Classrooms as Communities: Developing Caring and Democratic Relationships

This chapter surveys the behaviorist legacies of classroom management, discipline, and control as well as an alternative perspective that promotes caring relationships and democratic communities. This second perspective makes sense to today’s school officials and teachers; it is supported by research findings and personal experience. Yet in practice, it is easy to fall into familiar behaviorist approaches. A critical perspective helps to identify the authoritarian tendencies that pervade public schools and diminish constructive action; without one, behaviorist strategies-like using rewards, punishments, threats of failure, and so forth-remain persuasive.