Classroom Management Theorists and

Theories/Jacob Kounin

1 Overview/History of Jacob Movement is achieved through withitness, overlapping,

momentum, smoothness, and group focus.
Kounin’s Work
Withitness was Kounin’s word to describe a teacher’s abil-
ity to know what was going on at all times in his/her class-
Jacob Kounin is an educational theorist who focused on room. This can be as simple as making scanning looks
a teacher’s ability to affect student behavior through in- around the room every once in awhile. Kounin said that
structional management. His best-known work was done is was not necessary for the teacher to know what is go-
in the 1970s, where he conducted two major case stud- ing on, but for the students to perceive that the teacher
ies. From educational psychologist to a well-known the- knows.
orist today, Kounin brought a novel idea that incorpo-
Overlapping is the ability for a teacher to in a word, multi-
rated both the instructional and disciplinary aspects of the
task. Being able to present a new topic while preventing
classroom together. Before this happened, most educa-
misbehaviors is essential for a teacher. The concept of
tors viewed their role as a straight-forward passing on of
overlapping ties into the idea of withitness as well.
skills and knowledge to their students. After publishing
his book, “Discipline and Group Management in Class- Momentum is the flow of a lesson. A teacher must be able
rooms”(1977), Kounin attempted to influence the origi- to “roll-with-the-punches” in acknowledging that things
nal viewpoint of educators and to integrate teaching and might go wrong and being able to fluidly adapt and con-
discipline in the classroom. tinue onward despite distractions and disruptions. An ex-
ample of this would be a student late for the class inter-
Kounin’s first observation of an intriguing pattern in stu-
rupts or technology that is being used goes wrong.
dent behavior was when he asked a student in his own
classroom to put something away; he noticed that the stu- Smoothness is also highly related to momentum. Being
dents around him suddenly followed in focusing their at- able to keep on track without getting on tangents as well
tention. He watched as the correction of one student be- as being diverted by irrelevant questions or information
havior actually spread to other students engaging in inap- is important. Many times, a teacher can get distracted
propriate behaviors, and resulted in a much more ordered and leave a topic open and not come back to it until later,
room. He later described this phenomenon as the “Ripple which can be confusing to students. Another thing that
Effect”. can ruin smoothness is when a teacher does not have a
plan or course of action, it can seem as though the lecture
This first observation led Kounin to conduct experiments
is jumping from one topic to the next.
over 5 years with students from all levels, but later Kounin
changed his focus to seeing how teachers actually pre- The final aspect that results in Lesson Movement and
pared or proactively managed their classrooms before be- effective teaching through integrating management and
havior occurred. He noticed how the reactions of teach- learning is group focus. Group focus is the ability of a
ers to students affected classroom management in a neg- teacher to engage the whole class using techniques such as
ative way. He learned that teachers were always receiving building suspense or asking community questions. This
similar responses from their students no matter how they can also look like asking random questions, or asking a
reacted to misbehavior in the classroom. From this ob- student a question and then looking around at other stu-
servation, he concluded that there must be something a dents to see if they are thinking or ready to respond.
teacher could do to prevent misbehavior in the first place, These are the main theories and history of Jacob Kounin.
which would lead to more effective classroom manage-
ment.
From his studies, Kounin developed theories about class-
room management that were based around a teacher’s 2 Implementation Of Kounin’s
ability to organize and plan in their classrooms while
using proactive behavior and high student involvement.
Philosophy
He believed that in order for a teacher to have an ef-
fective connection between management and teaching, As mentioned above the Five Main points of Kounin’s
there needed to be good Lesson Movement. This Lesson work are:

1
2 3 ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

1. “with-it-ness” 2.4 Smoothness

2. overlapping The teacher can have students make hand gestures, that
will tell the teacher whether the student has a comment
3. momentum or question concerning the lesson. This technique allows
the teacher to have an idea about those students who may
4. smoothness cause an unwanted tangent and those who may have a
good question, pertaining to utilise the time effectively.
5. group focus When placing students in group-work, the teacher can
walk around facilitating and listening to discussions of
other students. The teacher can then intervene or take
2.1 “With-it-ness” the group to a different track if required.

The teacher is responsible for inhibiting poor behavior.

