Managing Classroom Teaching-Learning

About this chapter

This chapter treats the upper-primary teacher (ages 11-14) as the manager of the teaching-learning process. It opens by distinguishing classroom management (a broad concept aimed at effective teaching and learning) from classroom discipline (a narrow concept used only when learners misbehave). It then lays down seven principles of classroom management drawn from Christian (1991) — clarity and mastery over content, involvement, democratic behaviour, teacher's behaviour, self-control, flexibility, and personal attributes. The chapter walks through five factors that influence management — effective instruction, setting and implementing rules, managing intervention, feedback on appropriate behaviour, and class environment — and four techniques (behaviour modification, learner responsibility, group activities, skill in maintaining attention). It explains the inclusive classroom under RTE 2009 and Universal Design of Learning (UDL), and a three-fold approach to behavioural problems (preventive, supportive, corrective measures, including PBS, extinction and redirection, conflict resolution, curricular adaptation). The final section breaks classroom time into six categories — available, allotted, engaged, academic learning time (ALT), pacing, and transition. CTET Paper II tests this chapter through situation-based items on principles, factors, the three-fold behaviour approach, ALT vs allotted time, and transition management. The four tests — Practice 15, Quiz 15, Hard 15, Mastery 30 — cover all these areas at CTET depth.