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Chapter 1: Theories UnderpinningThe Lyford Model
Our Lyford model is underpinned by a strategic diversity of theories, frameworks, models and principles about human development, psychology and sociology, teaching and learning, and particularly about classroom management. Their inclusion was informed and determined by our collective experiences, action research activities and the academic literature, and represents a challenging amalgam of our worldviews! We acknowledge of course that you hold your own worldview, but urge you to think deeply when choosing the theories, frameworks, models and principles that underpin your emergent professional philosophy, theoretical approach to, and plan/s for classroom management. The theories informing the Lyford model are: Humanist theory; Knowledge acquisition theory; Ecological systems theory; Sociocultural theory; Psychoeducational theory; and Cognitive behavioural theory.
Humanist Theory underpinning the Lyford Model
Humanist theories focus on the self and self-development, as well as broader social change, and became popular in the 1970s and 1980s. In the field of learning and education Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (Maslow 1987) is a preeminent humanist theory. Carl Rogers’ substantial contribution was to highlight the importance of relationships in effective learning; the need for students to trust their teachers and for teachers to be empathetic in return (Rogers 1980). Paolo Freire has also been hugely influential as his humanism took on broader dimensions (Freire 2000). He encouraged greater awareness of the political and economic processes that affect systemic disadvantage. He is regarded as the father of transformative education. Freire’s work with poor farmers in Brazil demonstrated the power of education to change lives. Personal change can occur through strategic reflection and action. Action research, promoted by people like Kemmis and McTaggart (1988), is now an embedded framework in the professional development expectations of most teachers. The following Figure 1 is a common representation of an action research sequence.
Figure 1 The plan, act and observe, and reflect cycle of action research
Figure 1 a repeating spiral of planning, acting and observing, and reflecting, is helpful because it guides ways to change and improve teaching practices. A most significant concept is to put the researcher (in your case, you as a developing teacher practitioner) at the centre of the action. It signals that sometimes strategies can be implemented, but need further reflection and further action before an action research sequence can be complete. In the Lyford model the outer layer of the main section (the classroom management plan) has the action research process cycling around the core theories and practices. This emphasises the importance of the ongoing development of teaching and learning practices and the need to continually reflect upon and seek change to practices.
Knowledge Acquisition Theory underpinning the Lyford Model
The branch of philosophy known as epistemology is devoted to examining the nature of knowledge, how we acquire it, how we put it into practice and how it informs our being – our identity. This is a topic you will revisit time and again during your studies to become a teacher, but here we want to explain knowledge acquisition as it has influenced our model. Its roots are in phenomenology and we focus on ideas put forward by Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus (Dreyfus & Dreyfus 1986). They presented a matrix that consisted of: novice; advanced beginner; competent performer; proficient performer; and expert.
We concur with the conceptualisation of the journey from the beginning of learning something new through to becoming an expert. In this conceptualisation being an expert is not the end point for learning. In this view a novice will first learn a context independent set of rules and attempt to apply those rules in a formulaic way in context. For example, when we learn to plan a lesson for the first time there is a procedure to follow; a set of questions to answer. Lessons have an introduction, a series of steps and a conclusion. In Australia, lessons in schools follow set outcomes derived from curriculum documents and frameworks. Before a novice teacher sets foot in the classroom, this context independent set of rules or procedures is learned.
Advanced beginners begin to apply their new knowledge. This provides the opportunity to see the different relevant bits of information needed and can be context dependent and context independent. At this stage the set of rules are applied judiciously. Pre-service teachers will teach individual and sometimes isolated lessons with small groups as a beginning point in their acquisition of teaching competencies. Usually at this level in professional contexts, there is an instructor/mentor carefully overseeing any performance and the learner does not have full responsibility for the task.
Increasingly as new knowledge is acquired and current knowledge applied, a learner is likely to become a competent performer. It is at this level that learners may become increasingly uncomfortable – not necessarily more comfortable! This is because as we learn more about a new set of skills we become aware of the more we need to know! This is true of complex scenarios such as learning to become a effective teacher, where there is so much to learn, and so many elements to take account of. The choices of what to prioritise and what to take notice of can seem overwhelming. Flyvbjerg (2001) comments, ‘The lack of terra firma for the choice of a plan, combined with a competent performer’s need to have a plan, produces a new and important relationship between performer and surroundings: a relationship of involvement’ (p. 13). At this level there is a greater degree of responsibility as the competent performer engages in choices about how to operate.
For Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1986), the difference between a competent performer and proficient performer becomes more marked, because the choices become more than conscious, systematic decision making. Proficient performers are more deeply involved and are able to shift and change their actions based on experience. They have a better understanding of what needs to come to the fore and what elements can take a back seat. Thinking and action is less sequential and more fluid. Here they seize on intuition as a way to describe proficient performers’ ways of doing things, and see intuitive action as a more sophisticated, finely honed way to operate. Dreyfus and Dreyfus refer to this as ‘holistic similarity recognition’ (p. 28). This intuition is based on both experience and knowledge. It is not guesswork but an additional operation to what is already known.
Finally, at the expert level, performance becomes effortless. ‘Experts operate from a mature, holistic well-tried understanding, intuitively and without conscious deliberation’ (Flyvbjerg 2001, p. 19). In modern parlance this could be referred to as operating ‘in the zone’. It refers to a deep understanding of what needs to be done as a result of cumulative experiences in a wide range of contexts. Dreyfus and Dreyfus do make the point, however, that when things are proceeding normally, experts are not solving problems as such, they do what works normally. Once a new element or challenge presents itself then experts will use a combination of deliberative consideration and intuition. They argue that what experts do is critically reflect on their intuition, and even then decisions may not always work out.
It is outside the scope of this book to discuss the criticisms of knowledge acquisition theory in depth, but suffice to say that in a complex task such as teaching, with countless elements shifting and changing, there will always be new elements to consider, new ideas to take account of and new issues to deal with. In that sense we can at times feel like novices, and at times like experts. School environments have changed dramatically over the last twenty years, and the challenges facing us as educators are greater; we can never stop learning and we can never be perfect teachers. There are of course expert teachers out there, and it is to these teachers we must turn to understand more about what makes an expert teacher.
Ecological Systems Theory underpinning the Lyford Model
Ecological systems theory leads the more contemporary move away from the Piagetian ‘ages and stages’ approach to learning and teaching. This theory is informed by Urie Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) social ecological model in which he proposed that human development and the environments in which it occurs are inextricably linked. Bronfenbrenner provided a visual image that helps illustrate the relational influences on learning events. Self-evident is the child at the centre of his ecological model. In Bronfenbrenner’s model, school is part of the mesosystem, alongside family and religion. Here there is a bi-directional influence as these elements are in close proximity to a child’s experiences. The child can influence these elements as the elements can influence the child. Another layer, the exosystem, contains community, culture and society and although a child may not be so directly involved, this layer can also influence a child’s development. Issues reverberating from the wider community can also have an influence and Bronfenbrenner described this as the macrosystem. Cultural beliefs and societal practices as well as global influences play a part here.
Teachers do need to be aware of how these influences impact upon a student’s ability to learn, concentrate and be motivated in the classroom. In terms of classroom management, familial influences and global influences can affect the ways students in classrooms interact with each other and these can impact on individual emotional wellbeing.
The notion of ecology is used in our model to emphasise the complex and sensitive relationship that involves every element in the context of a child’s life. For example, the degree to which strong study practices and positive expectations for success are modelled at home will influence how a student tackles academic tasks at school. What happens at school will have a direct impact on what happens at home, and so, ‘behaviour evolves as a function of the interplay between person and environment’ (Bronfenbrenner, 1979 p. 16).
Bronfenbrenner continued to update and improve his model. He introduced proximal processes as a concept (Bronfenbrenner & Morris 1998) and saw these as the engines of development. Children develop through their experiences with their immediate environment where competence signals the effective acquisition of new knowledge and dysfunction refers to the difficulties of adjusting behaviour. Two examples will illustrate how an ecological approach helps teachers understand the complex issues that are at play in a classroom’s relational dynamics...
Some children were adversely affected by the continual bombardment of images after 11 September, 2001 when the twin towers in New York came crashing down. Ongoing media debate and commentary about terrorism and the role of fundamentalist Muslim groups can affect relationships between Muslim and non-Muslim students and more broadly may also influence the ways children and youth from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds interact. Teachers are required to be aware of these global and local issues, have knowledge about them and unpack the complexities of these issues in the context of classrooms.
The second example is about climate change. Recent research argues that the focus on climate change and the doomsday scenarios sometimes discussed in quite graphic detail in the media are affecting children’s wellbeing and in some cases leading to increases in childhood depression (Tucci, Mitchell & Goddard 2007). On the one hand, it is incumbent on teachers to deal with this issue in the classroom. On the other, teachers have a responsibility to recognise the influences these global concerns can have on individual students. It is clear that developmentally, children and youth understand these issues differently and the way teachers tackle these issues and present them in classrooms requires great sensitivity.
