No matter how well the material is prepared or how interesting the topic is, engaging students without effective classroom management is nearly impossible. Good classroom management goes beyond using rules, rewards, and penalties to get students to behave.
It involves managing space, time, activities, materials, social relations, and student behavior to create a safe and stimulating learning environment. It is about taking the right actions to establish and sustain a caring, orderly environment that supports students’ academic learning and social and emotional growth.
One important factor influencing classroom management is the teacher’s classroom management style. This style dictates how teachers react to student behaviors and their teaching approach. It plays a crucial role in promoting a safe, pluralistic, and effective learning environment.
There is no one “right” classroom management style, and a teacher’s style can often be a combination of more than two styles. This article will discuss some common classroom styles and approaches and their pros and cons.
Nature of a Classroom
A classroom is a complex, dynamic structure with at least the following six distinct characteristics:
- Speed: Events happen fast, and there is not enough time to think before acting. Teachers can average over 1,000 interactions a day and may be required to make a decision every two minutes.
- Public nature: Many, including parents, colleagues, the head, local authority, government, and pupils, have a view or opinion on classrooms and how they should operate. The teachers’ and pupils’ behaviors are highly visible to all other members, which means teachers will always feel they are ‘on stage.’
- Multidimensionality: A classroom is a learning laboratory, a social center, a peer group, a collection of individuals, and more. Teachers must manage events in multiple dimensions, including knowing the subject, appraising students, managing groups, coping with emotional responses, establishing procedures, distributing resources, encouraging thinking, and keeping records.
- Unpredictability: Because of its busy, multidimensional nature, it is almost impossible to accurately predict the course of events in a classroom. There will always be surprises and ambiguity.
- Simultaneity: Events in the classroom (especially from the teacher’s point of view) do not occur sequentially but simultaneously. For example, one group may happily work while another wants attention while a third wants to climb out of the window.
The teacher is expected to monitor more than one aspect at any given time, meaning they must have ‘eyes in the back of the head.’ They must also decide which aspect to respond to and which to ignore. - History: classes, like families, remember past events. They remember who got yelled at, who was chosen as the paper monitor, and what the teacher said about homework assignments. The class memory means that teachers must work to shape a history that will support, rather than frustrate, future activities.
These unique characteristics influence how teachers manage their classrooms and teaching styles.
A Brief Background of Teaching Styles
Prior to the 1970s, teachers maintained order by asserting authority, while students were generally well-behaved and required little disciplinary attention. In the early 1960s, societal conventions and schools began to change, gradually causing the old methods to fail.
Teachers began to complain as classroom disruptions and student inattention interfered with their ability to teach. In the 1970s, researchers began studying teaching practices to identify what methods were effective.
This led to the development of several discipline models that attempted to understand attitudes and leadership styles to address classroom control. These developments were also shaped by advances in behavioral research and backed by observational studies.
Some of these early models of discipline include:
- Dreikurs Model of Social Discipline in Classrooms
- Kounin Model of Discipline and Group Management
- Lee Canter’s Model of Assertive Discipline
- Jones Model of Positive Classroom Discipline
- Redl and Wattenberg Model of Group Dynamics
- Glasser Model of Individual Responsibility and Rational Choices
- Mendler and Curwin’s Model of Addressing Disruptive Behaviors
A common theme emphasized across these models was that effective classroom management is not simply about controlling misbehavior but also about creating a positive environment conducive to learning.
Success in teaching depends on the style teachers adopt, and studies show a strong correlation between students’ performance and classroom management styles.
Types of Classroom Management Styles
There are several classroom management styles with overlapping characteristics. The First four (and the most common of them) are based on Baumrind’s parenting styles, which classify the style into four categories based on the level of control and the level of involvement as shown:
1. Authoritarian Style
Authoritarian teaching involves high hostility, coercion, and psychological control with low levels of warmth and acceptance. Teachers with this style are very demanding and even dictatorial. They exhibit high control with low involvement and are often seen as lacking warmth, sensitivity, or responsiveness to students’ needs.
