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Classroom management for learning

What do we mean when we talk about classroom management.

Classroom management refers to actions that an instructor takes to create and maintain a learning environment that is conducive to successful instruction. These actions include decisions about structure, organization, and course activities that support students by managing their expectations and behaviors. Effective classroom management can create a positive learning environment that:

• Fosters an environment that supports academic, social, and emotional learning;
• Facilitates a structured and organized environment where students can focus on learning; and 
• Builds trust and healthy relationships between instructor and students, and peer-to-peer among students.
• Maintains attention and fosters motivation and engagement; and
• Minimizes disruption and interference with learning.

Ecological Approaches to Classroom Management:

The classroom is a learning environment with particular purposes, features, processes, and dimensions. Classrooms are public places and yet each class can feel like a private sphere with shared stories, inside jokes, and particular comforts and discomforts. Each classroom can also have its own dynamics that are affected by the people in the room, the time of day, the physical space, and many other factors. 

The instructor can have a big influence on the ecology of the classroom by attending to many of these factors through course and lesson planning. What works:

• Being “with it”: scan the room and be aware of what is happening at all times
• Overlapping: do more than one thing at a time, such as maintaining eye contact and using proximity to keep attention
• Momentum: teach well-prepared and briskly paced lessons that keep students’ attention
• Keep the group alert and accountable: use teaching techniques that keep students’ attention and reduce predictability
• Offer varied and challenging assignments: different ways to use their minds at the right level of difficulty

Considerations:

Classroom management can often feel like a battle for control between students and instructors. If it starts to feel that way for you, it’s time to reflect on your approach.

• Are your rules consistent with your larger purpose and learning outcomes? Do they promote or hinder student motivation? Are any of your rules or procedures unnecessarily rigid or punitive?
• What degree of control do you need to have and in what areas? How should you balance control for maintaining a healthy group order with individual student needs for control over their own learning?
• How can you promote individual and collective responsibility for learning? How are you building a community of learners?
• How do outside factors (e.g. time of day, classroom location, weather, etc.) affect your class mood and behavior?
• What will be more important for you to do in large classes vs. small classes, or lecture vs. lab/studio classes?
• How do you show respect for yourself and your students in your respective roles?

Strategies for Starting and Ending Class:

Get off to a good start.

• Come to class early, if possible, to set up everything you need and be available to chat with students.
• Start class on time, every time.
• Post a question or problem on the board/screen that they need to start working on right away; this can be related to their homework, a concept from the last session, or kick off a concept for that day’s session.
• Use the intro activity to do a think-pair-share exercise with a peer; this gets them talking!
• Connect what you will do today with the last class or place it in the bigger picture.
• Activate prior knowledge by asking questions, doing a demonstration, or using a Student Engagement Technique .

End Class with Confidence

• Leave time at the end of class to review what students learned that session and how it connects to the course or unit learning objectives; ask students to summarize.
• Use a Classroom Assessment Technique (CAT) to find out what students learned and what was confusing.
• Don’t ask for questions at the end of class; no one wants to hold up the class from leaving. Be clear about how and when is the best time to ask questions.
• Give instruction and reminders for homework or upcoming deadlines.
• Provide a preview of the next class and how it will connect.

  10 Effective Classroom Management Techniques Every Faculty Member Should Know (Free report downloadable from Faculty Focus)

  Classroom Management – University of Connecticut

  Classroom Management Tips for New College Instructors

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The Key to Effective Classroom Management

A three-phase process helps build strong teacher-student bonds, which can reduce disruptive behavior.

It’s a daunting but all-too-common sight for many teachers: A classroom full of rowdy students who are unable to focus on the lesson. Classroom management techniques may get things back on track, but valuable time has already been lost.

Many experienced teachers know that making meaningful connections with students is one of the most effective ways to prevent disruptions in the first place, and a new study set out to assess this approach . In classrooms where teachers used a series of techniques centered around establishing, maintaining, and restoring relationships, academic engagement increased by 33 percent and disruptive behavior decreased by 75 percent—making the time students spent in the classroom more worthwhile and productive.

“Strong teacher-student relationships have long been considered a foundational aspect of a positive school experience,” explains Clayton Cook, the lead author of the study and a professor at the University of Minnesota. When those relationships are damaged, student well-being may be affected, leading to academic and behavioral problems.

In the study, teachers used an approach called Establish-Maintain-Restore to build positive interactions with students—a total of 220 in fourth and fifth grade—and boost their sense of belonging. (A follow-up study with middle school teachers used the same strategies, with similar results.) Relationship-building was broken down into three phases: the first meeting, maintenance throughout the school year, and points when a relationship may suffer damage, with useful strategies for each phase.

Since it can be easy for some students to fall through the cracks, a relationship reflection form—like the one we share here—can help teachers take notes on each individual student and highlight ones who need the most attention.

Starting on a Positive Note

At the start of the school year, the teachers in the study made time for establishing relationships. “The goal is to ensure all students feel a sense of belonging that is characterized by trust, connection, and understanding,” Cook and his colleagues explain. For students with learning or behavioral problems, cultivating positive relationships provided “protective effects” that helped them stay focused on learning.

To establish positive relationships, teachers can:

• “Bank time” with students. Schedule one-on-one meetings with students to get to know them better. The goal is to “make deposits into the relationship” to help ease conflict in the future if you have to give constructive feedback or address disruptive behavior.
• Encourage student-led activities. Students feel more invested in their learning if given opportunity to share their interests . Teachers can step aside, be supportive, and listen.
• Welcome students into the classroom. Activities such as positive greetings at the door and icebreaker questions help create a warm classroom culture.
• Use positive communication techniques. Open-ended questions, reflective listening, validation statements, expressions of enthusiasm or interest, and compliments help students—especially shy or introverted ones—ease into classroom discussions.

Maintaining Relationships

Without active maintenance, relationships deteriorate over time, the study authors point out. Teachers may focus too much on academics and not enough on supporting students’ emotional well-being, slowly using up the banked time they initially built up with students.

Teachers can maintain relationships by continuing to implement the strategies above, and in addition they can:

• Take note of positive and negative interactions with students.  Teachers should aim for a five-to-one ratio.
• Regularly check in with students. Ask how they’re doing and what support they may need. In an Edutopia article, Todd Finley explains how 5x5 assessment time helped him focus on a handful of students every day.
• Acknowledge good behavior. When teachers focus attention on positive conduct, disruptive behavior is stemmed before it becomes an issue.

Repairing Harm Before Things Get Worse

Eventually, negative interactions such as misunderstandings, conflict, or criticism can weaken a teacher-student relationship. If these negative interactions are left unaddressed, students may feel disengaged and be less willing to participate in activities. They may also be more likely to misbehave, creating further damage. So it’s important for teachers to “intentionally reconnect” with students to restore the relationship to a positive state.

When relationships need repair, teachers can:

• Let go and start fresh. Teachers should avoid holding mistakes over a student’s head, instead giving them a chance to start each day with a clean slate.
• Take responsibility for their actions. Teachers can avoid blaming students when things go wrong, and think, “What could I have done to avoid the problem in the first place?” They shouldn’t be afraid to apologize when that’s called for—doing so helps build trust with students.
• Show empathy. There are two sides to every story, and a teacher can acknowledge that students may have a different perspective about what happened.
• Focus on solutions, not problems. Teachers can work with students to find a solution that everyone feels is fair.
• Separate the deed from the doer. It’s important to criticize the behavior, not the person. If teachers label children as “problem students,” there’s a danger that they’ll internalize that label, making it more likely that they’ll repeat the behavior in the future.

The takeaway: Effective classroom management starts with relationship building. When students feel a greater sense of belonging, they’re more likely to be academically engaged and demonstrate positive behavior.

13 Classroom Management Games Your Students Will Want to Play

Have you ever brought out the clay, paint, or papier-mâché, only to feel frustrated and devastated by students’ lack of respect for the materials? Have you spent hours planning the perfect lesson, only to provide instruction and see glazed-over eyes and confusion? We’ve all been there, and you are not alone!

With strong classroom management , teachers can do their job well, and students can maximize their learning experience. If you are considering revamping your classroom management strategy, keep reading to learn how games can make learning interactive and entertaining! Games also instill key skills like listening, following directions, cooperation, and camaraderie.

Check out these five aspects of classroom management and thirteen games to help you enforce them.

Rules and Procedures

The backbone of classroom management is establishing and enforcing rules and procedures. It helps avoid chaos and keeps students safe, but it also requires constant reinforcement throughout the year.

Check out these two games to encourage students to follow the rules and procedures.

1. Classroom Bingo

One way to reward students for following the rules and procedures is to have a classroom management BINGO game. You can make your own or download one here for free ! Laminate it, and every time students follow the correct procedures or go an entire class period without breaking a rule, they get to mark off a spot on the BINGO board. If the class gets BINGO, they get a reward.

If you play BINGO all the time, students will begin to think they don’t have to follow all the rules and procedures—just the ones to get them BINGO! Only pull it out when classes are really struggling. They’ll pay close attention to what rules and procedures are on the BINGO board. It reminds them of what they’re supposed to do without you having to give a lecture. For a different spin on BINGO and other classroom management games, check out the article 6 Exhilarating Classroom Management Games You’ll Want to Play in the Art Room !

Put a twist on the classic game of Jenga by setting up the wooden block of towers before class. If you notice something to correct, ask a volunteer student to make the correction and then remove one of the wooden blocks. The more corrections, the more blocks to remove, making the tower wobblier! If the tower falls down, students will receive a consequence. There isn’t a more dramatic visualization of a classroom failing to follow the rules and procedures than a whole tower of wooden blocks tumbling down!

Cleanup is a much bigger classroom management issue in the art room than it is for other subjects. The art room has more materials, supplies, and bulky projects. Letting up even a little on cleanup procedures can lead to a messy environment, which can stifle creativity.

Keep your classroom clean with these five cleanup games.

1. Supply Hospital

If you’re nearing the end of the class and something is still dirty, tell the class there is a supply emergency, and it needs to go to the supply hospital. Tell the class you need a doctor to save the supply! It conveys a sense of urgency, and your young “doctors” will rush over to make sure the supply doesn’t go into the supply graveyard.

2. Supply Graveyard

Unfortunately, you may find some supplies are past the point of revival. When paintbrushes aren’t cared for properly, they end up with hard, unusable bristles. Erasers fall victim to scissors, or markers get their tips smashed onto the tables. These supplies go to the supply graveyard. What happens when you add a supply to the graveyard is up to you! Students may lose access to certain supplies for a designated period of time or get extra cleanup time added to the end of class.

The supply graveyard can be a regular trash can, but it’s more effective to have a designated bucket. It gives students a constant visual reminder of what happens when they don’t take care of supplies. If you discover broken supplies after class, you can add them to the supply graveyard so students see them when they come to the next class.

3. Trash Toss

Trash toss is simple, requires no prep, and is bound to get students scouring the room for trash to collect. Students collect all the trash onto one table during cleanup time. If they finish all the other cleanup duties with time to spare, they get to take turns using the trash as basketballs to shoot them into the trash can. Up the stakes by rewarding students for making a certain amount of “baskets,” or let the game itself be the reward!

4. Recycled Airplanes

Similar to Trash Toss, students make paper airplanes out of recyclable trash. If they can fly their plane into the recycling bin, they win! A bonus is that this game teaches basic origami folding skills.

5. Power Tool Time

This one isn’t a game, but it does get students excited to clean! If you have a power drill, invest in a wire attachment tool. Be sure to review safety procedures before giving your students power tools. When your concrete floors or laminate countertops have dried paint or glue on them, students can remove them using the drill. Getting to use a drill makes students feel trusted and excited to clean. Warning: You may have students arguing over who gets to clean with the drill first!

Organization

You’ve spent hours carefully labeling your cabinets with the names and pictures of everything they contain. Surely it will be enough to keep your students from asking where supplies are and putting them back in the wrong places, right? All veteran teachers know the answer is “no.”

When you notice your perfectly organized classroom starting to devolve into disarray, try these two games to get things back on track.

1. Supply Scavenger Hunt

Students work individually or in small groups to find a list of commonly asked-for items. The first team to bring all the supplies back to their desk wins! Part two of the game includes having students practice putting all of the scavenger hunt items back where they belong. If students have electronic devices, snap a picture of the supply when they put it back in its place. This way, you can track each team and keep them accountable. The first team to put everything back correctly wins!

2. Hot Potato Classroom Organization

To reinforce classroom organization, create a simple drawing of your classroom and a list of commonly used supplies. Make sure the supply list is long and comprehensive so it doesn’t run out before the game ends. Divide students into small groups and set a one-minute timer. The group members take turns passing the list around. Each person labels one supply in the correct place on the drawing. Eliminate the person with the paper when the timer goes off. Play enough rounds to eliminate everyone except one person. The last person becomes the winner!

Team Building and Collaboration

The more collaborative projects you incorporate into your classroom, the more students will get to know one another. Incorporate small challenges throughout the year to ensure that students get to work with students outside of their friend group.

Here are two games to encourage team building in your classroom.

1. Fast Fashion

Students make a wearable piece of fashion using designated leftover materials in 15 minutes or less. It’s a great way to use leftover supplies if there aren’t enough for a full project. Dedicate the rest of the class period to a fashion show to show off the students’ creations. Have guest judges view the fashion show and vote for their favorite pieces. It’s not just a fun, collaborative game; it also helps free up space by getting rid of excess material and clutter.

2. Peer Directed Drawings

Peer Directed Drawings always get students laughing while working on communication skills! Divide the students into pairs. Give one student from each pair a sheet of paper with a simple line drawing. Remind them to make sure they don’t let their partner see what’s on the paper. Give the other students a blank paper and a pencil. The students with the line drawings guide their partners in replicating what’s on their paper. They aren’t allowed to tell their partner what the drawing is or give them any hints; they can only tell them how to move their pencil. The pair with the drawing most similar to the original wins the game!

For example, if the drawing is a simple flower, the student can give directions like these: “Start in the middle of the paper’s bottom edge. Make a line about two inches long going up toward the middle of the paper. Draw a circle on top of the line. Draw five ovals onto the outside of the circle.”

There are times when students don’t want to do what they’re supposed to. If students are giving you a lot of pushback, let them play a game to determine if they have to do the task. Even if they lose and have to do what you ask them to do, they’ll be less resistant because you gave them an “out.”

Save these two games for occasions when students are highly unmotivated.

1. Punch-A-Cup

Buy cheap or disposable cups. In all of the cups except one, put a piece of paper saying, “teacher wins.” In the one remaining cup, put a piece of paper saying, “students win.” Cover each cup with wax paper and secure it with a rubber band. Place the cups in the drilled holes.

Now comes the part where students have to earn “punches.” Ask them questions about what you’ve taught so far, or drill them on classroom rules and procedures. For each answer they get correct, they get a “punch.” One student gets to select a cup and punch through the wax paper. They get to keep playing until they run out of punches or until they get the cup containing the “students win” paper. Even if the students win, you also win because you snuck in a review game!

2. The Dice Decides

You can simplify the premise of Punch-A-Cup by using dice. Again, quiz the students on what you recently taught them. For each right answer, they earn a roll of the dice. Before rolling, the class determines the winning number. If the dice land on their choice, they get out of the task!

Games imply winners, and winning implies a reward. Manage student expectations by telling them upfront what they are playing for. Sometimes, playing the game is a reward in itself, and other times, students need to know they are playing for bragging rights. Don’t pressure yourself to create grand prizes or buy the rewards out of pocket. Keep it simple, and remember that you are incorporating games to make classroom management fun, not because you have to bribe your students to do the right thing! If you want more advice on implementing games in the art room, check out the Games in the Art Room Pack in PRO Learning .

A solid classroom management plan is one of the keys to success as an art teacher. It can be easy to fall into a rut of enforcing the plan through lectures. However, don’t write classroom management off as something to dread! There are plenty of games to play to keep the art room fun and entertaining for both you and your students. There are even games specifically designed for those moments of low student motivation. Give these games a try and witness the positive effects of your new classroom management approach!

Do you play classroom management games with your students?

What are your favorite ways to make classroom management fun?

Magazine articles and podcasts are opinions of professional education contributors and do not necessarily represent the position of the Art of Education University (AOEU) or its academic offerings. Contributors use terms in the way they are most often talked about in the scope of their educational experiences.

Chelsea Solano

Chelsea Solano, a secondary art educator, is a former AOEU Writer. She is passionate about choice-based art education, fiber arts, and amplifying students’ voices in the classroom.

What Do You Need to Know About Teaching High School vs. Elementary Art?

Advice for Effective Classroom Management in the Art Room After the Break

4 Tips and 12 Ideas to Help Traveling Art Teachers Who Teach at Multiple Schools

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20 Classroom Management Strategies and Techniques [+ Downloadable List]

Written by Marcus Guido

Reviewed by Joshua Prieur, Ed.D.

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Final thoughts about these classroom management strategies

Paper airplanes fly across the room. Students race between desks. You can’t get a word in, as they yell over you.

Disruptive behavior doesn’t have to be this dramatic, like a movie scene you’d watch in a media literacy lesson, but poor classroom management will almost assuredly elevate your stress and burnout rates.

Unfortunately, a 2019 report indicates that teachers overwhelmingly report a lack of professional development support in improving classroom management. Despite this unideal situation, there are straightforward and effective classroom management approaches you can implement by yourself. These approaches can enhance prosocial student behavior and academic engagement, establishing an orderly learning environment.

Available as a downloadable list to keep at your desk , below are 20 research-backed classroom management strategies and techniques.

Use the ones that best appeal to your situation and teaching style.

These 20 classroom management techniques have shown to improve classroom behavior, build relationships for a better classroom community, and foster a positive classroom environment where student learning is the number one collective goal.

Try these effective classroom management strategies with your students to become a happier, more effective teacher.

1. Model ideal behavior

Make a habit of demonstrating behavior you want to see, as many studies show that modelling effectively teaches students how to act in different situations.

A straightforward way to model certain behaviors is holding a mock conversation with an administrator, other teacher or student helper in front of the class. Talking about a test or other relatable topic, be sure to:

• Use polite language
• Maintain eye contact
• Keep phones in your pockets
• Let one another speak uninterrupted
• Raise concerns about one another’s statements in a respectful manner

After, start a class discussion to list and expand upon the ideal behaviors you exemplified.

2. Let students help establish guidelines

Encourage all students to help you build classroom expectations and rules, as you’ll generate more buy-in than just telling them what they’re not allowed to do.

This is especially essential for new teachers. Near the start of the school year or during the first day of a semester, start a discussion by asking students what they believe should and shouldn’t fly in terms of appropriate behavior.

At what points are phones okay and not okay? What are acceptable noise levels during lessons?

This may seem like you’re setting yourself up for failure, but -- depending on the makeup of your class -- you may be shocked at the strictness of some proposed rules. Regardless, having a discussion should lead to mutually-understood and -respected expectations for your classroom culture.

