Based on the task given, I have chosen to write a review on these three classroom

management theories which are Theories of Assertive Tactics, Theories of Instructional

Management and Theories of Democratic Teaching.

Assertive Discipline is a model developed by Lee Canter and Marlene Canter. It is also

known as Theories of Assertive Tactics. This model helps teachers to take charge in the

classroom and train them to be calm yet influential and firm in controlling their students’

behavior. The key concept of this model is that, students have the right to learn in a calm,

orderly classroom and teachers have the right to teach without interruption from the students.

Support from parents, other teachers and school administrators contribute helps to maximize

the efficiency of the theory applied by the teacher.

Canter suggests that the best approach to handle inappropriate behaviour is the

assertive style. According to Lee Canter and Marlene Canter, when teachers give students clear

expectations and consistent follow through, most students choose appropriate behavior

(Canter,1974). Assertive teachers express their expectations to the class clearly, confidently,

and consistently. They build trust and teach students how to behave appropriately by being the

model of desired behaviours themselves. In the implementation of rules and consequences,

assertive teachers make promises not threats. In which, they do not threaten to implement the

rules and apply the consequences but they promise to do so when the situation get across the

limit.

Besides, assertive teachers do not damage students’ self-esteem with statements such

as “How can you be so dense to make the same mistake again? Can’t you ever learn one

simple rule?” but they plan an appropriate way by considering the needs of the students.

Therefore, in establishing rules, teacher needs to make sure that every rule is clear, specific,

observable, and agreed by the students. This means, students are clear of the expectations and

consequences for breaking them. Any follow up action must be relevant to student’s mistake

and promote positive behaviour choices.

There are two types of consequences that might be experienced by a student which are

positive and negative consequences. Recognition, praise, material reward, free time, and

special privilege are the examples of positive consequences. Whilst, losing recess time, staying

after school, and going to the principal office are the examples of negative consequences.

Basically, there is a technique suggested by Canters on how to implement consequences. It is

known as Discipline Hierarchy. It is a step by step approach starts with issuing a warning when

a student disrupts or break a classroom rule. The second or third time the same student repeat

his or her misbehavior, teacher warn the student again and take action on him or her for

example ask the student to stand for 5 minutes in front of the class. On the fourth time, if the

student still breaks the rule, teacher will call his or her parents to report on the misbehavior. The

fifth time the same thing happen again, teacher starts to settle the issue by including the

principal of the school. According to Canters’ broken record, a maximum of three times request

to stop students’ misbehaviour must be done before any consequences received by the

students.

One of the advantage of this theory is it involve mutual agreement that each party will

has a win-win situation that satisfied their need. Thus, a teacher will be able to control the class

according to the desired behavior and students will get to learn in a comfortable and non-

threatening environment. Other than that, it emphasis on clear and positive ways to implement

good classroom discipline which is good to encourages student’s participation in following rules

and be responsible for any consequences cause by their own action. It also prevent time

wasting because the rules and the consequences is already acknowledged by the students and

the teacher. Hence, if a student creates a misbehaviour, the teacher will take any relevant

action to stop the disturbance then proceed with the lesson again without taking longer time to

overcome the situation. However, this theory also has some disadvantages. As Canter suggest

the teacher to use the Discipline Hierarchy, a step-by-step approach to solve behaviour

problems. It is quite ineffective sometimes because teacher might need an instant change of

behaviour during the instructional time especially when the period is short and quality time is

desperately needed. In addition, culture is one of the vital aspect to be considered in applying

this theory. In some culture there are societies who feel uncomfortable receiving rewards or

punishments. In this case, this theory is not suitable to be applied.

In local ESL primary classroom, assertive discipline model can be applied by

establishing rules for classroom behaviour especially while conducting activities so that the

smoothness of the lesson can be preserved. Implementation of Discipline Hierarchy to manage

the classroom rules will create a positive learning atmosphere because students are given

chances to correct their mistakes and act accordingly in a calm and non threaten ways.

