Classroom Behaviour: A Practical Guide to Effective Teaching, Behaviour Management, and Colleague Support

Citation

Richmond, C. (2004), "Classroom Behaviour: A Practical Guide to Effective Teaching, Behaviour Management, and Colleague Support", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 42 No. 1, pp. 112-114. https://doi.org/10.1108/09578230410517503

This text contributes to the huge behaviour management literature base by summarising and building upon many of the themes that have been introduced in earlier works by Rogers. He has synthesised behaviour management practice into seven chapters each exploring a set of key issues. Chapter one illustrates the recursive nature of the relationship between teachers and students. The author has a superb grasp of the lived moment, the spaces between what is said to whom and what happens next in the classroom. While each of the scenarios is necessarily described in fairly linear ways, (he said or did this, she responded in such a way and then that happened) it is so cleverly done that the author evokes memories that lend each vignette living credibility.

Chapter two leaps into practical advice about how teachers can prevent disruptive behaviour by establishing classroom routines and clarifying expectations with students. The title of chapter three, “The language of behaviour management” reframes classroom dynamics between teachers and students in terms of their communication. Both verbal language and non‐verbal teacher language are dissected with a view to providing advice about maximising influence on student behaviour.

Chapter four, lying geographically at the very heart of this text, is a succinct essay on “fundamental understanding and skills” underlying “effective teaching”. Rogers introduces this chapter with a brief though only partially satisfying reflection about effectiveness as it relates to teaching. While effective as a concept is debunked as potentially utilitarian, there is much left unsaid about, for example, maximising student learning in the context of inclusive classrooms. Case illustrations make this chapter useful because they use curriculum‐based examples, to reinforce management‐based ideas made elsewhere in the text. Szasz's quote cited under the chapter title “A teacher should have maximal authority and minimal power” is translated by the thrust of the information to read “how a teacher can project authority in a context where he or she has little power”.

Chapter five addresses the difficult area of applying consequences for disruptive behaviour. While Rogers addresses the ambivalent nature of the concept of consequence, the content almost exclusively deals with consequences flowing from misbehaviour. Ironically an anonymous quote cited with the chapter title is “When I do good no one remembers, when I do bad no one forgets”. Advice to teachers in how to think about and strategise consequences for misbehaviour in respectful, fair and reasonable ways is, nevertheless, excellent.

Chapter six summarises work originally outlined in behaviour recovery together with additional information guiding teachers to work well with students who relentlessly challenge. It is refreshing to read a behaviour management text that avoids labelling student behaviour. Instead the subtext of this book is how teachers can manage themselves in order to influence students to learn. The final chapters focus almost entirely on this aspect, and Rogers names this intention in the title of chapter seven, “Managing anger in ourselves and others”. Finally, “When things get difficult: hard class hard times” will evoke for many teachers the remembered terrors of midnight ruminations about Year 9 in 1990, or Year 6B in 1995, or whichever, whenever but there is usually at least one class like this in a teacher's experience. Multidimensional demands on educators in the complex environments of contemporary schools provide fertile ground for conflict. Rogers handles the advice giving here with clarity and generosity. He does not, however, pull punches when he writes “teaching is not for everybody”.

This text is densely packed with management advice. While there is some attention on clarifying theoretical points, this is not one of the book's strengths. Another limitation is its lack of contextualising within broader social landscapes. The book is what Rogers says it is, “a practical guide” to strategy. The writing style is characterised by short bursts of information with liberal use of dot points. This type of writing facilitates a “dipping in” rather than a cover to cover one‐off reading style which is likely to suit busy teachers who want useful information quickly.

The stories in this text take the reader inside classrooms, onto playgrounds and into the minds of contemporary teachers and students. The one message drawing all these stories together is of the potency of personal dimensions in that perennially challenging part of teachers' work called behaviour management. Rogers introduces a personal voice from the opening paragraph carefully building his argument on a foundation stone of charming self‐deprecation. It is a seductive voice; the reader cannot help but laugh, if somewhat ruefully at times, with the human dilemmas played out in scenarios used to illustrate each strategic piece of management advice. Cleverly, Rogers teaches particular strategies by providing examples of poor (but nevertheless logically human) practice followed by examples of preferable practice. The delicious juxtaposition of case examples embeds this text with a practical edge unsurpassed in the classroom management field.

There is useful cross‐referencing within the longer case studies. For example, when Rogers describes one teacher's work with a challenging Year 8 class in order to make several points about how this teacher manages the beginning part of a lesson, he notes that a student enters the room late. Instead of repeating how best to manage lateness he uses a page reference at that point so the reader can check back to an earlier recommendation.

The phrase that succinctly captures Rogers' thesis in this book is his wish for educators to undertake their work with sanity and grace. Looking up the thesaurus for “sanity” one finds the synonyms “good sense”, “reason”, “wisdom”, and “judgement”; and similarly for “grace” the synonyms are “elegance”, “refinement”, “poise”, and “charm”. All these concepts are translated into practical advice through the behaviour management approach described in this book. I recommend it to teachers and those aspiring to teach. If set for preparation courses, this is one of the texts that will not end up on the shelves of the secondhand book shop!