One very significant change since Bronfenbrenner published his seminal work in 1979 is that the Internet now provides a much closer link to global issues. Students can tap into the global world in unprecedented ways. Technology allows students to communicate with others in an instant. This immediacy brings into much sharper relief the ecological influences on student learning in the contemporary environment.
Sociocultural Theory underpinning the Lyford Model
School, by its very nature, is a site of social and cultural transformation. It aims to produce effective local and global citizens in a changing world (see, for example, the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians 2008). Furthermore schools must ‘ensure that socioeconomic disadvantage ceases to be a significant determinant of educational outcomes’ and ‘ensure that schooling contributes to a socially cohesive society that respects and appreciates cultural, social and religious diversity’ (Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians 2008, Goal 1). This goal signals two points …
The first point is that it acknowledges there is still a correlation between socioeconomic conditions (the wealth or otherwise of families, their own educational background, their cultural and linguistic heritage) and educational outcomes. In other words children and youth, whose parents are well off, are English-speaking and have an Anglo, Celtic or European heritage, are likely to do better at school. Sociocultural theories have tried to explain this phenomenon.
In the 1960s it was a student’s home background that was scrutinised. In a ‘blame the victim’ approach, poor educational outcomes were the fault of poor home conditions, lack of parental education, lack of resources in the home, and so on. Theories in the 1970s and 1980s (see, for example, Connell 1982; Walker 1988; Willis 1977) argued that schools were an active participant in reproducing economic disadvantage rather than agents to counter disadvantage.
These ‘reproduction’ theories suggested that when there was dissonance between the cultures of home and school, successful school outcomes were less likely. During this time it was suggested that schools, with largely white, English-speaking, middle class male teachers masked a wider hidden curriculum (see, for example, Giroux & Purpel 1983; Jackson 1968; Kozol 1991). This hidden curriculum embedded a particular set of cultural values, social practices and ways of communicating that contributed to some students being privileged over others. Ever since, curricula development, together with the cultural assumptions, values, attitudes and social practices of teachers have been the focus of analysis in an attempt to ‘level the playing field’ for all students.
The second point is that, Goal 1 in the Melbourne Declaration acknowledges that schools have a part to play in developing citizens for a culturally diverse nation. Australia is very culturally, economically and racially diverse. This diversity continues to increase so it is incumbent upon schools to present curricula that are more equitable, and also to educate students to value and appreciate the diversity within their classrooms and the wider Australian community. More recently, however, there has been a backlash against this curriculum approach that has attempted to become more culturally inclusive. In Australia the most vocal critic has been Kevin Donnelly (2007a). In his strong repudiation of a more culturally inclusive education approach, Donnelly argued that our curriculum has consequently been systematically ‘dumbed down’.
Cognisant of the above two points, we posit that sociocultural theories play an important part in examining classroom management practices. They act as a link between the more traditional behavioural and psychoeducational theories (explained in chapter 2) coming as they do from a more individualistic and psychological perspective, and evidence the need to more closely examine curriculum development and implementation as integral to classroom management practice.
We will now identify some of the sociocultural theories that influence interrelationships in the classroom and what impact these may have on the teaching and learning nexus. These influences interact in complex ways and Australian classrooms are not immune from the social dynamics of wider society. Bronfenbrenner explained this by including in his model the macro-system, which broadly refers to the cultural and subcultural aspects of people’s lives. (You may also like to refer to an update, Bronfenbrenner & Evans 2000). Teachers and students can be seen as cultural beings embedded, as they are from birth, in the traits, mores, values and attitudes of their own cultures.
Giddens (1989, p. 31) gives one useful definition of culture:
‘Culture’ concerns the way of life of the members of a given society – their habits and customs, together with the material goods they produce. ‘Society’ refers to the system of interrelationships, which connects together the individuals who share a common culture.
In more recent years, sociocultural theories have paid greater attention to areas more traditionally psychologically focused, such as issues of identity and subjectivity and are examining processes of identification in terms of broader sociological concepts such as class, race, ethnicity and gender. Avtar Brah’s definition of culture is representative of this emphasis, that is ‘Culture is the play of signifying practices; the idiom in which social meaning is constituted, appropriated, contested and transformed; the space where the entanglement of subjectivity, identity and politics is performed’ (1996, p. 234). It is here that postmodern ideas of breaking down boundaries between different disciplines have had the greatest impact. Identity, subjectivity, efficacy and resilience can now be discussed from both psychoeducational and sociocultural perspectives as both cognitive and social processes.