Instructional Management by Jacob Kounin

Instructional Managementby Jacob Kounin

Instructional Management: Jacob Kounin

IPG KAMPUS TUN ABDUL RAZAK

Group members:

Muhd Shahjeehan bin Sahran

Alice Chiam Ai Min

Gary Gilbert anak Jerald

Timothy Janting anak Jannis

Who is he?

Jacob Kounin was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1912.

He is an educational psychologies which is specialized in classroom behavior and discipline.

He published many books such as “Teachers and Children” & “Discipline and Group Management in Classrooms”


Jacob Kounin – Instructional Management

Teaching approach: -authoritative/democratic

Main Assumption:-Teacher prevent misbehavior through awareness in classroom and by using effective lesson management techniques.


Kounin’s Theory

Discipline through classroom management

Keys to engaging students are through organisation & careful planning

Teacher/Student relationship

-Critical to student success

-Characterised by proactive teacher behaviour

Focus on student involvement in learning


Kounin’s Principle Teachings

Teachers need to be attentive to all aspects of the classroom.

Effective teachers keep students attentive and actively involved.

Teachers should be able to attend to two activities at the same time.

Activities should be enjoyable and challenging.


teacher must learn and competently use teaching techniques.

according to Kounin, he believe that teacher was primarily responsible for the learners’ behaviors but he still not relieve students of their responsibility to behave and self-discipline.

Kounin’s model advances the idea that teacher affect learners’ behaviors positively and negatively.


Teacher must have clear transition from one activity to another.

Knows what going on in all parts of the classroom at all times.


The Approaches & Strategies



APPLICATIONS OF

INSTRUCTIONAL

MANAGEMENT

Withitness

Desists

Overlapping

Satiation

Jerkiness

Stimulus BoundThrust

Dangles and

Truncations

Flip-Flops

Slowdowns

Group Focus



Effective teachers that are aware of all things that is happening around him or her.

The ‘withit’ teacher can tell whether behaviours contribute to or take away from learning situations.

According to Kounin (1970), the students know that the withit teacher detects inappropriate behaviours early and accurately at the same time.

Know who is causing disturbance in the class and can handle more than one situation at a time.

WITHITNESS

1



Efforts to stop a misbehaviour. I can cause ripple effect (the corrected

misbehave student will ripples to other students, causing them to behave better).

Resulted in less-relaxed students and reduces feelings of teacher helpfulness and likability (Kounin, 1970).

Be ensure that desists are spoken clearly and can be understood.

DESISTS

2



Overlapping is what teachers do when they have two matters to deal with at the same time (multitasking).

For example, a teacher correcting a student’s misbehaviour and never breaking instructional momentum.

Teachers who can perform overlap are better able to demonstrate withitness.

OVERLAPPING

3



Satiation occurs when a teacher teaches the same lesson for so long that the students grow tired of the topic.

Kounin (1970) stated that the teacher and students are ”doing the same thing over and over”.

To avoid this problem, there are several steps that can be done by the teacher:

i) show a genuine zest and enthusiasm for the topic.

ii) make a positive statement about the activity.

iii) point out that the activity has a special intellectual challenge.

SATIATION

4



Lack of lesson smoothness and momentum.

Wattenburg (1977) stated that some teachers demonstrate jerkiness in the way they pace instruction or proceed with the lesson.

To avoid this situation, a teacher should maintain the focus of the learning topics.

Do not ask questions that are not related to the topic the lesson.

JERKINESS

5



It is a situation where a teacher has the students engaged in a lesson and something else attracts the teacher’s attention.

When this happen, the teacher is stimulus bound.

The momentum are lost while the teacher deals with another issue.

To overcome this problem, a teacher needs to recognize and make a genuine commitment towards the lesson.

STIMULUS

BOUND

6



According to Kounin (1970), a thrust consist of a teacher’s sudden “bursting in” on students’ activities with an order, statement, or question without looking for or being sensitive to the groups’ readiness.

It may lead to jerkiness and students lose pace in activities.

Teachers should consider the suitable time for him or her to thrusting in.

THRUST

7



Dangle: occur when a teacher starts an activity and then leaves it “hanging in midair” (Kounin, 1970). Later, the teacher resumes the activity.

Truncation: does not resume the initiated activities. Can also be called as longer-lasting dangle.

Resulting of confusion and unsure in doing something.

Teachers need to focus and stay on track for the lesson to be smooth in instructional momentum.

DANGLES

AND TRUNCATIONS

8



Occurs only at transitional points, such as when the teacher terminates one activity and begins another and then reverts to the first activity.

Can cause confusion among students. Realizing the importance of smoothness

and momentum in order to become good instructional management teachers.

FLIP FLOPS

9



Two types of slowdowns:

i) overdwelling

ii) fragmentation Overdwelling – a situation when a teacher

dwells on corrective behaviour longer than needed or on a lesson longer than required for most students’ understanding & interest (Kounin,1970)

Fragmentation – happens when a teacher breaks down an activity into subparts, even though the activity could be performed easily as a single unit or an uninterrupted sequence.

SLOWDOWNS

10



There are two types: group alerting & group accountability.

It occurs when a teacher make conscientious attempt to keep the attention of all members of the class at all times.

Kounin (1970) stated that the teacher maintains efficient classroom control & reduces student behaviour.

