Question 1

William Glasser bases his management of children in the classroom on the meeting of their basic Drivers. Explain how you would act in a classroom to ensure that the 5 drivers in Year 9 students are met and thus allow effective learning to take place.

The five basic drivers are:

• Survival (food, clothing, shelter, breathing, personal safety and others)
• Belonging/connecting/love
• Power/significance
• Freedom/responsibility, and
• Fun/learning

Working in the classroom my approach is this:

• I ensure that students are physically and emotionally safe. Physical: In the workshop this means very clear and strict enforcement of safety standards. Emotional/Physical: in the classroom this means creating a safe space where bullying is less likely to occur, and dealing promptly and carefully with bullying when it does occur. I avoid at all costs getting hooked into power/control issues, but rather try to defuse them by using humour or giving other options.
• I ensure that students are welcomed and treated as individuals. As time permits I take a moment to speak to students by name and inquire about things that I know they are interested in. If I have an issue with a student I ensure that I never speak negatively about the student, but only refer to the students behaviour. (Belonging)
  
• Whenever I set an assessment task I return students marked work the next day which gives immediate and direct positive feedback. This also gives students the message that I value the work that they do, and value them. (Belonging, Significance, Love)
• If students do not complete assessment tasks I enforce consequences consistently and firmly (Responsibility)
  
• I ensure that wherever possible students have some choice about what they learn or how they learn. This gives the students some sense of power over their own education and also a sense of freedom. (Power, Freedom)
• I endeavor to find a way to make topics fun, by using some humor, making connections to historical or topical events or people, setting challenges, posing brain teasers or conundrums, by playing the devils advocate, and by including activities suited to different intelligences. (Fun, Freedom, Learning, Connecting)

I like Glasser's approach with Choice Therapy which states that the only behaviour we can control is our own. For me this is about letting go, and allowing students to be themselves. My hope is that by modelling some of the methods of Choice therapy in the classroom students will also pick up some of the tools and ideas and incorporate them into their own ways of working. If students understood that they cannot control their feelings, but can control how they think, and what they do then I believe they would be better able to deal with their world.

Glasser argues that unhappiness is usually the result of failed relationships. As a teacher this is a strong message to make sure that I maintain the quality of my relationships with all the students in the class. I am convinced that by making the effort to build good relationships I will circumvent or minimise instances of bad student behaviour.

The idea of doing prevention instead of a cure is a good one. If inappropriate behaviour is the result of unfulfilled needs then it is sensible to try to understand and meet the needs before the behaviour becomes evident. Thus I would act as a teacher as I have outlined above to try to meet the five driver needs through the regular teaching activities.

Question 2

The best classes are those where the students are motivated to learn. Such lessons have included in their structure the best learning theories. How would you structure a lesson so that students are really engaged in their learning? Explain the learning theories that would underpin your approach.

Motivation is definitely the gold standard!

How would I structure the lesson so students are really engaged?

Before the actual lesson the context of learning and the needs and drivers of the students should be considered.

The school culture, and the classroom should be conducive to learning. Durkheim/Bordieu emphasise that the 'Habitus' of the school, the 'external conscience' that students have, is ideally one that values working and fun and appropriate social interaction - and the 'civilised' ability to critically reflect. The physical classroom should be friendly and comfortable. Downs and Siemens point out that resources and learning tools like ICT should be available so that students can be 'connected' and ready for action.

Glasser and Dreikurs remind us that we need to attend to basic needs - this is an ongoing process that should be carrying over from many previous lessons. The students needs for survival, belonging, power, freedom and fun should have been addressed gradually over the course of many previous lessons. This way students come to the class with minimal unmet needs and an ongoing relationship with the teacher such that the needs of today can possibly be met. The students should know in advance that they will have some legitimate power and choices in the lesson, and that their needs for self determination and to belong can be met. As a teacher I should be able to identify and student motives, give students choices and model good behavior myself by being firm, consistent, caring, encouraging and providing logical consequences.

To start the actual lesson we must capture the students attention, set the scene and reference prior learning.

This fits with Vygotsky's ZPD which states that we have to start with what students have already learned and build on that. Ausubel states that the most important thing is integrating the new lesson with what the student already knows. Ausubel gives us the idea of the Concept of 'Advance Organiser' which is a device or mental tool used to get a grip on the information. In this case the advance organiser would be a story or anecdote which connects what the lesson is about with what students have done before and could also set out what the lesson is about.

It is very important that students are engaged early in the lesson. Many of the cognitive theories about learning emphasise that the more information is processed and manipulated in the students mind the more likely it is to be 'encoded' in memory and result in deeper learning. Furthermore the quality or the 'how' of the learning is important - the more interesting the lesson, with more opportunities to 'do things' with the information - the more likely it will be encoded and remembered.

Piaget argues that our knowledge forms a 'scheme', and learning new things involves adding to the scheme, or modifying it. Sometimes the scheme will need to be significantly changed when the new knowledge contradicts what is already 'known'.

The body of the lesson should include a large amount of student activity, hands on work and opportunity for discussion.The teacher needs to be sure to shut up and let it happen.

A key question should be posed in the form of a dilemma or a challenge. According to Bloom the question should be open and lead to higher levels of learning - moving from remembering 'facts' to understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating and ultimately creating.

