Theory of Instructional Management by Jacob

Kounin

Presented by: Aderlin Chung Kim Yuk, Beatrice Barnabas & Bernadette Mening Jau

PISMP BI 1 Jan 2012

Theory of Instructional

Management by Jacob Kounin

Brief description of Jacob Kounin

Key concepts

Advantages and disadvantages

Practicality of the theory

Conclusion

Jacob Kounin’s Biography

• known as classroom management theorist. • According to Kounin's ideas and principles, one should

be able to manage a classroom by utilizing skills within discipline and instruction as one.

Kounin’s model believes that teachers affect

learners’ behaviours positively and negatively.

Overview of Instructional

Management Philosophy

Minimize behaviour problems

Maintain instructional momentum

Conducive environment for

learning and behaviour

Keep students focus on

learning task

Clear transitions between activities

Teacher-centered and

prevention-based

Teacher

Behaviours

Movement Management

Group focus

Key Concepts

• desists• overlapping

• withitness • ripple effect

• jerkiness • stimulus bound•fragmentation•dangles

• truncation•flip-flop•slowdowns•overdwelling

•thrust

• group alerting•accountability

• satiation

Teacher Behaviours

WithitnessDesists

Ripple effectOverlapping

SatiationMomentum

Definition:A word to describe that teacher always knows what is going on within his/her classroom.

Example: aware of events, activities and students’ behaviour.

can tell whether behaviours contribute to/take away from learning situations

1. Withitness

Characteristics of “withit” teachers

prevent minor disruptions from becoming major.

know who the instigator is in

a problem

React appropriately

don’t make target errors.

Don’t make timing errors

Can handle more than one situation

at a time

scanning the class frequently

establishing eye contact with individual pupils

having eyes at the back of your head.

Strategies to Ensure Effectiveness of

withitness

Practical Application of Withitness in ESL

classroomDuring discussion:- listens to students’ answer- watches for signs of comprehension /confusion- formulates the next question- scan class for possible misbehaviours.

During instruction:- has all needed materials- Is well prepared

While helping students with problem:-Handle disruptions- Monitor the rest of the class-Acknowledge other requests for assistance-Keep track of time

Practical Application of Withitness in ESL

classroom

Definitions: attempts to stop a misbehaviour.

2. Desists

Ensure desists are spoken clearly

Desists are understood

Use clarity instead of firmness and roughness

Strategies to Ensure Effectiveness of

Desists

Advantages and Drawbacks of

Desists Advantages

Have the potential of ripple effect.

Stop the misbehaviour immediately.

Drawbacks

Resulted in less-relaxed students.

Reduced feelings of teacher helpfulness and likeability.

Likely to misbehave for the next session due to being unaware of the consequences.

(Kounin, 1970)

A student who uses other languages during an

English lesson, is heard by the teacher. The teacher reprimands and warns the students to stop using other languages besides English.Example desists: “Gordon, I’m going to send you out of this class if you continue using Mandarin”.

Practical Applications of Desists in ESL

classroom

Discipline directed to one student

affects the behaviour of others.

3. Ripple effect

Strategy of the use of Ripple Effect in the classroom by

Jacob Kounin

Kounin told a student to stop reading newspaper and to pay attention to the lecture. While Kounin only told this one student to get on task, other students who were not on task suddenly put away what they were doing and started listening to the lecture.

Practical Applications of Ripple Effect in ESL

Classroom The teacher reprimanded and warned the student who use Mandarin during an English lesson. The other students who are not using English will also get the impact from that particular student and start to use English.

Definitions: handling two or more activities or groups at one time, and

avoiding fixating on one event at the expense of all other classroom activities (Reid, 2009).

Ability to attend to two issues at the same time (Pryde, 2010).

= multitasking

Kounin found that teachers who can overlap are able to demonstrates withitness better.

4. Overlapping

if a teacher is conducting small group assignments, and

a pair is off task, a teacher may address them from a distance while still conducting the activity. (“The Kounin Model,” 2008).

Practical Application of Overlapping in ESL

Classroom

Occurs when a teacher teaches the same

lesson for so long that the students grow tired of the topic.

5. Satiation

Too much input

Quality of work decreases

Number of mistakes increases

Activity is not an intellectual

challenge

Teacher and students do the

same thing over and over

Strategies to stop

satiation

Show enthusiasm

for the topic

Make positive

statement about the activity

Carry out activity that has a special intellectual challenge

“read” the class to

check for signs of satiation

Enrichment activities

Ask HOT questions

Change teaching

techniques /activities

Practical Applications in ESL Classroom

When teaching language skills, to avoid students getting bored or uninterested, the teacher should give assignments and tasks that provide the students with a feeling of progress or accomplishment when completing the assigned work.

Kounin also stresses the importance of creating a diverse curriculum, as well as a change in learning environment every now and then.

keeping the lesson moving briskly, requiring

the teacher to plan effectively to avoid slow downs.

By minimizing delays and interruptions, students will not lose interest and misbehave.

Kounin believes that teachers should not lecture for a long period of time to allow students to gain knowledge trough classroom activities and maximizing their allotted time.

6. Momentum

Example of how to Maintain Instructional

Momentum1. making lessons short so students have

time to work with other students in groups, which will let students elaborate on a certain subject and gain knowledge from other student's connections.

2. Keep a folder to fill-in activities if a lesson takes less time than planned. Be sure to include activities of various lengths and for a variety of ability levels.

Movement Management

Pacing and the ebb and flow of instruction are important in the presentation of a lesson and the maintenance of appropriate student behaviour in

the classroom.