GROUP FOCUS

11



Features Group alerting

1. The degree to which a teacher attempts to involve all learners in learning task, maintain their attention, and keep them “on their toes” (Kounin, 1970).

2. Positive GA – create a ‘suspense’, who will be called upon next.

3. Negative GA – putting the name first when asking the students.

Group accountability

1. The teacher holds the students accountable and responsible for their task performances.

2. Know what students are doing by communicating with them and assess their manner with checklist or task cards.

3. Students then know that they are accountable for their own learning, so misbehaviour decrease.

GROUP FOCUS

11



Strengths & Weaknesses



STRENGTHS

Teacher act as an administrator in the classroom.

Behaviour problems are reduced to the minimum.

Provide the teacher with a specific, detailed approach to handle the discipline problems.

Help teacher to handle situational discipline problems.



STRENGTHS Offers techniques for making desists

effective.

eg. teacher can quiet the whole class by using desist in order to keep one pair of students from talking. (Morris, 1996)

Helps teachers to create an atmosphere that students are aware of everything happening in the classroom.

Teacher will avoid from frustration, yelling to students or sarcasm.



WEAKNESSES

Might lead to overdwelling / fragmentation.

Limited use in the classroom. Shows to avoid disciplinary problems but

not to provide effective way to solve serious discipline problems.

Does not help the students in forming self-discipline.



WEAKNESSES

It does not help pupils to become personally responsible for their own behaviour.

Does not work with every problematic students in the classroom.

It is quite impossible for a teacher to know everything that is happening in the class at all time.



Practicality in the Primary ESL classroom



In Malaysian Primary ESL Classroom Context



Malaysian Primary ESL Classroom Context

Malaysian students are increasingly diverse in terms of race, culture, socio-economic background, personal knowledge and experiences. (Edward & Kuhlman, 2007)

Students bring a wide range of histories, perspectives, experiences, expectations, and approaches to teaching that affect children’s educational experiences (Hixson, 1991)



In Local Primary ESL Classroom

English teacher are not proficient and competent enough in teaching English.

Students only use English in English lessons. Students are unconfident and shy to use

English. Students have different mother tongue (first

language) Insufficient and ineffective of basic skills and

foundations in English learning.



Withitness


• Withitness may only be effective for experienced teacher • A beginning teacher thus should discuss with the class teacher about the students – e.g. students’ particular traits• Then, more attention is given to this

particular students.



Withitness


• For example,An experienced teacher is teaching

English in a classroom. Since she knows her students very well, thus she knows who are usually misbehave in the classroom. Whenever the misbehave students cause interruptions to the class, the teacher calls out his name and warns him.



Desists (ripple effect)

Students only use English in English lessons.

Students are unconfident and shy to use English.• Teachers can use it to show that one’s

behaviours/misbehaviours will cause some consequences. • More effective to be implemented in a mixed-ability classroom.


Desists (ripple effect)

Students only use English in English lessons. Students are unconfident and shy to use

English.• For example,In a classroom, when a teacher asks a

question, a pupil raises her hand up and answers the question correctly. Then, teacher praises her or asks other pupils give her a round of applause. This will make others to be a good model and encourages others to answer the questions.



Jerkiness/stimulus bound

Insufficient and ineffective of basic skills and foundations in English learning.

• This problems lead to failure in early pupils’ foundations in English learning.• Not applicable for teachers who are teaching with no proper lesson planning – switch lesson suddenly (out of topic), lack of momentum during teaching• These will cause pupils to lose their focus in

learning.



Jerkiness/stimulus bound

Insufficient and ineffective of basic skills and foundations in English learning.

• For example,When a teacher is teaching, suddenly she

saw the class window is dusty. Then, she asks a pupils about it. “Ali, did you clean the window in the morning just now?” This will subsequently affect the momentum of the lesson.



Overlapping Group focus

• Overlapping can be applied by creating a procedure to use when two separate situations happen at nearly the same time.

• For instance, if a student finishes an assignment early they can read a book, start on another assignment, make a craft, etc.

• Group focus can be applied by always having some sort of group each day so students have time to collaborate with one another. • If students tend to go into the

same groups, the teacher can write each student's name down and put all the pieces of paper in a hat to randomly select the groups.



State whether the theories appeal to you and provide reasons for that

Yes, because Instructional Management by Jacob Kounin main aspect focuses on the ways of how the teacher manages the class and this is the first way to take control over the class.

We agree that classroom management should start from the teacher and not only blaming on the pupils’ negative behavior.

This is because if the lesson plan is perfect, it does not mean that the pupils will learn from it if the teacher fails to control the class.

Teacher must have an awareness in his classroom and by using effective lesson management techniques.

References Lee M. & Katherine T. (2003) Classroom Management: Models, Applications

and Cases. Pearson Education.

Teacher Matters, (2008). The Kounin Model. Retrieved May 31, 2009 Teacher

Matters from http://www.teachermatters.com/index.php?option=com_

content&view=article&id=9:kounin-model&catid=4:models-of discipline

&Itemid=4

Charles, C.M. (1989) Building Classroom discipline: from models to practice. New

York City, New York: Longmans Inc.

WikiBooks, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (2009). Overview/History of Jacob Kounin’s

Work. Retrieved May 28, 2009, from http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Classroom_

Management_Theorist_and_Theories/Jacob_Kounin

Kounin, J. S. (1970). Discipline and group management in classrooms. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

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Instructional Management by Jacob Kounin