Week+2+-+Classroom+Management

**__Week 2 - Classroom Management__**
by Janis Haymes

Ray's lecture this morning was pretty interesting. He came up with a lot of insightful points.

For Scarlet and Hazal, who missed the lecture, Ray outlined that there are four different behavioural categories of students and 5 different 'power' types of teachers:

**Students**
Students that are able to manage themselves in order to learn. Students that occasionally are distracted, discruptive, but do not have to be isolated. Can not be managed within the class. Need to be isolated, sent out or referred on to someone else Students who generally seem unmanageable. Nothing seems to be effective.
 * A** - **managed by the normal curriculum**
 * B - managed within the class**
 * C - managed out of class**
 * D - not managed**

**Teachers**
They hold power because they demand it. Hold power because they've 'earnt' it'. They are experts in a field, therefore you listen to them and they 'sell' their information. Power they have earnt through trust. Requires a relationship between the parties. Power based on fear through the threat of punishment. Power is based on the concept of earning a reward. Good behaviour is recognised through reward.
 * Legitimate power - eg. policeman.**
 * Expert power - eg. surgeon**
 * Referent power - eg.** **best friend giving you advice**
 * Coercive power - eg. skinheads**
 * Reward power - eg.**

Ray then went on to explain that different student types require different teacher approaches. For example, a D student will not react well to a legitimate or coercive approach, but required a referent appraoch whereby they have a relationship with their teacher.

My only problem with this approach is that Ray is proposing that everyone fits within these categories and that the categories are the be-all in explaining the behaviour of all the students within them. I don't believe that it's that black and white. A 'C' student may not always neccessarily respond favourably toward a referent approach. Perhaps they've had teachers attempt it before and are therefore untrusting of it. Or it may work one week and not the next. Ray did mention that things were not as straightforward as he had displayed them, but at the same time it still leaves you wondering what the point of recognising these different types is if they don't always hold true.

I would think that spending time trying to categorise a child could be a futile exercise, rendering you more frustrated as you would be attempting to pigeon-hole a student who just won't quite fit into the mould you've created for them.

Ray also left us with the question: //"Why would teachers choose to use forms of power they know don't work?//" To me it's quite obvious why teachers would do as such. If you were in a classroom with a difficult child for 5 hours, you would start to crack once that sixth hour starts to roll around. Also, it's all very well to note down that Johnny is a D and requires extra time and attention, but what if you had 5 Ds in your class? As well as a bunch of Cs? How on earth to you manage it on a larger scale with other types in amongst that mix as well?

To finish up, I can definitely see the benefits of trying to distinguish between different students and how each one needs to be approached, but I dont' quite see how to employ that on a scale of class of 30 individuals. I also am unsure of how reliable it is to allocate students into groups as they may have good and bad days as everyone does. How do you then approach them when they aren't acting appropriately in accordance with their group label?