Throughout much of the latter half of 20 Century, classroom discipline was focused on the issue of how best to respond to student misbehavior. The humanist and applied behavior analysis approaches to classroom management shared the spotlight about equality during this period. Both of these traditions are primarily reactive rather than preventive systems of classroom management. That is they tend to provide solutions to misbehavior after it occurs, not before. More recent research. however. has provided another approach to classroom management that frames the question of classroom order and discipline not in terms of reaction but prevention. This approach is based on classroom research that examined what effective teachers do to prevent misconduct and what less effective teachers do to create it. Some of this research involved observation and analysis of both experienced and inexperienced teachers while they taught. The major conclusion of this research was that more effective and less effective classroom managers can be distinguished more by what they do to prevent misbehavior than how they respond to misbehavior. In a study, 27 third grade teachers were recruited for a year-long observation study. During the first 3 weeks of school several types of information on each of the teachers including roomarrangement, classroom rules, consequences of misbehavior, response to inappropriate behavior, consistency of teacher responses, monitoring. and reward systems was gathered. Further, the number of students was counted who were on task and off task at 15 minute intervals to determine the extent to which students were attending to the teacher. From this data the teachers were classified in two groups. One consisting of more effective managers and other consisting of less effective managers for more in depth observation the rest of the year. Those teachers who were categorized as more effective classroom managers were found to have significantly higher student engagement rates and significantly lower student off task behavior during rest of the school year. The more effective managers established themselves as instructional leaders during first 3 weeks of the school year.
An effective teacher manager as per classroom management tradition
