Listening and Responding

This chapter makes the case that students deserve to be taught how to read texts critically and interrogate norms, givens, and assumptions. This includes re-evaluating what is meant by the word empowerment, revisiting the purpose of raising hands so that the teacher might decide and control who speaks, challenging current discussion techniques that are ostensibly geared toward teaching students how to respond to the comments of others, and interrogating the ubiquitous practice of classroom rules. The goal established here is to help both teachers and students embrace plurality and difference so that social justice is grounded in our engagements with others.

Contemporary Thai Primary Schools through the Years

Amidst the various educational reforms implemented in Thai education system is a burning question of the current state of schools in the country. What has been accomplished and what is there to improve? This paper utilizes a qualitative research design in exploring the current state of Thai primary schools in Thailand. Specifically, it employs critical discourse analysis to extract relevant data from pre-service teacher’s coursebooks. Additionally, informal interviews were conducted to supplement and provide further information on the areas of school learning resources, daily routines, school activities, classroom rules, and new functions of teachers aside from teaching. Observations and responses were coded and grouped into themes. The results of the study have shown some progress along learning resources, several changes in daily routines and school activities, a more comprehensive classroom policies that include social and cultural rules, and multi-faceted functions of Thai teachers. Keywords: Pre-service teachers, School resources and daily routines, School activities, Classroom rules, Responsibilities of teachers, Thai primary schools

TEACHER’S STRATEGIES TO CREATE A CONDUCIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT IN THE RON CLARK STORY MOVIE

In learning process, a good teacher indeed needs a strategy to create a conducive learning environment in order that it runs smoothly. The Ron Clark Story Movie depicts how a teacher uses various strategies to create a conducive classroom environment so that the learning process can run well. The purposes of this research are to identify what strategies used by the teacher, Mr. Clark, to create a conducive learning environment in The Ron Clark Story Movie and to describe how the strategies are implemented by the teacher to create a condusive learning environment in the Movie. This study was designed qualitatively. The data of this study were scenes on the teacher’s strategies to create a conducive learning environment in the movie. The source of data in this study was a movie entitled The Ron Clark Story.It was found that Mr. Clark used 5 types of teacher’s strategies to create a conducive classroom environment: physical design of the classroom, rules and routines, relationship, engaging and motivation, and discipline. Each of the strategies has several classifications. By applying these strategies, the students of Mr. Clark finally succeeded in passing the exam with satisfactory grades.

Classroom Rules Reimagined as the Rights of the Learner

The article describes how one fifth-grade teacher helped her students to exercise their Rights of the Learner (e.g., to be confused; to claim a mistake; to speak, listen, and be heard; and to write, do, and represent what makes sense) as they learned to graph and interpret non-linear data.

Classroom routines…

Establishing classroom rules and routines is a vital part of good teaching. Matt Bromley advises trainee teachers and NQTs on developing and building on effective practice

To follow a rule: The construction of student subjectivities on classroom rules charts

Rules charts are commonplace on classroom walls throughout the world. This article examines how such charts work to sustain discursive power relationships among teachers and students by mobilising idealised notions of the student within the classroom. The article reports on a discourse analysis of 50 rules charts and identifies three disciplinary and subjectivising discourses mobilised by charts: the Apollonian ‘good’, Dionysian ‘bad’ and Athenian ‘choice-making’ student. The article argues that awareness of the constitutive effects of discourse can enable practitioners to reflect on how their discursive practices might have material impacts on students’ capacity to move through educational spaces, and in particular can work to marginalise already disenfranchised students who do not fit the normative mould.

Moral Education

This chapter positions moral education as concordant with the moral component of religion, but does not equate moral education with socialization into the particular norms or conventions of any specific faith tradition. Research findings have revealed that deeply religious children and adolescents make a similar set of distinctions between religious conventions and moral prescriptions regarding fairness and the welfare of others. This research forms the basis of a critique of the proposition that religiously devout people maintain a separate “morality of divinity.” The chapter reviews research on moral education designed to stimulate development of these universal moral understandings of fairness and welfare through developmental approaches to classroom rules and discipline together with practices that foster responsive engagement and transactive forms of discourse to stimulate the development of a critical moral perspective. This developmental approach to moral education is compatible with the basic moral core of religious systems but may be viewed as challenging to religious traditions and customs that sustain social inequalities.

Seeking Accommodations

Chapter 4 describes social class differences in children’s efforts to seek accommodations from teachers. Classroom rules, procedures, and expectations sometimes conflicted with students’ individual needs or desires. In those situations, middle-class children treated rules as flexible—trying to negotiate changes and exemptions. When middle-class children were caught breaking rules, they would offer excuses for their actions, and they were generally able to avoid punishment by doing so. Working-class children almost never tried to negotiate changes to or exemptions from rules, expectations, and procedures. They treated rules as fixed and adjusted their behavior accordingly. When working-class students were caught misbehaving, they rarely offered excuses; instead, they endured their punishment without complaint. Those contrasting approaches to rules and expectations also contributed to inequalities. Because teachers generally said “yes,” middle-class students had more opportunities to express their creativity, experienced less discomfort and fewer inconveniences at school, and even avoided consequences for misbehavior.