Julia Ann Bonner
Grand Canyon University
Classroom Engagement and Management
EDU-536
Professor Laurie Martinez
October 03, 2012
Student Diversity and Classroom Management
Today’s classrooms present with a multitude of diversity. This diversity can be seen in the various cultural, socio-economic, mental and physical differences within the classrooms. This level of diversity today must be met with educators who can understand the needs of various groups of students and who are prepared to manage these students effectively. These multiple differences can present enormous challenges to the teacher where discipline is concerned. This paper discusses five classroom management strategies, which group of students these strategies might work well with and how these strategies can promote critical thinking in the students, explained by providing brief examples. The five strategies include Morrish’s Real discipline, Wong’s Pragmatic Classroom, Kagen, Kyle and Scott’s Win-Win Discipline, B.F. Skinner’s Discipline through Shaping Behavior and William Glasser’s Discipline Guided by Choice.
The Win-Win discipline model foster’s communication, emphasizes accountability and works to replace negative attitudes with positive attitudes. This theory is centered about the idea of a student achieving long term self-managed accountability of their actions (Charles 2008). It promotes critical thinking by causing students to review their actions, reflect on their responsibilities and openly communicate their thoughts about these things through discussions with their teacher. This approach is best suited for high functioning students capable of this reflection and acceptance of their responsibilities, but who may need an attitude adjustment. This approach will try to find the causes of negativity and also attempt to educate the student about their attitude in an effort to change the student’s attitude. For example, it may be determined