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THE POSITIVE DISCIPLINE MODEL

Fredric H. Jones, who is a psychologist and director of the Classroom


Management Training Program in Santa Cruz, CA, is the founder of this
model. Fredric H. Jones defines classroom discipline as the business of
enforcing classroom standards and building patterns of cooperation to
maximize learning and minimize disruptions.

According to Jones, to build positive classroom discipline, teachers should


model appropriate behavior, and use appropriate classroom management
methods.

Teachers must convey dignity and cooperation. If students feel they are
respected as individuals, they will want to act with similar behaviors.
Likewise, when teachers act maturely and competently, students will see
them as role models after whom they pattern their own behavior.
Not only do good teachers tell students how to act, they demonstrate
appropriate behavior in all their daily routines and interactions. Fredric H.
Jones developed a model of classroom discipline which stressed the
physical presence of the teacher.
The basic assumptions of Positive Discipline Model are that children need
to be controlled and that teachers can achieve this control through body
language, administration, and parental support. His model is based on
extensive observation of classroom teachers and student behavior.
Jones believes that discipline problems occur because of mismanaging
various routines and procedures in the classroom. Rules may be
misunderstood. Seating arrangements may prevent easy access to
students. Thus it will be difficult to monitor their behaviors.
Moreoever, interactions between the teachers and the students may
promote misbehavior.

For Jones, several misconceptions about rules create problems for


teachers such as;

Rules:

Click to see >>

For Jones, management is leadership. It is getting things done through


people. The fundamentals are the same in parenting, teaching, business
and industry.
How do you get people to do what you want them to do:

Correctly?

On time?

With a good attitude?

Jones found out that about 50% of classroom time is lost due to student
misbehavior and being off task.

80% of lost time is due to talking without permission.

19% is lost to daydreaming, out of seat, making noises, etc.

1% is lost to more serious misbehavior, such as fighting.

He recommends that most of the lost time can be avoided by


systematically employingseating arrangements, limit setting techniques,
and responsibility training through incentives.
Teachers need to arrange classroom furniture in ways that maximize their
mobility and allow greater physical proximity to students. This proximity
allows easy access to each student. Teachers need to put the least

distance and the fewest physical barriers between themselves and their
students.
Some teachers believe the students should have the freedom to select
their own seats in the classroom.
Jones prefers to have assigned seats. Without assigned seating, the ones
who want to talk or disrupt the classroom environment will sit in the back
of the classroom next to their close friends.
Jones believes that teachers must employ very specific, limit
setting techniques.
Limit setting means the actions taken by the teacher to control the
students natural reflexes and motivate students back to work while the
students are doing seatwork and the teacher is lecturing.

Limit setting techniques primarily involve the use of body language


designed to convince
students that their teachers are in control.
Effective Body Language: Click to see >>
1. Eye contact
2. Physical Proximity
3. Body Carriage
4. Facial Expression

For Jones, punishment does not solve discipline problems. Instead of


punishing, teachers can promote cooperation through responsibility
training which helps students to demonstrate good behavior voluntarily.
Students do not cooperate without a reason. They will cooperate if good
relationships are established and incentives provided.
Incentives motivate students to start doing the right thing, maintain ontask behavior, and behave properly.
An incentive is something the teacher can provide that students like so
much that in order to get it they will work throughout the
period/week/month. Incentives like stars, being dismissed first, having
work displayed, grades, etc. motivate only the achievers...the others have
no realistic expectation and so, no motivation.

If some students continue to misbehave after being presented


with appropriate instruction, well-planned and delivered, with immediate

response to off-task behavior with limit setting acts, an incentive system,


and positive instructional support, then what to do?

In Joness words, a back-up system is a series of responses


designed to meet force with force so that the uglier the students
behavior becomes, the deeper he or she digs his or her hole with
no escape.
It is important that the teacher plans and be prepared to use increasingly
severe order--a sequence of consequences administered within the
classroom and a back up system outside the classroom.
The knowledge of what to do next, if what you are doing doesn't work
instills confidence that you can gain control without getting upset.
The back up system contains certain traditional sanctions to students,
which are:

Warning

conference with student

time out,
loss of privileges

being sent to the office

detention

conference with parent

in school suspension, out of school suspension (1-day)

out of school suspension (3 days), expulsion.

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