Jacob Kounin's Theory of Preventative Discipline

hello everybody this is jeremy weishaupt

and this is for uh edu 520

my uh behavior management theorist was

jacob kuhnen

and he is known for his theory on

preventative discipline

the best way to remember kunin's theory

is

uh

and in

and i put over here a little picture of

a baby raccoon

and then a picture of a old-timey bed

and breakfast sign

uh that end was the most common

pronunciation i found i did find one

that said count in

that was rare so i to help you remember

this just think of a a little raccoon

checking into an old-timey inn

a little background information on

jacob coonan

uh he was born

in 1912 in cleveland ohio

in 1946 he became an educational

psychologist at wayne state university

in detroit michigan

he's known for his studies that took

place in the 1970s on classroom

management

over the course of that time over five

years he conducted research on students

of all ages from preschool ages to

college age

throughout the course of his study they

evolved from his studies evolved from

how teachers handle misbehavior

to

how to prevent misbehavior

uh and then that's where he focused on

preventative discipline

and his approaches to uh avert or stop

instances of disciplinary issues in the

classroom

and then he his research he ended up

authoring the book discipline and group

management in classrooms which came out

in 1977 a few other bits of information

on dr coonan as he received his

doctorate from iowa state university in

1939.

uh and he's a renowned

uh classroom management theorist

he did pass away in 1995

so it's been a while since he passed

away

and a little interesting

tidbit on this slide is when i was

looking for an image of him three

different images came up and they all

looked like somebody different so this

is my best guess of

the image of dr kunin

and here's a uh a quote from him from

his

research

if the teacher was more aware

of what was going on she could have

prevented the student behavior problem

which uh

is you know fits

very closely with his theory of

preventative discipline

so here's uh

in a nutshell what his theory is it's

based on the idea

the teachers being proactive by

incorporating a high level of student

involvement in the classroom

his thoughts were that

students

who are active and engaged are

much less likely to act out or misbehave

which as

as most of us teachers know from

experience that is key

because if they are active and involved

they're much less likely to act out

so his

kunin's classroom management theory

really has

five main areas of focus he called it

with it miss

overlapping group focus

momentum and smoothness and then we will

look at

what he calls the ripple effect

and so first we'll look at with with it

miss his uh preventative discipline

uh this is the teacher's overall

awareness

of their environment and their

surroundings

wilderness informs students that the

teacher is aware of everything that is

going on in their classroom

this involves a teacher constantly

surveying the room

even when they're working with

individual students

uh the students notice the teacher's

behavior more than their spoken words so

that's more like a uh

a look or a gesture than words the

teacher addresses misbehavior with an

expression that can be seen by the

entire class

and then

this is also known as

having eyes in the back of your head

and uh like i said a strong looker

stance is is really

impressed upon students more than words

are

and then these

these sort of activities of a teacher

let the students know that you are

with it

next we'll look at

overlapping as it results to

regards to preventative discipline

and it

simply stated overlapping is a another

way

to say multitasking

the teach teacher deadly attends to two

or more matters simultaneously

this can be attending to different

groups of students at the same time

it can also be related to outside

disruptions such as notes from the

office or phone calls or things of that

nature that that would cause a

disruption

and

disruptions often

give the students a window

of opportunity to be disruptive

next we'll look at group focus

this means

actively involving every student

in the class

so

one of the ways is utilizing a variety

of questioning techniques

that ensure all students are actively

engaged

and additionally

navigating the room constantly walking

around behind in front around

and

reviewing student work

is also a great uh strategy to make sure

everyone is focused

and then also pausing at selected

interview intervals builds attention and

suspense

for for their learning

a couple questioning techniques that are

valuable

for teachers to use

are

uh asking a question in the whole group

answer calling on random students

so that nobody knows that they're going

to be called on of course you can have

them raise hands take volunteers

a little factor that you can have

into your grading is incorporating a

participation grade

and these are all things

that will help keep students attention

at all times

next we'll look at

momentum and smoothness as it relates to

kuden's theory of preventative

discipline

this is the teacher's ability to

maintain a steady flow

of the lesson and keep students on task

this also involves smooth and seamless

transitions between activities which is

easier said than done but it's something

that over time you can get really get

the feel of

and then thorough planning ahead of time

helps keep down time during class two

minimum which of course downtime

idle hands

are the devil's playground they say

uh and then

and then of course at the bottom keeping

students on task greatly reduces idle

time and opportunities for disruption

the next uh

factor we'll look at

is the ripple effect

and this is this is basically the the

way the teacher

can

do have a direct at one student and have

an effect on the entire class

