Time and again, new teachers report that their biggest
challenge is classroom management. Without the fundamentals of effective
management in place, even the most brilliantly
crafted lesson can fall on distracted ears – or worse, be upended by disruptive
behavior. Understandably, student learning suffers, and teachers who in
time might excel in the classroom are frequently so demoralized that they
abandon the profession altogether.
Today, NCTQ releases a new report digging into the
specifics of teacher preparation on classroom management to determine why so
many new teachers start the school year unequipped to succeed.
As centuries of received wisdom about education has told us – and decades of careful research has confirmed – there are in fact effective strategies
to keep students on track so that learning can take place. We call these effective
strategies the “Big Five.”
- Rules: Establish and
teach classroom rules to communicate expectations for behavior. - Routines: Build structure
and establish routines to help guide students in a wide variety of
situations. - Praise: Reinforce positive
behavior, using praise and other means. - Misbehavior: Consistently
impose consequences for misbehavior. - Engagement: Foster and
maintain student engagement by teaching interesting lessons that include
opportunities for active student participation.
Our review of 122 elementary and secondary, undergraduate
and graduate programs indicates that nearly every teacher prep program does
address classroom management in some way. But few programs are addressing all
the strategies they should, and some are addressing one or none:
What’s worse is that even if teacher candidates learn these strategies,
they still may not practice them until they reach student teaching months
later. Overall, only about a third of programs provide teacher candidates with opportunities
to practice these strategies as they learn them.
Check out our report to learn more about some bright
spots among programs, the research on the Big Five and
common sense steps teacher prep programs can take to improve their classroom
management training.
