Approaches to Behavior and Classroom Management

W. George Scarlett is senior lecturer and deputy chair of the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development at Tufts University. He received a BA from Yale University, an MDiv from the Episcopal Divinity School, and a PhD (in developmental psychology) from Clark University. He has authored or co-authored six books and co-edited the Encyclopedia of Religious and Spiritual Development (published by SAGE). His second most recent book was Approaches to Behavior and Classroom Management (also published by SAGE). He has been the lead author or co-author of chapters in The Handbook of Child Psychology and The Handbook of Life-Span Development - both leading resources for professionals conducting research on children and adolescents. In addition, he has published numerous articles on a variety of subjects pertaining to children, including articles on behavior management, and he has been on the research teams of several internationally known leaders, including Ed Zigler at Yale (early research on Head Start) and Howard Gardner at Harvard (early research on multiple intelligences). He has served as a consultant to the Cambridge, Somerville, and Lowell Head Start systems in Massachusetts and directed a residential summer camp for children with emotional and behavioural disorders. Currently, he is a regular consultant to reporters and news agencies, communicating to the general public best practices for raising and educating children and youth. At Tufts, in addition to his administrative duties as the department's deputy chair, he teaches courses on approaches to problem behavior, children's play, and spiritual development, and writes a column, "Kids These Days," for Tufts Magazine. Iris Ponte is a graduate of Holy Cross College and a former Watson Scholar. She has conducted extensive research in preschools in the United Kingdom, Taiwan, China, Japan and Newfoundland and has worked for Sesame Street Research at the Children's Television Workshop in New York. Jay P. Singh is a former recipient of the SRCD Horowitz Millennium Scholarship, the SRA Emerging Scholars Award, the a member of Tufts University's PACE and IPC research teams, and a clinical associate at Yale University's EGLab. He is presently engaged in graduate studies at Oxford University. His major work focuses on emotion recognition biases in psychopathic development and allegiance effects in risk assessment tools.

Foreword: David Elkind Preface PART I. INTRODUCTION 1. Introduction to Approaches and Methods 2. A Historical Perspective on Behavior and Classroom Management PART II. RELATIONSHIP BUILDING 3. Building Positive Teacher-Student Relationships 4. Community Approaches PART III. LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT 5. Learning Approaches 6. Developmental Approaches PART IV. ORGANIZATION 7. Organizational Approaches 8. The Classroom Systems Approach PART V. ACCOMMODATING DIVERSITY 9. Cultural Approaches 10. The Medical Model and Organic Approaches to Behavior Management Conclusion. Integrating Discipline and Care

"This work is a lucid approach to the pragmatic application of classroom management. It is a valuable tool in the classroom teacher's arsenal." -- Dr. Michael J. Lynch, III * Adoption Review Card * "This book moves caring from being an object of study to being a professional practice. Thinking of classroom management in terms of relationships, learning, development, organization and accommodating diversity redefines discipline. No longer is it about rules and punishments--now it is about connections and meaning making. This is a book that a teacher can really do something with!" -- George Noblit "This wise and readily accessible book fills a gaping hole in the literature preparing teachers to address classroom management. A central message of the book is that methods are not approaches. Methods that work with middle class children may not work in the same way with inner city students, or children from other cultures. The dilemma facing many teachers is how to adjust methods and still maintain integrity and coherence in their teaching. Teachers are not technicians, and methods "cookbooks" won't suffice. Effective classroom management and discipline requires self-awareness of one's underlying approach in order to adjust methods to fit the needs of particular students and contexts. Thus, instead of promoting a particular set of methods, George Scarlett and his colleagues have a done a wonderful job of grouping existing approaches according to their underlying goals, basic assumptions and historical origins. To be sure, this book does have a point of view. Classroom management is not simply about control and efficiency, it is also a basic tool for social and emotional development and learning. Bringing these goals into balance is at the heart of this book. It is also at the core of what it means to be a teacher." -- Larry Nucci "Scarlett and his colleagues write about that fertile middle ground between coercive control and hopeful laissez-faire that all good teachers must find, and they do so with a wisdom that comes from years of thinking about the dilemmas of teaching. In every chapter, the authors consider approaches to teaching children, and the range of methods supporting those approaches, through the uncommonly reasonable lens of respect--respect for the adults and the children in our schools. Their emphasis on the importance of caring, of building relationships, and on hearing the implicit and explicit messages we communicate to children, infuses every aspect of this deeply respectful introduction to the discipline of caring and caring about discipline. The authors suggest the power of reframing when we are responding to unwelcome behavior in a child, but they demonstrate the real power of reframing in their analyses of classroom management." -- Laura Rogers "This book moves caring from being an object of study to being a professional practice. Thinking of classroom management in terms of relationships, learning, development, organization and accommodating diversity redefines discipline. No longer is it about rules and punishments-now it is about connections and meaning making. This is a book that a teacher can really do something with!"-George Noblit, University of North Carolina -- George Noblit "This wise and readily accessible book fills a gaping hole in the literature preparing teachers to address classroom management. A central message of the book is that methods are not approaches. Methods that work with middle class children may not work in the same way with inner city students, or children from other cultures. Thus, instead of promoting a particular set of methods, George Scarlett and his colleagues have a done a wonderful job of grouping existing approaches according to their underlying goals, basic assumptions and historical origins. To be sure, this book does have a point of view. Classroom management is not simply about control and efficiency, it is also a basic tool for social and emotional development and learning. Bringing these goals into balance is at the heart of this book."-Larry Nucci, University of California, Berkeley -- Larry Nucci "Scarlett and his colleagues write about that fertile middle ground between coercive control and hopeful laissez-faire that all good teachers must find, and they do so with a wisdom that comes from years of thinking about the dilemmas of teaching. Their emphasis on the importance of caring, of building relationships, and on hearing the implicit and explicit messages we communicate to children, infuses every aspect of this deeply respectful introduction to the discipline of caring and caring about discipline."-Laura Rogers, Tufts University -- Laura Rogers "This title by Scarlett and Ponte and Singh is highly recommended for use as a textbook or a supplemental resource for classroom management courses." -- P.S. Arter * CHOICE magazine *