Concerns and Practices in Classroom Management

Abstract

In Chapters 1–4, we have created a picture of classrooms, emphasising their formal and institutional characteristics and their social and cultural nature. Classrooms are, as we have seen, complex and multi-dimensional, open to many external influences as well as having a ‘life’ of their own, in real time. Classroom management is thus concerned with managing both internal and external events and influences. The characteristics and nature of classrooms suggest that there are fundamental concerns in classroom management, of establishing and maintaining order, of generating learning opportunities and how people feel and interact there. These concerns underlie an array of classroom management practices.