Imagine this as a typical old-school teacher who is strict and manages behavior with rules and consequences. They go about laying down the law with a set of consequences where there is little room, leeway, or margin for error.
While the authoritarian structure may sound negative (and has mostly fallen out of favor), it is not all bad. Some key elements of behavior management in this style have merits. First, it effectively sets boundaries and expectations, establishes a structure, and communicates acceptable and unacceptable behavior, making it easy to establish and manage rules.
Second, because the style uses hierarchies, it is effective when teaching younger children. When children see the teacher as someone in authority, they tend to show deference. Having clear expectations and being very firm about boundaries establishes rapport and respect.
However, the authoritarian style has disadvantages. It tends to fall apart with older students, especially teenagers, who go through the process of individualization. Students at this age seek ways to separate themselves from the adults in charge, potentially creating power struggles and leading to unnecessary escalations.
Another drawback of the authoritarian style is that it leaves little room for understanding the subtleties of a student’s personality. Human behavior is never black and white. Backgrounds and circumstances play a crucial role in how children behave.
Authoritarian teachers are less flexible when working with and understanding students individually. They take a transactional approach: “These are the rules, these are the consequences, and we are not departing from that.”
This often leads to a shallow teacher-student relationship. As a result, authoritarian teachers who do not spend time and effort investigating and understanding a child’s needs are often seen as insensitive, lacking empathy, or perhaps not working in the child’s best interest.
2. Authoritative Style
The authoritative style involves both high control and high involvement. Teachers with this style enforce rules but are also receptive to students. They encourage discussions and value student voices.
They are very invested in their student’s success and provide positive feedback. Before implementing disciplinary actions, they carefully consider the context. They nurture students by encouraging independence and open-mindedness while also exercising control.
Compared to the authoritarian style, authoritative teachers exhibit high levels of affection, guidance, and monitoring but lower psychological control. Within the structure and rules, they show warmth and support students’ autonomy. Students get to participate in decision-making, but the teacher remains consistent in their demands.
Authoritative teachers also set realistic expectations for their students and don’t expect them to be perfect in everything. This allows students to take ownership of their day with guidance.
The authoritative style works best with most students, especially gifted ones, who thrive on empathy and attention. It welcomes conversations, debates, and interruptions during lessons, providing opportunities for deeper connections with teachers and peers.
Studies have shown that this style positively impacts students’ academic and social competencies, mastery, and self-esteem and is most effective in supporting their multifaceted development.
3. Indulgent Style
The indulgent style is characterized by low control but high involvement. Indulgent teachers take their careers seriously and prepare fun and exciting lessons. They believe in a student-empowered learning model, allowing students to run the classroom without much intervention.
Indulgent teachers prioritize building strong relationships. They are not strict enough to ensure proper behavior and have difficulty saying no. On the positive side, students feel very comfortable with indulgent-style teachers and know they can say something or ask questions whenever needed. They are also at ease and more willing to experiment and make mistakes.
Indulgent teachers also give students the freedom to make decisions independently and are less likely to force them into something they may not like. This allows students to tap into their creativity and develop new ideas or concepts that may not have been explored otherwise.
Indulgent teachers also tend to emphasize more on students’ efforts and not so much on the quality of their work. They often ignore disruptive behavior or handle it with weak, soft-spoken “reprimands” or pleading.
On the negative side, an Indulgent style can lead to an out-of-control classroom where constructive learning doesn’t flow well. While students may describe a permissive teacher as “nice and easy,” they may not trust them in handling problematic situations.
Indulgent teachers often struggle to enforce discipline as they want to be liked by students. They often place personal feelings above the overall well-being of the class and students. As a result, students may think, “If Johnny faced no consequences for misbehaving, I could get away with acting out, too.”
This style suits higher grades or college-level settings, where educators can provide broad guidelines to encourage creativity and uniqueness. It allows students to brainstorm and develop ideas independently, encouraging innovation and self-directed learning. That said, the style can be disastrous in younger grades where students need guidance and instructions.
4. Permissive Style
The permissive style is marked by low control and involvement. The teacher is often uninterested and disengaged and considers teaching a mere job compulsion. Often, this is a consequence of external factors such as burnout or systemic issues rather than a lack of care.
