Kounin, Jacob
From WikEd
Whom are we talking about: Jacob Kounin is a classroom management theorist. He based his work on that of Glasser. Kounin began as an educational psychologist at Wayne State University in 1946. Prior to Kounin, most people felt as though discipline and instruction were separate entities. Many thought that teaching was only helping students learning information and skills. Discipline was how a teacher kept the students working, paying attention, and maintaining proper behavior. Kounin worked to change this view and to integrate teaching and discipline.
Jacob Kounin is best known for two studies that he did in the 1970s about classroom management. Originally he was doing research into how teachers handles misbehavior. Before long he realized that it was more that what the teachers did in reaction to student behavior, it was the way they handled the class from the start.
All of this came about from an incident that happened while he was teaching a class in Mental Hygiene. A student in the back of the class was reading newspaper, the newspaper being opened fully in front of the student so that he couldn't see the teacher. Kounin asked the student to put the paper away and pay attention. Once the student complied, Kounin realized that other students who were engaging in non-appropriate behaviors (whispering, passing notes) stopped and began to pay attention to the lecture. This gave him an interest in understanding classroom discipline on not only the student being disciplined, but also the other students in the classroom. This is the effect that became known as the "Ripple Effect" (Kounin, pgs 1 & 2)
He wrote a book "Discipline and Group Management in Classrooms" to summarize the behaviors of effective and ineffective classroom managers. He began by studying what teachers did to stop misbehavior, but found that no matter how the teacher handled the situation, it did not change the students' reaction. His conclusion was that the ways teachers handle misbehavior once it occurs are not the keys to successful classroom management, but instead what teachers do to prevent management problems from occurring at all. One of his examples was of one teacher who would flick the lights off and on to get her students to be quiet. This worked well for her. In another classroom, flicking the lights did nothing to settle the students down.
His experiments took place over the course of 5 years. He experimented with college, high school, and elementary students. His research was based on videotapes of 80 elementary school classrooms.
Applications: He found that organization and planning were keys to good classroom management along with proactive behavior on the part of the teacher and high levels of student involvement. Teachers also need to have good Lesson Movement. This emphasizes the strong relationship between effective management and effective teaching. It is maintained through withitness, overlapping, momentum, smoothness, and group focus.
Withitness - The teacher knows what is going on in the classroom at all times. Seemingly, the teacher has eyes in the back of his/her head. This is not only when the teacher is in a small group setting, but when he/she is presenting a topic or students are working as individuals. It can be as simple as looking around the room frequently or making sure your back is never turned to the class. It is not necessary to know what the teacher knows is going on - it is what the students believe she knows. (Kounin, 81)
Overlapping - The ability to attend to multiple things at the same time. this might include giving a lecture to open a new topic, while at the same time patrolling the room and preventing student misbehaviors and also handling any notes being delivered from the office. This is closely related to withitness and Kounin felt one without the other would reduce effectiveness. (Kounin, 88)
Momentum - The flow of a lesson. Not only does the teacher need to know what is going to happen next, but needs to be prepared for unexpected changes such as the bulb burning out in the projector.
Smoothness - Maintaining direction in the lesson and not losing focus, going on tangents, or being diverted by irrelevant information or incidents. Accomplished by letting students know what is going to happen in class on that day and sticking to it. Transitioning from one learning activity to another without a lot of disruption. Avoid the "jerkiness" of going from one task to another without direction. This includes "flip flops", where a teacher may close one subject and begin another and then jump back to the previous subject again. Avoiding "dangles" where a teacher is interrupted, leaves the topic unfinished and then returns to it at a later point. Avoiding "Truncation where the teacher is interrupted and leaves the topic and fails to return to it. (Kounin, 93-100) Group Focus - The whole class is involved in the lesson. Making the class interesting so that students are unable to find other things that interest them more. Making students accountable for their misbehaviors without disrupting the entire class.
Kounin also coined a term, the Ripple effect. He believed that how a teacher handled one student's misbehavior influences the other students who were not misbehaving.
