Discipline
for Peak Learning
J'Anne
Ellsworth
Introduction
Our classrooms are on the cusp of moving from the discipline models of
the past in an exciting, stimulating and novel direction. The momentum
has been gathering for several decades, and large movements from Dewey
(1916) to Goodlad (1984,1990) swept in, carrying teaching praxis forward,
modifying the educational landscape. Each ground swell receded, but altered
sentiments and practices always remained.
The momentum of the newest restructuring adds strength to the waves. The
move from industrial revolution to age of information, from isolation
to world community, from local school control to National and International
scrutiny of standards and instructional progress adds force to the flood
of school change. Modes of computer assisted instruction, distance learning,
and virtual institutions of education span the globe, bringing education
practices into sharper focus and inundating older practices with new opportunities
and challenges.
The status of children changed. Children were once property, belonging
to parents and subject to their whims. Litigation, protective services
and heightened awareness dramatically changed the rights of parents and
children. Through television shows featuring characters like 
Bart Simpson and docudramas like Mommy Dearest, we gained a
different sense of children, their power and position in the family and
community. Of course, writers like Charles Dickens, and Carl Rogers described
humanityās ability to value and enhance the lives of children as a measuring
stick for depth of humanity and civility.
The
causes of change are less critical than recognizing the dawning of childrenās
rights. It changes the position of children in society and in classrooms.
It heightens the importance of educational changes. It adds compulsion
to our abandonment of physical force in chastening youngsters. Many educators
are reluctant to leave the paddle behind as a form of discipline. We know
that few creatures - human or animal, perform better when berated, belittled
or hurt (Hyman,1990; Kohn,1996), yet the rituals of the past frame punishment
as an alternative.
Our uncertainty about punishment is still evident. While newscasters raged
about a youngster being caned in another country, television anchors and
educators entertained ambivalence about head masters who paddled youngsters
in our local communities. Many schools continue to permit the practice
of corporeal punishment with parent permission. We express sentiments
about capital punishment being a deterrent to breaking the law and put
more youthful offenders into adult course, positing that incarcerating
juveniles will prevent law breaking.
This lingering over punitive measures may derive from a sense of vacuum.
We seem unprepared with a different or more effective alternative that
is simple and "feels" like its working. Some people feel a sense
of relief and reward when they punish children. The childās immediate
personal response is often gratifying. The miscreant seems chastened,
the adultās adrenalin is drained through physical action and obvious chagrin
or horror of other students appears as a heady tonic. We sense that other
children will not be as ready to break the rules. It "feels right"
intuitively. In addition, it mirrors our own experiences, since most of
us grew up expecting or receiving force as a response to delimited actions
(Straus, 1994). Fortunately, no one is ćownedä by another, and abuse is
unlawful.
We may
believe that those who are punished change their behavior out of fear,
for that is what we claim to ourselves. In fact, many of us when children,
behaved and followed rules out of an intrinsic desire to be loved, accepted,
to match the actions of those we knew and admired. The fear we remember,
the withdrawal to fight or flight when assaulted, masks the true humanity
of our choices, our basic readiness to cooperate and develop.
Another force comes from a ground swell of scientific theories about children
in the twentieth century. Behaviorism swept into educational practice
(Skinner, 1953, 1968). These ideas and tools, effective in certain limited
forms, became common practice regardless of their ability to serve children
or further good education. Their linear, one-size-fits-all application
occurred in grading. As we taught the use of the bell curve to justify
test questions, grading practices and program effectiveness, we lost track
of the limitations (sample size, various forms of validity and reliability,
bias, etc.).
Curriculum and lesson planning became simplified as we focused on teaching
material that could be defined and quantified in ways that could be
measured, observed and tested with objective questions (Mager, 1975).
We placed our focus on teaching material or content instead of teaching
children. Then, when children and their needs interrupted that focus on
material, the instructor experienced frustration, became anxious or angry.
Evidence of this perspective can be found in numerous classrooms where
signs are posted declaring, "I have the right to teach."
These practices are reinforcing for educators because they simplify an
otherwise messy field. It makes the job of educators more manageable if
we make classes linear. In reality, human dynamics are multi-dimensional
and children are as idiosyncratic as they are similar. Great teaching
is complex, entangled, paradoxical and elusive.
