Discipline and Group Management in Classrooms
Jacob Kounin has conducted research with several colleagues of kindergarten, elementary,
secondary, and college classrooms. His most important findings have come from videotaping 15
first- and second-grade classrooms and 15 third- and fifth-grade classrooms. They were
videotaped on half days for two months. Kounin followed with another study of 50 primary
classrooms videotaped for a full day. For each classroom, he recorded the behavior of eight
students chosen at random and one emotionally disturbed child. His concern was with finding
teacher practices related to student work involvement and low student misbehavior. Kounin
isolated the teacher practices and procedures of "with-it-ness", "over-lapping," "smoothness and
momentum," and "group alerting" as parts of classroom-management success. (Wolfgang, 294)
Summation of Kounin’s important work on classroom management, a teacher can minimize
misbehavior by:
With –it-ness:
* Keep constantly alert to sights and sounds around the classroom.
* Arrange students to be within sight at all times
* Scan the classroom whenever attending to an individual or small group
of students.
* At the first detection of misbehavior, use a brief acknowledgment to
let the class know that you are aware of the misbehavior
(i.e. “Felina, would you please get back to work?”
Overlapping:
* Attend to two events at the same time whenever necessary so as not to
leave students waiting.
* When instructing one group acknowledge difficulties that students
outside the group may be having, but keep group instruction moving
(i.e., “Marsha, keep explaining that logarithm out loud to us while I
check on Petunia’s problem
Now, Petunia, where do you need help – I see. Martha, check your
logarithm with the rest of the group; then all of you do exercise B.
Petunia, you’re forgetting to invert the ratio…: Correct misbehavior
but keep instruction moving i.e., “Tom, it’s your turn to read
(teacher turns head to class in seats. ) There’s too much noise. I
can’t hear Tom read. Tom, sound that word out y syllables; for , tu, nate.
Good. Sam, get back to your seat. If you need help come over here.
Sandra (who sits two seats form Tom in the reading group),
please pronounce the same word Tom just had...”
Smoothness:
* Preplan the lesson so that extraneous matters are taken care of
beforehand (i.e., “now that today’s schedule and assignments are handed out,
have we forgotten any other items? If not, let’s give our full
attention to Gothic design. Let’s look on page 13, the picture of the
Cathedral of Chartres. No, Sally, I’ll pass back the homework at the
end of the class. What do you notice about this cathedral that is
different from Notre Dame? Bruce?”)
* Once students are absorbed in their work, do not distract them.
Leave them alone to work and assist them individually.
Momentum:
* Keep the lesson moving briskly.
* Do not over dwell on a minor or already understood part of the
lesson.
* Correct students quickly without nagging and return to the lesson.
* Have students move from one activity to the next without having to
wait for each other on each subpart of the transition
(i.e., avoid saying, “First everyone put your pencils away”).
Group alerting:
* Call on students at random.
* Raise group interest by interspersing suspense between questions by
saying, “This is a tough one coming up.”
“Can you figure this one out?” “You haven’t heard of this before.”
“I want you all to think hard before responding.”
* Have the entire group or class respond in unison.
* Physically move around the room and ask students to show what they
have done.
* While asking one student to respond, look at other students.
Kounin found that with-it-ness, overlapping, smoothness, momentum, and group alerting were
the teacher practices most highly related to management success. With-it-ness, overlapping and
group alerting are focused teacher behaviors, verbal and non-verbal, in scanning and responding
to students. Smoothness and momentum are focused on the organization of the lesson,
presentation of instruction, and transitions between work activities. (Wolfgang, 297-98)