Educational Psychology: Managing Learning Environments
I. The what and why of classroom management
- Classroom management stands out as the variable with the largest impact on
student achievement.
- Classrooms are particular kinds of environments. They have distinctive features
that influence their inhabitants no matter what the teacher believes about
education.
- Classrooms are multidimensional, they are crowded people, tasks, and time
pressures
- Events occur simultaneously—everything happens at once and the pace is fast.
- A lesson can still be interrupted by a technology glitch or a loud angry discussion
right outside the classroom because classrooms are public the way the teacher
handles these unexpected intrusions is seen and judged by everyone.
II. The Basic Task: Gain Their Cooperation
- Gaining student cooperation means planning activities, having materials ready,
making appropriate behavioral and academic demands on students giving clear
signals, accomplishing transitions smoothly, foreseeing problems and stopping
them before they start selecting and sequencing activities so that flow and interest
are sustained, maintaining positive relationships with students based on mutual
respect—and more.
- Towards the end of elementary school, some students begin to test and defy
authority.
- The management challenges at this stage are to deal productively with these
disruptions and to motivate students who are becoming less concerned about
teacher’s opinions and more interested in their social lives.
III. The goals of Classroom Management
- Classroom Management- is to maintain a positive, productive learning
environment.
a. Access to learning
 Each classroom activity has its own rules for participation, sometimes
these rules are clearly stated but often implicit and unstated. (i.e. raising
hands in making a comment)
 Participation Structures- rules defining who can talk what they can talk
about, when and to whom and how long they can talk.
 The first goal of a good classroom management---giving all students
access to learning—you must make sure everyone knows how to
participate in class activities.
b. More time for learning
 Good classroom management can take some of lost hours for
teaching so that more instructional time is available. Making more
time for instruction will no automatically lead to achievement. To be
valuable, time must be used effectively.
 Engaged time/ Time on task- Time spent actively involved in specific
learning tasks. Does not guarantee learning
 Students may be struggling with material that is too difficult or they
may be using the wrong learning strategies.
 Academic Learning Time- Students working with a high rate of
success really learning and understanding.
 The Third Goal of class management is to increase academic learning
time by keeping all students actively engaged in worthwhile,
appropriate learning activities.
c. Management Means Relationships
 When students feel caring and support from their teachers and their
peers, they are more likely to cooperate. Cooperation leads to
learning, learning to a sense of self efficacy, and self-efficacy to more
cooperation.
 d. Management for Self-Management  Established Routines
 The Final Goal of any management system is to help students  Administrative routines- attendance
become better able to manage themselves
 Student Movement- entering and leaving
 Complex learning structures such as cooperative or problem-based
 Housekeeping- watering plants
learning require student self-management. Compliance with rules is
not enough to make these learning structures work  Lesson-running routines- how to collect assignments
 The most fundamental purpose of discipline is the development of  Interactions between teacher and student- how to get teacher’s
self-control. Academic knowledge and technological skill will be a little attention
consequence if those who possess them lack self-control.
 Talk among students- giving help or socializing
 Self-Management- Requires extra time, but teaching students how to
take responsibility is an investment worth the effort. b. Rules

 Student teachers who developed self-regulation knowledge and skills - Specify expected and forbidden actions in the class.
were more confident, less stressed, and more engaged during their - Rules should be consistent with the school rules and also in keeping with
student teaching compared to other prospective teachers who did not principles of learning.
learn how to help their students to become self-regulated.
- Rules should be positive and observable.
 Neglect to set student self-management goal, their students often find
that they have trouble working independently after they graduate from c. Consequences
these well managed classes
- Logical consequences like doing it right
IV. Creating A Positive Learning Environment
- The use of Natural or Logical Consequences to support social/emotional
- Teachers prevent discipline problems whenever they make an effort to development by doing the ff.
motivate students. A student engaged in learning is usually not involved in a
- Natural/logical consequence- Redoing and repairing or in some way face the
class with the teacher or other students at the same time.
consequences that naturally flow from their actions.
- Most and least effective teachers were identified on the basis of the quality of
 Separate the deed from the doer, the behavior not the student
classroom management and student achievement later in the year.
 Emphasize that they have the power to choose their actions and
- Teachers who applied the principles (classroom management) had fewer
avoid losing control.
problems; their students spent more time learning and less time disrupting;
and achievement was higher.  Encourage student reflection, self-evaluation and problem solving
V. Routine and Rules Required  Help students identify and give a rationale for what they could do
differently next time.
a. Routines and procedures- describe how activities are accomplished in
classrooms but they are seldom written down; they are simply the wats of
getting things done
 - Teaching children that something is wrong because there is a rule against it is
not the same as teaching them that there is a rule against it because it is
wrong, and helping them understand why this is so.