The second theory is the Theories of Instructional Management by Jacob Kounin. This

model is different from the Assertive Discipline discussed above. In this model of classroom

management, prevention of any possibilities that will lead to undesired behaviour is being

concerned. According to Kounin, implementation of a good instructional management happened

when a teacher is able to monitor his or her students closely and able to control the classroom

environment before students starts to act inappropriately and disturb the progress of the lesson.

Specifically, this model focused on keeping the students’ attention and involvement across the

lesson in which there should not be a chance for the students to feel bored or frustrated.

In order to achieve a good discipline classroom, a teacher need to master and

understand all the approaches and strategies involves in this model. One of them is called

withitness which means awareness. Teacher need to always be aware of all events, activities

and student behaviours in the classroom. This includes the teacher to monitor classroom

environment closely at all times. When there is a need to warn misbehaviours, teacher needs to

quickly decide an appropriate moment and detect the particular student who initiated the

inappropriate behavior. It is important to react quickly and accurately to manage class

disturbances and stop the discipline problems in the classroom before they spread. An excellent

withitness achieved when a teacher is able to monitor all the classroom activities and keep the

students in control even when the teacher is giving attention on a student or small group who

need extra guidance.

Another way to get student’s attention is by maintaining students’ accountability. Group

alerting encourages the students to stay alert, respond, demonstrate or explain what they

understand from the lesson they had learn. This is due to the awareness created by the teacher

at the beginning of the lesson that every participation and contributions will benefit the group

each students is in. Group management approach efficiently encourages motivation and

attention among students because they feel responsible to participate and contribute something

to their respective group.

Apart from that, Kounin Instructional Management imparts the application of Ripple

Effect technique. It is called ripple effect because when a teacher correcting one student for a

misbehaviour, it will also influence other students around the target student. To implement the

technique, teacher must specify the inappropriate behavior for example ,“Firdaus, stop talking

and pay attention to what I am saying” and provide instruction about how to stop the

misbehaviour and provide the reason for example, “Lisa,go back to your seat,You can’t remain

in the class if you insist on walking all over the classroom when I am teaching”. This way, the

students understands the instruction very clearly and the others understood the displeasure of

the teacher. Such words as “I mean it” or “I want it done now” also help to covey seriousness on

the demand. Rough physical treatment of misbehaving students should be avoided since it

tends to make the class uneasy and fearful.

Overlapping is the ability of a teacher to deal with more than one situation

simultaneously in the classroom. This is also one of the important techniques in achieving

successful instructional management as claimed by Kounin. Teacher should be able to

supervises more than one group at the same time for example “Hanis,continue with your

presentation, I am listening, Faiz, get back to your seat and listen to what Hanis is saying”. If a

student is done with a task assigned, teacher should provide them with another task, and while

keeping them busy, teacher is able to move around to assist or monitoring the class.

Another two techniques of Instructional Management is momentum and smoothness.

Momentum is a forward movement of the lesson.Meanwhile, smoothness is a steady

progression of the lesson. A good momentum and smooth lesson is a lesson without a sudden

stops and start, getting off track, making irrelevant statement, leaving a lesson hanging,

changing back and forth from one subject to another and suspending activity when students are

participating in it. Usually the smoothness of the lesson is also disrupts when overdwelling and

fragmentation occur. Overdwelling is arise when a teacher tend to focus on a single issue long

after the students have understood it. In the other hand, fragmentation is arise when a teacher

tend to break down an activity into small parts when it could be done as a whole. The effects of

these situations are students get bored and it leads to misbehavior. Kounin suggest to keep the

students focused during the lesson, a teacher need to always keep them in suspense, for

instance asks the students to perform or answer question, use a variety of activities to capture

attention, worthwhile and sufficiently challenging.

The advantages of Instructional Management by Jacob Kounin is easy to apply

anywhere the lesson is carry on, practical to be used with every stages of student, effective to

handle and helps to avoid discipline problem. In the meantime, the disadvantages of this theory

are it only could prevent misbehaviour but could not cure and students tend to neglect their

responsibility for their behaviours due to the ripple effect. The practicality of the theories in local

ESL primary classroom are teacher can create a lesson that is engaging to students and fun,

make the students as a part of decision-making process and arrange the classroom

systematically so that all the students are always within eyesight.