3. Document rules

Don’t let your mutually-respected guidelines go forgotten.

Similar to handing out a syllabus, print and distribute the list of rules that the class discussion generated. Then, go through the list with your students. Doing this emphasizes the fact that you respect their ideas and intend to adhere to them. And when a student breaks a rule, it’ll be easy for you to point to this document.

You'll likely want to post these rules up in your classroom — if you haven't already — for occasional reference. If you’re feeling creative, you can include the rule list in a student handbook with important dates, events and curriculum information, too.

4. Avoid punishing the class

Address isolated discipline problems individually instead of punishing an entire class, as the latter can hurt your relationships with students who are on-task and thereby jeopardize other classroom management efforts.

Instead, call out specific students in a friendly manner. For example:

• “Do you have a question?”, not “Stop talking and disrupting other students”
• “Do you need help focusing?”, not “Pay attention and stop fooling around while I’m talking”

This basic approach will allow you to keep a friendly disposition, while immediately acknowledging inappropriate behavior.

5. Encourage initiative

Promote  growth mindset , and inject variety into your lessons, by  allowing students to work ahead and deliver short presentations  to share take-away points. Almost inevitably, you’ll have some eager learners in your classroom. You can simply ask them if they’d like to get ahead from time-to-time.

For example, if you’re reading a specific chapter in a textbook, propose that they read the following one too. When they deliver their subsequent presentations to preview the next chapter on your behalf, you may find that other students want a bit more work as well.

6. Offer praise

Praise students for jobs well done, as doing so improves academic and behavioral performance , according to a recent research review and study .

When it is sincere and references specific examples of effort or accomplishment, praise can:

• Inspire the class
• Improve a student’s self-esteem
• Reinforce rules and values you want to see

Perhaps more importantly, it encourages students to repeat positive behavior. Let’s say a student exemplifies advanced problem-solving skills when tackling a math word problem . Praising his or her use of specific tactics should go a long way in ensuring he or she continues to use these tactics. Not to mention, you’ll motivate other students to do the same.

7. Use non-verbal communication

Complement words with actions and visual aids to improve content delivery, helping students focus and process lessons.

Many differentiated instruction strategies and techniques are rooted in these communication methods. For example, running learning stations -- divided sections of your classroom through which students rotate -- allows you to deliver a range of non-spoken content types. These include videos, infographics and physical objects such as counting coins. 

8. Hold parties

Throw an occasional classroom party to acknowledge students’ hard work, motivating them to keep it up.

Even if it’s just for 20 or 30 minutes, they should be happy with snacks and a selection of group games to play. Clarify that you’re holding the party to reward them and they can earn future parties by demonstrating ideal behavior, collectively scoring high on assessments and more.

9. Give tangible rewards

Reward specific students at the end of each lesson, in front of the class, as another motivational and behavior-reinforcement technique.

Let’s say a few students are actively listening throughout the entire lesson, answering questions and asking their own. Before the class ends, walk over to their desks to give them raffle tickets. So others can learn, state aloud what each student did to earn the tickets. On Friday, they can submit their tickets for a shot at a prize that changes each week -- from candy to being able to choose a game for the next class party.

10. Make positive letters and phone calls

Keep students happy in and out of class by pleasantly surprising their parents, making positive phone calls and sending complimentary letters home.

When the occasion arises, from academic effort or behavioral progress, letting parents know has a trickle-down effect. They’ll generally congratulate their kids; their kids will likely come to class eager to earn more positive feedback. This can also entice parents to grow more invested in a child’s learning, opening the door to at-home lessons. Such lessons are a mainstay element of culturally-responsive teaching .

11. Build excitement for content and lesson plans

This one works well no matter the grade level: elementary school, middle school or high school. Start lessons by previewing particularly-exciting parts, hooking student interest from the get-go.

As the bell rings and students settle, go through an agenda of the day’s highlights for the whole class. These could include group tasks, engaging bits of content and anything else to pique curiosity. For example, “Throughout the day, you’ll learn about:”

• How to talk like you’re a teacher (sentence structure)
• Why you don’t know anyone who’s won the lottery (probability)
• What all the presidents of the United States have had in common (social analysis)

The goal of this classroom management technique is to immediately interest students in your agenda and thereby dissuade misbehavior.

Ready to make learning an exciting adventure?

Use Prodigy to boost classroom engagement and excitement with two captivating learning games for math and English!

12. Offer different types of free study time

Provide a range of activities during free study time to appeal to students who struggle to process content in silence, individually.

You can do this by dividing your class into clearly-sectioned solo and team activities. In separate sections, consider:

• Providing audiobooks, which can play material relevant to your lessons
• Maintaining a designated quiet space for students to take notes and complete work
• Creating a station for challenging  group games  that teach or reinforce standards-aligned skills
• Allowing students to work in groups while taking notes and completing work, away from quiet zones

By running these sorts of activities, free study time will begin to benefit diverse learners. This should contribute to overall classroom engagement.

13. Write group contracts

Help student group work run smoothly and effectively by writing contracts that contain guidelines, having everyone sign.

Group contracts should be based on expectations that students have for each other, and you have for them. You can gather the class’s thoughts by holding a discussion about what the ideal group member does, and how he or she acts. Once you’ve written the contract, encourage students to come up with consequences for violating expectations.

By having them sign a fresh version of the contract before each group task and project, you’re empowering them to hold each other accountable.

14. Assign open-ended projects

Encourage students to tackle open-ended projects -- projects that don’t demand a specific product -- to allow them to demonstrate knowledge in ways that inherently suit them.

This starts by giving the class a list of broad project ideas, asking each student to choose one. Be sure to provide a rubric for each project that clearly defines expectations. By both enticing and challenging students, you should notice they’ll:

• Work and learn at their own paces
• Engage actively with appropriate content
• Demonstrate knowledge as effectively as possible

With these benefits, students may actually look forward to taking on new projects.

15. Give only two scores for informal assessments

Recall a time you saw a big “F” in red ink on your work. You were probably too upset to review mistakes and feedback, and so are your students when they see the same.

So, consider avoiding standard marks on informal and formative assessments .

Instead, just state if a student did or did not meet expectations. Then, provide struggling students with a clear path to improve. For example, pair classmates who didn’t meet expectations with those who did, giving them a review and practice activity. When strugglers are confident they understand key concepts, encourage them to tell you. Provide a new assessment, allowing them to prove their competency.

16. Use EdTech that adjusts to each student

Give students who struggle to process your content opportunities to try educational technology that adapts to their needs.

There are many games and platforms that use adaptive learning principles to detect a given student’s skill deficits, serving them content to help overcome them.

For example, Prodigy Math adjusts its content to help students in grades 1 to 8 address their trouble spots. It also offers feedback to help them solve specific mistakes, as they answer questions that use words, charts, pictures and numbers.

The best bit? Teaching tools are all available at no cost to educators and schools.

See the student experience below!

17. Interview students

Interview students who aren’t academically engaged or displaying prosocial behavior to learn how to better manage them.

While running learning stations or a large-group activity, pull each student aside for a few minutes. Ask about:

• What helps them focus
• Who they work well with
• Their favorite types of lessons
• Their favorite in-class activities
• Which kinds of exercises help them remember key lesson points

Note their answers to come up with activities and approaches that engage them, thereby limiting classroom disruptions.

18. Address inappropriate or off-task behavior quickly

Avoid hesitation when you must address inappropriate or off-task behavior, especially when a student breaks a documented rule.

Acting sooner than later will help ensure that negative feelings -- whether between students or you and a student -- won’t fester. Failure to act can result in more poor behavior, leading to needlessly-difficult conversations.

But keep in mind: It’s usually best to talk to the student in private. Research shows that punishing students in front of peers has “limited value.”

19. Consider peer teaching

Use  peer teaching  as a classroom management strategy if you feel your top performers can help engage and educate disruptive and struggling students.

Peer teaching activities, such as pairing students together as reading buddies, can be  especially beneficial for students who suffer from low confidence and poor interpersonal skills.

Authoritative research  states tutors improve self-esteem and interpersonal skills by giving feedback. Tutees realize benefits because they can ask questions and receive immediate clarification. A  later study  of at-risk students echoes these advantages. Although you should spend time teaching peer tutors how to properly communicate with tutees, you’ll likely find the benefits are worth the work.

20. Gamify personal learning plans

Motivate students on personal learning plans by gamifying those plans, as studies — such as recent research from South Korea — indicate this will continuously engage and incentivize them.

Consider  gamification strategies  such as:

• Adjusting your scoring system --  Give experience points (XP) -- along with traditional scores -- on tests and assignments, setting a goal for the student to reach a certain amount of XP per unit. For example, if a student scores 60% on a quiz, give him or her 6,000 XP. You can also award XP for completing extra assignments, participating in class or anything else that shows effort to learn.
• Using stages --  Refer to topics and units as stages. The former terms have clear connotations for you, but students may not see how they fit together. If they’re gamers, they’ll understand that reaching the next stage requires overcoming precursory challenges. Emphasize this by framing certain tasks as prerequisites to reach the next learning stage.

If these strategies work especially well for individual students, you should see similar success by using them as class-wide student management techniques.

Want a handy reference of all these strategies you can keep at your desk? Download our classroom management strategies cheat sheet here!

Classroom management strategy FAQs

What is the best classroom management style.

According to Diana Baumrind's work, a clinical psychologist known for her research on parenting styles, some educators believe an authoritative classroom management style may the best one. This type of high control, high involvement classroom management style is characterized by strong expectations of appropriate behavior, clear understandings of why certain behaviors are acceptable and others not acceptable, and warm student-teacher relationships.

However, there is no specific approach that has been proven to be the most effective. So you may wish to review The Classroom Management Book by Harry K. Wong and Rosemary T. Wong which includes a variety of solutions that can be easily implemented. Every group of students has varying needs and will likely need a unique approach to help every student bring his or her best self to the classroom and be ready-to-learn every single day.

What are the four components of classroom management?

Implementing the top four components of classroom management from the start will set you and your students up for success all year long. They are:

• Classroom design —  be intentional about how you set up your desk, your students' desks, bulletin board displays, devices and other aspects of your classroom. Thoughtful classroom design can help create a safe and welcoming learning environment.
• Rules/discipline —  to create a safe and caring school community, develop classroom rules your students understand and — hopefully — respect. While it may not be fun, be sure to communicate that breaking classroom rules will have concrete yet fair consequences.
• Scheduling/organization —  being on time, keeping on task and staying organized will help set up your lessons (and your students' learning) up for success.
• Instructional technique —  while you may not have the flexibility you'd like when it comes to content and curriculum, you should have the freedom to choose  how  you teach. For example, 8th grade students may prefer a lecture-style lesson with small group discussions while 3rd grade students may prefer learning math with a digital game-based learning platform. Observe how your students learn best and use the classroom management strategies and techniques to teach your lessons.

Why is classroom management so important?

When done effectively, classroom management is important for three main reasons. It:

• Creates and sustains an orderly learning environment in the classroom
• Improves meaningful academic learning and fosters social-emotional growth
• Increases students' academic engagement and lowers negative classroom behavior

These class-wide and one-on-one approaches to classroom management largely work  across subjects and grade levels . Implementable without admin and parent support, they should empower you to establish an orderly — yet friendly and engaging — environment.

Look forward to better teacher-to-student and student-to-student interactions as a result.

Looking for a fun way to engage and reward your students ? Try Prodigy Math ! Aligned with curricula for grades 1 to 8, students will practice key skills while also exploring an exciting fantasy world.

Plus, you'll get access to free teacher tools that help you differentiate math content, send assessments and collect student insights — in just a few clicks.

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

This is an excerpt from a professional journal kept by one of us (Kelvin Seifert) when he was teaching kindergarten:

20xx-11-14: Today my student Carol sat in the circle, watching others while we all played Duck, Duck, Goose (in this game, one student is outside the circle, tags another student who then chases the first person around the circle). Carol’s turn had already passed. Apparently she was bored, because she flopped on her back, smiling broadly, rolling around luxuriously on the floor in the path of the other runners. Several classmates noticed her, smiled or giggled, began flopping down as well. One chaser tripped over a “flopper”.

“Sit up, Carol”, said I, the ever-vigilant teacher. “You’re in the way.” But no result. I repeated this twice, firmly; then moved to pick her up.

Instantly Carol ran to the far side of the gym, still smiling broadly. Then her best friend ran off with her. Now a whole new game was launched, or really two games: “Run-from-the-teacher” and “Enjoy-being-watched-by-everybody”. A lot more exciting, unfortunately, than Duck, Duck, Goose!

An excerpt from Kelvin’s same journal several years later, when he was teaching math in high school:

20xx-3-4: The same four students sat in the back again today, as usual. They seem to look in every direction except at me, even when I’m explaining material that they need to know. The way they smile and whisper to each other, it seems almost like they are “in love” with each other, though I can’t be sure who loves whom the most.

Others—students not part of the foursome—seem to react variously. Some seem annoyed, turn the other way, avoid talking with the group, and so on. But others seem almost envious—as if they want to be part of the “in” group, too, and were impressed with the foursome’s ability to get away with being inattentive and almost rude. Either way, I think a lot of other students are being distracted.

Twice during the period today, I happened to notice members of the group passing a note, and then giggling and looking at me. By the end, I had had enough of this sort of thing, so I kept them in briefly after class and asked one of them to read the note. They looked a bit embarrassed and hesitant, but eventually one of them opened the note and read it out loud. “Choose one”, it said. “Mr Seifert looks (1) old , (2) stupid , or (3) clueless .”

Kelvin’s experiences in managing these very different classrooms taught him what every teacher knows or else quickly learns: management matters a lot. But his experiences also taught him that management is about more than correcting the misbehaviors of individuals, more than just discipline. Classroom management is also about orchestrating or coordinating entire sets or sequences of learning activities so that everyone, misbehaving or not, learns as easily and productively as possible. Educators sometimes therefore describe good management as the creation of a positive learning environment , because the term calls attention to the totality of activities and people in a classroom, as well as to their goals and expectations about learning (Jones & Jones, 2007). When one of us (Kelvin) was teaching, he used both terms almost interchangeably, though in speaking of management he more often was referring to individual students’ behavior and learning, and in speaking of the learning environment he more often meant the overall “feel” of the class as a whole.

Why classroom management matters

Managing the learning environment is both a major responsibility and an on-going concern for all teachers, even those with years of experience (Good & Brophy, 2002). There are several reasons. In the first place, a lot goes on in classrooms simultaneously, even when students seem to be doing only one task in common. Twenty-five students may all seem to be working on a sheet of math problems. But look more closely: several may be stuck on a particular problem, each for different reasons. A few others have worked only the first problem or two and are now chatting quietly with each other instead of continuing. Still others have finished and are wondering what to do next. At any one moment each student needs something different—different information, different hints, different kinds of encouragement. Such diversity increases even more if the teacher deliberately assigns multiple activities to different groups or individuals (for example, if some students do a reading assignment while others do the math problems).

Another reason that managing the environment is challenging is because a teacher can not predict everything that will happen in a class. A well-planned lesson may fall flat on its face, or take less time than expected, and you find yourself improvising to fill class time. On the other hand an unplanned moment may become a wonderful, sustained exchange among students, and prompt you to drop previous plans and follow the flow of discussion. Interruptions happen continually: a fire drill, a drop-in visit from another teacher or the principal, a call on the intercom from the office. An activity may indeed turn out well, but also rather differently than you intended; you therefore have to decide how, if at all, to adjust the next day’s lesson to allow for this surprise.

A third reason for the importance of management is that students form opinions and perceptions about your teaching that are inconsistent with your own. What you intend as encouragement for a shy student may seem to the student herself like “forced participation”. An eager, outgoing classmate watching your effort to encourage the shy student, moreover, may not see you as either encouraging or coercing, but as overlooking or ignoring other students who already want to participate. The variety of perceptions can lead to surprises in students’ responses—most often small ones, but occasionally major.

At the broadest, society-wide level, classroom management challenges teachers because public schooling is not voluntary, and students’ presence in a classroom is therefore not a sign, in and of itself, that they wish to learn. Instead, students’ presence is just a sign that an opportunity exists for teachers to motivate students to learn. Some students, of course, do enjoy learning and being in school, almost regardless of what teachers do! Others do enjoy school, but only because teachers have worked hard to make classroom life pleasant and interesting. Those students become motivated because you have successfully created a positive learning environment and have sustained it through skillful management.

Fortunately it is possible to earn this sort of commitment from many students, and this chapter describes ways of doing so. We begin with ways of preventing management problems from happening by increasing students’ focus on learning. The methods include ideas about arranging classroom space, about establishing procedures, routines, and rules, and about communicating the importance of learning to students and parents. After these prevention oriented discussions, we look at ways of re focusing students when and if their minds or actions stray from the tasks at hand. As you probably know from being a student, bringing students back on task can happen in many ways, and the ways vary widely in the energy and persistence required of the teacher. We try to indicate some of these variations, but because of space limitations and because of the richness of classroom life, we cannot describe them all.

Preventing management problems by focusing students on learning

The easiest management problems to solve are ones that do not happen in the first place! Even before the school year begins, you can minimize behavior problems by arranging classroom furniture and materials in ways that encourage a focus on learning as much as possible. Later, once school begins, you can establish procedures and rules that support a focus on learning even more.

Arranging classroom space

Viewed broadly, classrooms may seem to be arranged in similar ways, but there are actually important alternative arrangements to consider. Variations exist because of grade level, the subjects taught, the teacher’s philosophy of education, and of course the size of the room and the furniture available. Whatever the arrangement that you choose, it should help students to focus on learning tasks as much as possible and minimize the chances of distractions. Beyond these basic principles, however, the “best” arrangement depends on what your students need and on the kind of teaching that you prefer and feel able to provide (Boyner, 2003; Nations & Boyett, 2002). The next sections describe some of the options. In considering them (and before moving too much furniture around your room!), you might want to try experimenting with spatial arrangements “virtually” by using one of the computer programs available on the Internet (see: http://teacher.scholastic.com/tools/class_setup/ ).

Displays and wall space

All classrooms have walls, of course, and how you fill them can affect the mood or feeling of a classroom. Ample displays make a room interesting and can be used to reinforce curriculum goals and display (and hence publicly recognize) students’ work. But too many displays can also make a room seem “busy” or distracting as well as physically smaller. They can also be more work to maintain. If you are starting a new school year, then, a good strategy is to decorate some of the wall or bulletin board space, but not to fill it all immediately. Leaving some space open leaves flexibility to respond to ideas and curriculum needs that emerge after the year is underway. The same advice applies especially for displays that are high maintenance, such as aquariums, pets, and plants. These can serve wonderfully as learning aids, but do not have to be in place on the first day of school. Not only the students, but also you yourself, may already have enough to cope with at that time.

