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.