In my opinion, this theories helps tell the students that the teacher is controlling the class

and always aware of the action make by each one of them. Kounin said that it was not

necessary for the teacher to know what is going on, but for the students to aware that the

teacher knows. Effective implementation of this theories helps to prevent misbehavior at the first

place. Hence, when the students are in control, it should not be a big problem for the teacher to

handle the rest of lesson requirements.

The last theories is the Theories of Democratic Teaching by Rudolf Dreikurs. It emphasis on

democratic classrooms which he claimed learning occurs best. It includes promoting active

student involvement, sense of belonging and self-discipline to exercise responsibility. Students

are motivate to participate in decision making, make positive choice and treated as social

equals by the teacher. Dreikurs highlighted mistaken goals cause by unfulfilled need are

attention-seeking, power-seeking, revenge-seeking, and withdrawal. Dreikurs also encourage

the use of logical consequences to correct misbehavior in which, the students should be given a

choice to correct his misbehavior and not be forced to behave as directed.

Based on the Logical Consequences, teachers must identify mistaken goal and discuss with

students in a non-threatening manner where punishment is the last thing to use. For example, if

a student pushes someone on the stairway, the teacher may let the student decide whether to

avoid pushing in the future or go back to the class and wait until everyone else has cleared the

stairway before he goes down. If the students disturb others, they may agree to no longer

disturb the class or they may be isolated from the group. Dreikurs suggest teachers to develop

self control based on social interest. It is achieved when they become able to show initiative,

make reasonable decision and assume responsibility in ways that benefit themselves.

Encouragement is essential and should be given more than praise. In a democratic class,

teacher are seen to always speak in positive terms, encourage students to strive for

improvement not perfection, emphasize students strengths, help student learn from mistakes,

encourage independence or responsibility, show faith, offer help, encourage students to help

each other, display students work, be optimistic, enthusiastic, and use encouraging remarks for

example “You have improved.”(Dreikurs &Cassel,1995)

The advantages of Theories of Democratic Teaching by Rudolf Dreikurs are it promotes

mutual respect between teacher and students, help students understand their misbehaviours

and help teacher to focus on causes of behaviour before taking action. Meanwhile, the

disadvantage is the trouble in determining students’ actual motives of causing misbehaviour

because students may not truly admit their motives. In local ESL primary classroom, teacher

can adapt this theories by having a class discussion in solving conflicts or deciding rules. Other

than that, teacher might choose to seek out students’ needs to discover the most suitable

method to help the students overcome their misbehaviour problem.

Based on the theories, it shows that students misbehave to achieve self serving goal,

getting attention, seeking power, taking revenge, and withdrawal. No matter what the reason is

for a student’s misbehavior, as a teacher, we still need to give positive and negative response to

the students in order to control their action and fulfill their needs. Application of theories

suggested by Dreikurs using logical consequences develops mutual respect among a teacher

and students which motivates them to behave nicely in a democratic learning environment.

Thus, it is a helpful theory to be applied especially with students who always commit disciplinary

problem yet, able to follow the rules when their social interest is considered by the teacher.

According to Canter, a system based on positive interaction and positive recognition will

encourage students to continue appropriate behaviour (Canter,1992). In my opinion, positive

environment during the instructional period is the most important factor that encourages the

effectiveness of any theories applied by a teacher. Other than that, as a teacher, we must not

show prejudice towards our students. Instead, we must be fair to all students regardless of any

theories we used to manage our classroom behaviour. Lastly, teachers need to determine what

works best for their class to make the students feel comfortable and what support their

instructional style the most to gain trust and respect from the students. Every teacher must

begin each day with a clean perception, which means that consequences taken by the students

one day are never carried over to the next day. For me, all of the three theories are relevant to

be used together in a classroom because all of those are able to create well discipline

classroom environment.