Desist - When a teacher reprimands one student and other students stop their inappropriate behavior also.
We will now get into each of his behavior techniques.
Withitness - This is the teacher's ability to know what students are doing in the classroom at all times. It also includes nipping problems in the bud. The teacher should:
- Always be alert to sights and sounds in the classroom.
- Arrange the seats so that students are always within eyesight.
- Scan the room when working with individuals or small groups of students. When helping an individual make sure that you do not have your back to the rest of the class.
- Briefly acknowledge misbehavior at first detection to let the class know that you know. So not let the misbehavior escilate before action is taken.
Overlapping - The teacher's ability to effectively handle two classroom events at the same time, instead of becoming engrossed in one and letting the other happening be neglected. When instructing one group, the teacher should be able to acknowledge difficulties that students outside of the group may be having so that instruction continues moving. This also includes distractions from outside the classroom such as notes from the office or students walking through the hallways.
Smoothness - The teacher's ability to smoothly transition between learning activities. Teachers should:
- Preplan the lesson so that extraneous matters are realized ahead of time and taken care of. Supplies for the class should always be preorganized before class begins and close to where they will be used.
- Once students are doing their work and engaged, do not distract them. Leave them to their work and assist individuals with questions or needs.
Momentum - The teacher's ability to have steady movement or pacing throughout a lesson. If a class has momentum, the teacher will:
- Keep the lesson moving briskly.
- Not overdwell on a minor or already understood concept.
- Correct students without nagging and quickly return to the lesson.
- Have students move from one activity to the next without being forced to wait for each other and each step in the transition.
Group Alerting - The teacher's ability to keep all students actively participating and to create suspense or interest. It includes:
- Calling on students at random by asking a question only after scanning the room to make sure students are paying attention.
- Raising group interest by interspersing suspense between questions.
- Having the entire class respond in unison.
- Physically moving around the room and asking students to show what they have done.
- Asking one student to respond and looking at others.
My philosophy of classroom management probably is most similar to the principal teachings of Jacob Kounin: "withitness", "overlapping", "smoothness", "momentum", and "group alerting" are all methods I use to minimize misbehavior. Kounin’s theory, and one that I can attest to, is based upon the interconnection between ways of teaching and control of behavior. He feels “the best way to maintain good discipline is to keep students actively engaged in class activities, while showing them individual attention. My curriculum is based on a "hands-on" philosophy of teaching, so my students are actively involved in most situations. Connie Early
Personal testimony: I too use these classroom management techniques more than any others. I like that Kounin addresses the climate of the whole class and the classroom environment as important to classroom management. He focuses on how to keep students engagaed rather than to look at what to do with students who are "problems."
Personal Experience - As a substitute teacher I already knew that students usually 'had it in for the sub." The teachings of Kounin were right up my ally as I began to sub repeatedly at Urbana Middle School. Students now know that I don't put up with the normal 'get the sub' behaviors and teachers leave content for me to cover, not worksheets. Keeping one step ahead of the students is my first task so that the task of teaching will follow quickly behind - D. Heater
I feel that Kounin does provide a very clear set of criteria of effective classroom management skills. However, I do disagree on one point. Kounin deemphasizes the personality of the teacher when it comes to implementing some of his strategies. I would argue in order for such skills such as, the ripple effect, withitness, and proximity, to be successful, they need to use the strengths of a teacher’s personality. I do not necessarily mean for teachers to maintain a “happy-go –lucky�? type of personality. I personally think that students respond to the ways I implement Kounin’s ideas because of two reasons. I believe that they work and the students respect what it does for the class as a whole. However, the implementation of the practices is laced with my personal humor and makes me human to the students. H. Ro
References:
Kounin, J.S. Discipline and Group Management in Classrooms. Holt, Reinhardt and Winston, NY, NY. 1970
Wolfgang, Charles H. Solving Discipline and Classroom Management Problems: Methods and Models for Today's Teachers. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2001.