Human
nature is enigmatic, too. We strive our whole lives to understand ourselves,
with mixed success. Our progress in understanding the physical world has
progressed dramatically from the Socratic view, but understanding of human
nature has changed very little, in comparison. People are complex. We
are in our infancy in understanding and explaining human nature. Even
the functioning of the human brain is a threshold just unfolding.
Many teachers wish for a logical and simple discipline plan, a cook book
approach to working in the classroom, teaching subjects and content rather
than constructing meaning with individual youngsters. Yet, the closer
we come to that goal, the further we are from what we want to accomplish
with respect to child building, nurturing, educating. When we simplify
teaching, the richness, diversity and excitement is often lost, not only
to children, but for all of us.
Recognizing the individual student, helping that child to meet personal
needs, teaching to the strengths of the child and recognizing and honing
the unique gifts that one student brings to community and society is a
defining difference between education and training. We can train soldiers,
and we do well to do it enmass, but education may actually occur, one
motivated, constructing, reflecting and thinking person at a time. This
does not suggest that students do not learn in community, but a crowd
is a very different dynamic than a community, and many of our classrooms
resemble a crowd far more than a coop.
In
fact, cooperative learning research (Johnson & Johnson, 1994) shows better
academic gains through communal rather than competitive effort. Building
community allows every person to take on the role of teacher, to learn
as an individual, to share concepts with partners, to individualize learning
and actually supports dyadic patterns so more of the class can move in
and out of learning and teaching as a part of the learning process. For
most children, learning is constructing (Piaget,1973; Vygotsky,1987)--
literally! Students find the conceptual building blocks many different
ways, using a myriad of types of intelligence.
A good
plan for discipline, pro-active and person building, ought to work in
tandem with the curricular constructs and philosophy. It is enticing to
establish rules as inviolate, as black and white, right and wrong. But
our great literature shows us, one book at a time, that the sanctity of
the individual, when factored with circumstances, makes discipline in
black and white a travesty. Two scholars in moral development, Piaget
(1965) and Kohlberg (1981) suggest that viewing events and the things
people do as black and white represents moral immaturity and lack of perspective.
It is so much simpler to see rules and social systems as inviolable. Once
we make one exception, there are so many that beg our attention, so it
is simpler to draw a line and refuse to equivocate. It is simple, but
inaccurate and inequitable and ultimately damaging to children, education
and society. It is not a question of truth being relative, but of acknowledging
that human beings are -- unique, developing, unfinished, and that traits
differ from child to child, that states, and thus visualization of actions
and justifications differ from moment to moment.
We play out the dilemma of individual or society rights beginning in kindergarten,
and our modeling of social good coming before the rights and needs of
the individual may be a grave error. Society is only as strong as our
humanity to the weakest among us. Schooling is only good for the whole
if it is also good for the individual child.
The curriculum is no different. In working to measure and quantify teaching
and learning, we sometimes ignore the richest portion of teaching. Teaching
and learning involve relationship. It is process. It is a synergistic
practice of art and craft that soars beyond the person weaving the spell,
superseding time and space. Like a great ballet or symphony, it is the
joining of the performer, the performance, and the audience. Great teaching
pulls those in the room into a shared bubble that is unique to that moment
and that group, that setting and the hopes and aspiration of the person
who first took up the mantle of teacher or performer.
Recognizing the multi-faceted nature of teaching and learning is critical
in understanding the components of a good discipline or leadership plan.
Such a plan is the outgrowth of multiple layers of complexity. The role
of teacher, the role of student, the rules and norms of the community
and the constraints of the curriculum come together with the personalities
of the participants. It is, of necessity, more than a set of rules or
expectations. It must be larger in scope than the vision of the teacher
or the expectations of those in charge.
What is it that we wish from the students we are teaching? Do we really
wish silent, fearful or withdrawn youth waiting for the next command?
Do we wish students to be undemanding, passive, compliant? Do we hope
for automatons, absorbing and reciting to specifications? The outcome
defines the need. We cannot compose classrooms that address the comfort
or needs of the teacher or written expectations of a final examination,
alone. It is essential to broaden our base of attention, including the
needs of all members in the classroom. We are planting the seeds of the
future in the way we treat and educate children. These future leaders
and decision makers, who will take the next steps for our society, need
our tenderness and attention to their needs and desires. Each student
truly needs to leave schools reluctantly, with a sense of whimsical loneliness,
and sense of fulfillment and gratitude. Many people speak openly of getting
rid of youth who do not appreciate how lucky they are to have schools.