A permissive teacher allows students to do whatever they please. Their impulsive acts are tolerated, while behaviors are rarely monitored. Consequently, classrooms are out of control. Permissive teachers are indifferent to students’ needs, so they rarely build relationships and are unaware if their students suffer.
Because the permissive style provides few opportunities to develop social skills and self-control, students have greater difficulty learning socially desirable behaviors. Considering the few demands placed by these teachers, students tend to have low motivation for achievement.
5. Democratic Style
The democratic education style was emphasized in the work of John Dewey, who suggested students should experience “discipline” and “freedom” in the classroom and that the learning environment must be based on fairness and mutual respect.
A democratic-style teacher ensures students’ needs are heard, they are treated fairly, and they are respected. They seldom use power to force beliefs on students. Instead, they set rules that align with what’s best for everyone.
This style balances fairness, honesty, and care when making decisions. For instance, teachers have open discussions where students share their views, and the teacher listens respectfully.
Use of embarrassment, sarcasm, ridicule, and other hurtful statements are avoided even when a teacher believes they may serve to motivate the child. The democratic style is rooted in the belief that the teacher is a role model, and students judge by what they see and not by the teacher’s (good) intentions.
Students are allowed to ask questions and express opinions. Frontal lecturing, with little discussion and much verbatim transcribing, is discouraged. Students learn to understand the teacher’s perspective, balance their needs with those of others, trust each other, and take responsibility for their actions.
The democratic style is best suited to teenagers, who can be encouraged to grow positively by managing the five areas of adult relationships: communication, respect, empowerment, support, and modeling.
6. Assertive Discipline Style
The assertive discipline style is based on Lee Canter’s 1976 book Assertive Discipline: A Take-Charge Approach for Today’s Educator. This style emphasizes positive reinforcement as the key to students making appropriate choices regarding classroom behavior.
While focusing on cooperation rather than authoritarian methods, the teacher retains the “right” to decide what is best for students. Central to this style is a belief that no student should ever prevent a teacher from teaching or keep another student from learning.
This style resembles the traditional boss-employee relationship where the teacher treats students as employees or allies to achieve a “profit,” which means education, peace in the classroom, and a positive learning environment for all.
This requires teachers to behave assertively, not aggressively or passively. They must remain consistent in their wants and expected behavior in the classroom and provide clear, firm directions. Good behaviors must be rewarded with positive reinforcement, while undesired behaviors must have negative consequences.
Students are neither viewed as enemies nor treated with a hostile or sarcastic attitude. They are seen as allies who are expected to cooperate for the good of all. The teacher’s assertiveness is key to the method’s success.
7. Non-Adversarial Style
Dr. Fred Jones popularized the non-adversarial teaching style, which focuses on understanding student behavior and preventing bad behavior rather than simply reacting to misbehaviors.
Instead of teaching from the front, non-adversarial-style teachers move among the students. This “working the crowd” strategy helps collaborate and interact with students to create a sense of presence and engagement.
Students in the classroom constantly assess whether the “coast is clear” for misbehavior. Subconsciously, they establish “proximity zones” based on their distance from the teacher: the red zone, closest to the teacher, signals high risk; the yellow zone, slightly farther away, suggests caution; and the green zone, the furthest distance, is perceived as the safest for such behavior.
When teachers stay at the front for long periods, they create a “stable green zone” where misbehavior is likely to occur.
Instead of focusing on large, disruptive behaviors, the non-adversarial style stresses the importance of addressing little things that frequently happen, like talking and being out of their seats.
Non-adversarial-style teachers are emotionally warm, enjoy being around kids, and don’t overwork themselves; rather, they have the kids do most of the work. They also periodically check for understanding to see how the students are doing and help those stuck.
They shift from reactive discipline to proactive management strategies that prevent misbehavior from occurring in the first place by adopting simple, practical strategies that are easy, cheap, and don’t take up too much time.
8. Dreikurs’s Logical Consequences Style
This approach is based on Rudolf Dreikurs’s behavior management model, in which the teacher acts as a guide, students are active participants, and classroom decision-making is shared by both parties.
