Edpsy 399 OL - Spring 2000

Tom Anderson, Instructor

Leonard Fretzin

Forum 4 - Lesson 4

Lesson 4 q2 Kounin and Learned Skills

Date: Saturday March 3, 2001

Kounin described the results of his research on classroom discipline in terms of the actions and methods teachers use which are effective, in distinction to those of teachers whose actions do not prevent continuous disciplinary problems.

To this extent he was uncovering discipline skills of teachers which may have been either learned, or derived from common sense. The term inborn is synonymous with hereditary, and Kounin does not speculate about hereditary skills as being a necessity for teacher created discipline.

On the contrary, he takes a scientific approach to discipline, and determines in his research what works and what doesn't work. He then organizes this information in a way that teachers can quickly adopt the methodologies that are effective.

Many teachers who have never read Kounin or other authors writing about his methods, will immediately find that they are in agreement with his ideas, partially because they have used his ideas in their classrooms already. This is especially true with Kounin's concept of "withitness".

In my personal experience as a teacher, I quickly became aware of the importance of watching certain students in every class, although I disagree with Kounin that a good teacher must know what was going on in all areas of the classroom at all times. Fortunately there are students who do not have to be watched, since they are never a behavior concern. On the other hand, there are students who need to be frequently watched because of their propensity to misbehave. This, of course must be done while a teacher is doing what he is principally paid for, namely teaching. Good teachers become skilled in quickly discovering the students who are the most frequent 'trouble makers' and then begin to consider methods of altering their behavior.

Teaching chemistry is less involved in the multiple simultaneous activities that are addressed in Kounin's concept of overlapping. By overlapping he means the ability of teachers to attend to two or more students doing different things at the same time. Elementary teachers are probably more involved with activities that involve overlapping. However, when I have a laboratory activity, I find that I am often explaining procedure to some students while looking over their shoulders to make sure that the other students are on task, practicing safe laboratory practices, wearing their goggles, and not engaging in horse play.

Overlapping is an extension of "withitness", because it challenges a teacher to be aware of what is going on in every area of the room. But again, this seemingly impossible task is modified by the teacher's knowledge of those students in his class that are more likely to need his 'attention'. This, of course, is something a teacher learns every year.

The importance of planning lessons to move smoothly from the beginning of an instructional period to its end, are always somewhat of a challenge for teachers, and one requiring experience to improve. Teaching high school science has its own intrinsic types of activities, which are dictated by the curriculum that the district wants to teach.

I quickly discovered that lecturing is one of the worst methods on conveying information in our 'modern' secondary schools, but must be modified by smooth transitions into group problem solving or other student activity which will require the students to be active learners. One of the tricks of keeping students interested and learning is to prevent slowdowns and 'overdwelling' on a particular subject. These methods are learned from experience, since a teacher must correctly judge the amount of time necessary to get the majority of his students to understand a particular subject. He mustn't induce the boredom associated with 'overdwelling', nor move too quickly for the majority of his students to comprehend the subject in a sufficient manner.

I have only worked with one curriculum, which specifically utilizes group projects in the instruction of chemistry; this is "Chemistry and the Community". The curriculum has been adopted by many schools for the instruction of 'regular' chemistry students, but has also fallen out of favor with some districts and has been dropped. In 'Chemistry and the Community' students take on various roles in a city council forum and discuss the problem of a pollution event that killed off the fish population of a nearby river. The accountability aspect of group focus is largely ignored, and is something that a teacher needs to learn to adapt to the curriculum being taught.

The idea of students using response props to write answers on is not self evident, but rather a methodology that a teacher needs to learn and practice over time. Group activity can be used in science to advance problem-solving methods. In this case the teacher would organize all the students to solve the problem, and then call on various students at random to respond. The teacher can then elicit responses from other students who will correct mistakes made by the responding student.

Of the three elements of group focus, maintaining attention is the most important since it impacts on classroom deportment and is the most important method that a teacher using group teaching routinely must learn.

It seem remarkable that problems with behavior in our classroom have become the determiner of teaching method, the latter should, ideally be chosen by the best method learning curve, instead. Its sad to see the extent, degree, and time that must be devoted to deportment. The result of these requirements is a matter of academic record.

TEACHERS FIRST!

Charles, C.M., Senter, Gail W., Barr, Karen B. - Building Classroom Discipline

ISBN: 0801330041; Publisher: Addison-Wesley Longman, Incorporated 1998

McEwan, E. K., Damer, M. - Managing Unmanageable Students; Corwin Press, Inc.,

Sprick, R. - Discipline in the secondary classroom; West Nyack, NY: The Center for