IMPLICATIONS FROM LEARNING THEORY - Classroom Management Strategies

Because students need to learn cooperative conduct (i.e., on-task, engaged, and prosocial behaviors), you need to make use of teaching cycles to lead students to choose these behaviors, just as you employ teaching cycles to lead them to achieve curriculum goals. Thus, an understanding of how people obtain knowledge, construct concepts, discover relationships, develop skills, acquire attitudes, formulate values, and make behavioral choices is foundational to the development of classroom management strategies. For example, the distinction between inquiry and direct instructional strategies and how they should be employed for different types of learning outcomes has critical implications in the classroom management world.

A teacher employs inquiry instructional strategies by engaging students in activities in which they interact with information, make observations, and formulate and articulate ideas that lead them toward discovery, concept construction, or invention. On the other hand, a teacher employs direct instructional strategies by exposing students to the information or process to be remembered and then engaging in repetitive activities to commit the information or process to memory (Cangelosi, 2003). Consider Case 2.4.

CASE 2.4

Ms. Martin is planning the ﬁrst class meeting for her third-period U.S. history class at Capuchin High School. The academic objective for her initial lesson is for students to discover that historians base their beliefs about the past on observations of today’s phenomena and events, examinations of artifacts and documents, and interviews with people. She also has two classroom management objectives for the ﬁrst two class meetings:

1. Students discover the importance of arriving to class on time and completing homework assignments by their due dates.

2. To begin building a productive learning community, students discover that in this course, each individual student’s opinions, experiences, and responses to prompts presented by Ms. Martin are valued for their contributions to the class’s understanding of U.S. history.

Because of her knowledge of learning theories, Ms. Martin understands that simply lecturing her students on the importance of being in class and completing homework assignments on time and telling students that she values their individual contributions to the class are not effective mechanisms for leading students to behave accordingly. Furthermore, she knows students have a history of teachers preaching to them about such matters, but they were still able to “get by” and that their individual opinions, personal experiences, and responses to prompts were hardly utilized in lessons. Ms. Martin will use direct instructional strategies to inform students of classroom procedures and standards of conduct just as she will to inform them of names of historical characters. But for the two classroom management objectives and the academic objective she will target in the initial meeting, she employs inquiry instructional strategies.

She begins the ﬁrst class meeting by directing students to complete the questionnaire displayed by Figure 2.1. Ms. Martin circulates about the room observing students as they respond to the questionnaire prompts. For example, she notes that instead of writing in #2’s blanks, Tonja looks around the room, as shown in Figure 2.2, and asks students near her, “Why do we have to do this? I thought this was supposed to be history!” Ms. Martin walks to her and in a hushed, calm voice says, “Tonja, I need for you to ﬁll in these blanks right away. I will use what

Implications from Learning Theory 21

Third-Period History Meeting #1

1. What is your name?____________________________________________________

2. Think of something that happened before you were born that you think almost everyone in this room also knows about. In two sentences, tell what happened.

_______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________

3. What makes you think what you just wrote actually happened?

4. Think of something that happened before you were born that you think no one else in this room (other than yourself) also knows about. In one or two sentences tell what happened.

5. What makes you think what you just wrote actually happened?

6. Explain one way in which you influenced history.

Figure 2.1. Questionnaire Ms. Martin’s History Students Complete during the First Class

7. Suppose that you are walking down a path through a forest. Just around a curve, you look to your left and observe the scene pictured:

Describe exactly what you see.

Now, explain what you would infer happened at this site at some time in the past before you arrived.

Implications from Learning Theory 23

©James Cangelosi

Figure 2.2. Ms. Martin Observes Tonja’s Reaction to the Questionnaire

you write to plan tomorrow’s class.” Frowning, Tonja says before she begins to write, “Okay, but I don’t see what this has to do with history!”

After collecting the questionnaires, Ms. Martin engages the class in a discussion about their responses, course expectations, and requirements for the course. She then distributes copies of a two-page essay by historian Mariya Jefferson and assigns the homework as follows:

Carefully read Mariya Jefferson’s essay, “Looking at the Past with Today’s Eyes.” Note her descriptions of how she studies current events, artifacts, and documents, and how she talks to people to learn about the past. You will use your work from this assignment right after we begin tomorrow’s class.

That evening in preparation for the second class meeting, Ms. Martin reads students’ questionnaire responses, noting from each paper at least one comment that she would like to reference during upcoming learning activities. Figure 2.3 displays Reggie’s responses.

Near the beginning of the second class meeting, Ms. Martin administers the test shown in Figure 2.4. Tonja spends most of the 15 minutes allotted for the test, as shown in Figure 2.5.

Reggie arrives to class 11 minutes late. As Ms. Martin hands him the test paper, he says, “I had to go to my locker to put away my orchestra stuff.” He takes a seat and begins writing but time runs short. He complains, “I didn’t have time to get started!” Acknowledging his complaint with a sincere, “Yes, I’m sorry; I wish we had more time for you to ﬁnish.” She then begins playing off students’ responses from the test prompts to engage the class in a discussion about how they use their own observations to make inferences about the past. During the spirited discussion, Reggie comments, “That Mariya woman said that she read old diaries and stuff to learn about things before she was born. That’s kind of like when I look at old pictures of my great-grandma and stuff. That’s how I know how they used to dress and look and stuff. I guess real historians like the one who wrote that paper we read are more careful and scientiﬁc than we

Implications from Learning Theory 25

Opportunity to Demonstrate Your Understanding of How We Discover History

Meeting #2 1. What is your name?

2. Yesterday, when you answered the questionnaire at the beginning of class, you thought of two things that happened before you were born. For homework, you read historian Mariya Jefferson’s explanations of how she learns about the past.

A. What is one inference about the past that Jefferson related in her essay?

___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________

B. Describe a process she used to obtain information from which she made

the inference you listed for “A”.

___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________

C. What is one inference about the past that you have made? (It could be

one of the ones you listed on the questionnaire yesterday, but it doesn’t have to be).

___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________

D. Describe a process you used to obtain information from which you

made the inference you listed for “C”.

___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________

E. Explain how the process you described in “D” above was similar to the

process you described in “B”.

___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________

F. Explain how the process you described in “D” above was different from the process you described in “B”.

___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________

Implications from Studies of Social Interaction and Communications 27

Figure 2.5. Ms. Martin Observes Tonja Taking the Test

are when we just look at pictures or something.” Ms. Martin asks Tonja, “Do you think Professor Jefferson is a bit more systematic when she formally studies history than when she’s making everyday inferences about the past?” Tonja replies, “I didn’t get to the homework; I didn’t know we were going to be tested on it. Will we have a test tomorrow?” Ms. Martin says, “Yes, we will. Now let’s go back to Reggie’s point paralleling the work of professional historians to what we do when we think about the past.” The discussion continues.

Of course, there are numerous other implications from learning-theoretic studies besides appropriately incorporating direct and inquiry instructional strategies to teach cooperative behaviors. Learning theory subsumes other areas of academic study that are alluded to in the remainder of this chapter and utilized throughout this book.

IMPLICATIONS FROM STUDIES OF SOCIAL INTERACTION AND

In document Classroom Management Strategies (Page 38-45)