The teacher can maintain this strategy by making eye con- 2.5 Group Focus
tact to all students at all times. The teacher should know
each student on a personal basis (i.e. name, interests, The teacher can implement this strategy with several
strength, weaknesses, etc.)The teacher can use other non- techniques:
verbal techniques to show students that they are alert and A.Encourage Accountability: Make students aware that
care about the well-being of all students. The teacher may they will be graded for their participation and contribu-
also want to make a respectable suggestion to inform the tions to the group.
student that their behavior is unacceptable. The teacher
should have communicated to all students the expecta- B.The teacher can have a canister of popsicle sticks that
tions and can have these displayed so everyone can be have each students name on them. The teacher can pick
“with-it”. the popsicle stick at random to keep students on track and
out of their seats with anticipation for question/answer
time, board problems, etc.
2.2 Overlapping C.The students can facilitate a discussion. Once they have
finished a task they can turn to each other or they could
The teacher can have procedures that will allow the pair up with those who are already done and compare an-
teacher to be effective when two situations occur at the swers.
same time. For example, if a student is done with an as-
In order for implementation to be effective the teacher
sessment or an assignment early have something for them
must be well organized, communicate their expectations
to do such as moving on to another assignment, reading
to their students, and hold them responsible for their ac-
a book, or a quiet enrichment exercise. While the early-
tions to encourage motivation and attention.
finishers are staying busy the teacher is allowed to move
around the room to answer question or assist struggling
students. Another example, if the teacher is in the mid-
dle of a lecture and a student enters the room the teacher 3 Elementary School
should make eye contact with the student, have an area
for the student to turn in work, and continue with the les- In an elementary setting, the teacher could pair up the
son. Once the students are doing their work the teacher class in groups of 3-5 students and assign a team name.
can go to the tardy student and tell them what they missed The teacher could have a visual of a pocket chart to show
or answer any questions from the homework assigned the where that group will be during the time granted. For
night before. example, a pink card for Suzy, Bobbie, and Billy could
stand for the Phonics station. A green card could stand
for Lizzy, Gary, and Greg to be at the Math station. The
2.3 Momentum time could be set for 30 minutes. Once the timer has
elapsed the students would be instructed of how to ro-
The teacher should make lectures short to allow students tate. The teacher must not remain idle at any time. This
to group together and move around to gain more knowl- should be used as reinforcement/enrichment of the con-
edge of the content. The teacher should make sure that tent in which the teacher has already covered the material
these exercises remain short so students do not get bored. and could informally assess understanding and applica-
A teacher can keep a timer and assign roles to students to tion of content. The centers assure the five strategies by
keep the students moving and on a time deadline. If stu- having directions at each center, a visual to state where
dents are struggling the teacher can reflect on what they students should be after the time is up, and a way for
can do to make the lesson more meaningful and easier to teachers to actively listen to concerns/speed-bumps that
understand for their students. are holding them back. The teacher should make each
 3

center as kinestethic as possible with many manipulatives
at each station (i.e. Magnetic letters for spelling center,
dice or play money for Math, etc.) It is very important
that elementary instructors maintain their energy and en-
thusiasm when presenting to their students.
check for students not paying attention and rapidly en-
gage them back into the subject, while holding the rest
of the class’ attention. This can be done through excit-
ing announcements, demonstrations, or by changing the
atmosphere of learning.

4 Middle School 6 Questions

Kounin’s theories are very useful in a Middle School set- 1) How would you incorporate Kounin’s 5 Management
ting. The first two terms he uses, “With-it-ness” and Behaviors in your classroom?
“Overlapping,” can be used for preventing the misbehav- 2) Analyze whether Kounin’s ideas would strengthen your
ior of other students. When one student is about to throw teaching practices?
a paper airplane or punch his friend in the shoulder, the
teacher can make eye contact with him and shake his
head. The belief is that doing this will show other stu- 7 References
dents that they will not get away with this either. In Mid-
dle School, however, it usually becomes more necessary
to make an example of a student who willingly breaks a 1. Kounin, Jacob S. Discipline and Group Management
rule so that other students know they will share the same in Classrooms. Huntington, N. Y.: R. E. Krieger, 1977,
fate if they do so as well. Also, the “overlapping” ability c1970.
to do more than one thing at once is essential, since most
middle school students will capitalize on the opportunity
to get away with outlawed behavior while the teacher’s
back is turned. A final approach that seemed very effec-
tive was implementing lesson plans with high participa-
tion formats. When every student always has something
to do, each will not become bored and find off-task be-
havior to engage in.

5 High School
In a high school setting, a teacher needs to incorporate
all of the aspects of Kounin’s philosophy in their teach-
ing practice. This means that with-it-ness, overlapping,
smoothness, momentum, and group focus all must meld
together to form a coherent whole. This could be imple-
mented through teachers having at least a week’s lessons
ahead of time in order for them to be sure that lesson flu-
idity occurs. The “with-it-ness” that comes with being
an effective teacher is most often the fruit of planning
and keeps students on task. This takes a special ability to
diffuse potentially distracting situations in which teach-
ers need to bring students back to the task at hand. In
showing students the connections between one subject to
the next, using previous vocabulary to prepare students
for learning new vocabulary, a teacher will show overlap-
ping. This overlapping ties into the momentum aspect.
Students that feel as thought they are learning will make
connections between old and new material. This confi-
dence will allow them to contribute to the momentum of
the classroom. The group focus aspect in the high school
setting really takes a quick attention to detail. Keeping
high school students on task and not thinking about to-
morrow night’s football game is a skill that is essential to
promoting learning. A teacher needs to be able to spot
4 8 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

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• Classroom Management Theorists and Theories/Jacob Kounin Source: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Classroom_Management_
Theorists_and_Theories/Jacob_Kounin?oldid=3010032 Contributors: Swift, Recent Runes, Kmosher, Christopher merriman, Math-
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