An activity that provides some challenge and fun should be included - This provides opportunities for students with different ways of learning (Gardner's multiple intelligences) to work in ways they are most comfortable with. The activity should include something for each of the three domains: Text/Logic, Visual/Spatial/Movement and Feeling/relationships.

If students have the opportunity to discuss or interact while they are doing the activity this increases the Cognitive and Constructivist opportunities for learning. The increased processing of the information leads to more 'encoding' and the building of schemas is facilitated by students working socially together in the ZPD.

The use of 'Jigsaw', 'Grafitti', 'Think, Pair, Share' group methods as part of the activity provides a road tested means of promoting discussion and analysis - as long as the class is trained in doing these things and the groups are pre-determined by the teacher. All of the members of the groups need to have roles and be well primed with 'seed' information. The members should have the ability to work together with respect and be inclusive of everyone in the group.

The activities should ultimately be a miniature picture of a 'whole' life with a good balance of head, hands and heart activities. This relates to the Steiner 'Thinking, Feeling and Willing' approach and is echoed in Glasser & Dreikurs' 'knowledge, skills and values'.

The lesson conclusion:

The Cognitivists would have us review what was learned at the end, as another opportunity to reinforce or encode the learning still deeper. The use of student reflections will bring the emotional and social to bear and help the remembering as well.

At the end of the lesson the knowledge schemes of students should have been built on more.

Further work can be set at this point so students can practice and process the information at their leasure.


Interesting motivation article:
http://eric.uoregon.edu/publications/text/portraits1.2.html

Question 3

Bullying is a problem in many schools and classes. Describe how you would use the restorative justice model to deal with an incident in class where a student is being pushed, name called and excluded from the group.

The idea of restorative justice is that punishing the bully does not solve the problem, but getting the bully to understand the effect of their actions, and emotionally relate to the victim may cause them to change their behaviour. The restoration part is where the perpetrator does some action or favour for the victim as a recognition of their loss. The reason it will succeed is that it strengthens community, joins people in a healthy way and gets people talking and agreeing about how they should live.

As in all education the quality of the relationships is king.

To do an effective 'mediation' however requires a lot of confidence and training.

The first step would be to ensure that the school has a policy on bullying and that there is some agreement amongst the staff, some support and some training for staff in using the restorative justice method.

The scenario described could be serious if it had been going on for some time. Alternatively it could be quite mild if it was just a one off, and the parties involved were just having an off day.

If it was only a one off then I would try to defuse the situation by suggesting some alternatives to both parties, by modeling good listening skills, by being clear and firm about what behaviour is acceptable. A small amount of humour, or distraction back to the lesson may not go astray.

If it was an ongoing problem then, following discussion with the students' class gaurdians, and the college of teachers we might initiate a more formal restorative justice process.

This would involve a getting a mediator to interview both parties, and then a formal meeting with the bully, some of the bully's mates, some of the friends of the victims, and some unrelated students with more of a leadership role.

This group would carfefully work through the issues without laying blame on the bully, but rather to bring the actions to clarity and help everyone to understand the feelings and results of the bullying. If this is done skillfully then the bully should hopefully have some new empathy with the victim, and be willing to do some sort of restitution for them. An extra dimension is added by building community and links with all the participants which will make it less likely that there will be a repeat action.

Follow up meetings between the mediator and the victim and bully should reinforce this outcome.

As a teacher I would be very interested to see where the unmet needs are for the bully, and also the victim - with more understanding of these it might be possible to subtly intervene or plan for this in lessons so that some of the unmet needs might be met.

Question 4

However a teacher teaches, at the end of the day their own fundamental beliefs about learning, discipline, the nature of children and how they value education take over. What are your fundamental ideas about the nature of education and classroom management?

Fundamental beliefs?

• The world is an amazing place - we are all students of it together

• My role as a teacher is to facilitate learning by providing enthusiasm, interest, explanation, making links, posing puzzles, acting as a mediator, simplifying concepts, expanding horizons

• We all learn by talking about stuff and sharing it

• We like to be recognised when we do well.

• My role is also to gate keep, and ensure that the classroom is safe and equitable - some students need to be encouraged to speak out, and others to speak less

• The teacher sets the tone and expectations of the class - students rise to appropriate challenges!

• Students are all unique and have their own style of learning and strengths and weaknesses. As far as possible I will try to make learning situations to work best for students with many different styles.

• Each student is ultimately in charge of their own life and actions - as far as possible I wish to encourage responsibility, self motivation and autonomy.

• Education should reflect the whole world - each student should ultimately have a broad knowledge of many disciplines and ideas - the 'renaisance man' comes to mind. Music, Mathematices, Logic, Art, Physics, Chemistry, Philosophy, Engineering, Morality, Dance, History. Dealing with these subjects discreetly and dryly does not help them become real - they all need to be part of every experience

• We occasionally need a gentle push, and consistent boundaries to stop us from being slack. 'Discipline' should be the last resort for a democratic/leadership/partnership management stlyle.
  

• We need opportunity to excercise all aspects of ourselves - head, heart and hands - thinking, willing and doing.

• We need examples of truthfulness, autonomy, creativity, justice, mercy and compassion around us - as teachers we need to model this in our actions and relationships.