Topic 4 Management And Discipline in Schools

4.1 School Climate and Classroom Management

The leadership style of a principal will reflect the nature of the school climate. A good school climate is a school with good administration, nice to look at and with orderly and systematic organisation. This condition will eventually enhance the effectiveness of the teaching and learning among the students of that particular school.

A good school climate contains the following characteristics:

1. Relationship of mutual respect between academic staff with their pupils.
2. Pupils voluntarily accept the school aspirations and rules which have been planned and arranged by the school authority.
3. The feeling of togetherness between students and teachers
4. Creation of favourable condition whereby every student involves in knowledge searching activity.
5. Creation of a clean, orderly and peaceful atmosphere in the school environment.
6. Creation of good discipline culture with zero defects.

4.2 Conflict and Stress in the School

Take some time to ponder over this question, “What do you mean by stress and conflict? Have you got an idea of its meaning? Stress refers to pressure or worry resulting from mental or physical distress while conflict refers to “be in opposition or disagreement with someone” It is perceived incompatible objectives between two or more people or groups occurs in every social systems.

In school, the successful management of stress and conflict depends upon the awareness of problems and potential solutions, the degree of interdependence among the parties and the existence of predictable procedures for handling problems. Pause for a moment . Reflect your school climate, Compare with the above characteristics.

It is in classrooms and informal school activities that students can develop understandings of stress and conflict; skills in recognizing and nurturing healthy relationships with people like and unlike themselves. Now let us see how conflict and stress occurred in the school context. Stress and conflict often appears due to various reasons between headmasters or administrators , teachers and students.

Some of the various situations which lead to stress and conflict at school level are :

• autocratic style of the Headmasters
• personality conflicts between teachers
• threatening pressure from the headmaster/administrator
• lack of teaching resources
• Discipline problems of students
• passive school interactions among the staff.
• low academic achievement of students
• Indifferent attitude of teachers towards the welfare of students
• lack of co-operation and collaboration among the teachers.
• the pupils involvement in co-curricular activities are minimal.

How would you compare your school with the above situations? Can you name 5 discipline issues that occurs in the school.

4.3 Importance of Administrative leadership in management of school discipline

Some of the few issues that are prevalent in schools are stealing, vandalism, fighting, drug abuse and truancy. How can the school administrative leadership play a role in managing the issues stated. The school principal plays an important leadership role in establishing school discipline, both by effective administration and by personal example. Principals of well-disciplined students are usually highly visible models. They engaged by walking around , greeting students and teachers as well as monitoring possible problem areas.

Good communication and shared values are important elements in this relationship. Ideally, a principal should be able to create consensus among staff on rules and their enforcement. It has been found that stable and supportive administrative leadership was the overriding factor determining whether a discipline program was effective.

As a teacher how would you handle these disciplinary problems in your school?

1. Implement the lesson plan in a systematic, interesting and meaningful ways.
2. Diversify teaching- learning activities and use suitable teaching ways.
3. Respect students and treat them well to foster close relationship.
4. Value and reinforce student’s good behaviour or who have shown good performance and results.
5. Be fair and firm when giving punishment.
6. Practise democratic leadership style.
7. Avoid the use of threat or physical punishment.
8. Give proper guidance and counselling service
9. Instil good values and sustain the students’ good behaviour through positive reinforcement.
10. Listen to students’ who have personal or academic problems.
l 1. Do not make hasty decisions. rationalise situations and make good decisions.
12. Always consult the other teachers especially the Guidance and Counselling teacher before making decisions.

4.4. Success and failures in teaching and learning

Effective learning of students generally depends on the teacher. The teacher as an effective manager refers to teacher whose classroom is orderly, had a minimum of student misbehaviour and had high levels of time-on-task, and ineffective manager is one whose classroom lacked these qualities. A teacher plays an important role in the teaching and learning process of students. The effectiveness of teaching and learning activities depends, to a large extent, on the students’ ability to understand the teacher’s message .The teacher should present his lesson in a simple way so that it could be easily understood by the students.

An effective teaching and learning to take place among the students a teacher has to:

1. Plan his lesson.
2. Manage group activities efficiently.
3. Practice pupil- centred strategy.
4. Use appropriate teaching methods, such as discussion, narration, Socratic method and inquiry- discovery approach.
5. Use suitable teaching aids to present lessons.
6. Use effective questioning technique.
7. Evaluate the students at the end of the lesson.
8. Reflect and evaluate your teaching and try to improve the lesson further.

Effective managers were found to be much more skilled at preventing disruptions from occurring in the first place. Effective managers engaged in specified behaviours to keep students focused on learning and to reduce the likelihood of classroom disruption. These included :

• “Withitness” – the teacher communicating to the children by his/her behaviour that he/she knows what the students are doing and what is going on in the classroom
• Overlapping – attending to different events simultaneously, without being totally diverted by a disruption or other activity
• Smoothness and momentum in lessons- conducting smooth and brisk pacing and providing continuous activity signals or cues
• Group alerting – attempting to involve non reciting children in recitation tasks and keeping all students “alerted” to the task at hand
• Stimulating seatwork – providing students seatwork activities that have variety and offer challenge.

4.5 Summary:

This topic discusses on the management and the discipline in schools. The role of the administrative leader in upholding and managing school discipline and the different ways of curbing discipline in schools by the school teachers in the teaching and learning process. The key points are:

• School discipline is to ensure the safety of staff and students as well as create an environment conducive to learning
• Effective school discipline strategies seek to encourage responsible behaviour and to provide all students with a satisfying school experience as well as to discourage misconduct.
• School principal plays an important leadership role in establishing school discipline, both by effective administration and by personal example.
• Effective teaching and learning approaches can help to manage classroom discipline

Basic Reading Text:

Cotton,K. 2001. School wide and Classroom Discipline. Retrieved from http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/sirs/5/cu9.html