Movement Management

Jerkiness

Stimulus Bound

Overlapping

Dangle

Truncation

Flip-Flop

Fragmentation

Thrust

Jerkiness

Refers to the lack of lesson smoothness and momentum.

For example, a teacher switch from one topic to another topic without sufficiently notifying the students.

Stimulus Bound

When a teacher has the students engaged in a lesson and something else attracts the teacher’s attention, that teacher is stimulus bound.

For example, while teaching, the teacher noticed that someone outside the classroom is called by the headmaster and they talked. The teacher distracted from the lesson in the class and making the students to realize that the teacher is being distracted. So students started to move from their seats to see what is going on outside.

Overdwelling

The teacher dwells on an issue and engages in a stream of talk that clearly lasts longer than the time needed for students' understanding.

For example, a teacher is correcting Brian’s behaviour for throwing paper towards his friends during his lesson. The teacher then goes on to correcting other student’s behavior.

Overlapping

What teachers do when they have two matters to deal with at the same time.

Similar with the idea of multitasking.

Dangles

A dangle occurs when a teacher starts an activity and then leaves it "hanging in midair" by beginning another activity.

The teacher might resume the original activity.

Truncation

The teacher engages in a dangle, yet fails to resume the original, dropped activity.

Might be described as a longer-lasting dangle.

Dangles Truncations

The students had just completed reading a story in their reading circle. As the teacher got up and walked toward the board, she said something like, "Let's look at these arithmetic problems on the board.

The students were taking turns reading their answers to the arithmetic problems. As Mary was getting up, the teacher looked around the room and asked, “Now, let's see.Suzanne isn't here. Does anyone know why Suzanne is absent today?"

Flip-Flops

The teacher is engaged in one activity and then returns to a previous activity that the students thought they had finished.

A teacher says, "All

right, let's everybody put away your

spelling papers and take your

mathematics’ book"

The students put their spelling papers

in their desk and, after most of the

students have gotten out their

mathematics' book, the teacher asks,

"Let's see the hands of the ones who got

all their spelling words right"

Fragmentation

The teacher engages in a type of slowdown; that is, the teacher breaks down an activity into subparts that could be taught as a single unit.

For example, the teacher tells each member of group to do something

individually that could be performed by the group as a whole. In this

instance, students have to wait for their turn and, while waiting, might begin to talk and engage in other

misbehaviours.

Thrust

A thrust consists of a teacher's sudden "bursting in" on students' activities with an order, statement, or question without looking for or being sensitive to the group's readiness to receive the message.

Group Focus

• Group alerting• Group accountability

Group focus

Definition: The teacher who uses appropriate

instructional strategies and activities can keep the students focused on the lesson and can minimize behaviour problems. (Kounin, 1970)

According to Kounin, this refers to

the degree which a teacher attempts to involve all learners in a learning tasks and maintain their attention.

Group alerting

Teachers hold the students

accountable and responsible of their task performances.

Group accountability

Group focus

Group alerting

positive

teacher creates “suspense” to

the whole class.

negative

students focus their attention to

one student instead of a

group

Group accountability

Strategy for group alerting

1. Positive: Teacher will keep the students in suspense

regarding who will be called next by not calling on names when asking a question.

Designing a file card with student’s name written on it. Shuffle the card

frequently. Pull the card from the stack to decide which student will answer the question.

Strategy for group

alerting2. Negative: Teacher puts the names before a question. For example: “Linda, what is a noun?”

Strategy for group

accountability

Teacher uses record-keeping devices such as checklists and task cards to know what the students are doing.

Advantages and Disadvantages

of Kounin’s Instructional Management

Advantages

Helping teachers create withitness image in the classroom.

Teacher detects inappropriate behaviours early and accurately.

(Kounin, 1970)

Teacher attempts to involve all learners in learning tasks

Helps teachers handle discipline problems in the classroom.

Teacher maintains students’ attention

Disadvantages

Students do not

necessarily take personal responsibility

for their behaviours.

Students do not learn a lesson from the use of DESIST because the

desists are used to stop behaviours

immediately rather than to teach a more appropriate way to

behave

Resulted in less-relaxed students and reduced feelings of teacher helpfulness

and likability. (Kounin, 1970)

Students in middle and secondary

school might not be

affected by Kounin’s

ripple effect, but

students in elementary school does.

This model does not

address the issue of teaching

learners to discipline

themselves.

This

theory is appeal to be used

because…

this effective instructional

management keep students focused on

learning.

this model contributes to improve and

minimize students’

misbehaviour.

it challenges teachers to develop specific

instructional skills to prevent misbehaviour

this theory does not affect the

smoothness of the lesson

Conclusion

This is a very useful and effective instructional management in keeping students to focus on learning and minimize behavioural problems.(If teachers are able to demonstrate appropriate teaching behaviours, maintain appropriate instructional momentum, work toward group focus and plan a learning environment that is conducive to learning.)

References

Approaches to Classroom Mangement. (2010). Retrieved January 21, 2014, from http://www.sagepub.com/mooreteachingk8/study/chapter/extensions/74554_03ee1.doc

Kounin, J. S. (1970). Discipline and group management in classrooms. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston

Lee, M. M., & Bucher, K. T. (2010). Classroom Management : Models, Applications, and cases (2nd ed.). London, UK: Pearson PLC.

Reid, K. (2009). Kounin Model of Classroom Management “Lesson Movement”. Retrieved January 21, 2014, from http://www.studymode.com/essays/Classroom-Management-1135452.html

Pryde, C. (2010). Classroom Theorist Presentation: Jacob Kounin.