Classroom Management and Student Discipline - Research Paper Example

In this essay, I endeavor to engage in reflection particularly in classroom management and student discipline. Towards this end, I will be discussing various dimensions in classroom management and discipline in the context of my own personal experience. To fully engage in reflective practice, I will draw from relevant literature to assess my own practice. In assessing my practice, I will introduce two types of overarching skills: hard skills and soft skills from where specific strategies belong.

I will then highlight areas of weaknesses and strengths. In conclusion, I will offer recommendations for my own practice that hopefully, will aid in both my personal and professional growth. In evaluating and reflecting upon my practice of classroom management and student discipline, I find it helpful to distinguish between two types of practices. First, I will refer to as technical strategies or hard skills. The second category I shall label as relationship strategies or soft skills. In the world of work, hard skills often refer to technical skills or procedures often involving machinery and computer protocols.

In the classroom, technical strategies are those that involve planning, structuring and organizing systems and procedures to maintain an effective classroom environment. Soft skills on the other hand are the people skills that are employed to build on relationships. In the classroom, certain relationships are important and must be established to reduce disruptions and misbehaviour. Planning would be the key factor in Arrend’s (2009) preventative classroom management strategies. To be able to plan effectively though, it is highly important to know and understand the background of the students, which I usually invest in during the first term of the school year.

I have found that this preparation facilitates not only making effective lesson planning