Computers in the classroom

If you are like the majority of teachers, you will have only one computer in your room, or at most just a few, and their placement may be pre-determined by the location of power and cable outlets. If so, you need to think about computer placement early in the process of setting up a room. Once the location of computers is set, locations for desks, high-usage shelves, and other moveable items can be chosen more sensibly—in general, as already mentioned, so as to minimize distractions to students and to avoid unnecessary traffic congestion.

Visibility of and interactions with students

Learning is facilitated if the furniture and space allow you to see all students and to interact with them from a comfortable distance. Usually this means that the main, central part of the room—where desks and tables are usually located—needs to be as open and as spacious as possible. While this idea may seem obvious, enacting it can be challenging in practice if the room itself is small or shaped unusually. In classrooms with young students (kindergarten), furthermore, open spaces tend to allow, if not invite, physical movement of children—a feature that you may consider either constructive or annoying, depending on your educational goals and the actual level of activity that occurs.

Spatial arrangements unique to grade levels or subjects

The best room arrangement sometimes depends on the grade level or subject area of the class. If you teach in elementary school, for example, you may need to think especially about where students can keep their daily belongings, such as coats and lunches. In some schools, these can be kept outside the classroom—but not necessarily. Some subjects and grade levels, furthermore, lend themselves especially well to small group interaction, in which case you might prefer not to seat students in rows, but instead around small-group tables or work areas. The latter arrangement is sometimes preferred by elementary teachers, but is also useful in high schools wherever students need lots of counter space, as in some shops or art courses, or where they need to interact, as in English as a Second Language courses (McCafferty, Jacobs, & Iddings, 2006). The key issue in deciding between tables and rows, however, is not grade level or subject as such, but the amount of small group interaction you want to encourage, compared to the amount of whole-group instruction. As a rule, tables make working with peers easier, and rows make listening to the teacher more likely and group work slightly more awkward physically.

Ironically, some teachers also experience challenges about room arrangement because they do not actually have a classroom of their own, because they must move each day among other teachers’ rooms. “Floating” is especially likely for specialized teachers (e.g. music teachers in elementary schools, who move from class to class) and in schools have an overall shortage of classrooms. Floating can sometimes be annoying to the teacher, though it actually also has advantages, such as not having to take responsibility for how other teachers’ rooms are arranged. If you find yourself floating, it helps to consider a few key strategies, such as:

• consider using a permanent cart to move crucial supplies from room to room
• make sure that every one of your rooms has an overhead projector (do not count on using chalkboards or computers in other teachers’ rooms)
• talk to the other teachers about having at least one shelf or corner in each room designated for your exclusive use

Establishing daily procedures and routines

Procedures or routines are specific ways of doing common, repeated classroom tasks or activities. Examples include checking daily attendance, dealing with students who arrive late, or granting permission to leave the classroom for an errand. Academically related procedures include ways of turning in daily homework (e.g. putting it on a designated shelf at a particular time), of gaining the teacher’s attention during quiet seat work (e.g. raising your hand and waiting), and of starting a “free choice” activity after completing a classroom assignment.

Procedures serve the largely practical purpose of making activities and tasks flow smoothly—a valuable and necessary purpose in classrooms, where the actions of many people have to be coordinated within limited time and space. As such, procedures are more like social conventions than like moral expectations. They are only indirectly about what is ethically right or ethically desirable to do (Turiel, 2006). Most procedures or routines can be accomplished in more than one way, with only minor differences in outcomes. There is more than one way, for example, for the procedure of taking attendance: the teacher could call the role, delegate a student to call the role, or note students’ presence on a seating chart. Each variation accomplishes essentially the same task, and the choice may be less important than the fact that the class coordinates its actions somehow, by committing to some sort of choice.

For teachers, of course, an initial management task is to establish procedures and routines as promptly as possible. Because of the conventional quality of procedures, some teachers find that it works well simply to announce and explain key procedures without inviting much discussion from students (“Here is how we will choose partners for the group work”). Other teachers prefer to invite input from students when creating procedures (asking the class, “What do you feel is the best way for students to get my attention during a quiet reading time?”). Both approaches have advantages as well as disadvantages. Simply announcing key procedures saves time and insures consistency in case you teach more than one class (as you would in high school). But it puts more responsibility on the teacher to choose procedures that are truly reasonable and practical. Inviting students’ input, on the other hand, can help students to become aware of and committed to procedures, but at the cost of requiring more time to settle on them. It also risks creating confusion if you teach multiple classes, each of which adopts different procedures. Whatever approach you choose, of course, they have to take into account any procedures or rules imposed by the school or school district as a whole. A school may have a uniform policy about how to record daily attendance, for example, and that policy may determine, either partly or completely, how you take attendance with your particular students.

Establishing classroom rules

Unlike procedures or routines, rules express standards of behavior for which individual students need to take responsibility. Although they are like procedures in that they sometimes help in insuring the efficiency of classroom tasks, they are really about encouraging students to be responsible for learning and showing respect for each other. Exhibit 8 lists a typical set of classroom rules. Treat others with courtesy and politeness.Make sure to bring required materials to class and to activities.Be on time for class and other activities.Listen to the teacher and to others when they are speaking.Follow all school rules.

Exhibit 8: Sample set of classroom rules

Classroom Rules

• Treat others with courtesy and politeness.
• Make sure to bring required materials to class and to activities.
• Be on time for class and other activities.
• Listen to the teacher and to others when they are speaking.
• Follow all school rules.

Note three things about the examples in Exhibit 8 . One is that the rules are not numerous; the table lists only five. Most educational experts recommend keeping the number of rules to a minimum in order to make them easier to remember (Thorson, 2003; Brophy, 2004). A second feature is that they are stated in positive terms (“Do X…”) rather than negative terms (“Do not do Y…”), a strategy that emphasizes and clarifies what students should do rather than what they should avoid. A third feature is that each rule actually covers a collection of more specific behaviors. The rule “Bring all materials to class”, for example, covers bringing pencils, paper, textbooks, homework papers, and permission slips—depending on the situation. As a result of their generality, rules often have a degree of ambiguity that sometimes requires interpretation. Infractions may occur that are marginal or “in a grey area”, rather than clear cut. A student may bring a pen, for example, but the pen may not work properly. You may therefore wonder whether this incident is really a failure to follow the rule, or just an unfortunate (and in this case minor) fault of the pen manufacturer.

As with classroom procedures, rules can be planned either by the teacher alone, or by the teacher with advice from students. The arguments for each approach are similar to the arguments for procedures: rules “laid on” by the teacher may be more efficient and consistent, and in this sense more fair, but rules influenced by the students may be supported more fully by the students. Because rules focus strongly on personal responsibility, however, there is a stronger case for involving students in making them than in making classroom procedures (Brookfield, 2006; Kohn, 2006). In any case the question of who plans classroom rules is not necessarily an either/or choice. It is possible in principle to impose certain rules on students (for example, “Always be polite to each other”) but let the students determine the consequences for violations of certain rules (for example, “If a student is discourteous to a classmate, he/she must apologize to the student in writing”). Some mixture of influences is probably inevitable, in fact, if only because the class needs to take into account your own moral commitments as the teacher as well as any imposed by the school (like “No smoking in the school” or “Always walk in the hallways”).

Pacing and structuring lessons and activities

One of the best ways to prevent management problems is by pacing and structuring lessons or activities as smoothly and continuously as possible. This goal depends on three major strategies:

• selecting tasks or activities at an appropriate level of difficulty for your students
• providing a moderate level of structure or clarity to students about what they are supposed to do, especially during transitions between activities
• keeping alert to the flow and interplay of behaviors for the class as a whole and for individuals within it. Each strategy presents special challenges to teachers, but also opportunities for helping students to learn.

Choosing tasks at an appropriate level of difficulty

As experienced teachers know and as research has confirmed, students are most likely to engage with learning when tasks are of moderate difficulty, neither too easy nor too hard and therefore neither boring nor frustrating (Britt, 2005). Finding the right level of difficulty, however, can be a challenge if you have little experience teaching a particular grade level or curriculum, or even if students are simply new to you and their abilities unknown. Whether familiar or not, members of any class are likely to have diverse skills and readiness–a fact that makes it challenging to determine what level of difficulty is appropriate. A common strategy for dealing with these challenges is to begin units, lessons, or projects with tasks that are relatively easy and familiar. Then, introduce more difficult material or tasks gradually until students seem challenged, but not overwhelmed. Following this strategy gives the teacher a chance to observe and diagnose students’ learning needs before adjusting content, and it gives students a chance to orient themselves to the teacher’s expectations, teaching style, and topic of study without becoming frustrated prematurely. Later in a unit, lesson, or project, students seem better able to deal with more difficult tasks or content (Van Merrionboer, 2003). The principle seems to help as well with “authentic” learning tasks—ones that resemble real-world activities, such as learning to drive an automobile or to cook a meal, and that present a variety of complex tasks simultaneously. Even in those cases it helps to isolate and focus on the simplest subtasks first (such as “put the key in the ignition”) and move to harder tasks only later (such as parallel parking).

Sequencing instruction is only a partial solution to finding the best “level” of difficulty, however, because it does not deal with enduring individual differences among students. The fundamental challenge to teachers is to individualize or differentiate instruction fully: to tailor it not only to the class as a group, but to the lasting differences among members of the class. One way to approach this sort of diversity, obviously, is to plan different content or activities for different students or groups of students. While one group works on Task A, another group works on Task B; one group works on relatively easy math problems, for example, while another works on harder ones. Differentiating instruction in this way complicates a teacher’s job, but it can be done, and has in fact been done by many teachers (it also makes teaching more interesting!). In the next chapter, we describe some classroom management strategies that help with such multi-tasking.

Providing moderate amounts of structure and detail

Chances are that at some point in your educational career you have wished that a teacher would clarify or explain an assignment more fully, and perhaps give it a clearer structure or organization. Students’ desire for clarity is especially common with assignments that are by nature open-ended, such as long essays, large projects, or creative works. Simply being told to “write an essay critiquing the novel”, for example, leaves more room for uncertainty (and worry) than being given guidelines about what questions the essay should address, what topics or parts it should have, and what its length or style should be (Chesebro, 2003). As you might suspect, some students desire clarity more than others, and improve their performance especially much when provided with plenty of structure and clarity. Students with certain kinds of learning difficulties, in particular, often learn effectively and stay on task only if provided with somewhat explicit, detailed instructions about the tasks expected of them (Marks, et al., 2003).

As a teacher, the challenge is to accommodate students’ need for clarity without making guidance so specific or detailed that students do little thinking for themselves. As a (ridiculously extreme) example, consider a teacher gives “clear” instructions for an essay by announcing not only exactly which articles to read and cite in the essay and which topics or issues to cover, but even requires specific wording of sentences in their essays. This much specificity may reduce students’ uncertainties and make the teacher’s task of evaluating the essays relatively straightforward and easy. But it also reduces or even eliminates the educational value of the assignment—assuming, of course, that its purpose is to get students to think for themselves.

Ideally, then, structure should be moderate rather than extreme. There should be just enough to give students some sense of direction and to stimulate more accomplishment than if they worked with less structure or guidance. This ideal is an application of Vygotsky’s idea of the zone of proximal development that we discussed in Chapter 3: a place (figuratively speaking) where students get more done with help than without it. The ideal amount of guidance

—the “location” of the zone of proximal development—varies with the assignment and the student, and it (hopefully) decreases over time for all students. One student may need more guidance to do his or her best in math, but less guidance in order to write her or his best essay. Another student may need the reverse. But if all goes well, both students may need less at the end of the year than at the beginning.

Managing transitions

Transitions between activities is often full of distractions and “lost” time, and is a time when inappropriate behaviors are especially likely to occur. Part of the problem is intrinsic to transitions: students may have to wait before a new activity actually begins, and therefore get bored at the very moment when the teacher is preoccupied with arranging materials for the new activity. From the point of view of the students, transitions may seem essentially like unsupervised group time, when seemingly any behavior is tolerated.

Minimizing such problems requires two strategies, one of which is easier to implement than the other. The easier strategy is for you, as teacher, to organize materials as well as possible ahead of time, so that you minimize the time needed to begin a new activity. The advice sounds simple, and mostly is, but it sometimes takes a bit of practice to implement smoothly. When one of us (Kelvin) first began teaching university, for example, particular papers or overhead transparencies sometimes got lost in the wrong folder in spite of Kelvin’s efforts to keep them where they were easy to find. The resulting delays about finding them slowed the pace of class and caused frustrations.

A second, more complex strategy is to teach students ways to manage their own behavior during transitions (Marzano & Marzano, 2004). If students talk too loudly at these times, for example, then discuss with them what constitutes appropriate levels or amounts of talk, and discuss the need for them to monitor their own sound level. Or if students stop work early in anticipation of ending an activity, then talk about—or even practice—waiting for a signal from yourself to indicate the true ending point for an activity. If certain students continue working beyond the end of an activity. On the other hand, try giving them warning of the impending end in advance, and remind them about to take responsibility for actually finishing work once they hear the advance warning, and so on. The point of these tactics is to encourage responsibility for behavior during transitions, and thereby reduce your own need to monitor students at that crucial time.

None of these ideas, of course, mean that you, as teacher, should give up monitoring students’ behavior entirely. Chances are that you still will need to notice if and when someone talks too loudly, finishes too early, or continues too long, and you will still need to give some students appropriate reminders. But the amount of reminding will be less to the extent that students can remind and monitor themselves—a welcome trend at any time, but especially during transitions.

Maintaining the flow of activities

A lot of classroom management is really about keeping activities flowing smoothly, both during individual lessons and across the school day. The trouble is that there is never just “one” event happening at a time, even if only one activity has been formally planned and is supposed to be occurring. Imagine, for example, that everyone is supposed to be attending a single whole-class discussion on a topic; yet individual students will be having different experiences at any one moment. Several students may be listening and contributing comments, for example, but a few others may be planning what they want to say next and ignoring the current speakers, still others may be ruminating about what a previous speaker said, and still others may be thinking about unrelated matters–the restroom, food, or sex. Things get even more complicated if the teacher deliberately plans multiple activities: in that case some students may interact with the teacher, for example, while others do work in an unsupervised group or work independently in a different part of the room. How is a teacher to keep activities flowing smoothly in the face of such variety?

A common mistake of beginning teachers in multi-faceted settings like these is to pay too much attention to any one activity, student, or small group, at the expense of noticing and responding to all the others. If you are helping a student on one side of the room when someone on the other side disturbs classmates with off-task conversation, it can be less effective either to finish with the student you are helping before attending to the disruption, or to interrupt yourself to solve the disruption on the other side of the room. Although one of these responses may be necessary, either one involves disruption somewhere. There is a risk that either the student’s chatting may spread to others, or the interrupted student may become bored with waiting for the teacher’s attention and wander off-task herself.

A better solution, though one that at first may seem challenging, is to attend to both events at once—a strategy that was named withitness in a series of now-classic research studies several decades ago (Kounin, 1970). Withitness does not mean that you focus on all simultaneous activities with equal care, but only that you remain aware of multiple activities, behaviors, and events to some degree. At a particular moment, for example, you may be focusing on helping a student, but in some corner of your mind you also notice when chatting begins on the other side of the room. You have, as the saying goes, “eyes in the back of your head”. Research has found that experienced teachers are much more likely to show withitness than inexperienced teachers, and that these qualities are associated with managing classrooms successfully (Emmer & Stough, 2001).

Simultaneous awareness—withitness—makes possible responses to the multiple events that are immediate and nearly simultaneous—what educators sometimes called overlapping. The teacher’s responses to each event or behavior need not take equal time, nor even be equally noticeable to all students. If you are helping one student with seat work at the precise moment when another student begins chatting off-task, for example, a quick glance to the second student may be enough to bring the second one back to the work at hand, and may scarcely interrupt your conversation with the first student, or be noticed by others who are not even involved. The result is a smoother flow to activities overall.

As a new teacher, you may find that withitness and overlapping develop more easily in some situations than in others. It may be easier to keep an eye (or ear) on multiple activities during familiar routines, such as taking attendance, but harder to do the same during activities that are unfamiliar or complex, such as introducing a new topic or unit that you have never taught before. But skill at broadening your attention does increase with time and practice. It helps to keep trying. Merely demonstrating to students that you are “withit”, in fact, even without making deliberate overlapping responses, can sometimes deter students from off-task behavior. Someone who is tempted to pass notes in class, for example, might not do so because she believes that you will probably notice her doing it anyway, whether or not you are able to notice in fact.

Communicating the importance of learning and of positive behavior

Altogether, the factors we have discussed—arranging space, procedures, and rules, and developing withitness— help communicate an important message: that in the classroom learning and positive social behavior are priorities. In addition, teachers can convey this message by offering timely feedback to students about performance, by keeping accurate records of the performance, and by deliberately communicating with parents or caregivers about their children and about class activities.

Communicating effectively is so important for all aspects of teaching, in fact, that we discuss it more fully later in this book (see Chapter 9,“The nature of classroom communication”). Here we focus on only one of its important aspects: how communication contributes to a smoothly functioning classroom and in this way helps prevent behavior problems.

Giving timely feedback

The term feedback, when used by educators, refers to responses to students about their behavior or performance. Feedback is essential if students are to learn and if they are to develop classroom behavior that is socially skilled and “mature”. But feedback can only be fully effective if offered as soon as possible, when it is still relevant to the task or activity at hand (Reynolds, 1992). A score on a test is more informative immediately after a test than after a six-month delay, when students may have forgotten much of the content of the test. A teacher’s comment to a student about an inappropriate, off-task behavior may not be especially welcome at the moment the behavior occurs, but it can be more influential and informative then; later, both teacher and student will have trouble remembering the details of the off-task behavior, and in this sense may literally “not know what they are talking about”. The same is true for comments about a positive behavior by a student: hearing a compliment right away makes it easier to the comment with the behavior, and allows the compliment to influence the student more strongly. There are of course practical limits to how fast feedback can be given, but the general principle is clear: feedback tends to work better when it is timely.

The principle of timely feedback is consistent, incidentally, with a central principle of operant conditioning discussed in Chapter 3: reinforcement works best when it follows a to-be-learned operant behavior closely (Skinner, 1957). In this case a teacher’s feedback serves as a form of reinforcement. The analogy is easiest to understand when the feedback takes the form of praise; in operant conditioning terms, the reinforcing praise then functions like a “reward”. When feedback is negative, it functions as an “aversive stimulus” (in operant terms), shutting down the behavior criticized. At other times, though, criticism can also function as an unintended reinforcement. This happens, for example, if a student experiences criticism as a reduction in isolation and therefore as in increase in his importance in the class—a relatively desirable change. So the inappropriate behavior continues, or even increases, contrary to the teacher’s intentions. Exhibit 9 diagrams this sequence of events.

