'Effective classroom routines are procedural representations of a teacher 's expectations, used to manage social behaviour and support the conditions for pupils ' engagement with learning. ' Critically discuss.
For the purpose of this discussion I would like to introduce a case study from one of my early voluntary placements in which the names of all participants have been changed.
The antecedent was Mrs Jennings telling Chloe, a Year 2 child she had previously warned me was 'problematic, ' that she had to be on her best behaviour since she would be changing phonics groups that day. Chloe behaved negatively by vocally expressing her displeasure, throwing her phonics book at the teacher, and hiding in the corner. As consequence for her …show more content…
In the transition to a new task the teacher called attention to a naughty child who had yet to misbehave that day, pre-empting her bad behaviour rather than reacting to it. Instead of being an anticipatory strategy, the situation became what Merton (1948) would call a self-fulfilling prophecy, “a false definition of the situation evoking a new behaviour which makes the original false conception come true.” Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) tells us that teachers behaviour towards pupils can be influenced by their perceptions of both the child personally and their abilities; their experiment found that, “When teachers expected that certain children would show greater intellectual development, those children did indeed show greater intellectual development.” It stands to reason then that the inverse of this is also true: when a teacher expects that a certain child is badly behaved, that child will indeed behave badly. Furthermore, Chaplain (2003) argues that teachers categorise students based on perceptions and expectations of behaviour rather than the behaviour itself, treating pupils in qualitatively different ways that can unintentionally influence pupil 's behaviour negatively - thus when Mrs Jennings told Chloe to be on her best behaviour she publicly singled her out as being naughty and Chloe therefore saw an opportunity to misbehave when the routine transition to a new task might otherwise …show more content…
In particular, I have seen the advantages of utilising cognitive approaches to behaviour, developing problem solving strategies in order to be reflective: an effective teacher must be constantly observing and reflecting upon their own actions to ensure that they haven 't slipped into bad routines and negative cycles. As a teacher I intend to respond to pupils actual behaviour, not what I perceive or anticipate it to be; I intend to be proactive in planning for possible occurrences, but in Chloe 's case telling her in advance to be on her best behaviour indicated an opportunity to be naughty and by not pre-empting this negative behaviour Chloe 's transition between groups may well have been smoother. But more than that, I have seen first-had the vital importance of a positive school ethos to stimulate an effective learning environment. A sumptuously decorated classroom became a rich learning environment in which children were not restricted to traditional tables, but rather free to work in a manner that was engaging and comfortable for them. Rather than inundating children with a restrictive list of rules, I recognise the effectiveness of stripping back rules to their core values and using these to structure the whole school 's behaviour policy in a manner that was consistent, easily understood across the entire age-range, and positive, rather than negative, to
For the purpose of this discussion I would like to introduce a case study from one of my early voluntary placements in which the names of all participants have been changed.
The antecedent was Mrs Jennings telling Chloe, a Year 2 child she had previously warned me was 'problematic, ' that she had to be on her best behaviour since she would be changing phonics groups that day. Chloe behaved negatively by vocally expressing her displeasure, throwing her phonics book at the teacher, and hiding in the corner. As consequence for her …show more content…
In the transition to a new task the teacher called attention to a naughty child who had yet to misbehave that day, pre-empting her bad behaviour rather than reacting to it. Instead of being an anticipatory strategy, the situation became what Merton (1948) would call a self-fulfilling prophecy, “a false definition of the situation evoking a new behaviour which makes the original false conception come true.” Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) tells us that teachers behaviour towards pupils can be influenced by their perceptions of both the child personally and their abilities; their experiment found that, “When teachers expected that certain children would show greater intellectual development, those children did indeed show greater intellectual development.” It stands to reason then that the inverse of this is also true: when a teacher expects that a certain child is badly behaved, that child will indeed behave badly. Furthermore, Chaplain (2003) argues that teachers categorise students based on perceptions and expectations of behaviour rather than the behaviour itself, treating pupils in qualitatively different ways that can unintentionally influence pupil 's behaviour negatively - thus when Mrs Jennings told Chloe to be on her best behaviour she publicly singled her out as being naughty and Chloe therefore saw an opportunity to misbehave when the routine transition to a new task might otherwise …show more content…
In particular, I have seen the advantages of utilising cognitive approaches to behaviour, developing problem solving strategies in order to be reflective: an effective teacher must be constantly observing and reflecting upon their own actions to ensure that they haven 't slipped into bad routines and negative cycles. As a teacher I intend to respond to pupils actual behaviour, not what I perceive or anticipate it to be; I intend to be proactive in planning for possible occurrences, but in Chloe 's case telling her in advance to be on her best behaviour indicated an opportunity to be naughty and by not pre-empting this negative behaviour Chloe 's transition between groups may well have been smoother. But more than that, I have seen first-had the vital importance of a positive school ethos to stimulate an effective learning environment. A sumptuously decorated classroom became a rich learning environment in which children were not restricted to traditional tables, but rather free to work in a manner that was engaging and comfortable for them. Rather than inundating children with a restrictive list of rules, I recognise the effectiveness of stripping back rules to their core values and using these to structure the whole school 's behaviour policy in a manner that was consistent, easily understood across the entire age-range, and positive, rather than negative, to