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How to Introduce Change to Classroom Management and Discipline

Classroom Management and Discipline (CMD) is an important area of teaching that the teachers assess themselves as not being adequately trained for. Reflective practice is considered an effective approach to classroom management and discipline and enables a critical reflection on educational practice. Instead of focusing exclusively on implementing a classroom management strategy, by adopting reflective practice the teacher raises awareness of different ways of thinking, behaving and acting. The teacher also identifies opportunities for introducing changes to educational practice and is developing professionally. Taking into account that the process of (self-)reflection is demanding, that the knowledge of and experience of Croatian teachers in how to implement reflective practice and introduce changes is insufficient, it is assumed that the Reflective Practice Guide can strongly support both its implementation and the teachers’ professional development. The aim of this paper was to establish the correlation between the self- assessment of teachers’ professional competence in classroom management and discipline on the one hand and the self-assessment of the support provided by the Guide to introduce changes in practice in line with the stated level of awareness of reflective practice in the reflection-on-reflection stage on the other. A total of 111 classroom and subject teachers participated in the study. A professional development seminar was organized for teachers (the agenda was published on the official website of the Education and Teacher Training Agency). The teachers attended a plenary lecture on classroom management and discipline and a workshop on reflective practice and implemented reflective practice in their classrooms for a month using the Guide as a support. Research results indicate that there is a statistically significant positive correlation between the self-assessment of professional competence in classroom management and discipline and the self-assessment of the support provided by the Reflective Practice Guide in the following elements: support for reflective thinking, documenting practice and introducing improvements in practice among respondents who expressed a positive attitude towards applying reflective practice. It can be concluded that the Reflective Practice Guide is an appropriate and potentially important form of support for introducing change in classroom management and discipline in the educational practice and for raising teachers’ awareness and understanding of the role they play in introducing change.

Reflection-on-Reflection ; Classroom Management and Discipline ; Reflective Practice Guide

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