Reinforcement can happen in class if an undesirable behavior, leads to a less aversive state for a student. Social isolation can be reduced by public misbehavior, which stimulates attention that is reinforcing.Ironically, the effort to end misbehavior ends up stimulating the misbehavior.others’gainsStudentStudent is isolated socially → Student publiclymisbehaves →attentionExample of Unintended Negative Reinforcement in the Classroom:

Exhibit 9: Attracting attention as negative reinforcement

Student is isolated socially  →  Student publicly misbehaves  →  Student gains others’ attention

Reinforcement can happen in class if an undesirable behavior, leads to a less aversive state for a student.  Social isolation can be reduced by public misbehavior, which stimulates attention that is reinforcing. Ironically, the effort to end misbehavior ends up stimulating the misbehavior.

Maintaining accurate records

Although timeliness in responding to students can sometimes happen naturally during class, there are also situations where promptness depends on having organized key information ahead of time. Obvious examples are the scores, marks, and grades returned to students for their work. A short quiz (such as a weekly spelling test) may be possible to return quite soon after the quiz—sometimes you or even the students themselves can mark it during class. More often, though, assignments and tests require longer processing times: you have to read, score, or add comments to each paper individually. Excessive time to evaluate students’ work can reduce the usefulness of a teacher’s evaluations to students when she finally does return the work (Black, et al., 2004). During the days or weeks waiting for a test or assignment to be returned, students are left without information about the quality or nature of their performance; at the extreme they may even have to complete another test or do another assignment before getting information about an earlier one. (Perhaps you yourself have experienced this particular problem!)

Delays in providing feedback about academic performance can never be eliminated entirely, but they can be reduced by keeping accurate, well-organized records of students’ work. A number of computer programs are available to help with this challenge; if your school does not already have one in use, then there are several downloadableeitherfreeoratlowcostfromtheInternet(e.g. http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Educational/Teachers_Help/Gradebooks/ ). Describing these is beyond the scope of this book. For now we simply emphasize that grading systems benefit students’ learning the most when they provide feedback as quickly and frequently as possible (McMillan, 2001), precisely the reason why accurate, well-organized record-keeping is important to keep.

Accurate records are helpful not only for scores on tests, quizzes, or assignments, but also for developing descriptive summaries of the nature of students’ academic skills or progress. A common way to develop a description is the student portfolio, which is a compilation of the student’s work and on-going assessments of it created by the teacher or in some cases by the student (Moritz & Christie, 2005; White, 2005). To know how a student’s science project evolved from its beginning, for example, a teacher and student can keep a portfolio of lab notes, logs, preliminary data, and the like. To know how a student’s writing skills developed, they could keep a portfolio of early drafts on various writing assignments. As the work accumulates, the student can discuss it with the teacher, and write brief reflections on its strengths thus far or on the steps needed to improve the work further. By providing a way to respond to work as it evolves, and by including students in making the assessments, portfolios provide relatively prompt feedback, and in any case provide it sooner than by waiting for the teacher to review work that is complete or final.

Communicating with parents and caregivers

Since parents and caregivers in a sense “donate” their children to schools (at least figuratively speaking), teachers are responsible for keeping them informed and involved to whatever extent is practical. Virtually all parents understand and assume that schools are generally intended for learning. Detailed communication can enrich parents’ understanding, of how learning is addressed with their particular child’s classroom, and show them more precisely what their particular child is doing. The better such understanding in turn encourages parents and caregivers to support their child’s learning more confidently and “intelligently”. In this sense it contributes indirectly to a positive learning environment in their child’s class.

There are various ways to communicate with parents, each with advantages and limitations. Here are three common examples:

• A regular classroom newsletter: A newsletter establishes a link with parents or caregivers with comparatively little effort on the part of the teacher. At the beginning of the year, for example, a newsletter can tell about special materials that students will need, important dates to remember (like professional development days when there is no school), or about curriculum plans for the next few weeks. But newsletters also have limitations. They can seem impersonal, and they may get lost on the way home and never reach parents or caregivers. They can also be impractical for teachers with multiple classes, as in high school or in specialist subjects (like music or physical education), where each class follows a different program or curriculum.
• Telephone calls: The main advantage of phoning is its immediacy and individuality. Teacher and parent or caregiver can talk about a particular student, behavior, or concern, and do it now. By the same token, however, phone calls are not an efficient way for informing parents about events or activities that affect everyone in common. The individuality of phoning may explain why teachers often use this method when a student has a problem that is urgent or unusual—as when he has failed a test, missed classes, or misbehaved seriously. Rightly or wrongly, a student’s successes tend not to prompt phone calls to the student’s home (though in fairness students may be more likely to tell parents about their successes themselves, making it less essential for the teacher to do so).
• Parent-teacher conferences: Most schools schedule periodic times—often a day or evening per term—when teachers meet briefly with parents or caregivers who wish to meet. Under good conditions, the conferences have the individuality of phone calls, but also the richness of communication possible only in face-to-face meetings. Since conferences are available to all parents, they need not focus on behavior or academic problems, but often simply help to build rapport and understanding between parents or caregivers and the teacher. Sometimes too, particularly at younger grade levels, teachers involve students in leading their own conferences; the students display and explain their own work using a portfolio or other archive of accumulated materials (Benson & Barnett, 2005; Stiggins & Chappuis, 2005). In spite of all of these advantages, though, parent-teacher conferences have limitations. Some parents cannot get to conferences because of work schedules, child care, or transportation problems. Others may feel intimated by any school- sponsored event because they speak limited English or because they remember painful experiences from their own school days.

Even if you make several efforts to communicate, some parents may remain out of contact. In these cases it is important to remember that the parents may not be indifferent to their child or to the value of education. Other possibilities exist, as some of our comments above imply: parents may have difficulties with child care, for example, have inconvenient work schedules, or feel self-conscious about their own communication skills (Stevens & Tollafield, 2003). Even so, there are ways to encourage parents who may be shy, hesitant, or busy. One is to think about how they can assist the school even from home—for example, by making materials to be used in class or (if they are comfortable using English) phoning other parents about class events. A second way is to have a specific task for the parents in mind—one with clear structure, such as photocopying materials to be used by students later. A third is to remember to encourage, support, and respect the parents’ presence and contributions when they do show up at school functions. Keep in mind that parents are experts about their own particular children, and without them, you would have no students to teach!

Responding to student misbehavior

So far we have focused on preventing behaviors that are inappropriate or annoying. The advice has all been pro- active or forward-looking: plan classroom space thoughtfully, create reasonable procedures and rules, pace lessons and activities appropriately, and communicate the importance of learning clearly. Although we consider these ideas important, it would be naïve to imply they are enough to prevent all behavior problems. For various reasons, students sometimes still do things that disrupt other students or interrupt the flow of activities. At such moments the challenge is not about long-term planning but about making appropriate, but prompt responses. Misbehaviors left alone can be contagious, a process educators sometimes call the ripple effect (Kounin, 1970). Chatting between two students, for example, can gradually spread to six students; rudeness by one can eventually become rudeness by several; and so on. Because of this tendency, delaying a response to inappropriate behavior can make the job of getting students back on track harder than responding to it as immediately as possible.

There are many ways to respond to inappropriate behaviors, of course, and they vary in how much they focus on the immediate behavior compared to longer-term features or patterns of a student’s behavior. There are so many ways to respond, in fact, that we can describe only a sample of the possibilities here. None are effective all of the time, though all do work at least some of the time. We start with a response that may not seem on the surface like a remedy at all—simply ignoring misbehaviors.

Ignoring misbehaviors

A lot of misbehaviors are not important or frequent enough to deserve any response at all. They are likely to disappear (or extinguish, in behaviorist terms) simply if left alone. If a student who is usually quiet during class happens to whisper to a neighbor once in awhile, it is probably less disruptive and just as effective to ignore the infraction than to respond to it. Some misbehaviors may not be worth a response even if they are frequent, as long as they do not seem to bother others. Suppose, for example, that a certain student has a habit of choosing quiet seat-work times to sharpen her pencil. She is continually out of her seat to go to the sharpener. Yet this behavior is not really noticed by others. Is it then really a problem, however unnecessary or ill-timed it may be? In both examples ignoring the behavior may be wise because there is little danger of the behavior disrupting other students or of becoming more frequent. Interrupting your activities—or the students’—might cause more disruption than simply ignoring the problem.

That said, there can still be problems in deciding whether a particular misbehavior is truly minor, infrequent, or unnoticed by others. Unlike in our example above, students may whisper to each other more than “rarely” but less than “often”: in that case, when do you decide that the whispering is in fact too frequent and needs a more active response from you? Or the student who sharpens her pencil, mentioned above, may not bother most others, but she may nonetheless bother a few. In that case how many bothered classmates are “too many”? Five, three, just one, or…? In these ambiguous cases, you may need more active ways of dealing with an inappropriate behavior, like the ones described in the next sections.

Gesturing nonverbally

Sometimes it works to communicate using gestures, eye contact, or “body language” that involve little or no speaking. Nonverbal cues are often appropriate if a misbehavior is just a bit too serious or frequent to ignore, but not serious or frequent enough to merit taking the time deliberately to speak to or talk with the student. If two students are chatting off-task for a relatively extended time, for example, sometimes a glance in their direction, a frown, or even just moving closer to the students is enough of a reminder to get them back on task. Even if these responses prove not to be enough, they may help to keep the off-task behavior from spreading to other students.

A risk of relying on nonverbal cues, however, is that some students may not understand their meaning, or may even fail to notice them. If the two chatting students mentioned above are engrossed in their talking, for example, they may not see you glance or frown at them. Or they might notice but not interpret your cue as a reminder to get back on task. Misinterpretation of nonverbal gestures and cues is more likely with young children, who are still learning the subtleties of adults’ nonverbal “language” (Guerrero & Floyd, 2005; Heimann, et al., 2006). It is also more likely with students who speak limited English or whose cultural background differs significantly from your own. These students may have learned different nonverbal gestures from your own as part of their participation in their original culture (Marsh, Elfenbein, & Ambady, 2003).

Natural and logical consequences

Consequences are the outcomes or results of an action. When managing a classroom, two kinds of consequences are especially effective for influencing students’ behavior: natural consequences and logical consequences. As the term implies, natural consequences happen “naturally”, without deliberate intention by anyone. If a student is late for class, for example, a natural consequence is that he misses information or material that needed to do an assignment. Logical consequences are ones that happen because of the responses of or decisions by others, but that also have an obvious or “logical” relationship to the original action. If one student steals another’s lunch, for example, a logical consequence might be for the thief to reimburse the victim for the cost of the lunch. Natural and logical consequences are often woven together and thus hard to distinguish: if one student picks a fight with another student, a natural consequence might be injury not only to the victim, but also to the aggressor (an inherent byproduct of fighting), but a logical consequence might be to lose friends (the response of others to fighting). In practice both may occur.

In general research has found that both natural and logical consequences can be effective for minimizing undesirable behaviors, provided they are applied in appropriate situations (Weinstein, Tomlinson-Clarke, & Curran, 2004). Consider a student who runs impulsively down school hallways. The student is likely to have “traffic accidents”, and thus (hopefully) to see that running is not safe and to reduce the frequency of running. Or consider a student who chronically talks during class instead of working on an assigned task. The student may have to make up the assignment later, possibly as homework. Because the behavior and the consequence are connected logically, the student is relatively likely to see the drawback of choosing to talk, and to reduce how much he or she talks on subsequent occasions. In either case, whether natural or logical, the key features that make consequences work are (a) that they are appropriate to the misbehavior and (b) that the student understands the connection between the consequences and the original behavior.

Notice, though, that natural and logical consequences do not always work; if they did, there would be no further need for management strategies! One limitation is that misbehaviors can sometimes be so serious that no natural or logical consequence seems sufficient or appropriate. Suppose, for example, that one student deliberately breaks another student’s eyeglasses. There may be a natural consequence for the victim (he or she will not be able to see easily), but not for the student who broke the glasses. There may also be no consequences for the aggressor that are both logical and fully satisfactory: the aggressor student will not be able to repair the broken glasses himself, and may not be able to pay for new glasses either.

Another limitation of natural and logical consequences is that their success depends on the motives of the misbehaving student. If the student is seeking attention or acceptance by others, then consequences often work well. Bullying in order to impress others, for example, is more likely to lose friends than to win them—so bullying motivated in this way is self-limiting. If a student is seeking power over others, on the other hand, then the consequences of bullying may not reduce the behavior. Bullying in order to control others’ actions by definition actually achieves its own goal, and its “natural” result (losing friends) would be irrelevant. Of course, a bully might also act from a combination of motives, so that natural and logical consequences limit bullying behavior, but only partially.

A third problem with natural and logical consequences is that they can easily be confused with deliberate punishment (Kohn, 2006). The difference is important. Consequences are focused on repairing damage and restoring relationships, and in this sense they focus on the future. Punishments highlight a mistake or wrongdoing and in this sense focus on the past. Consequences tend to be more solution focused. Punishments tend to highlight the person who committed the action, and they often shame or humiliate the wrong doer. ( Table 17 summarizes these and other differences.)

Table 17: Differences between consequences and punishments

Classroom examples of the differences between consequences and punishment are plentiful. If a student fails to listen to the teacher’s instructions, then a consequence is that he or she misses important information, but a punishment may be that the teacher criticizes or reprimands the student. If a student speaks rudely to the teacher, a consequence may be that the teacher does not respond to the comment, or simply reminds the student to speak courteously. A punishment may be that the teacher scolds the student in the presence of others , or even imposes a detention (“Stay after school for 15 minutes”).

Conflict resolution and problem solving

When a student misbehaves persistently and disruptively, you will need strategies that are more active and assertive than the ones discussed so far, and that focus on conflict resolution —the reduction of disagreements that persist over time. Conflict resolution strategies that educators and teachers tend to use usually have two parts (Jones, 2004). First, they involve ways of identifying what “the” problem is precisely. Second, they remind the student of classroom expectations and rules with simple clarity and assertiveness, but without apology or harshness. When used together, the two strategies not only reduce conflicts between a teacher and an individual student, but also provide a model for other students to follow when they have disagreements of their own. The next sections discuss the nature of assertion and clarification for conflict resolution in more detail.

Step 1: clarifying and focusing: problem ownership

Classrooms can be emotional places even though their primary purpose is to promote thinking rather than expression of feelings. The emotions can be quite desirable: they can give teachers and students “passion” for learning and a sense of care among members of the class. But feelings can also cause trouble if students misbehave: at those moments negative feelings—annoyance, anger, discomfort—can interfere with understanding exactly what is wrong and how to set things right again. Gaining a bit of distance from the negative feelings is exactly what those moments need, especially on the part of the teacher, the person with (presumably) the greatest maturity.

In a widely cited approach to conflict resolution called Teacher Effectiveness Training, the educator Thomas Gordon describes this challenge as an issue of problem ownership , or deciding whose problem a behavior or conflict it really is (Gordon, 2003). The “owner” of the problem is the primary person who is troubled or bothered by it. The owner can be the student committing the behavior, the teacher, or another student who merely happens to see the behavior. Since the owner of a problem needs to take primary responsibility for solving it, identifying ownership makes a difference in how to deal with the behavior or problem effectively.

Suppose, for example, that a student named David makes a remark that the teacher finds offensive (like “Sean is fat”). Is this remark the student’s problem or the teacher’s? If David made the comment privately to the teacher and is unlikely to repeat it, then maybe it is only the teacher’s problem. If he is likely to repeat it to other students or to Sean himself, however, then maybe the problem is really David’s. On the other hand, suppose that a different student, Sarah, complains repeatedly that classmates refuse to let her into group projects. This is less likely to be the teacher’s problem rather than Sarah’s: her difficulty may affect her ability to do her own work, but not really affect the teacher or classmates directly. As you might suspect, too, a problem may sometimes affect several people at once. David, who criticized Sean, may discover that he offended not only the teacher, but also classmates, who therefore avoid working with him. At that point the whole class begins to share in some aspect of “the” problem: not only is David prevented from working with others comfortably, but also classmates and the teacher begin dealing with bad feelings about David.

Step 2: active, empathetic listening

Diagnosing accurately who really has a problem with a behavior—who “owns” it—is helped by a number of strategies. One is active listening —attending carefully to all aspects of what a student says and attempting to understand or empathize as fully as possible, even if you do not agree with what is being said (Cooper & Simonds, 2003). Active listening involves asking questions in order continually to check your understanding. It also involves encouraging the student to elaborate on his or her remarks, and paraphrasing and summarizing what the student says in order to check your perceptions of what is said. It is important not to move too fast toward solving the problem with advice, instructions, or scolding, even if these are responses that you might, as a teacher, feel responsible for making. Responding too soon with solutions can shut down communication prematurely, and leave you with inaccurate impressions of the source or nature of the problem.

Step 3: assertive discipline and I-messages

Once you have listened well to the student’s point of view, it helps to frame your responses and comments in terms of how the student’s behavior affects you in particular, especially in your role as the teacher. The comments should have several features:

• They should be assertive —neither passive and apologetic, nor unnecessarily hostile and aggressive (Cantor, 1996). State the problem as matter-of-factly as possible: “Joe, you are talking while I’m explaining something”, instead of either “Joe, do you think you could be quiet now?” or “Joe, be quiet!”
• The comments should emphasize I-messages (Gordon, 1981), which are comments that focus on how the problem behavior is affecting the teacher’s ability to teach, as well as how the behavior makes the teacher feel. They are distinct from you-messages, which focus on evaluating the mistake or problem which the student has created. An I-message might be, “Your talking is making it hard for me to remember what I’m trying to say.” A you-message might be, “Your talking is rude.”
• The comments should encourage the student to think about the effects of his or her actions on others—a strategy that in effect encourages the student to consider the ethical implications of the actions (Gibbs, 2003). Instead of simply saying: “When you cut in line ahead of the other kids, that was not fair to them”, you can try saying, “How do you think the other kids feel when you cut in line ahead of them?”

Step 4: negotiation

The first three steps describe ways of interacting that are desirable, but also fairly specific in scope and limited in duration. But in themselves, they may not be enough when conflict persists over time and develops a number of complications or confusing features. A student may persist in being late for class, for example, in spite of efforts by the teacher to modify this behavior. Or two students may repeatedly speak rudely to each other, even though the teacher has mediated this conflict in the past. Or a student may fail to complete homework, time after time. Because these problems develop over time, and because they may involve repeated disagreements, they can eventually become stressful for the teacher, the student, and any classmates who may be affected. Their persistence can tempt a teacher simply to dictate a resolution—a decision that can leave everyone feeling defeated, including the teacher.

Often in these situations it is better to negotiate a solution, which means systematically discussing options and compromising on one if possible. Although negotiation always requires time and effort, it is often less time or effort than continuing to cope with the original problem, and the results can be beneficial to everyone. A number of experts on conflict resolution have suggested strategies for negotiating with students about persistent problems (Davidson & Wood, 2004). The suggestions vary in detail, but usually include some combination of the steps we have already discussed above, along with a few others:

• Decide as accurately as possible what the problem is. Usually this step involves a lot of the active listening described above.
• Brainstorm possible solutions, and then consider their effectiveness. Remember to include students in this step; otherwise you end up simply imposing a solution on others, which is not what negotiation is supposed to achieve.
• If possible, choose a solution by consensus. Complete agreement on the choice may not be possible, but strive for it as best you can. Remember that taking a vote may be a democratic, acceptable way to settle differences in some situations, but if feelings are running high, voting does not work as well. In that case voting may simply allow the majority to impose its will on the minority, leaving the underlying conflict unresolved.
• Pay attention to how well the solution works after it is underway. For many reasons, things may not work out the way you or students hope or expect. You may need to renegotiate the solution at a later time.