Central to this approach is an assumption that all students desire and need social recognition. When those needs are unmet, they exhibit a hierarchy of misbehaviors based on “mistaken goals,” which begin with attention-seeking actions and escalate to power struggles and even revenge until the student finally gives up and disengages.
The logical consequences style emphasizes assisting students in meeting their innate need to gain recognition and acceptance. Teachers with this style believe all behavior, including misbehavior, is orderly, purposeful, and directed toward achieving social recognition.
They handle misbehaviors through logical consequences, which have a clear and logical connection to the misbehavior and have been discussed and agreed upon with the student beforehand.
For example, a logical consequence for a student who disrupts the class could be isolation from the group until he or she agrees to rejoin without disruption. This is different from natural consequences that occur without teacher planning or discussion with the student.
9. Glasser’s Choice Theory Approach
This management style is based on Choice Theory, developed by renowned American psychologist and psychiatrist William Glasser, who theorized that behavior is a choice made by an individual based on his or her feelings and needs and is, therefore, not determined or controlled by external circumstances.
According to Choice Theory, human beings have five sources of motivation, which are internal and not derived from external stimuli. These are Survival (physical needs), Belonging, Power or Achievement, Freedom, and Fun. When these needs are fulfilled at school, students behave better, learn more, and see education as valuable and important.
Hence, teachers don’t directly control students’ behaviors – it’s the students who choose how to react to their feelings. Teachers only help them identify circumstances that trigger certain behaviors and, by doing so, empower them to change their reactions toward those feelings and, thus, behaviors.
10. Kounin’s Approach
In the 1970s, Jacob Kounin researched classroom management and summarized that good classroom management depended more on the teachers’ behavior than the students. He identified six teacher behaviors that produced student learning:
- With-it-ness – Knowing what is going on in the classroom at all times. Even if the teacher may not necessarily know all that is happening, it is enough if the students perceive that the teacher knows what is happening.
- Overlapping – The teacher’s ability to multitask. For example, help a student or a group of students while staying alert for possible disturbances.
- Smoothness and momentum – an ability to move through lessons smoothly without being diverted. This also includes maintaining a steady pacing, a smooth flow, and momentum to the lesson so that learning moves forward.
- Group Alerting – keeping students alert and attentive. For instance, by choosing students to recite material, creating suspense in lessons, using chorus responses, and signaling students that they may be called upon to respond.
- Accountability – continually monitor student performance during lessons and require them to show work and recite material individually or as a group.
- Seatwork Variety and Challenge – provide varied and frequent shifts in activities to prevent boredom and challenge students to work at a higher intellectual level.
Kounin also introduced the concept of the “Ripple Effect,” which means when one student does something, the others will follow along. As long as the students do what they are told to, they will follow each other throughout the day.
Teachers with this style look around the classroom at all times and conduct well-thought-out and engaging lessons, leading to less negative behavior in the classroom.
11. Skinner’s Operant Conditioning Approach
The core principle of Skinner’s theory of operant conditioning is that reinforced behaviors tend to be repeated, while those that are punished are less likely to occur. Classroom management based on this approach translates to strategies that encourage positive behavior through reinforcement and discourage negative behavior through consequences.
Reinforcement can be either positive or negative. Positive reinforcement involves adding a favorable outcome or stimulus after a desired behavior to encourage repetition—for example, verbal praise, stickers, or special privileges for completing assignments. Negative reinforcement involves removing an unpleasant condition or stimulus to strengthen a behavior. For example, a teacher might cancel homework if a class participates well.
Similarly, punishment can also be positive or negative. Positive punishment involves adding undesirable consequences, such as extra homework for disruptive behavior. Negative punishment involves removing a desired stimulus or privilege, such as taking away recess time if students don’t complete their work.
Conclusion
It is unlikely that an individual’s teaching style would closely match any single style or approach discussed here. After all, no single style fits every situation. Teachers often employ a combination of approaches to build positive relationships and create a structured and engaging environment.
Continuous self-reflection and adaptation are necessary to refine teaching practices and improve dynamics that best fit the classroom needs.