We need more voices raised in honor of enhancing schools enough that attendance
is not a problem, for children wake in the morning excited about the prospects
of a new day.
Pro-active Discipline
Pro-active discipline focuses on moving from teacher as controller
to student as the agent for self control and self motivation. By empowering
students to take responsibility for fully engaging in the process and
substance of education, student energy shifts from passive participation
or detractor to motivated partner. Youthful energy bursts into excited
learning and questioning with commitment to task coming from the student.
Teachers find fulfillment and delight in teaching.
Opening the way for students to sense this freedom to learn requires certain
beliefs about the teaching role, the student role, the administrative
role and home - school connection. It alters the way a school is developed
and a classroom looks and feels. The human dynamics are different, the
vision of what can and should be happening in schools is different. What
we see as success is different, and what types of learning we value and
engage in changes. Even the way we measure and report progress alters.
It is an education process that empowers all participants. It challenges
adults in the system to engage in or acquire the ability to see each student
as a real person, a whole person, someone as vitally important as the
adults in the system. It asks the teacher to take the role of the protagonist,
energizing and advancing the mutual search for who each child is, who
each student can become. It is an unfolding drama with the teacher and
students working in concert.
It is a pro-active mutual quest with a focus on civility and community
building. It frames schooling as a major part of the apprenticeship for
life. It does not presume that school is the seat of all learning, but
rather that life itself is an education. Schooling assists the youth to
develop the tools to successfully engage life, to successfully enhance
personal gifts and abilities to make that journey notable, meaningful,
and uniquely personally fulfilling.
The teacher utilizing pro-active techniques to work with youth views the
school experience as a focusing mechanism, enhancing each childās ability
to fully develop self, the real self and the real abilities each child
can build upon, and simultaneously work as a unit to further community.
Each student and the unique importance and value of that person hood becomes
a shared focus. Acquiring and honing the tools for a life time of learning,
thinking, reflecting, becomes an axis, for this discipline program is
about understanding the significance of every
child.
This
prototype provides the foundation for the individualized model a teacher
will develop in concert with personal taste and experience, a microcosm
that will shift each year, reflecting a new complement of personalities
and the shared governance of a new group of youngsters. One set of skills
involves understanding structure as a critical component of the teaching
and learning community. With practice and artistry, teachers become architects
of the learning edifice, recognizing how and when to arrange the classroom
or learning establishment to facilitate learning and validate the age
old honor of the teaching dedication.
Teachers and students share responsibility for maintaining the learning
environment. The educator initiates this process, and holds firmly to
the dedication to humanity and the amelioration of the future. It is the
teacher who initiates changes, and then together, the community of learners,
students and teacher with parental and community support promote the positive
changes that follow.
Shared governance is complex, and most students are not prepared to control
self or are not yet mature enough to assume full responsibility to enhance
learning and community, so a wide range of tools and options are furnished
to support teachers and students as they cultivate the new repertoire
of skills necessary to help maintain structural integrity. In this system
of shared regulation, the roles of teacher and student change dramatically.
This program assists all participants to gain the understanding that the
community building process is developmental in nature. It highlights the
acquisition and perpetuation of a sense of personal responsibility and
second person perspective. It helps participants explore the positive
components of community and hone elements of personality that enhance
cooperation and individuation.
Content and curriculum are richer when education is approached in this
manner. As the individual and community are built, excitement about content
and responsibility for expanding the opportunities to learn are shared.
Students learn to monitor self, to develop and hold to a standard of excellence.
They learn to self assess, to organize new learning experiences that strengthen
weaknesses, and become active partners in evaluation. Youth can then utilize
those outcomes to further develop distinctive techniques to refine strengths
and bases of knowledge. They also maintain a sense of ownership about
learning, the curiosity and the excitement that assure life long learning.
Discipline is more broadly defined as the honing
of inner power, the inner voice of potential, the bringing together of
the being of self and the competency that springs from that self.
It is building a competent person for the sake of personal esteem and
the well being of the community. Thus, content is another crucial question
addressed. When development of the whole person is a valued element of
education, a process curriculum becomes as important as product curriculum.
Who a person is and is to become is as critical and worthy of attention
and focus as what the person is able to do, how well they, read, write,
cipher, perform.
