Behavior Modification

Over on Another Brick in the Wall, Donna posted an entry about the term “classroom control.” It got me thinking about the concepts of control, management, and teaching. Here’s her lead

Teachers use the term “classroom control” for classroom management techniques. I have also used those terms. Lately I have been thinking about how much control makes sense and if the goal is to keep children simply controlled or to change their behavior in a more lasting way. Change is a process that takes place inside the child before you see it in the behavior.

In subsequent paragraphs, Donna goes on to discuss the necessity for teachers having control, her rejection of control by physical force (yay!), and other topics. I was a bit stymied by the inside-the-child perspective, in the post; I thought I should post a reflection about the inside-outside dichotomy and why I see it as misleading. Still, there is much to agree with in Donna’s post (e.g., concern about students physical and emotional safety).

As I reflected on her post, I thought it important to differentiate between control and teaching. In fact, I see behavior management as a teaching process, and that’s the topic of this reflection.

I want my students to be able to teach their students how to behave appropriately, to the point that their K-12 students can and do behave appropriately on their own. Given the importance of modeling, practice, and feedback for learning, I want my students to understand how they need to identify specific behaviors students need to learn, specify learning objectives, and design programs (composed of modeling, practice, and feedback) to teach those behaviors.

So, in that sense, perhaps we really do want control. We want to teach students self-control. And, in fact, there is a technology (heavy on modeling, practice, and feedback, no less) for teaching self-control.

Donna, who has been teaching for many years, teaches in a program for juvenile offenders, a maximum security facility for 10-18 year olds who are detained while the legal systems determine their immediate futures. A couple of months ago she began chronicling her experiences and observations. Link to Donna’s post about classroom control that got me started on this entry. While you’re there, scout about for other interesting observations.