Keeping management issues in perspective

There are two primary messages from this chapter. One is that management issues are important, complex, and deserving of serious attention. The other is that strategies exist that can reduce, if not eliminate, management problems when and if they occur. We have explained some of those strategies—including some intended to prevent problems and others intended to remedy problems.

But there is an underlying assumption about management that this chapter emphasized fully: that good classroom management is not an end in itself, but a means for creating a classroom where learning happens and students are motivated. Amidst the stresses of handling a problem behavior, there is a risk of losing sight of this idea. Telling a student to be quiet is never a goal in itself, for example; it is desirable only because (or when) it allows all students to hear the teacher’s instructions or classmates’ spoken comments, or because it allows students to concentrate on their work. There may actually be moments when students’ keeping quiet is not appropriate, such as during a “free choice” time in an elementary classroom or during a group work task in a middle school classroom. As teachers, we need to keep this perspective firmly in mind. Classroom management should serve students’ learning, and not the other way around. The next chapter is based on this idea, because it discusses ways not just to set the stage for learning, as this chapter has done, but ways to plan directly for students’ learning.

Chapter summary

Classroom management is the coordination of lessons and activities to make learning as productive as possible. It is important because classrooms are complex and somewhat unpredictable, because students respond to teachers’ actions in diverse ways, and because society requires that students attend school. There are two major features of management: preventing problems before they occur and responding to them after they occur. Many management problems can be prevented by attending to how classroom space is used, by establishing daily procedures, routines, and rules, by pacing and structuring activities appropriately, and by communicating the importance of learning and of positive behavior to students and parents. There are several ways of dealing with a management problem after it occurs, and the choice depends on the nature of the problem. A teacher can simply ignore a misbehavior, gesture or cue students nonverbally, rely on natural and logical consequences, or engage conflict resolution strategies. Whatever tactics the teacher uses, it is important to keep in mind their ultimate purpose: to make learning possible and effective.

On the Internet

< www.theteachersguide.com/Class Management .htm > This is part of a larger website for teachers containing resources of all kinds. This section—about classroom management—has several articles with very “nuts and bolts” tips about management. You may also find their page of resources for substitute teachers useful.

< www.teachnet.com > Another website for teachers with lots of resources of all kinds. A section called “Power Tools” has dozens of brief articles about various aspects of classroom management.

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Educational Psychology Copyright © 2019 by Kelvin Seifert and Rosemary Sutton is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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A Classroom Management Training Helps New Teachers Send Fewer Kids to the Office

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Understanding and managing a room full of students is often a “trial by fire” for less experienced educators, according to Megan Ryan, the mentor coordinator for teacher professional development at the Louisa County, Va., public schools.

“A lot of new teachers have this slightly romanticized idea about what their classroom is going to look like,” Ryan said. “They were in a wonderfully managed classroom [as student-teachers] with their cooperating teacher, and I don’t think a lot of them got to see the work in the background that went into that. They just feel like all students are going to listen and be engaged—and they don’t.”

That’s why Louisa County and other districts nationwide are exploring ways to help teachers—and particularly novices—better understand students’ social and behavioral cues. With explicit training on classroom management—a skill often underdeveloped in teacher-preparation programs—the thinking goes that teachers will cultivate closer relationships with their students and better manage, or prevent, disruptions that might otherwise result in a student being sent to the office for discipline.

New research suggests teacher training like the program used in Louisa County can significantly improve class climate and reduce disparities that result in students of color being disciplined disproportionately.

Class discipline has proven a thorny problem for schools, particularly amid post-pandemic increases in student behavior problems and disengagement. In an EdWeek Research Center survey last year, 70 percent of educators said students were behaving worse than they did in 2018-19, and 68 percent reported student morale falling during the same period.

But punishments that remove students from class lead to lost instruction and often further disengagement. Civil rights data show Black students, for example, can lose more than three times as much instructional time as their white classmates from exclusionary discipline.

Some efforts to reduce racial discipline gaps have focused on training teachers to avoid implicit, or unconscious, bias when gauging student behavior. But studies suggest anti-bias training has limited benefits and in some cases worsens stereotyping of students. That’s where the classroom management training Louisa County and other districts are working on could prove more effective.

“By focusing teachers’ attention on their interactions with kids and really trying to read kids’ cues correctly, essentially you bypass some of the racial biases by focusing just on behavior,” said Robert Pianta, the director of the Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning at the University of Virginia. “From the kids’ perspective, you are responding more accurately to their cues.”

Take what Pianta calls a “garden-variety misbehavior”: a student doodling or staring into space while a teacher is talking. Prior studies have found implicit racial biases can lead teachers to interpret the same behavior more negatively from students of color than from white students, particularly boys.

Teachers with less effective classroom management often interpret the behavior personally and negatively, Pianta said: “This kid wants to make life difficult for me.”

More experienced teachers are more likely to interpret the behavior neutrally—that the student may be confused or may need more scaffolding to be engaged, for example—and are more likely to ask the student questions about the behavior rather than jumping to discipline.

Classroom-management shortcomings worsen discipline gaps

Teachers who refer high numbers of students out of the classroom for discipline are more likely to be early in their careers, and they’re more likely than other teachers to refer students of color at higher rates than their white peers.

Jing Liu, an assistant professor of education policy at the University of Maryland, College Park, and his colleagues tracked office referrals for 2,900 K-12 teachers at more than 100 urban California schools from 2016 to 2020. They found that roughly 5 percent of teachers were responsible for nearly 35 percent of office discipline referrals.

These high-referring educators—overwhelmingly in their first three years in the field—sent a student to the office for discipline about once every four days, often for subjective misbehavior like defiance, a category found more frequently to be associated with cultural and ethnic bias. By contrast, other teachers on average sent less than one student to the office every other month.

The racial disparities in these high-referring teachers’ disciplinary referrals were so staggering that the study estimated providing better classroom-management training for high-referring teachers could halve racial discipline gaps between Black and white students.

(According to the most recent federal civil rights data , Black students made up 15 percent of all K-12 public school students but accounted for nearly 27 percent of students without disabilities who had to serve an out-of-school suspension at least once in 2020.)

By focusing teachers' attention on their interactions with kids and really trying to read kids' cues correctly, essentially you bypass some of the racial biases by focusing just on behavior.

Such wide discipline gaps “beg the question of the extent to which teacher-preparation programs are addressing issues with aspiring teachers about inequities in the use of discipline strategies in the classroom,” said Heather Peske, the president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, which reviews teacher-preparation programs for the classroom-management strategies they teach by examining program materials and syllabi and, in some cases, interviewing students and staff. “We know that the consequences of poor classroom management are often far worse for students of color. Better training in classroom management could help teachers head off behavior challenges before they become so problematic that a teacher would need to resort to disciplinary referral.”

Limited classroom-management training

In policy, schools have been attempting to move away from discipline that takes students out of the classroom, but most teachers receive little preparation in implementing more positive and inclusive classroom-management approaches.

Inclusive discipline approaches like restorative justice depend on strong teacher-student relationships, but the National Council on Teacher Quality finds many teachers get little preparation in the best practices for building those relationships.

The council’s reviews of teacher-prep programs include an analysis of their emphasis on what NCTQ considers to be five key, evidence-based instructional practices, including praising students’ good behavior, articulating and applying clear consequences for misbehavior, and engaging students through interesting lessons that provide ample opportunities for participation.

“Reinforcing good behavior with praise stands out to us because it’s the least likely to be taught and the least likely to be practiced in teacher prep, even though it has the most research behind its efficacy ,” Peske said.

Only 27 percent of teacher -prep programs required that aspiring teachers learn to reinforce positive classroom behavior, according to NCTQ’s most recent, 2020 review of classroom management practices in teacher prep programs.

In a nationally representative survey of 953 educators conducted from Jan. 31 to March 4 of this year, 39 percent of K-12 educators told the EdWeek Research Center that they had never received explicit classroom-management instruction in their teacher-preparation program. Another 8 percent of educators said they had never participated in a formal teacher-training program.

Even among educators who told the EdWeek Research Center that they did have classroom management training, its quality and usefulness varied widely.

“We had one semester of classroom management,” one teacher recalled in an open-ended section of the survey. “It felt helpful at the time, but didn’t much prepare me for an actual classroom.”

One veteran teacher who participated in classroom-management training in the 1990s, said it focused “primarily about ‘what’ and not necessarily about ‘why’ or ‘how,’” the teacher recalled. “We are now very aware of the importance of creating an inclusive community of learners (the ‘why’) rooted in behavior modeled by adults (the ‘how’) for respectful communication, emotional regulation, and active engagement in the learning process.”

Requirements for teacher prep programs vary significantly by state, field of study, and accrediting group, according to the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. The Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium ‘s 2013 model standards for teacher preparation do call for teachers to understand how to create a positive learning environment and suggest a teacher should understand “how personal identity, worldview, and prior experience affect perceptions and expectations,” and recognize “how they may bias behaviors and interactions with others.”

Building teachers’ self-reflection

Ryan, the mentor coordinator in Louisa County, located northwest of Richmond, is trying to help teachers understand the how’s and why’s behind classroom management.

Since 2018, the district has participated in the My Teaching Partner program, developed at the University of Virginia. Participating teachers learn to record and analyze their own lessons, looking for and analyzing students’ social cues and behavioral triggers.

Ryan said new teachers often don’t take enough time at the start of the school year to get to know their students and explain the purposes behind class procedures and routines.

“They may feel like it’s taking away from instructional time, so we really try to focus on the fact that if they put in that time at the beginning of the year, the benefits and the payoff down the road are going to outweigh losing some instruction time,” she said.

In two-week cycles throughout the year, Ryan records and analyzes lessons with each of her teachers. She seeks three, one-minute clips in which the teacher uses strong, effective, and specific communication with their students, rather than general critiques.

In one clip, Ryan said, a teacher “gave a little grace” on an assignment after learning that a student was late because he had been caring for six siblings. In reviewing another, Ryan called out a strong content discussion, “where the teacher and the student are in a good feedback loop, and they’re having a really deep conversation with good questioning skills.”

Rachel Post, a 6th grade math teacher at William Wirt Middle School in Prince George’s County, Md., who participated in the My Teaching Partner training in 2020, said recording her lessons helped her be “honest” and catch student reactions she would otherwise miss.

“I may be working one-on-one with a student or managing some behavior problem, but there’s so many things that I miss,” she said in one program video. “The thing about watching yourself on video is that you see all of that and you can’t really hide behind excuses.”

After eight of these two-week cycles, a study found teachers who participated in the mentoring program were referring fewer students for discipline outside the classroom and had no discipline gaps between Black and white students. Participating teachers’ students, across all races and achievement levels, also had higher engagement.

“You watch these shifts in the teacher’s behavior and then you also watch shifts in the kids’ behavior,” Pianta said. “They’re paying attention more. They’re looking like they’re enjoying the classroom more, participating in the classroom to a greater extent. … It’s like the classroom becomes a more active environment.”

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Education management, monitoring and evaluation

Education management relies on complex institutional and organizational administrative arrangements mobilizing resources such as teachers, educational infrastructures, materials, and equipment to deliver quality education services to the population. Access to accurate and timely information is critical for ministries of education to implement, monitor and evaluate administrative and educational processes.

For decades, UNESCO has been providing technical assistance and capacity development services on education management, monitoring and evaluation to Member States, mobilizing its network of field offices and specialized institutes (notably IIEP and UIS). UNESCO also promotes the development of standards, methodologies, and tools to help governments strengthen their education management capacities and setup digitalized information systems (EMIS).

Education sector management refers to the administration of the education system. Its overall goal is to create and maintain environments within education administration and educational institutions that promote, support, and sustain teaching and learning effectively and efficiently. To provide quality education, governments need to ensure availability of relevant educational services for learners on a day-to-day basis. This requires efficient institutional and organizational arrangements for mobilization of resources such as teachers, educational infrastructures, materials, and equipment, as well as strong capacities to organize and manage these resources in an optimal and cost-effective manner while ensuring that delivery of education services translates into quality learning outcomes for learners. 

Inadequate management capacity at different levels of ministries of education and in schools can hinder the success of education sector reforms and plans and the delivery of quality education. Many countries face difficulties in using resources effectively to improve education services because they lack management capacity. 

To be efficient, education management relies on accurate and timely information to implement, monitor and evaluate administrative and educational processes. Education Management Information Systems (EMISs) play a cornerstone role in that regard, enabling decision-makers, administrative employees, and education practitioners to access critical information required to drive their work. Information technologies offer new pathways and opportunities for education sector management and monitoring and evaluation, allowing governments to establish real-time data systems informing decisions and education practices at all levels. Yet, the global digital divide remains a reality and UNESCO advocates for the implementation of realistic and carefully designed data, monitoring and evaluation systems aligned with capacities available in countries. 

For decades, UNESCO has been providing technical assistance and capacity development services on education planning, management and monitoring and evaluation to Member States, mobilizing its network of field offices and specialized institutes (notably IIEP and UIS). UNESCO promotes the development of standards, methodologies, and tools to help governments strengthen their capacities.  

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Experiential learning and education in management.

• D. Christopher Kayes D. Christopher Kayes School of Business, George Washington University
•  and  Anna B. Kayes Anna B. Kayes Business Administration, Stevenson University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190224851.013.294
• Published online: 23 February 2021

Experiential learning describes the process of learning that results from gathering and processing information through direct engagement with the world. In contrast to behavioral approaches to learning, which describe learning as behavioral changes that result from the influence of external factors such as rewards and punishments, learning from experience places the learner at the center of the learning process. Experiential learning has conceptual roots in John Dewey’s pragmatism. One of the most influential approaches to experiential learning in management and management education is David Kolb’s experiential learning theory (ELT) and the learning cycle that describes learning as a four-phase process of direct experience, reflection, abstract thinking, and experimentation.

Experiential learning has been influential in management education as well as adult education because it addresses a number of concerns with traditional education and emphasizes the role of the learner in the learning process. It has been adopted by over 30 disciplines across higher education and has been extensively applied to management, organizations, and leadership development. The popularity of the experiential learning approach is due to many factors, including the growing discontent with traditional education, the desire to create more inclusive and active learning environments, and a recognition of the role that individual differences plays in learning. A renewed interest in experiential learning has brought about new and expanded conceptualizations of what it means to learn from experience. Variations on experiential learning include critical approaches to learning, brain science, and dual-processing approaches.

While the term “experiential learning” is used by scholars to describe a specific philosophy or theory of learning, it often refers to many management education activities, including the use of experiences outside the classroom such as study abroad, internships, and service learning. Experiential learning also includes educational “experiential” learning activities inside the classroom. Within organizations, experiential learning provides an underlying conceptual framework for popular learning and leadership development programs such as emotional intelligence, strengths-based approaches, and appreciative inquiry.

There is a growing recognition that experiential learning is the basis for many management practices such as strategy creation, research and development, and decision-making. Applications of experiential learning and education in management include simulations and exercises, learning style and educator roles, learning as a source of resilience, learning attitudes and other learning-based experiences, learning flexibility, cross-cultural factors, and team learning.

Emerging research interest is also found in the relationship between experiential learning and expertise, intuition, mastery, and professional and career development, decision-making, and judgment in organizations.

• experiential learning
• leadership development
• learning-based experiences
• learning styles
• adult education
• management education
• Kolb learning theory
• pragmatism learning theory
• cross-cultural learning
• team learning

Introduction to Experiential Learning and Education in Management

An overview of experiential learning theory (ELT) and related concepts demonstrates the broad influence of experiential learning to management, management education, and workplace learning. Experiential learning and education can take many forms and specific applications include action learning, problem-based learning, and team-based learning (Wurdinger & Carlson, 2010 ). While there are multiple streams and agendas that fall under the term “experiential learning,” Kolb’s ( 1984 , 2014 ) ELT provides an organizing framework because it is widely cited in the management educational literature and has been highly influential in practice. Further, as an integrative approach to learning, Kolb’s theory integrates assumptions across different approaches to learning.

Experiential learning has had a significant influence on management education and learning; its influence has reached beyond the areas of education and learning to include management and organizational and human resource management practices.

Theory and Concepts

What is experiential learning and experiential education.

Experiential learning is the process of learning through direct experience. Experiential learning in management refers to both a theory of learning as well as activities associated with learning from experience. Experiential learning focuses on the process of learning rather than specific outcomes. In the context of management, experiential learning has been adopted to describe how managers learn on the job and develop personally and professionally. In addition, it describes how managers, leaders, and other members of organizations draw on their direct experience as a source of knowledge that facilitates the goals of the organization.

Experiential learning has been highly influential in management and adult education, having been adopted in the teaching of over 30 academic disciplines. This growing influence is due to many factors, including:

a growing discontent with traditional education methods that include lectures, memorization, declarative knowledge, and standardized testing (Pfeffer & Fong, 2002 );

the desire to create a more inclusive learning environment (Ely, Ibarra, & Kolb, 2011 );

a recognition of the role that individual differences and culture plays in learning (Han, Seok, & Kim, 2017 ; Holtbrugge & Mohr, 2010 );

the ability of experiential learning theory to address important challenges that organizations face in terms of learning, leadership development, organizational and individual change, and improving diversity and inclusion (e.g., Ng, Van Dyne, & Ang, 2009 );

an integrated approach to learning that recognizes a multidisciplinary understanding of how people learn (e.g., Hoover, Giambatista, Sorenson, & Boomer, 2010 ); and

the need for a learning theory that addresses both the practical and the theoretical needs of adult learning (Ghoshal, 2005 ).

The Contributions of Kolb’s Theory

David Kolb’s theory is one of the most widely cited and applied approaches to experiential learning. 1

A Description of Kolb’s Theory of Experiential Learning

Kolb’s experiential learning theory describes learning as a process of engaging with the world through different learning processes or modes. He defines learning as the process of transforming knowledge through experience. Learning involves two modes of knowledge transformation: a gathering mode and a processing mode. In turn, the gathering mode includes two subprocesses: gathering new information through the use of senses, which is called learning through concrete experience, and gathering new information through the use of abstract concepts, which is called learning through abstract conceptualization. The knowledge processing mode includes two subprocesses: processing information through reflection, which is called learning through reflective observation, or processing information through action, which is called learning through active experimentation. Taken together, these subactivities describe learning as a fourfold process:

Concrete experience: use of senses through direct experience;

Reflective observation: reflection on that experience;

Abstract conceptualization: conceptualizing the experience in the context of prior knowledge; and

Active experimentation: taking action on the experience by considering the action in the real world.

