ENTRENCHMENT OF CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT BELIEFS IN WORLD LANGUAGES EDUCATION STUDENTS
Open Access
- Author:
- Hults, Alaska Black
- Graduate Program:
- Curriculum and Instruction
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- None
- Committee Members:
- Matthew Edward Poehner, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Matthew Edward Poehner, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor - Keywords:
- sociocultural theory
classroom management
teacher education - Abstract:
- Classroom management is the framework around which any lesson is planned and by which any lesson is implemented. Yet our understanding of how teachers develop an understanding of classroom management is limited. Furthermore, our understanding of what, if any, role their teacher education courses played in the development and mastery of that understanding is extremely limited. The author observed eleven world language education (WLED) students in their first field experience and analyzed the reflective writing of two of the participants to seek insight into the development of their ideas about and implementation of classroom management. A grounded theory emerged in alignment with Levin & Nolanes (2010) notions about classroom management beliefs and practices of education students. Participants emerged from the experience with their initial ideas about classroom management further entrenched in their beliefs and practices, despite receiving detailed written supervisor comments which occasionally conflicted with some of those beliefs. Classroom management skills. acquired were largely empirical in nature and lacked the kind of generalizability to new situations required to lower the cognitive and affective load of the education students in novel situations. According to sociocultural theory, this indicates a need for a different kind of mediation of students, or at the very least, a more conceptual, scientific presentation of classroom management theory to the WLED students. This raises the question of what kind(s) of instructional interventions could mediate the WLED students to develop more abstract and generalizable notions of classroom management so as to substantially increase the feelings of success of WLED students in their role as teacher and provide more effective instruction, resulting in more effective development of L2 skills on the part of their students.