Get It Right #46: Managing the Learning Environment

How might we create a learning-centered approach to classroom management?

by James M. Wile, PhD.

Classroom management, one of the most important courses in pre-service teacher education, might also be one of its worst. Worst because this course risks misrepresenting classroom management as child management, thus perpetuating a novice teacher’s biggest nightmare—a classroom of 35 poorly managed students acting out of control.

What’s more, these courses can imply that controlling student behavior is the teacher’s main concern. This can lead to managed classrooms, yes. Where the only questions are those the teacher asks and for which the teacher already knows the answer. Where the only voice is that of the teacher’s lecturing. Where opportunities for learning are papered over with repetitive drills, endless worksheets, mindless copying from the chalkboard, and similar activities whose sole purpose is to manage students’ behavior and whose singular effect is to dull their imaginations.

Certainly, teachers are responsible for creating safe and well-ordered classrooms. However, the way teachers handle this responsibility reflects their perception of the relationship between themselves and their students. Pre-service teachers may expect a course in classroom management to arm them with techniques veterans use to control student behavior. But new teachers would be better served if such courses helped them to explore and clarify this relationship, and to consider carefully the type of learning environment they aim to create.

You find all manner of teachers in classrooms. Each has a management approach that follows from their understanding of this relationship between teachers and learners. Here are four types to consider.

There is the authoritarian. This teacher believes the goal of teaching is obedience. Authoritarians manage student behavior with a cane in one hand, a leather strap in the other. Not all authoritarians resort to corporal punishment, though. The fixed glare or the sarcastic comment can sting just as much as the cane—and leave scars that last far longer.?Authoritarians act the way they do because they neither understand the content they are meant to teach nor possess the techniques for helping students learn. They are often the poorly educated teacher whose only hope for surviving one more day of pointless work is to use domination--with the support of indifferent school leaders and encouraged by uninformed parents—to manage students. The authoritarian may aim to create respect for authority, but invariably produces education dropouts.

There is the good shepherd. This teacher believes there is a right answer for every question and that it is the teacher’s responsibility to lead a flock of students to those answers. Good shepherds manage students through training activities, mnemonic exercises, and repetitive drills. The shepherd fills the school day with comprehension questions, memorization activities, and test-taking skills. Good shepherds are themselves managed by the pressures of high stakes examinations. Discussion and inquiry are distractions that only steal time from practice tests. Critical thinking and reflection undermine the concept of the one correct answer.?Good shepherds reward correct answers with praise and with parties. Their management leads to students who score well on examinations but who are managed to avoid all learning.

There is the supervisor. This teacher equates learning with productivity. What learners produce is of little consequence. The supervisors’ objective is to maximize the volume of output.?The supervisor manages a classroom of student workers and extends each work day into the night with hours of homework. Supervisors use graphs, charts, computer spreadsheets, and other recordkeeping systems to monitor and manage learner productivity. Supervisors reward productivity with incentives like stickers, stars, report card grades, and happygrams. At the end of the year, students who meet high productivity standards are promoted. Those who do not, end up as education scrap. The supervisor teaches that habits of productivity lead to success, but they invariably create neurotic adolescents and adults who live in fear of failing to meet or exceed expectations.

There is the producer. This teacher equates schooling with spectacle. For producers, all schooling is a form of show business. They manage student behavior with competitions, challenges, and performances. Producers pride themselves on the spectacles students create under their management--classroom dramas, musicals, scale model replicas, functional robots, video documentaries and on and on. The producer manages student behavior by hyping the extravaganza. Unfortunately, the brilliance of the spectacle can blind students to the pure joy of learning. For the producer the play is the thing. They may believe they are preparing future producers, but when the curtain falls, what remains may seem empty. Unembellished learning may appear boring, an experience of little value.?

From Teacher-Centered to Student-Centered to Learning-Centered Classrooms

None of these classrooms seem particularly organized to manage learning. But then students don’t come to school to be managed. They begin their schooling experience awed by the mysteries and miracles that surround them. They are full of questions and curiosity. What they need is an opportunity to explore those questions. Ironically, much of classroom management in formal schooling seems to have little to do with supporting students to explore their place in the world. And all too soon, this spark of curiosity is put out. For many, schooling introduces children to a lifetime of following directions, filling in blanks, and staying between the lines.