VI. Planning Spaces for Learning
a. Personal Territories and Seating Arrangements
VII.
- A personal territory is your own (usually assigned) seat. Teachers should
move around the room when possible, establish eye contact with and direct
questions to students seated far away, and vary the seating so the same
students are not always consigned to the back.
- In classes with lower-ability students, work cycles are shorter; students are not
required to spend long, unbroken periods on one type of activity. Each period
are moved smoothly through several different task
- Effective teachers carefully follow each student’s progress, so student cannot
avoid work without facing consequences.
Maintaining A Good Environment for Leaning
a. Encouraging Engagement
- This type of activity usually requires careful planning and monitoring

- Horizontal Rows- Useful for independent seatwork and teacher, student, or
media presentation. It also permit students to work more easily in pairs
however poor arrangement for large-group discussion.
- Cluster of four or Circle- useful for discussions but still allow for independent
seatwork. Permit students to talk, help one another, share materials, and work
on group tasks. Poor in whole group presentations
- Fishbowl or stack- special information where students sit close together near
the focus of attention. Could potentially lead to discipline problems.
- When the task provides continuous cues for the student about what to do next,
involvement will be greater. Activities with clear steps are likely to be more
absorbing, because one step leads naturally to the next. Students will be
more engaged if they are involved in authentic tasks or activities connected in
real life.
- Effective class managers at all levels had well-planned systems for
encouraging students to manage their own work
VIII. Prevention is the Best Medicine

b. Interest Areas
- Can influence the way the areas are used by students. Changes in these
areas helped the teacher meet her objectives of having more girls involved in
the science center and having all students experiment more with a variety of
manipulative materials
- The successful manage were much better at preventing problems. First, these
teachers captured students’ attention and maintained engagement in work that
was at appropriate levels for all students. Second these effective classroom
managers were especially skilled in four specific kinds of prevention
a. Withitness

- Personal Territories and interest areas are not mutually exclusive; many
teachers use a design that combines these types of organization
- Interest areas in the back or around the periphery of the room allows flexibility
needed for both large and small group activity.
c. Effective Managers for Secondary Students
- Effective managers focus on establishing rules, procedures, and expectations
on the first day of class
- Communicating to students that you are aware of everything that is happening
in the classroom. With-it teachers seem to have eyes in the back of their
heads. They are always scanning the room, making eye contact with individual
students so the students know they are being monitored
- They know who instigated the problem and they make sure they deal with the
right people in other words they do not make timing errors
- Timing Errors- waiting too long before intervening
- Target Errors- blaming the wrong student and letting the real perpetrator
escape responsibility for the behavior.
 - If two problems occur, effective managers deal with the more serious first.
b. Overlapping and Group Focus
- Overlapping- keeping track of and supervising several activities at the same
time (i.e. teacher may have to check the work of an individual and at the same
time keep a small group working and saying” right, go on,” and top an incident
in another group with a quick “look” or reminder.
- Group Focus- means keeping as many students as possible involved in
appropriate class activities. All students should have something to do during a
lesson.
c. Movement Management
- Mearns keeping lessons and the group moving at an appropriate and flexible
pace, with smooth transitions and variety.
- An effective teacher avoids abrupt transitions such as announcing a next
activity before gaining the students’ attention or starting a new activity in the
middle of something else.
d. Student Social Skills are Prevention
- All efforts to teach social and emotional self-regulation are steps toward
preventing management problems
- Educators can teach and model these skills and then give students feedback
and practice using them in variety of settings. Teacher can help to change
attitudes that value aggression over cooperation and comprise
IX. Caring Relationships: Connections with School
- Students also value teachers who show academic and personal caring by
acting like real people, sharing responsibility, minimizing the use of external
controls, including everyone, searching for students’ strengths, communicating
effectively and showing an interest in their students’ lives and pursuits
- The students also reported greater cognitive, social, and emotional
engagement in math learning when the teachers made learning goals clear,
used proactive/preventive management strategies and orchestrated smooth
transitions.
- Students need to know that no matter what, you will never give up on them.
Some teachers have morning rituals that include greeting each student at the
door to maintain connection.
a. School Connections
- Students who feel connected with school are happier, more engaged in school
work, more self-discipline, and less likely to be involved in dangerous
behaviors.
