards the end of an activity. In contrast lower ability students misbehave during the activity • Interventions can repair temporary disturbances in classroom order • Interventions are, by their very nature, reactive

  18. Conclusions and Future Research • Classroom management is fundamentally a process of solving the problem of order rather than the problem of disruption or misbehavior • An emphasis on program of action in the classroom is embedded in the activities teachers and students enact together as they accomplish work

  19. Conclusions and Future Research (cont’d) • Order in classrooms is context specific and held in place by balancing a large array of forces and processes • Order is a permanent pressure on classroom life and a teacher continuously faces the need to monitor and protect the programs of action in class • Successful classroom management involves understanding the configuration of events in the classroom and skill in monitoring and guiding activities

  20. Conclusions and Future Research (cont’d) • Little has been changed in the past two decades • There is a general decline in classroom management research • A challenge is to push the ecological approach toward a framework that integrates habitat, curriculum, action and cognition into a unified conception • Activity theory is a new framework which seems to hold promise for advancing work on an integrated conceptualization for classroom studies through goal-directed, tool-mediated, intersubjective and self-regulated actions

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