By Mandouh al-Husseini
Classroom management is a teaching skill of utmost importance. Classrooms can become a safe, supportive, enjoyable, and an appropriate learning environment, if teachers perform well and master this skill to the fullest.
Multiple definitions emerged for ‘classroom management’ as a term in the past period, including traditional definitions that limit the term to the creation of conditions that affect the learning process by organising the physical environment of the classroom (furniture, equipment, materials, and other means).
The same definitions also include maintaining order and discipline through rules and instructions made by teachers to enhance the behaviour of the learners.
Nevertheless, modern definitions of the term focus on a set of psychological, social and behavioural dimensions.
They define classroom management as all the processes of guidance, leadership, and organised actions, whether verbal or practical, that teachers take to encourage learners to interact and actively engage in learning.
These efforts open the door for the provision of an effective classroom climate in which positive human relations prevail between the teachers and the pupils and among the pupils themselves.
This climate helps improve pupils’ behaviour, tendencies, and preparedness. It also refines their talents and abilities.
Classroom management in this modern sense is a participatory process between the teachers and the learners, one aiming at the employment of all available capabilities to develop the learners’ personality.
Human Relations Department
The pupils and the teachers in the classroom live a common life. They are a group of humans who spend a long time together. In the classroom, these teachers and pupils are exposed to the same influences people outside the classroom are exposed to.
This means that they experience love and hate, friendship and hostility, enjoyment and boredom, happiness and sadness, success and failure, and peace and aggression.
Teachers’ skills in managing human relations play an important role in determining the type of life that prevails inside the classroom.
There are many theories that explain classroom environment management, including modern ones, such as the preventive theory and the remedial theory which depend on the democratic approach in management.
These theories promote the classroom management process as a leadership of human relations aimed at achieving planned goals, and increasing interaction between teachers and pupils.
It motivates everyone to work with a team spirit. Teachers’ leadership of the classroom turns into a force of influence that inspires the pupils, unifies their efforts, and encourages them to succeed.
As for traditional theories, such as the theory of delay and the theory of revenge, they are based on an authoritarian approach that focuses on teachers’ official authority and pupils’ submission to this authority.
Some teachers, especially new ones, believe the classroom management process is an easy one.
Nevertheless, the fact is that it requires great care and experience, as many teachers spend a large part of the class time in controlling and managing the classroom and providing an appropriate environment for learning.
However, this affects the educational and learning process negatively. Teachers’ classroom management skills help reduce wasted time and increase the time devoted to learning. They also increase pupils’ involvement in various educational activities.
Classroom management is an art and a science at the same time. From a technical point of view, this management depends on the personality of the teachers and the way they deal with pupils inside and outside the classroom.
It is also a science that has its own definition; rules; principles, and procedures.
Available resources are an optimal investment, through planning, organisation, coordination, direction, supervision, follow-up, control, evaluation and strengthening to reach specific goals.
To manage the classroom effectively, teachers have to carry out many tasks, including the regular and routine administrative tasks they must practice. They also have to supervise their completion according to an arrangement agreed upon with pupils.
These tasks can include taking attendance and absence, checking the cleanliness, ventilation and the lighting of the classroom, maintaining an appropriate arrangement of seats, and securing educational means and materials.
As for the task of organising the classroom interaction process, whether educational, moral, or emotional, they include developing a sense of responsibility, self-discipline, mutual respect, and permanent and fruitful communication between the teachers and his the pupils.
All teachers out there, to manage your classroom effectively, you have to plan this process by organising your thoughts and believing that classroom management means effective human relations that lead to the achievement of goals.
Al-Mandouh al-Husseini is the board chairman of several private schools and the Egyptian Society for Private School Owners and a former member of parliament.
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