- If students perceive their schools are competitive places where they are
treated differently based on race, gender, or ethnicity, then they are more
likely to act out or withdraw altogether.
b. Creating communities of care for adolescents
- Students have more teachers and few close relationships, just at a time when
emotional, social, and academic stresses are increasing. Feeling a sense of
belonging is important for all students, but particularly for students who may
because of language or poverty, feel disconnected from the basically middle
class culture of most schools.
X. Dealing with Discipline Problems
a. Stopping problems quickly
- It may help you to be more effective at deescalating problems if you approach
students’ social/behavioral problems more like you would academic problems
—as an opportunity to learn a better way (i.e. when students make an
academic mistake we assume that they were trying to get it right and did not
make the mistake on purpose)
- Most students comply quickly when the teacher gives a desist instructions or
redirect behavior.
- Eight simple ways to stop misbehavior quickly moving from least to most
intrusive
 Make eye contact with or move closer to the offender
 Try verbal hints (name dropping)
 Ask students if they are aware of the negative effects of their actions
  Involve the whole class in a brief interactive activity  Level C- Cooperation/Conformity- Complies with expectations,
conforms to peer influence.
 Remind the students of the procedure and have them follow it
correctly.  Level D- Democracy—self-disciplined, initiative, responsibility of your
own actions.
 Ask the students to state the correct rule or procedure and follow it
XIII. Bullying and Cyberbullying
 Tell the student in a clear, assertive, and unhostile way to stop the
misbehavior - Bullying is a type interpersonal aggression intended to harm the victim that is
characterized by systematic and repeated abuse of physical or social power.
 Offer a choice
- Victims may believe that they are rejected because they have flaws that they
XI. If you impose penalties cannot change or control.
- Teachers prefer the use of logical consequences. - Students who are different from the larger peer group are more likely to be
- Effective caring teachers would not use low achievement status, grades, or bullied
the like as a means of discipline as it is unfair and ineffective and serves to - Chronic victims are more depressed and more likely to attempt suicide as
alienate the students young adults.
XII. Teacher Imposed Penalties Versus Student Responsibility
Types of Bullying Description Behaviors
- Even though classroom management is the responsibility of the teacher, Physical Unwanted physical Hitting, pinching, kicking, and
discipline is really the responsibility of the student contact; exerts power or shoving.
force over another
- Classroom management is about how things are done in the classroom and
involves procedures routines, and structures—the teacher’s responsibility. Verbal Offensive comment or Teasing, name calling, criticizing,
threats humiliating, taunting, derogatory
- Students must discipline themselves to be self-regulated learners and remarks
ultimately productive, successful, happy adults. Cyber Using electronic Spreading rumors; testing
platform embarrassing/ compromising
- Anyone who has worked with children or adolescents knows that self-
pictures of vides
discipline is not automatic—it must be taught and practiced like any other skill
Identity Leaving people out or Calling racist jokes; mocks one’s
(a.) Communicating in positive terms (b.) offering choices and eliciting
treating them badly race, religion, disability;
consequences from students (c.) encouraging reflection and self-evaluation
because of race, intentionally making someone
- Hierarchy of behavior using explanations and examples ethnicity, background, feel uncomfortable
religion or disability
 Level A- Anarchy—aimless, chaotic. Sexual Leaving individuals out, Making sexist comments or
 Level B- Bossing/Bullying—Breaking laws and making your own treating them badly or jokes, touching, pinching,
standards; obeying only when the enforcer has more power authority. making them feel grabbing in a sexual way; making
uncomfortable because crude comments about
of their sex someone’s sexual behaviors or
orientation

a. Why do Students Bully?
- Bullied feel annoyed, insulted or have some grievance against the victim so
they feel justified lashing out
- They simply enjoy putting the victim under pressure especially if bystanders
seem to find the whole situation fun
- The bully believes the aggression against the victim will gain or maintain
acceptance for himself or herself in a valued group.
- The bully wants something from the victim and is willing to inflict harm to get it
and or the bully is basically sadistic hurting other people feels good
b. What can teachers do?
- An active role if students believe their teachers will separate those involved in
bullying or contact parents and the principal, they are more likely to report
bullying.
- Consequences for the bullies should be clear, stated in advance, escalate if
the bullying continues, include a reflection on the situation and not be meant to
humiliate the bully but rather teach better ways of dealing with the reasons for
bullying.
XIV. Special Problems with High School Student
- The most important thing is to enforce the established consequences for
incomplete work.
- Do not pass a student because you know he or she is bright enough to pass.