These four learning processes constitute a learning cycle. 2 The four-phase cycle involves concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation. Kolb and Kolb ( 2005 ) have expanded the model to include a total of nine learning processes: experiencing, imagining, reflecting, analyzing, thinking, deciding, acting, initiating, and balancing. Figure 1 depicts the four-phase cycle of experiential learning as it applies to learning in management.

Figure 1. The four-phase experiential learning cycle.

Theoretical Roots of the Kolb Model

Kolb’s ELT traces its conceptual roots to the pragmatic philosophical tradition, most notably John Dewey’s ( 1938/1998 ) book Experience and Education . For Dewey, life is experienced as a continuous flow of events. However, this sense of continuity becomes disrupted by a particular event or series of events or episodes that force learners to consider their experience more deliberately. Continuity is interrupted when a learner becomes either “struck” or “stuck.” The learner is struck when something shocking or dramatic occurs that forces the learner to further consider her experiences. Learners become stuck as they are no longer able to make progress or solve a problem. The opportunity for learning arises when learners reflect on these experiential events or episodes.

Psychologist William James ( 1912/1976 ), from the pragmatic tradition, has also had a key influence on experiential learning. James’s notion of “radical empiricism” emphasizes the inductive process of learning. As an inductive process, learning begins with experience. The experience then forms the basis of more generalized assumptions as people’s unique experiences are put into the context of abstract concepts. While experiential learning can be traced to Dewey and James, Kolb builds on these philosophical traditions by integrating other learning theories, including those of social psychologist and management scholar Kurt Lewin ( 1951 ), child psychologist Jean Piaget ( 1968 ), and developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky ( 1930/1978 ).

Ultimately, Kolb’s theory of experiential learning is an integrative approach that combines different assumptions about how people learn into a holistic framework of learning. Each of the four phases of learning is tied to a set of learning processes. For example, the process of experience is based on the role of sensory perceptions, while the process of reflection is influenced by an approach to learning that is based on self-awareness and self-knowledge, especially in the context of social, economic, and political factors. The process of abstract thinking is influenced by cognitive approaches to learning while the process of active experimentation is influenced by behaviorist approaches. Despite the broad influences of diverse learning theories, Kolb moves beyond theoretical integration to offer a unique perspective on what it means to learn. The theory is not simply a reconfiguration of existing theories, but the integration of theories results in a new description of how people learn from experience.

Highlights of Kolb’s Theory

Kolb’s approach to experiential learning brings several unique considerations to management learning, including a description of the inherent tension of learning, an appreciation for the interaction between the person and the environment, and an optimistic and person-centered approach to learning.

First, Kolb’s approach describes the inherent tension between different modes or processes of learning. Learning is thus a tension-filled process of choosing between different modes of learning. Learning requires the learner to resolve these tensions when processing information. For example, a manager may need to make a decision and, in so doing, experiences a tension between using direct experience or abstract concepts. Direct experience would be more closely linked with a “gut” feeling or intuition, while abstract concepts may rely more on data. In other cases, a manager may experience a tension between reflection and action. Reflection would require gathering more information, gathering new opinions and input, and considering alternative options. Action requires timely action and seeing the results rather than taking time to gather additional data.

Second, experiential learning emphasizes an interaction between the person and the environment. Kurt Lewin’s ( 1951 ) description of behavior as the interaction of person and environment takes on relevance here. As an interaction, learning is a transaction between the individual learners and the social and physical world around them. Using their sensory perceptions (experiences) and prior knowledge (abstract concepts gathered over time), managers test their assumptions and actions in practice. Thus, there is a constant interaction between various emotional and cognitive processes and social and environmental processes.

Third, experiential learning offers an inherent optimism about the human potential to learn. The individual is placed at the center of the learning process, and experiential learning is often considered a “learner-centered approach” because it is focused on understanding the needs, desires, goals, ambitions, and so on, of the individual as the basis for learning. This inherent desire to learn can be the source of motivation and progress for individual learners. In this way, experiential learning emphasizes the potential of individuals and thus is a humanist approach to learning because of its optimism about the inherent potential of people to learn and grow under the right conditions.

Variations and Developments of Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory

Several variations of Kolb’s formulation of experiential learning have emerged, expanding understanding of what it means for managers to learn from experience. Three of these approaches are explored: critical approaches, brain and mind approaches, and dual processing approaches.

Critical Approaches

Critical approaches to experiential learning carry multiple agendas but generally focus on two concerns: (a) power relations and their impact on learning, and (b) the role of internal psychological states, including emotions, psychological defense mechanisms, and social, political, and economic assumptions that may influence how people learn.

In the critical approach, the learner’s experience with anxiety is central to learning. Anxiety is an inevitable part of learning, according to this perspective, because learning takes the learner into a place of discomfort. Learning thus is like moving into unchartered waters. Vince ( 1998 ), for example, emphasized how the ambiguity and uncertainty that emerge in times of learning and change can block learning. Anxiety results from ambiguity, but as the learners overcome the anxiety, they develop the capacity to learn. When learners cannot effectively deal with the anxiety, they become stifled in their learning and are likely to repeat the experience without learning. In order for learning from experiences to occur, managers need to understand their own tolerance and ability to deal with ambiguity. Despite their anxiety, they need to learn to take action. The key to learning is not to release the anxiety, but rather to recognize and address the source of the anxiety.

In addition to the focus on anxiety and ambiguity, critical approaches to experiential learning are interested in the politics and power that can block learning. The emphasis is on how learners perceive and conceive experience. What is recognized as important learning experiences is shaped by power relations within and around the learning process. Reynolds ( 2009 ) provides an insight into how critical approaches to experiential learning can have an even greater emphasis on the practice and teaching of management and the related area of leadership.

An experience-based approach provides managers and “leaders” with the opportunity to develop an understanding based on their professional experience, reflecting on the social and political process of leadership and on the different ways that working definitions of leadership evolve in different contexts. It offers possibilities of learning through making sense of past situations or by examining current experience via here-and-now activities designed for that purpose and which provide the opportunity to learn in real time about the social and political processes of leadership and the different ways it is constructed, negotiated, and experienced. (p. 391)

Brain and Mind Approaches

In addition to critical perspectives on experiential learning, brain science offers a promising approach to improve learning. The approach looks at how microprocesses within the brain contribute to learning. For example, brain science provides details on how short-term memory differs from long-term memory and how different facets of the brain respond to new stimuli from the environment.

Zull’s ( 2002 , 2011 ) review of brain and mind research through the lens of experiential learning offers insights into how brain and mind research can enhance the understanding of experiential learning. Zull sees “a natural connection between brain structure and learning” (p. 14) and makes a direct connection between the experiential learning cycle and the brain. This draws important connections between experiential learning and the key executive functions of the brain associated with managing (see Chan, Wang, & Ybarra, 2018 ).

The connections between brain functions and phases of the experiential learning cycle are of particular note. The role of the brain cortex is primarily threefold: sensing, integrating, and acting. Sensing involves direct experience as a sensory function through seeing, touching, smelling, tasting, and hearing. The sensory information is then sent to various integrative regions throughout the brain, including the frontal integrative cortex, (e.g., prefrontal cortex) and the sensory and postsensory integrative cortex. The integrative cortex describes a set of processes associated with making meaning from sensory information and how that meaning is stored and accessed in long-term memory. Meaning making is a complex process that involves placing sensory information into language and images. From language and images, the brain creates meaningful patterns, ideas, and thoughts. These patterns, ideas, and thoughts are then organized into plans of action in the motor cortex. Zull’s description connects the mind’s functions to the four processes of experiential learning:

Concrete experience involves gathering knowledge through sensory input through the sensory cortex.

Reflective observation involves making associations with past experiences, mental “reruns” of experiences, and selective editing of experiences.

Reflective observation combined with abstract conceptualization place the sensory information into patterns through the integrative cortexes.

Finally, active experimentation involves the integrative motor cortex in concert with the prefrontal cortex, which directs future action plans. 3 Zull also points to additional ways that mind science connects to experiential learning. Brain research has demonstrated that the entire learning process can unfold in a period of microseconds or it can unfold over a period of days, months, and years. Also, brain research confirms that learning does not always go through an orderly cycle as described by the fourfold process of learning, but that learning does require a complete cycle. Brain connections are not one-way interactions and learning can occur in different patterns, not necessarily in the order offered by experiential learning.

Dual Processing Approaches

Future research on the mind may provide insight into processes that shape experience such as the role of long-term memory and the “hidden mind,” the preconscious processes that shape decision-making, guide action, constitute intuition, and shape learning and development. Kayes ( 2002 ) offered a dual processing approach to learning that describes two simultaneous processes of learning: a conscious process within the awareness of the individual, and a “hidden” or preconscious approach (see Miner, 2015 for an application in organizations).

Drawing on a theory proposed by neo-Freudian psychologist Jacque Lacan, Kayes demonstrates that experiential learning had built-in assumptions of these two processes within the learning cycle. He argued that the experiential learning cycle involves tacit (intrapersonal) processes of learning as well as explicit (interpersonal) processes of learning. The learning cycle represents a natural interaction between interpersonal and intrapersonal knowing. To further support this connection, Kayes references the initial assumption of experiential learning as an interaction between the person and the environment. A dual process theory of experiential learning considers more overtly the dual conscious and preconscious processes associated with learning by embracing self-awareness as a key to learning from experience.

Applications to Management Education

This section outlines some of the ways that experiential learning and the learning cycle have been applied to management. While the term experiential learning is used by scholars to describe a specific philosophy or theory of learning, it is also used to refer to many management and management education activities. Learning is no longer considered a secondary process for management success but is seen as the primary activity of managers. This section examines the diversity of ways that experiential learning has been applied in management and emphasizes key contributions, including applications to learning simulations and exercises, a focus on how learning plays a more central role in management practice as it applies to areas such as cross-cultural adaptation, resilience, and teams.

As managers increasingly face changing and complex situations, learning becomes a key tool for navigating these changes and complexities. Learning plays an important role beyond traditional training and education, but also serves as a core function of management (Dixon, 2017 ). Experiential learning and the learning cycle have been described as essential for key organizational processes such as problem-solving, project management, scenario planning (Van der Heijden, 2002 ), strategic planning, research and development, after-action reviews, organizational culture (Thomas, Sugiyama, Rochford, Stephens, & Kanov, 2018 ), and cross-cultural adaptation of executives (Yamazki & Kayes, 2007 ).

Experiential learning has also been connected to the development of expertise (Ericsson, Charness, Feltovich, & Hoffman, 2006 ), intuition (see, e.g., Kahneman & Klein, 2009 ; Klein, 1999 , 2008 ), mastery (Bloom, 1971 ), and professional and career development (see Berlew & Hall, 1966 ). Within organizations, experiential learning provides an underlying conceptual framework to understanding popular learning and leadership development programs such as emotional intelligence, strengths-based approaches, and appreciative inquiry.

Experiential learning and the learning cycle have been applied to a variety of management education processes, programs, and exercises. Peer-reviewed journals such as Simulation and Gaming , Journal of Management Education , Management Teaching Review , and Journal of Experiential Education provide an extensive source of exercises, simulations, and other materials for developing and implementing experiential activities. The Academy of Management Learning and Education and Management Learning are additional journals that seek to provide academic inquiry into management learning, including experiential learning. Experiential learning exercises can be found in books such as The handbook of experiential learning and management education (Reynolds & Vince, 2007 ).

Simulations and Exercises

Experiential learning and education have been implemented in organizations and in higher education through simulations and exercises. The application of experiential learning to in-class exercises and simulations encourages the creation of common experiences among participants in a classroom. These interactions, then, serve as the basis for future learning. These activities may include role plays, participating in improvisation, watching a movie clip, engaging in an activity, or reading a case study. Participants would then share their reaction to the learning experience and discuss how it may or may not impact their day-to-day workplace or life. In many of these exercises, the experiences are then tied to course concepts or key learning points. For example, the participants may watch a clip from a television show that demonstrates conflict, and participants would explain how the course concepts associated with conflict and conflict resolution may be utilized in various situations they have encountered. In this way, participants are asked to apply what they learned from this situation to future actions they may take. One approach that seeks to recreate a natural setting is the integration of theater techniques and theater professionals into the management classroom, which creates a rich context to generate and reflect on experiences (Clark & Kayes, 2019 ).

Experiential learning can also occur outside of formal classrooms. For example, outdoor leadership training, field trips, and outdoor “team-building” exercises such as ropes courses are often based on the notion that these activities create experiences that form the basis for learning. Experiential learning also applies to aspects of activities beyond formal instruction, including internships, study abroad, and service-learning activities.

Learning Style and Educator Roles

Learning style and educator roles provide another application of experiential learning. Learning style describes the preferences of individuals to use certain modes of learning over others. For example, an individual may express a preference for direct experience, reflection, abstract conceptualization, active experimentation, or a combination of these processes. Learning style is influenced by a variety of factors, including personality, education, life stage, the nature of problems being addressed, and career. Learning style remains a promising way to understand learning preferences (see, e.g., Holtbrugge & Mohr, 2010 ; Li, Mobley, & Kelly, 2013 ) and how individuals, teams, and organizations engage in the learning cycle. While there are many different approaches to learning and learning style, including different frameworks and measurements, Kolb’s learning style inventory is arguably one of the most widely used models. The original learning style inventory is based on four learning styles:

the creating style (a combination of concrete experience and reflective observation);

the planning style (a combination of reflective observation and abstract conceptualization);

the deciding style (a combination of abstract conceptualization and active experimentation); and

the acting style (a combination of active experimentation and concrete experience).

A more recent configuration of this model includes nine learning styles based on the revised nine learning modes.

There is a growing interest in the role played by the educator in learning from experience. Because experiential learning is a learner-centric approach, the role of the educator, trainer, teacher, facilitator, or coach was often de-emphasized, placing the learner instead in the center of the equation. The role of teacher or other educational professional in experiential learning was simply to cultivate learning in the individual through an eye on the learning process and the development of exercises, interventions, questions, and other activities.

A renewed interest in the role of the educator has resulted in a model of educator preferences as demonstrated through the educator role profile (ERP). The ERP outlines four roles or preferences that educators play relative to the learning cycle.

Educators can take on four different roles:

As a facilitator, the role of the educator is a nondirective approach that seeks to guide the learner rather than “tell” the learner.

The expert role is the more traditional one as the educator serves as a content specialist providing their expertise and knowledge.

The evaluator role is an expectation-setting role, where the educator sets standards and monitors the learner’s desired outcomes.

The coaching role involves the educator working closely with the learner, providing specific feedback and including the learner in the learning process (Kolb, Kolb, Passarelli, & Sharma, 2014 ).

Like learning style, educators, develop a preference for using one mode of educating over another. Educators can use the model to determine their own preferences for educating and then determine if they need to adapt or change based on the needs of the learner, the learning environment, and desired learning outcomes.

Importantly, the role of the educator is not to “style match,” which means match their teaching style to match the learning style of the learner. For example, if the learner’s style has a strong preference for “active experimentation,” then the educator should not try to simply use active learning in order to match the learning style. The goal of the educator is to try to enhance the learning capabilities of the learners by introducing them to a variety of learning processes. This would include active learning, but also finding ways to make concepts more accessible to the learner. The educator may use active learning as a way for the learner to enter the learning cycle but then would be advised to encourage the learner to utilize other modes of learning once the learner’s attention is captured through active learning.

Learning as a Source of Resilience

Another consideration for experiential learning in management is how learning serves as a source of resilience for organizations. Kayes ( 2015 ) argues organizations are more resilient when they adopt learning practices and create a culture that values learning (Kayes, Allen, & Self, 2017 ). Experiential learning activities can advance organizational resilience including: establishing a culture of learning, surfacing and responding to errors, sustained learning, and organizational renewal. The role of the manager is to value learning and promote learning from experience. This is accomplished not only by valuing learning, but also by building a learning culture and introducing learning activities that become institutionalized in the organization. Thus, the organization’s learning values are built through policies, procedures, and practices that support learning. These are summarized in Figure 2 .

Figure 2. Taxonomy of experiential learning activities in organizations.

Drawing on several case studies of organizational disaster and crisis, Kayes ( 2015 ) shows that many disasters occur due to a breakdown of learning. When organizations engage in learning, they build resilience. For example, in the Air France flight 447 disaster, the pilots misdiagnosed a faulty instrument reading. In response, one of the pilots failed to execute the correct maneuver. The pilot turned to this incorrect maneuver because the pilot had not learned, or had not remembered learning, or had not practiced flying the airplane in manual mode. The pilot executed the wrong maneuver in part because he had never experienced this critical situation before. Adding to the situation was pilot stress caused by the aircraft sounding an alarm that engaged when the computer disengaged autopilot. The ensuing repeated warning that rang in the cockpit created stress that limited the pilot’s ability to learn (e.g., diagnose and respond) in the face of the situation at hand (Kayes, 2015 ; Kayes & Yoon, 2016 ).

Attitudes and Learning-Related Experiences

Another area of interest is how attitudes, the underlying thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors about learning, can influence learning. The connection between experiential learning and the nature of those experiences that may support or facilitate learning has yet to be fully articulated.

Research on learning attitudes offers insights into what types of experiences enhance learning. By cultivating these attitudes, individuals can enhance their learning in a variety of ways and overcome the frustration associated with slow progress and new projects (Dweck, 2013 ). Learning attitudes can be thought of as experiences that facilitate or enhance learning or as learning-related experiences, suggesting that the experience of learning is an important area for future study (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997 ). Learning is affected by the nature of human experiences, and certain kinds of experiences are most likely to facilitate learning (Vygotsky & Cole, 1978 ).

Kayes and Yoon ( 2020 ) point to key attitudes that support learning. These include positive emotional engagement, creative problem-solving, learning identity, social support, flexibility, focus, and progress toward learning. Cultivating these attitudes can lead to positive benefits, including overcoming new challenges, improving progress toward desired outcomes, making periods of perceived lack of progress more productive, improving learning, overcoming periods of frustration, and facing change with an open mind. Learning attitudes are summarized in Figure 3 .

Figure 3. Attitudes that facilitate learning.

Two learning attitudes in particular are primed for further research. First, learning flexibility is defined by how easily an individual can “flex” from one mode of learning to another. For example, how easily can individuals move from reflection to action or how easily can they adapt when a situation requires abstract conceptualization but their primary preference is for direct experience (Trinh, 2019 )? Initially, research on the topic of flexibility focused on adaptability specifically within the model of experiential learning (Boyatzis, Mainemelis, & Kolb, 2002 ), with more recent emphasis on general flexibility to learn across different modes of the learning cycle. Second, learning identity is the degree to which someone feels that she is capable of learning and growth. Learning identity reflects an attitude of confidence that learning is possible, as in one’s potential to learn.