Examples
of process skills include: self discipline, ability to see outcomes of
behavior, capacity to discipline self to think through options and create
new outcomes, ability to clarify own feelings and ask for meaning and
reflection from others, paths for self growth and development that also
respect the needs and stages of others, communication, conflict resolution,
acceptance of and appreciation for diversity.
These areas are also critical components of the pro-active discipline,
and excellent mechanisms for enhancing self-esteem. The humanistic view
of the nature of human beings recognizes that self worth comes from the
interplay of complex components of self-esteem. Enhancing sense of self
includes understanding many layers of human nature that address personal
being and person as doer. It is an embodiment of a sense
of significance, competence, power over oneself and oneās choices and
competence in achieving a sense of virtue in those things the culture
values. The program helps teachers and students utilize the building blocks
of esteem, strengthening self and enhancing each studentās facility in
community.
The classroom milieu is enhanced as participants analyze the ongoing struggle
and importance of blending and balancing need for control, for self expression
and maintaining the sanctity of others. Issues surrounding power and control
become part of the learning experiences for facilitating natural development
of student self-responsibility for conduct and for educational progress.
Understanding this developmental model involves close scrutiny of the
function of autonomy and heteronomy as the two life-long dimensions of
self will and socialization. Such inquiry and consideration enhances the
educatorās capacity to focus on the importance of assisting students and
self to acquire civility and social graces, balancing classroom decorum
and human interaction as a means of establishing a common recognition
of human dignity and the value of respect for self and others. Individuality
is developed. Community is encouraged and refined. Students are taught
to attend to the well being of both.
Holistic development of the student is another critical piece in the pro-active
classroom. The components for person building include understanding and
working to optimize the physical, emotional,
philosophical or moral reasoning, and social
as well as the cognitive or intellectual underpinnings of
each person. (This is called the pepsi model). Each of these
is a critical building block in achieving the goal of helping young people
become competent, fully functioning, fully educated beings.
Summary
From the beginning, this type of classroom setting focuses on the individual
while promoting relationship, cooperation and community building. The
emphasis on proactive discipline techniques, on helping the student to
master self and feel in control of self in the situation is critical.
The teacherās role of support, guide and mentor is essential. Learning
and implementing these roles is also very different from most of our own
classroom experiences and what we visualize as the teaching role.
These ideas program are exciting, stimulating and challenging because
they provide more than a theory. Thinking about classrooms and students
in this way helps the teacher visualize the "what" of such a
dynamic classroom, and then moves forward to describe the bridge building
process that allows todayās practices to telescope into new skills.
As trust is built in the ability of students to take a vital interest
in learning and in self discipline, the motivation to continue heightens.
Teachers find themselves feeling the sense of hope and expectation that
first opened the door to teaching as a career and lifetime dedication.
Collect
a 
for completing this reading!
References
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy
and education. New York: The Free Press.
Ellsworth, J.D. & Monahan, A. K. (1987).
A humanistic approach to teaching/learning through Developmental Discipline.
New York: Irvington.
Ellsworth, J.D. & Monahan, A. K. (1995).
The impact of the Developmental Discipline management system. ERIC,
resources in Education. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. Ed 378
150).
Ellsworth, J. D. & Monahan, A. K. (1996).
Developmental Discipline: A channel to multicultural understanding.
Journal of Intergroup Relations, 23, (2), 34-46.
Goodlad, J. (1984). A place called school:
Prospects for the future. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Goodlad, J. I. (1990). Teachers for our
nationsās schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Hyman, I. A. (1990). Reading, writing
and the hickory stick: The appalling story of physical and psychological
abuse in American schools. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
Kohlberg, L. (1981) The philosophy of
moral development (vol 1), San Francisco: Harper & Row.
Kohn, A.(1996). Beyond discipline: From
compliance to community. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision
and Curriculum Development.
Mager, R. F. (1975). Preparing instructional
objectives. Belmont, CA: Fearon.
Piaget, J. (1965). The moral judgment
of the child. Illinois: The Free Press.
Piaget, J. (1973). To understand is to
Invent: The Future of Education.
Skinner, B. F. (1953). The science of
human behavior, New York: Macmillan.
Skinner, B. F. (1968). The technology
of teaching. New York: Appleton-Century-Croft.
Staus, M. A. (1994). Beating the devil
out of them: Corporeal punishment in American families. Lexington,
MA: Lexington Books.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). The collected
works of L.S. Vygotsky (translated by Rieber and Carton). New York:
Plenum.
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