Classroom management is the key to learning. Routines are the foundation of classroom management. Students require structure in their lives. Routines provide that in all of their life from the time they awake until the time they go to bed. Routines in a school and in the classroom provide the environment for learning to take place. The paper is…

Teachers are faced with the challenge of selecting interventions that are most likely to be effective and best matched to the function of problem behavior. This article will define aspects of the instructional environment and describe a decision-making logic to select environmental variables. A summary of commonly used function-based interventions…

This article explores how mapping patterns of student participation in classroom discussion can both illuminate and complicate the dynamic relationships among identity, physical position in the classroom, student engagement, and course content. It draws on the perspectives of an undergraduate in the role of pedagogical consultant, a faculty member…

The paper considers the value and implementation of routines in the educational setting with learners who have severe handicaps. Part I outlines the importance of routines as an intrinsic part of the teaching process, and reviews the potential benefits to the student of routine-based teaching. Benefits include the observations that routines:…

The classroom setting is a source for daily and creative writing material for teachers as well as students. Teacher and student writing samples help to illustrate classrooms as cultures-in-the-making in which new rules are invented every day and suggest that stories of classroom life must of necessity end in question marks and untied threads.…

This paper discusses community psychology programs which serve members of alternate cultures and are based on the premises that: (1) individuals may possess desirable behaviors that are suppressed by their environmental context; (2) conventional behavioristic methods are inadequate for assessment; and (3) an interdisciplinary approach is needed to…

Increasingly, college faculty are complaining about unacceptable and disruptive student behavior in the classroom. Scholars are publishing articles on the problem and institutions are offering workshops to help faculty cope. Blame is placed on a crisis of authority in American society. Some find the trend is not new, but the behavior has worsened.…

A "thick" description of teaching is referred to as the uncovering of the meaning of what is being said or done by knowing the structure in which it is said or done. In this ethnographic study of teachers' experiences with microcomputers in their classrooms, George Kelly's (1955) personal construct theory was used to develop a clinical interview…

Happy Sticks, the name given to the reinforcement system used in a classroom of pre-school autisitc children, is presented. Happy Sticks are decorated tongue depressors serving as token rewards; Happy Bags, or pouches are worn by the children around their necks to hold the earned Happy Sticks. Reinforcement can be immediate and occur throughout…

The user-friendly Classroom Ecobehavioral Assessment Instrument was developed to incorporate advantages of environmental assessment and functional assessment. Relatively simple behavior sampling procedures and scripted steps for summarizing and analyzing data lead to prescriptions for altering assessment and/or intervention practices. Results of…

Five elementary school teachers were interviewed to determine their planning processes during the first weeks of school. Three phases were observed: 1) preparation of the physical environment of the classroom; 2) diagnosis and placement of students, and establishing behavior structures of the classroom; and, 3) planning academic activities and…

The intent of this theoretical paper is to recast our ideas about teaching mathematics as a result of an extensive research review on teaching behaviors. The product of this review is an explanatory curricular model which takes into account the content being taught. The purpose of studying teaching from a curricular perspective and the constructs…

Presents the results of a study that reveals that the determinants of habitual cheating are much the same as those that relate to having cheated at least once (versus never having cheated). Suggests that habitual cheating is related inversely to grade point average but related positively to having seen others cheat. (MJP)

Details several instructional strategies for dealing with behavior problems in art education classrooms. These include establishing rules and procedures, structuring routine activities and procedures, monitoring student behavior, using a preplanned approach for dealing with misbehavior, and reflective teaching. (MJP)

An overview is presented of classroom observation instruments which have been created and refined since 1962. The components of teacher-pupil transactions measured by different observation methods are listed, and the complexities and difficulties encountered when using the instruments are discussed. A description is given of the Coping Analysis…