Cross-Cultural Factors

In addition to individual and organizational factors, national culture is a consideration in the application of experiential learning. Cross-cultural differences in learning and learning style have been studied. For example, research has shown important connections between learning style and culture, as Yamazaki and Kayes ( 2004 ) identified patterns of how learning styles differ across cultures, how employees adapt to working in new cultures, and in some cases, employees working in a new environment adapt their learning style to the dominant style of the host culture (Kayes, Kayes, & Yamazaki, 2005a ; Kayes, Kayes, & Yamazaki, 2005b ). They hypothesized a taxonomy of cross-cultural competencies: valuing people of different cultures, listening and observing, coping with ambiguity, transforming complex information, taking action and initiative, managing others, and building relationships. Two additional competencies were developmental: managing stress and adaptive flexibility.

Team Learning

With the widespread use of teams in organizations, a particular area of interest in experiential learning is its application to teams. The focus is on how individual learning can contribute to a team’s success. The individual learner contributes to the team through their own increased learning about themselves, their team members, and the desired outcomes and processes of the team. Kayes, Kayes, and Kolb ( 2005 ) build on Mills’ ( 1967 ) research to describe several considerations for application of experiential learning to teams, including the following:

Learning is a process of reflecting among team members. This reflection takes place in a conversational space and involves a high degree of psychological safety (see Edmondson, 1999 ).

The team members develop specialized roles and functions that help them function as a team toward achieving desired outcomes.

The team shifts from a group of individual members to members of a team working toward specific outcomes. The learning cycle comes into play as the process by which teams develop.

Key factors that facilitate or inhibit this progress of the group through this transformation are learning style of team members and the team’s overall learning profile, how the team progresses through the learning cycle, and how a team navigates getting “stuck” in certain phases of learning.

Connections to Experiential-Based Decision-Making and Judgment

Another area of emerging interest is the intersection between experiential learning, judgment, decision-making, and intuition (Kayes & Kayes, in press ). While there are many streams of research associated with these terms, experiential learning offers an integrating framework to understand how leaders and managers learn to make decisions, exercise judgment, and build long-term learning based on experience.

Experiential learning continues to have broad influence in management education and within organizations. Experiential learning provides an organizing framework within management education, and various approaches have emerged that consider what it means for managers to learn from experience. Experiential learning has moved beyond just influencing well-understood processes of learning toward influencing a variety of organizational processes. As part of the growing influence of experiential learning, important factors and emerging topics for research and application are reviewed.

Further Reading

• Kayes, D. C. (2002). Experiential learning and its critics: Preserving the role of experience in management learning and education . Academy of Management Learning & Education , 1 (2), 137–149.
• Kayes, D. C. (2015). Organizational resilience: How learning sustains organizations in crisis, disaster, and breakdowns . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
• Kolb, A. Y. , & Kolb, D. A. (2005). Learning styles and learning spaces: Enhancing experiential learning in higher education . Academy of Management Learning & Education , 4 (2), 193–212.
• Kolb, D. A. (2014). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
• Peterson, K. , & Kolb, D. A. (2017). How you learn is how you live : Using nine ways of learning to transform your life . San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Kohler.
• Berlew, D. E. , & Hall, D. T. (1966). The socialization of managers: Effects of expectations on performance . Administrative Science Quarterly , 11 (2), 207.
• Bloom, B. S. (1971). Mastery learning. In J. H. Block (Ed.), Mastery learning: Theory practice (pp. 47–62). New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
• Chan, T. , Wang, I. M. , & Ybarra, O. (2018). Leading and managing the workplace: The role of executive functions . Academy of Management Perspectives . Advance online publication.
• Clark, R. M. , & Kayes, A. B. (2019). Building leadership storytelling skills: A collaboration between management and theater students . Management Teaching Review . Advance online publication.
• Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997). Finding flow: The psychology of engagement with everyday life . New York, NY: Basic Books.
• Dewey, J. (1998). Experience and education (60th anniversary ed.). West Lafayette, IN: Kappa Delta Pi. Original work published 1938.
• Dixon, N. M. (2017). The organizational learning cycle: How we can learn collectively . London, UK: Routledge.
• Dweck, C. S. (2013). Mindset: The new psychology of success . New York, NY: Random House.
• Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams . Administrative Science Quarterly , 44 (2), 350.
• Ely, R. , & Ibarra, H. , & Kolb, D. (2011). Taking gender into account: Theory and design for women’s leadership development programs . Academy of Management Learning & Education , 10 (3), 474–493.
• Ericsson, K. A. , Charness, N. , Feltovich, P. J. , & Hoffman, R. R. (Eds.). (2006). The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Ghoshal, S. (2005). Bad management theories are destroying good management practices . Academy of Management Learning and Education , 8 (4), 75–91.
• Han, M. , Seok, B , & Kim, J. (2017). Effects of six personality factors on CEOs at small and medium-sized enterprises on performance in business management: Focusing on learning and growth. Asian Academy of Management Journal , 22 (2), 97–128.
• Holtbrügge, D. , & Mohr, A. T. (2010). Cultural determinants of learning style preferences . Academy of Management Learning & Education , 9 (4), 622–637.
• Hoover, J. D. , Giambatista, R. C. , Sorenson, R. L. , & Bommer, W. H. (2010). Assessing the effectiveness of whole person learning pedagogy in skill acquisition. Academy of Management Learning and Education , 9 (2), 192–203.
• James, W. (1976). Essays in radical empiricism . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Original work published 1912
• Kahneman, D. , & Klein, G. (2009). Conditions for intuitive expertise: A failure to disagree . American Psychologist , 64 (6), 515–526.
• Kayes, A. B. , & Kayes, D. C. (Eds.). (in press). Judgment and leadership: A multidisciplinary approach to concepts, practice and development . Cheltenham, UK: Elgar Press.
• Kayes, A. B. , Kayes, D. C. , & Kolb, D. A. (2005). Experiential learning in teams . Simulation & Gaming , 36 (3), 330–354.
• Kayes, A. B. , Kayes, D. C. , & Yamazaki, Y. (2005a). Transferring knowledge across cultures: A learning competencies approach . Performance Improvement Quarterly , 18 (4), 87–100.
• Kayes, D. C. , Kayes, A. B. , & Yamazaki, Y. (2005b). Essential competencies for cross‐cultural knowledge absorption . Journal of Managerial Psychology , 20 (7), 578–589.
• Kayes, D. C. , Allen, N. , & Self, N. (2017). How leaders learn from experience in extreme situations: The case of the U.S. military in Takur Ghar, Afghanistan. In M. O. Holenweger , M. K. Jager , & F. Kernic (Eds.), Leadership in extreme situations (pp. 251–275). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Springer.
• Kayes, D. C. , & Yoon, J. (2016). The breakdown and rebuilding of learning during organizational crisis, disaster, and failure . Organizational Dynamics , 45 (2), 71–79.
• Kayes, D. C. , & Yoon, J. (2020). Learning routines that build organizational resilience. In N. Powley , B. Caza , & A. Caza (Eds.), Handbook of organizational resilience (pp. 203–213). Cheltenham, UK: Elgar Press.
• Klein, G. (1999). Sources of power . Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Klein, G. (2008). Naturalistic decision making . Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society , 50 (3), 456–460.
• Kolb, A. Y. , Kolb, D. A. , Passarelli, A. , & Sharma, G. (2014). On becoming an experiential educator: The educator role profile . Simulation & Gaming , 45 (2), 204–234.
• Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
• Lewin, K. (1951). Field theory in social sciences . New York, NY: Harper & Row.
• Li, M. , Mobley, W. H. , & Kelly, A. (2013). When do global leaders learn best to develop cultural intelligence? An investigation of the moderating role of experiential learning style . Academy of Management Learning & Education , 12 (1), 32–50.
• Mainemelis, C. , Boyatzis, R. E. , & Kolb, D. A. (2002). Learning styles and adaptive flexibility: Testing experiential learning theory . Management Learning , 33 (1), 5–33.
• Mills, T. M. (1967). Sociology of small groups . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
• Miner, J. B. (2015). Organizational behavior (6th ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.
• Ng, K. Y. , Van Dyne, L. , & Ang, S. (2009). From experience to experiential learning: Cultural intelligence as a learning capability for global leader development . Academy of Management Learning and Education , 8 , 511–526.
• Piaget, J. (1968). Structuralism . New York, NY: Harper Torchbooks.
• Pfeffer, J. , & Fong, C. T. , (2002). The end of business schools? Less success than meets the eye . Academy of Management Learning and Education , 1 (1), 78–95.
• Reynolds, M. (2009). Wild frontiers reflections on experiential learning. Management Learning , 40 (4), 387–392.
• Reynolds, M. , & Vince, R. (Eds.). (2007). The handbook of experiential learning and management education . Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• Thomas, N. K. , Sugiyama, K. , Rochford, K. C. , Stephens, J. P. , & Kanov, J. (2018). Experiential organizing: Pursuing relational and bureaucratic goals through symbolically and experientially oriented work . Academy of Management Review , 43 (4), 749–771.
• Trihn, M. P. (2019). Learning identity, flexibility, and lifelong experiential learning . Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Business and Management .
• Van der Heijden, K. (Ed.). (2002). Sixth sense: Accelerating organizational learning with scenarios . Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
• Vince, R. (1998). Behind and beyond Kolb’s learning cycle . Journal of Management Education , 22 (3), 304–319.
• Vygotskiĭ, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes ( M. Cole , V. John-Steiner , S. Scribner , & E. Souberman , Eds.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Original work published 1930
• Wurdinger, S. D. , & Carlson, J. A. (2010). Teaching for experiential learning . Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education.
• Yamazaki, Y. , & Kayes, D. C. (2004). An experiential approach to cross-cultural learning: A review and integration of competencies for successful expatriate adaptation . Academy of Management Learning & Education , 3 (4), 362–379.
• Yamazaki, Y. , & Kayes, D. C. (2007). Expatriate learning: Exploring how Japanese managers adapt in the United States . The International Journal of Human Resource Management , 18 (8), 1373–1395.
• Zull, J. E. (2002). The art of changing the brain: Enriching the practice of teaching by exploring the biology of learning . Sterling, VA: Stylus.
• Zull, J. E. (2011). From brain to mind: Using neuroscience to guide change in education . Sterling, VA: Stylus.

1. A summary of Kolb’s theory can be found in the following link: Experience Based Learning Systems

2. This model is described in more detail through the following link: Video: This is Experiential Learning

3. A visual representation of the brain and related learning activities can be found in the following link: The Experiential Learning Cycle

Related Articles

• Assessment for Learning in Management Education: A Practical Perspective
• Learning Identity, Flexibility, and Lifelong Experiential Learning
• Critical Thinking in Business Research

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27 Classroom Games Students Will Want To Play Again and Again

Practice important skills … and have fun!

The classroom games you choose to play with students may become their favorite memories. (I still remember playing Heads Up, Seven Up in Mrs. Merar’s first grade class!) Classroom games are a great way to build collaboration and community and practice important skills. Plus, they’re fun!

Benefits of Classroom Games

Classroom games capture what kids are naturally good at—playing—to improve other skills. Games support kids’ executive functioning skills , things like planning, organization, turn-taking, and problem-solving are all skills that students need to be successful. Playing games, from Memory to Monopoly, gives kids experience in focus and concentration, working memory, and flexibility in safe spaces where they can grow and stretch these skills. Plus, they’re a fun way to learn more about how your students think and work together.

In addition to all the classroom games listed below, check out our lists of most loved educational board games and best board games for 6-to-12-year-olds .

Here are our favorite classroom games that you can use to teach, reteach, and engage students.

Games for Practicing Academic Skills

Classroom games can help students practice things that they need to know—like multiplication tables, vocabulary words, and science facts. They’re great ways to do a quick review or practice for a quiz.

Math (or Fact) Baseball

Divide the class into two teams. One team is “at bat” and scores runs by answering questions that are worth one, two, or three bases. You “pitch” the questions using flash cards. If the at-bat team answers correctly, they move around the baseball field and rack up runs. If the at-bat team does not answer correctly, the defending team can respond correctly to earn an out. Once the at-bat team has three outs, they switch.

You can also put students into pairs and have them play a partner version.

Why we love it:  This game is great for upper elementary students who are able to follow the game and will love the strategy of earning runs.

Beach Ball Toss

Write questions on the sides of a plastic beach ball. You can write questions about a story (plot, theme, setting, characters, structure), about math (write numbers 1 through 6 on the beach ball and students have to select a math problem based on the number they choose), or simply silly questions that students can answer. As students catch the ball, they answer the question. When they’ve answered, they throw the ball to the next player. If you’re working with material that may be new for some kids, you can give each kid one “pass” and they can share the problem-solving with another student.

Why we love it: It’s flexible and works with students’ eye-hand coordination.

Buy it: Beach Balls at Amazon

Learn more: More Than Elementary

Create a list of topics that students can visualize (think: science concepts, vocabulary words). Students work either in two teams for the entire class or in small groups that are divided into two. One student selects a card and has to draw an image that the other team uses to guess the word. The rest of the group guesses the term that’s being drawn. Add a timer for an added challenge. Provide additional differentiation by allowing students to provide one, two, or more letters in the word as well.

Why we love it: Kids who have strengths in drawing and thinking outside the box can really shine.

Learn more: Differentiation Daily

There’s the Simon Says you know from the playground and the Simon Says classroom game. In this Simon Says, tell students to do something that lets them show off what they’ve learned or practices a skill. So you might say, Simon Says spell “conundrum.” Or Simon Says solve this equation. Play either as a whole class with you as Simon or in small groups with cards of prompts that students can use when they take turns being Simon.

Why we love it: In addition to practicing skills, students also practice listening and impulse control.

20 Questions

Prepare cards with related words or topics. Group students into teams of two to four students. One at a time, students choose a card and the others have to try to guess what the card is by asking questions that can only be answered with a yes or no. Keep track of how many questions are asked, because you’re only allowed 20 questions to get to the answer. Have students put aside the cards they didn’t get for review.

Why we love it: Students practice working memory as they add new information to what they already know.

Also, Guess in 10 is a great 20 Questions–style game played around various topics, including animals, countries, and cities.

Buy it: Guess in 10 at Amazon

Memory is a game that students can do with any content—vocabulary words paired with their definitions, chemistry terms paired with images that depict them, or text structures paired with graphic organizers. First, have students create card pairs. Shuffle the cards and put them on the table. Take turns flipping cards over and finding the matching pairs.

Why we love it: Memory is so versatile you can use this game with anything from procedures to vocabulary to history facts.

Buy it: Blank Memory Cards at Amazon

In charades, students choose a card and act out the information on the card. For a unit on weather, you may have the words cloud , tornado , or hurricane for example. Scaffold this game with three rounds. In the first round, students can explain the topics using a few words. Then, in the second round, they can only use one word to describe what they are acting out. And in the third round, they have to be completely silent, using only their bodies to act out each word.

Why we love it: This game gets students up and moving around and thinking creatively about how to show what they know.

Learn more: Savvy Apple

Put students in the hot seat to review the plot points of a story, practice answering questions, or review for a science test. First, choose vocabulary to review. Then, select a student to sit in the hot seat. The other students ask questions about the topic or information. The student in the hot seat must answer as quickly as possible. If their answer is correct, they stay in the hot seat. If they get a wrong answer, they can pass the seat to someone else. (You can take the pressure out of this game, which can make some students nervous, by removing the timed aspect.)

Why we love it: Hot Seat is a great way to get students to practice information they need to have right at the tip of their tongue.

Scattergories

Scattergories can be played for academics or for fun. It also helps students improve their creative thinking. You’ll need a list of at least 10 categories—mix serious topics with silly ones. Then, select a letter of the alphabet. Have students brainstorm words to go with each category that starts with that letter. So, if the categories you have are Weather, Bees, and Favorite Places, and the letter is H, students might write: hurricane, hive, Hawaii. Give a set amount of time for students to complete their own brainstorm, then share out. Students can rack up points for the number of categories that they complete. And sharing out helps them connect their brainstorming with everyone else’s.

Why we love it: The boundaries that kids have to work in when playing Scattergories is ideal for inspiring creativity.

Get printable Scattergories sheets on Pinterest.

Fix It Relay Race

Divide the class into teams of four to six students, and prepare sentences that each have an error—it could be a factual error for content classes or grammar or spelling mistakes for language classes. Arrange students in a line, with students standing a few feet apart. The first student in each team must correct one mistake in the sentence they are given. Then, they pass the card to the next teammate. The next student corrects another mistake. This continues until each team member has seen the card and they think all the errors are corrected. Then they run the card to the front to complete the relay.

Why we love it: Teams work together to complete each task.

Buy it: Fix It Sentences at Teachers Pay Teachers

This is another classic game that can be adapted to any academic content. Each student gets a card that is taped to their back or their forehead. The card has a name of a person you’re studying or a topic on it. Then, the students circulate and ask questions of other people to try to figure out who or what is taped to them.

Why we love it: This game is easily differentiated by providing students with personalities that you know they are familiar with, and by providing them with questions to ask or a checklist of personalities that they can be thinking about as they figure out who everyone is.

Word Scramble

Each student or group has a word. The goal is to pull as many words out of the original word as possible within the time limit.

Why we love it: Word Scramble encourages flexibility, and students may be surprised at what they see in each game.

Stickyball Bingo

Create a bingo board on your whiteboard with the words that you want students to work with or the math problems you want them to do. Then, have students throw a sticky ball at the board to select their game.

Why we love it: When their aim is poor, students may have to answer questions that push them out of their comfort zone.

Musical Chairs

Prepare a list of discussion questions or prompts. Students choose a card, then walk around the room while music plays. When the music stops, they find a partner and work on the questions they see on the card. You can prepare cards with math or science problems, questions from social studies, getting-to-know-you questions, or silly questions. Changing the type of questions that students are working with keeps this game fresh.

Why we love it: Musical chairs really gets students up and moving, and if you remove the loss of a chair each time, all students can stay in the game.

Check out these school-appropriate songs kids love .

Flashcard Duel

Students each have a set of flash cards and use them to “duel.” In pairs, students show each other a flash card one at a time. If they answer the card right, they get to keep the card. If they don’t, their partner keeps the card.

Why we love it: It’s fast-paced and easy for students to pick up and play during a few minutes of downtime.

Classroom Games for Communication

Games that require students to talk and listen to each other are great ways to encourage communication.

Yes, No, Stand Up

Have a list of sentences prepared. When you read a sentence, students stand if their response is yes and stay seated if it’s no.

Why we love it: Students practice listening skills and inhibition by standing or not in response to your questions.

Blind Square

Use a long rope and blindfolds. Have students stand in groups of four, then put the blindfolds on and hold the rope between them so it creates a square. They have to work together to put the rope down on the floor in front of them.

Why we love it: This game is great for middle schoolers to learn to work together.