Schools can be places of learning only if the relationship between teachers and students is that of learners in learning classrooms. If we can stop thinking of students (and their parents) as threats to be managed, we can begin to embrace them as our partners in learning. We might come to school, like the students we teach, eager to step out into the uncertain, uncontrolled realm of new experiences and unknown ideas. To do that we will need a different approach for managing this relationship.

We don’t need more systems that manage students or teachers. What we need is a classroom management approach that supports the learning of teachers, students and their parents or guardians.

One barrier to creating classrooms where people can learn together and from each other are the terms we use to describe the people in this relationship. The labels “teacher” and “learner” perpetuate conditions of authority, purpose, and responsibility. But in a learning environment shouldn’t everyone—including and especially the adult in the room and the adults at home--be learners? And mightn’t everyone in the class—or at home--at some occasion during the day, be a teacher? For schooling to be dedicated to managing learning, we might dispense with these labels as inaccurate, inappropriate, and obstructive.

This may seem odd, perhaps even radical. But maybe the notion is not so far-fetched. Many have already dumped the terms “pupil” and “student” for the more descriptive term “learner”. And the concept of a learner-centered approach, well-known in schools around the world, has already taken us part of the way. From there, the idea of a learning-centered approach to classroom management is certainly within reach. A learning-centered approach is one that is organized to manage learning, not people. A learning-centered approach stems from a core belief that learning is what drives human thought and action forward, and requires no coercion, control, or manipulation.

Managing a Learning Environment

So, chuck out those worksheets. Tear up those quizzes. Shred the standardized tests. Stop spending valuable resources on workbooks, teaching guides, and other merchandise purporting to manage learning but which are really about managing teachers and students. There is scant evidence these schemes contribute any positive impact on learning for students or their teachers. On the contrary, there is quite a bit of evidence to show these things constrain and subvert the process of learning in school.

Classrooms where teachers and students learn together need a management approach that supports the cognitive and social components of human learning. That means managing space, time, and other resources to support critical learning activities and the development of learning skills. Here are some general ideas that might be useful:

1.?????Thinking???For learning to take place we need classroom management ideas that provide time and resources that allow individuals to think. This means creating spaces in the day where people have the opportunity to imagine, reflect, wonder, or just plain daydream.??

2.?????Asking? Real learning gets going when people learn how to ask good questions.?Teachers often use questions to manage students’ attention and to control discussions. But in a learning-centered classroom management approach, questions arise not from a textbook or teacher guide but from real-life experiences and reflection. The more adept students become at articulating questions born of their own thoughts, interests, or curiosity, the more likely it is that learning will take place. ??

3.?????Exploring?In this information age, we may have lost the animal instinct for exploration that produced original learning in ages past. Students need not be merely consumers of information. They can be creators of knowledge, too. But they will need a classroom management approach that supports investigation and experimentation, and the excitement of discovery.?

4.?????Observing??Students are good at watching. They observe the behaviors of people around them, the behaviors of clouds, and insects, and seasons, and so much more. Unfortunately, classroom management practices have replaced observing the world with listening to teachers. When learners (adults and youth) develop more elaborate tools for observing such as measuring, recording, and noting they are apt to make even more remarkable discoveries. A learning-centered classroom management approach would support opportunities for observation.

5.?????Discussing??Throughout human history learning occurs when people talk about what they are thinking, about the questions on their minds, about what they experience and discover, and what they observe. A learning-centered classroom needs effective techniques for managing this sort of discourse. Not the turn-taking rituals of show and tell, the oral book report, or recitation, but actual conversation and the respectful exchange of ideas that build to a collaborative construction of new knowledge.

For the better part of the last 75 years, educators have bought into programs and social theories, instruments and procedures for managing student learning. But what is presented as learning is often nothing more than the meager ability to get the right answer.

When we think about approaches to classroom management, we would be wise to consider just what kind of learning we aim to achieve. In this post-instruction era, where a ten-year-old with a smartphone can access more information in a few clicks than any teacher or textbook can provide, the most valuable lessons in school just might be learning how to learn. The best way to do that is to become learners in our own classrooms, learning how to learn together with students, peers, and parents. Developing a learning-centered approach to classroom management, an approach that facilitates learning not controlling learners,?ought to be an urgent priority?for our profession and our teacher education programs.