ABSTRACT
It is Monday morning and Mrs Smith meets her class of twenty-five 8-yearolds for the first time.
Mrs Smith Good morning everybody. I’ve heard some very good things about you from Miss Reid and I’m looking forward to getting to know you. I know we are all going to get along well together. I’d like us to start by deciding what our classroom rules are going to be… I’d like each group to decide on one really important rule and say why it is important…
There can hardly be a more important aspect of teaching than classroom discipline. Creating and sustaining a classroom environment which promotes learning is fundamental to the job. Yet classroom discipline is not just a means to an end, the end being that children learn. It is an end in itself. The way in which power and authority are exercised, rules established and infringements of rules dealt with are important elements in children’s personal and social development. Children will probably remember the values displayed through a teacher’s approach to classroom discipline, long after the content of a particular piece of academic work has been forgotten. Classroom discipline, then, is about much more than time on task and rules and sanctions. It is about roles and relationships, between teacher and pupil and among pupils themselves.
