Classroom Management Perspectives on the Social Curriculum

PREFACE This book is intended to help readers consider management strategies for contemporary school classrooms. The book engages readers in a number of activities that focus on cultural dimensions of classroom management. An assumption underlying many books on classroom management, especially those reflective of behavioristic perspectives, is that preservice teachers should first learn theoretical principles of management, then somehow connect these principles to their practice during field experiences in teacher education programs or during the first year of teaching. We have learned from research that this kind of theory-practice connection is problematic, and that preservice teachers who learn management theory in such a manner often express concerns over the impracticality of their teacher education experience. Purely behaviorist approaches to classroom management tend to decontextualize classroom management by discussing it apart from the whole of classroom practice. These approaches also focus in theory on explicit behavior of learners irrespective of biographical or cultural influences. However, the position we take in this book is that decontextualized approaches to classroom management are misaligned with contemporary constructivist thinking on preservice and in-service teacher education and also with the globalization of local school classrooms. Consequently, this book engages readers in readings, activities, and action research projects that proactively link contemporary thinking in classroom management to actual classroom practice. To foster this link, we ask readers to begin with their own theories, perspectives, and biographies relative to classroom management and adaptability, what Hunt (1987) calls "beginning with ourselves." Then throughout the book we help readers extend their personal views of management as they actively construct new meanings for managing classrooms in a pluralistic society. This book also extends and broadens existing textbooks on cultural diversity and multicultural education. Many of these books provide commendable discussions of cultural diversity in school classrooms from sociopolitical and theoretical perspectives but tend to skirt issues of classroom management. Our extensive experience interacting with preservice and in-service teachers suggests that teacher education programs and their selected textbooks are effective in providing teachers with a view of traditional classroom management theory, but are mostly ineffective in helping teachers understand the limitations of traditional management strategies in contemporary culturally diverse classrooms. Moreover, these same programs, especially those that assume behavioristic approaches to classroom management, are misaligned with the demands on teachers in culturally diverse settings to establish and maintain effective classroom learning environments. Such demands include negotiating classroom interactions with students who represent many different cultures and nationalities. Teachers must also negotiate interactions with and manage learning environments for students with severe disabilities, who were once not a part of regular school classrooms and have not been included in mainstream education. To accommodate linguistic diversity, teachers must also know how to manage the information flow in classrooms where English is not the first language of many of their students. Cultural pluralism in school classrooms requires new ways of viewing relationships between teachers and students and among students. Student apathy, increased delinquency, and high dropout rates attest to the need for viewing classroom relationships in new ways. This book holds potential to help preservice and in-service teachers understand the social curriculum in multicultural classrooms and to help them consider alternative ways of thinking about their classrooms, what we describe asalternative metaphors.Considering alternaPowell, Richard R. is the author of 'Classroom Management Perspectives on the Social Curriculum', published 2000 under ISBN 9780134609089 and ISBN 0134609085.