Odd One Out

Prepare this game with a set of words or phrases written on slips of paper. Have students work in pairs or small groups to categorize the words or phrases as they relate to each other. Students have completed the game when they find the odd one out. So, students may have a group of four people from the Revolutionary War but only three who were presidents, so the one who is not a president is the odd one out.

Why we love it: Odd One Out requires students to use critical thinking and working memory as they come to each answer.

Can You Hear Me Now?

This is a fun warm-up or cool-down for the day. It’s also a great classroom game to play if you’re teaching virtually. Play as a class or in groups. Each student takes a turn describing an item for the others to draw one step at a time. For example, if the object were “cat,” the description might be: Draw a circle. Draw two triangles on top of the circle. And so on until a cat is drawn. It’ll surprise students how their directions are interpreted, and how hard it is to get people to follow their directions.

Why we love it: This is a humorous way to reinforce that students need to be clear in their directions and listen to yours.

Classroom Games for Collaboration and Team Building

Games that require teamwork are ideal for helping kids practice collaboration in short bursts and around a common, if silly, goal.

Minute To Win It

Challenge your class to compete in tasks that can take under a minute. You could:

• Speed-stack paper cups.
• Roll a coin between fork tongs.
• Transfer pom-poms with chopsticks.
• Build a tower out of marshmallows and toothpicks.
• Pass a balloon from one person to another without using your hands.
• Put together a puzzle.

Why we love it: It’s a quick way to engage students and shift students into a positive frame of mind.

Learn more: Fun and Easy Minute To Win It Games

Over the Electric Fence

Put two chairs in a row, and tell students that they are connected by a wire that is 3 feet high. Even better, string a rope 3 feet high. Students have to imagine that this is an electric fence and if they touch it they are dead. They’ll help everyone get over the fence and work together to do so. Make it even more challenging by telling students that they have to hold hands while moving everyone from one side of the fence to the other.

Why we love it: Students will have to slow down and figure out exactly how to solve the problem.

Create a square in your classroom using tape. Then, place plastic cups or cones around the inside of the square. This area is the minefield. Break students into pairs. One student is blindfolded and the other leads them. The students have to cross the minefield without touching or knocking down the plastic cups. The non-blindfolded student gives directions and the blindfolded student must follow them to cross the minefield without blowing up a “mine” or knocking over a cone.

Why we love it: Students will get out of their comfort level while playing this game.

Start with general everyday scenes (eating dinner, brushing teeth). Have two people act out a scene while everyone else watches. After a time, stop the scene and have someone swap out for a new player. Then, they have to change how the scene is being done. They could, for example, turn eating dinner into taking care of a pet. Once students are familiar with the game, make it more challenging with prompts from the book you’re reading or history scenarios (e.g., Washington crossing the Delaware turns into the French Revolution).

Why we love it: This game gives older students the opportunity to work with a variety of people and get creative connecting scene to scene.

Check out more team-building activities for kids and cooperative games for kids .

Classroom Games for Fun

Sometimes you need classroom games that simply let students have fun and blow off steam!

Freeze Dance

This is a great brain break. Put on music and dance (challenge kids to a Floss-off or the Macarena to get everyone moving). Then, pause the music and any student who unfreezes before the music starts again is out.

Why we love it: You’ll see some students come out of their shells once the music starts.

Heads Up, Seven Up

Why we love it: This is a classroom game we remember from our elementary school years, and now we’re passing it along!

Tic-Tac-Toe

Use a version of tic-tac-toe during the dreaded indoor recess or as a brain break.

Tic-tac-toe with Hula-Hoops:

Human Tic-Tac-Toe:

Why we love it: Whichever version you choose, tic-tac-toe is a quick game that’s always a winner.

Place a number of objects (up to 20) on a table (or post on a slide with 20 words or pictures) and have students take one minute to try to memorize as many as they can. Then, cover the objects or hide the slide and have students write down as many as they can remember. Play this game once a week or so and see how students improve their memory strategies.

Why we love it: Students will sharpen their focus and memory skills trying to remember as many objects as possible.

For more articles like this, be sure to  subscribe to our newsletters  to find out when they’re posted!

Teaching online check out these top online educational games ..

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Management Notes

Functions of Educational Management – 8 Major Functions | Management

An education management system encompasses a number of functions and responsibilities that are designed to make sure that educational institutions are run efficiently and effectively.

Schools, colleges, universities, and other educational organizations rely heavily on these functions for smooth functioning and continuous improvement.

Functions of Educational Management

Let’s examine these functions in more detail:

1) Planning:

A fundamental part of educational management involves defining goals, objectives, and strategies that will help you achieve them. It encompasses both short-term and long-term planning.

A curriculum planning process, resource planning process, and timeline creation process are part of planning in educational institutions.

To ensure educational programs align with educational objectives and meet the needs of students, curriculum planning involves determining their scope, sequence, and content.

A resource planning process involves identifying and allocating resources that support educational activities, including teachers, instructional materials, facilities, and technology.

The establishment of timelines makes it easier to organize and schedule different activities, such as curriculum implementation, assessments, and extracurricular activities.

In order to achieve desired educational outcomes, educational institutions need to have a clear direction, be prepared to address challenges, and have a clear plan.

2) Organizing:

A function of educational management that involves structuring and arranging resources in order to facilitate educational achievement.

As part of this function, the educational institution must create an efficient organizational structure that optimizes coordination and collaboration among its stakeholders.

In addition to setting up administrative systems, scheduling classes, creating assignments, and allocating budgets, organizing entails a variety of tasks.

A well-defined administrative structure ensures smooth communication and decision-making processes by assigning roles and responsibilities.

The class schedule enables students to take advantage of instructional time while facilitating the delivery of diverse educational programs.

It is important to assign teachers to specific subjects or grade levels according to their qualifications and expertise when creating teaching assignments.

By allocating budgets effectively, educational institutions can maximize their resources and create an environment conducive to teaching and learning by optimizing their financial resources.

3) Staffing:

It is crucial to educate teachers, administrators, and support staff that they are properly recruited, selected, and placed in those roles.

Staffing is the process of ensuring that quality education is provided by the right people with the appropriate skills and expertise. To determine the staffing needs, enrollment, class size, and program requirements must be considered.

The recruitment process begins with the advertisement of job openings, followed by a screening process, interviews, and qualifications assessment.

As part of the selection process, candidates are selected based on their qualifications, experience, and expertise, aligned with the institution’s vision and mission. Once selected, they are placed in appropriate positions.

In addition to professional development opportunities and performance evaluations, staffing also includes career advancement pathways and career development opportunities.

To deliver high-quality education, educational institutions need competent and motivated employees.

4) Directing:

It is part of educational management to guide and supervise teachers’ and other staff’s activities in order to achieve educational goals.

The role requires providing instructional leadership, fostering a positive learning environment, promoting effective teaching practices, and managing student behavior.

In the field of instructional leadership, high academic standards are set, innovative teaching methods are promoted, and teachers are supported in their professional development.

In order to foster a positive learning environment, students need to feel motivated, respected, and supported in an inclusive environment. To enhance teachers’ instructional skills, it is necessary to provide resources, training, and feedback.

As part of managing student behavior, discipline policies must be established, behavior management strategies must be implemented, and positive student engagement must be promoted.

In addition to supporting the professional development of educators, educational institutions can enhance teaching and learning outcomes through effective directing.

5) Coordinating:

In educational management, coordination is a crucial function that involves harmonizing the efforts of various departments and individuals within the institution as a whole.

Facilitating communication and collaboration among teachers, administrators, students, parents, and other stakeholders is included in it.

By coordinating efforts across multiple areas of the institution, educational programs and services are kept cohesive and consistent.

Developing a collaborative culture, facilitating regular meetings and discussions, and establishing clear lines of communication are essential components of effective coordination.

Through coordination, curriculum planning, instructional practices, and assessment strategies are aligned across departments.

By collaborating with external stakeholders, such as parents and community organizations, educational initiatives are more engaging and supported by the community.

Coordination facilitates efficiency and reduces duplication of effort in educational institutions, creating a cohesive learning environment.

6) Monitoring and Evaluation:

Educational management involves monitoring and evaluating educational programs and activities to determine their effectiveness and progress.

As part of monitoring, data are collected and analyzed about student performance, teacher effectiveness, curriculum implementation, and resource utilization.

An evaluation is an assessment of the quality and impact of educational programs, policies, and practices based on the collected data. Monitoring and evaluation helps educational institutions identify strengths, weaknesses, and improvement areas.

Through monitoring and evaluation, informed decisions can be made, evidence-based interventions can be developed, and education can be improved.

Education institutions are also held responsible for their performance through monitoring and evaluation, since they can demonstrate their effectiveness to stakeholders and policymakers.

7) Financial Management:

Financial management is one of the most crucial functions of educational management that involves planning, budgeting, and controlling financial resources that support educational activities.

Financial accountability refers to preparing budgets, allocating funds, monitoring expenditures, and ensuring accountability. As part of financial management, resources are optimized and transparency and efficiency are ensured.

It is part of planning and budgeting that financial requirements are estimated for educational activities, including curriculum development, teacher training, infrastructure maintenance, and student support.

In order to achieve the institution’s goals and priorities, budgets are prepared based on these estimates. Depending on the needs and priorities of each department and program, funds are allocated based on the budgeted resources.

In order to ensure funds are used appropriately and within the allocated budget, expenditures must be monitored.

Keeping accurate financial records, conducting audits, and complying with financial regulations and reporting requirements are all part of financial accountability. Managing financial resources effectively ensures educational institutions have access to the resources they need.

8) Stakeholder Engagement:

Engaging stakeholders is a vital part of educational management. It involves involving and collaborating with a variety of stakeholders, including students, parents, teachers, administrators, community members, and policy makers.

Engaging stakeholders fosters the sense of ownership and collective responsibility that contributes to the educational institution’s success.

A few of these activities include involving parents in decision-making processes, gaining input from stakeholders, and forming partnerships with community organizations.

By involving students in decision-making processes, we empower them and create a learning environment that is student-centered.

It is beneficial to parents and guardians to be involved in their children’s education in order to strengthen a collaborative relationship and parent involvement.

Education initiatives can benefit from collaborating with community organizations and businesses who can provide additional resources, expertise, and support.

By engaging policymakers, institutions can advocate for educational reforms, secure necessary funding, and align educational policies with their goals.

Educational institutions can create a supportive and inclusive learning community through effective stakeholder engagement.

As a result, the functions of educational management, such as planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, monitoring, and evaluating, financial management, and stakeholder engagement, are vital to ensuring effective and efficient educational operations.

To ensure quality education, to support the professional growth of educators, to foster a positive learning environment, to meet the diverse needs of students and the community, these functions work together in synergy.

The educational manager’s role is to develop and grow individuals, ensure the success of educational institutions, and improve the overall education system.

• Importance of Classroom Management – 12 Major Importance | Classroom Management
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Education System Management

“The world must move beyond helping children enter school to also ensure that they actually learn the basics when they are there.”

– Irina Bokova, UNESCO Director General

Educational planning may be defined as a practice aimed at preparing an education system for the future and facilitating the achievement of medium- and long-term goals set by policy-makers. To fulfill these functions effectively, planners need to have a good understanding of the concepts and theories that shape the tools and approaches of educational planning. 

IIEP works with ministries of education to assist them in strengthening their capacity to manage the education system. This is crucial because, in many countries, the critical deficiency is a lack not of funds but of human resource capacity to implement reforms and manage education in an efficient and effective way at various levels. 

Critical policy implementation and management issues can be addressed from different angles: One angle is to view the specific issues faced at the major levels of management/administration (system, project, regional/local and institutional levels); another is to deal with the main resources of educational development to be managed (human, financial, etc.). IIEP’s programme incorporates both approaches.

IIEP encourages education policy-makers to engage in broad-based participatory processes . At a time when citizen power is increasingly shaping civic and democratic renewal, the relevance of public action is enhanced when it adopts broad-based participatory processes and engages with authoritative sources of information, whether domestic or international, For ministries in charge of education, what is at stake is how stakeholders perceive the quality, relevance and responsiveness of education as a public good. 

During the 2018-2021 period, IIEP will support Member States so that ministries in charge of education:

• have the competent human resources needed across the planning cycle;
• can improve the processes and tools necessary for plan preparation, implementation, monitoring and review; and
• can bring about a planning environment which is conducive to collaboration among political and technical staff in formulating policy, and one where staff engage with both other governments and civil society actors. 

What is educational planning? Watch our short video with Malia:

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Utilization of information and communication technology and students' learning activities in secondary school libraries in emohua local government area, rivers state, nigeria, kate nnenne okonu, samuel k. ibenne.

The study examined the relationship between utilization of Information and Communications Technology tools and resources and  students' learning activities in secondary schools' libraries in Emohua Local Government Area, Rivers state Nigeria. It adopted the survey  research design and a questionnaire validated and tested with a reliability coefficient of 0.79, as research instrument. The population of  the study consisted of all the students in public secondary schools in Emohua L.G.A from JSS 1 to SS 3. A sample size of 380 was drawn  from a population of 7,600 students using the Taro Yamane statistical formula, while descriptive and inferential statistics were used to  analyze the data. The findings revealed that there is a significant relationship between students' utilization of ICT tools and resources in  secondary schools libraries and their information searching activities, preparations for tests, examinations, assignments and class activities. ICT tools and resources use also had a significant relationship with the technical skills of the students in online learning  activities, an important aspect of modern pedagogy and learning. However, some challenges encountered by the respondents, such as:  in adequate skill on the use of ICT tools and resources; the non-preservation of ICT tools and resources; and, inadequate availability of  ICT tools and resources in the school library, posed as inhibitors to the overall effectiveness of their learning activities through the use of  ICT tools and resources. The study recommends that the acquisition and maintenance of ICT resources in the school libraries should be prioritized; periodic training and seminars should be organized for teachers, library staff and even for the students in line with new  technological innovations as regards to ICT tools and resources utilization in learning activities; a need for the relevant authorities to  provide sufficient policy, technical guidance and support in the provision and use of ICT tools and resources in school libraries; and, the  employment of experienced digital librarians which is necessary for enhancing the students' skills in the use of ICT tools and resources,  given the relevance in learning activities. 

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Staying home to prevent the spread of respiratory viruses

Stay home when you have symptoms of any respiratory illness, like flu COVID-19, and RSV. Staying home when sick helps prevent the spread of germs.

Table of Contents

Overview of things you can do to help prevent the spread of respiratory viruses:

• Get vaccinated for flu and COVID-19
• Stay home when you are sick (follow the recommendations below)
• Use hand and respiratory hygiene  
• Wear a mask around others 
• Get tested for flu and COVID-19 so you can get treated
• Avoid crowded areas and maintain physical distance
• Increase fresh air  

If you have symptoms of a respiratory virus (isolation)

If you have new symptoms of a respiratory virus, such as a fever, sore throat, cough or a runny or stuffy nose, you should stay home and stay away from others in your household.

While you are staying at home:

• Get tested for COVID-19 and flu. Talk to your healthcare provider about getting treatment if you test positive.
• Stay away from others in your household. Wear a mask when you have to be around them.
• Wash your hands often with soap and warm water. If soap and water are not available, use hand sanitizer containing at least 60% alcohol.
• Cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze.  Use a tissue or your inner elbow, not your hands.
• Clean  high-touc h surfaces (such as countertops, handrails, and doorknobs) often.

You should stay home even if you don’t know what virus is making you sick. 

When you start to feel better:

You may begin to resume normal activities with precautions if: 

• You have not had a fever for at least 24 hours without the use of fever reducing medicines; AND 
• Your other symptoms are improving

You may still be able to spread the virus that made you sick, even if you are feeling better. 

For at least the first 5 days after you resume normal activities, take these extra precautions:

• Avoid crowded indoor spaces. Wear a mask anytime you are indoors around other people 
• Avoid spending time with people who are at increased risk for severe disease

If your symptoms get worse again: 

If your fever comes back or any other symptoms start to get worse, you should go back home until you are better again. Wait to resume normal activities until you have not had a fever for at least 24 hours without the use of fever reducing medicines AND your symptoms are improving again. When you resume normal activities, take the recommended additional precautions during the next 5 days:

• Avoid crowded indoor spaces
• Wear a mask indoors around other people
• Wash your hands often
• Cover your coughs and sneezes

If you have tested positive for a respiratory virus but do not have any symptoms

You can still spread the virus. Take additional precautions to protect others from getting sick.

For at least the first 5 days, take these extra precautions: 

• Avoid crowded indoor spaces. Wear a mask anytime you are indoors around other people.
• Avoid spending time with people who are at increased risk for severe disease .
•  Wash your hands often with soap and warm water. If soap and water are not available, use hand sanitizer containing at least 60% alcohol.
• Clean high-touch surfaces  (such as countertops, handrails, and doorknobs) often.

If you develop any respiratory symptoms: 

If you get a fever, or any other symptoms of respiratory illness, you should go home. You may begin to resume normal activities with some precautions when:

• You have not had a fever for at least 24 hours without the use of fever reducing medicines; AND
• Your symptoms are improving again

Then, take the recommended extra precautions during the next 5 days:

• Avoid crowded indoor spaces 

If you were exposed to someone with a respiratory virus illness (exposure precautions)

If you have been exposed to someone with a respiratory virus, you do not need to stay home as long as you remain asymptomatic. You may be able to spread a respiratory virus before developing symptoms.

To protect others, especially those with risk factors for severe illness , take precautions: 

• Consider wearing a mask and avoiding crowded places
• Monitor yourself for symptoms carefully

Stay home if you start to develop any signs of illness. 

Protecting people with risk factors for severe illness from respiratory viruses

When you are sick from a respiratory virus, you may spread germs for about 10 days after your symptoms start or after a positive test, even if you don’t have symptoms.

Be aware that some people around you may have risk factors for more severe disease. Masking, physical distancing, hand hygiene, and covering your coughs and sneezes helps protect them.

People at increased risk can include: 

• Older adults 
• Individuals with chronic underlying medical conditions, for example heart, lung, liver or kidney disease 
• Young children, especially those under 2 years old 
• People with weakened immune systems 
• People with disabilities 
• Pregnant people 

Schools and childcare settings

Schools and childcare settings should follow the recommendations for the general population. Recognize that young children may not always be able to wear a mask effectively. Children under 2 years are not asked to mask when they return to normal activities.

School health offices are health care settings. School nurses and other health office staff should follow the guidance for health care settings .  

Health care settings

View specific guidance and protocols for health care settings:  Guidance for Health Care Personnel with SARS-CoV2 Infection or Exposure .

Health care guidance is intended for:

• Inpatient settings (e.g., hospitals, long-term care facilities)
• Outpatient settings (e.g., clinics, urgent care, ambulatory surgical centers, imaging centers, dialysis centers, physical therapy and rehabilitation centers, alternative medicine clinics)
• Community settings where health care is being delivered (e.g., emergency medical services, home health agencies)
• Tips to protect yourself and others from getting sick 
• Guidance for Health Care Personnel with SARS-CoV2 Infection or Exposure 

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