- There is also the problems of students who continually break the same rules
or get into fights. Try to catch them before they break the rules and if the rules
are broken, be consistent in applying established consequences and do not
accept they will do better next time.
- Teach students who to monitor their own behavior; some of self-regulation
techniques.
- Remain friendly with the students.
- A defiant student can pose serious problems. If there is an outburst, try to get
out of the situation as soon as possible
- Give the student a chance to save face and cool down by saying “its your
choice to cooperate or not” If the students complies, the two of you can talk
later about controlling the outbursts. If the student refuse to cooperate, you
can tell him or her to wait in the hall until you get the class started on work
then step outside for a private talk.
XV. The need for Communication
- Communication between teacher and students is essential when problems
arise
- Our actions, movements, voice tone, and facial expressions, and many other
nonverbal behaviors send messages to our students.
- A student may respond with hostility if she or he feels insulted by the teacher
- Paraphrase Rule- Policy whereby listeners must accurately summarize a
speaker has said before being allowed to respond.
- Paraphrasing is more than a classroom exercise. It can be the first step in
communicating with students.
XVI. Emphatic Listening
- Hearing the intent and emotions behind what another says and reflecting them
back by paraphrasing.
- To allow the student to find a solution
- Emphatic, active listening is more than a parroting of the student’s words: it
should capture the emotions, intent, and meaning behind them
XVII. I message, Assertive Discipline, and Problem Solving
a. I Message
- Nonaccusatory statement of something is affecting you
- To intervene and change a student’s behaviors
 - Telling a student in a straightforward, assertive and nonjudgmental way what
she or he is doing, how it affects you as a teacher, and how you feel about it.
- The student is then free to change voluntarily and often does so.
b. Assertive Discipline
- When students behaviors have to be changed, many teachers are ineffective
with students because they are either wishy-washy and passive or hostile
aggressive
- Passive Response Style- they ask the student to try or to think about the
appropriate action, a passive teacher might comment on the problem without
actually telling the child what to do differently.
- Hostile Response Style- Involves different mistakes. Teachers may make you
statement that condemn the student without stating clearly what the student
should be doing. “ You should be ashamed of the way you’re behaving” or
“you never listen”
- Assertive Response Style- Teachers care too much about them and the
process of learning allow inappropriate to persist. Teachers clearly state what
they expect, they also have calm, firm, and confident voices. They are not
sidetracked by accusations. They do not get into a debate about the fairness
of the rules. They expect changes not apologies
c. Confrontations and Negotiations
- There are three methods of resolving a conflict between a teacher and a
student
 Teacher to impose solution
 The teacher give in to the student demands
 Problem solving that allows both teacher and student have input into a
solution
XVIII. Reaching Every Student: Peer Mediation and Restorative Justice
a. Peer Mediation
 Jointly define the conflict
 Exchange positions and interests
 Reverse Perspectives
 Invest at least three agreement that allow mutual gain
 Reach an integrative agreement
- All students in were trained in mediation strategies. The role of the mediator
was rotated—every day the teacher chose two students to be the class
mediators and to wear the mediator’s t-shirts
b. Restorative Justice
- Focuses on building, nurturing, and repairing relationships while giving a voice
to victims, offenders and the community.
- The participants in a conflict meet with a facilitator and sometime members of
the family. The victim and the offender express their views and describe their
experiences with monitoring by the facilitator to keep discussions productive.
XIX. Research on Management Approaches
- Recognizing and rewarding appropriate student behaviors, talking with
students about how their behaviors affect others, involving students in class
discipline decisions, and providing nondirective hints and descriptions about
unacceptable learning
- When teachers feel threatened it can be difficult for them to do what students
need, but that maybe the most important time to act positively and combine
caring with control.
XX. Diversity: Culturally Responsive Management
- Teachers do their students and themselves a service if they work at becoming
bicultural—helping their students to learn how to function in both mainstream
and home cultures, but also learning the meaning of their students’ unintended
insults
- Culturally responsive classroom management- taking cultural meanings and
styles into account when developing management plans and responding to
students
- Five dimensions of a culturally responsive classroom management
(1) Understanding and addressing your own beliefs, biases, values, and
stereotypes that are grounded in your own ethnic culture
(2) Developing a knowledge of your students’ cultural backgrounds
(3) Understanding the broader social, economic, and political context of
classroom teaching—schools often reflect and reinforce the
discriminatory practices of the larger society.
(4) An ability and willingness to use culturally appropriate management
strategies
(5) A commitment to building classrooms
- Warm Demanders- Teachers who show both high expectations and great
caring for the students. A teacher who seems to be most effective with
students placed at risk.