so when the teacher addresses the

misbehavior of one student

and it has a positive impact on the

behavior of the rest of the class the

teacher must be firm and direct in their

correction of the offender

and as well verbally identifying the

behavior following with reasoning has

the greatest effect on all students in

your class

some additional things you can look at

is the ripple effect also is vital on

the other end of the spectrum

if you notice and address positive

behavior of a student this also has a

great impact on

their

that student's peers and the other

students in the room

they see that the positive results

and then desire the same positive

feeling for themselves

and the best way to look at that is like

positive reinforcement

and it

has great effect on your entire class

next we'll look at the application

in the classroom that's what we really

want to look at because it's like what

does all this mean for me what can i how

can what can i do with this

in my class school's getting ready to

start so we want to make sure that

we're able to apply this in the

classroom

in regards to classroom applications

teachers must be able to seamlessly

interweave coonan's theory of

preventative discipline into their daily

classroom routine

we must realize

that teaching and discipline are two

interconnected things for there's a long

time where they were viewed as two

separate things teaching was on one end

of the spectrum discipline was on the

other

we must be able to

interweave these together

for the greatest

impact

we must realize that actively engaged

students are much less likely to

misbehave

as well as students pay close attention

to the teacher so it's important to

display the traits

that are outlined in the theory

a couple a couple of tips to help

with classroom application for teachers

is you want to organize your materials

before class you want to make sure your

lessons planned out

uh ahead of time so you can

prevent any downtime during class

we must be adaptive and make adjustments

when needed we all know that there's

announcements and then there's

there's other disruptions that can cause

things to kind of go off plan but we

have to be adaptive

and

an overlooked but important tool is is

reflection uh we have to be able to

reflect and we review and improve easily

we look at

the best look at what worked what worked

the best what didn't work what can we

improve what should we not do next time

what can we add what did we add

on the fly that worked

all these things are very important to

just improving in the future

and also we must remember

uh to minimize distractions

and also remember that we can be the

source of distraction if they're working

independently

and we

and we start talking about something not

on past that that serves as distractions

we want to make sure we do that

and this little image to the left

uh shows the uh

one of the biggest distractions there

are in today's world are our phones so

we must we must remember to

have them put away as well as as well as

your earbuds and that sort of thing

that way that that can be mint in the

bud immediately

so with all the great greatness of uh

preventative discipline there's also uh

some things that could be done dig a

little deeper to uh help make to help

make things you know better

understanding

and and and paint a more uh complete

picture

as

because as as teachers we do even though

we we want a plan

to for prevent to prevent any kind of

disciplinary action we must be prepared

because they they still happen even the

best planning things can still happen

so we must be able to quickly adapt and

uh and handle the situations as they

come

a few things

that we could that kind of need to be

that the theory doesn't really go into

are

are the reasons students misbehave in

the first place

if we can provide greater support to

students

with these underlying causes of

misbehavior perhaps we can more

successfully prevent it

some some of the outside causes that we

think that you could think of are issues

at home perhaps sleeplessness loss of a

loved one family illness

maybe at school there's issues with

friends or something going on online or

even they may just be feeling a little

under the weather if we can figure out

how to

bring that out and how to support them i

think that'll help us greatly improve

and uh

be more effective

and and really maximize

this theory of preventative discipline

so in conclusion

i want to look at

from my personal experience

most teachers already incorporate

many of the aspects of coonan's theory a

preventative discipline into their

classroom and instruction and they may

not even be aware of it

an important area that that we can look

at

is self-reflection

because that is something very important

especially for me as as somebody that

as like

as as greenness can be

like every every single

experience i have i can i see room for

improvement i can see areas where i did

good but you also got to be

humble enough to realize that you could

always grow and improve

we always want to strive to improve and

provide the best learning experience for

our students

if that that should be our goal at all

times

no matter what

and then

uh if if we can incorporate preventative

discipline

it is if we do that it is

it can maximize the students classroom

experience

so if we can if we can be

if we can use all those factors

of wickedness group focus

smoothness momentum

all these things if we can if we can

like seamlessly weave them together then

we can be uh

help maximize their overall learning

experience

i'm glad that you guys uh sat in and

watched my uh video

and uh i hope you'll have a great school

year

i think here's my here's the references

from that i used for the uh

presentation there's a

a lot of good a lot of good information

in these in these websites

you guys have a have a great day and

thank you for watching

bye