I meet so many fantastic teachers focusing on student choice and project based learning, that I needed to write a little about some differences which many people might consider small, but my peer group and myself consider HUGE!
Guiding Methods vs Interacting Models
Discipline in classrooms is a foundational aspect of effectively managing the learning environment for individual students as well as the group. Depending on a teacher’s preferences, capabilities, and goals they can manage discipline how they see best fit. Generally, the level of discipline the teacher gives themselves power to execute can be split into low/medium/high categories. Whereas high categories represent clearer and more traditional roles of adult/child, and low categories go further in empowering students to advocate for themselves and participate in the process of discipline. We see models of discipline which are compatible with these categories, a low discipline level with a guiding model, a medium discipline level with an interacting model, and a high discipline level with an intervening model.
The purpose of this review is to differentiate between some important examples of low-level/guiding models with medium-level/interacting models. I compare and contrast the models, so that we can clearly see positive and negative aspects of each in relation to each other. I also express a preference for my personal teaching style. The review is supported by academic references and illuminated with personal experiences where possible.
Student Agency
The two methods both address the amount of self-agency students experience, which is the feeling of control they have over their own actions and lives. A high amount of self-agency would mean that a student feels they are self-governing and are the ultimate authority in determining their own behavior. Alfie Kohn directly states his support of self-agency, “Children learn to make good choices by having the chance to choose, not by following directions.” (“Discipline is the Problem”, 1995). He believes that it is a fundamental aspect of revealing goodness in students. To support this, his methods are low-level and he uses guiding models to create his discipline techniques. In “Discipline with Dignity”, the authors refer to a student’s sense of agency as a secondary element when they write that students should be advocates for their own needs, and that teachers should listen to them and offer some choices (Richard Curwin, Allen Mendler and Brian Mendler, 2018).
Personally, I prefer enacting a medium-level interacting model for new classes, in order to create a sense of traditional adult/child relationship in the classroom. Within this framework, I introduce the idea of a low-level guiding model to the students, and we work towards achieving it. This technique has a disadvantage of creating a sense of artificial environments, revealing students that discipline methods are not innate but rather designed. However, I generally entrust the students with this information, “breaking the fourth wall” in a manner, and find that it builds trust when consistently executed.
Documentation vs Experiential Learning
The two methods often, but not always, differ on the depth and style of documentation. We can see that in “Discipline with Dignity”, the reader is given precise methods of handling classroom situations. For example, in the section “Core Beliefs Underlying Discipline with Diginity” eight beliefs are listed and explained (Richard Curwin, Allen Mendler and Brian Mendler, 2018). In my personal experience, this method of detailed explanation is also used by practitioners of the method when instructing their classrooms. This can be a great advantage to a teacher seeking written guidance and rules.
In contrast, Alfie Kohn’s encourages self-reflection. For example, his questions “…what if you engaged the students in thinking for themselves?” or “Did I really expect my students to be eager to learn about “Our Friend the Adverb”?” (Kohn, 1995) are unanswered in his text, and instead expect the reader to ask the question to themselves. To answer this question, a reader either needs experience to reflect upon, or needs to manage a class while reflecting upon Kohn’s words. This style of writing reflects the classroom discipline techniques he is recommending. Unlike the methods in “Disciple with Dignity”, where the rules and motivations can be discussed at the beginning of class in as great of detail as the teacher wishes, the methods in “Discipline is the Problem” require students to encounter experiences and then involved in a reflection and decision about how to behave.
In classes that I have taught, this guiding method lacks enough front-loaded content to introduce students to a new environment. Ideally this lack of disciplinary content could be replaced with information about the class itself, preferably in the form of informational experiences that set the stage for the rest of the semester. However, my classes rely heavily upon student agency and student choice and face a “chicken or the egg” issue of needing choices to be made by students before students know what choices can be made, and how to voice them. When William Glasser is discussed in “Interpreting Glasser’s control theory”, it is evident that students need to find meaning in life while they are attending school (Henry, S.E. & Abowitz, K.K., 1998). Achieving this result while also allowing students experience a high level of self-agency results in a class introduction that relies on a medium-level interacting model, which builds towards a low-level guiding model.
Ultimately, the low-level guiding model achieves a superior result of “meaningful lives” and “a high level of self-agency”, however it must be achieved through a gateway method of discipline due to the heavy requirements of student awareness and understanding of the classroom goals, which can realistically be formed only after the class has begun.
Conclusion
In order to differentiate between “the guiding method” and “the interacting model”, I compared Alfie Kohn’s “Discipline is the Problem” guiding method article with the interacting model presented in “Discipline with Dignity” by Richard Curwin, Allen Mendler and Brian Mendler. These two works do not represent the purest form of each control technique; however they are experience-based writings, and relatable examples. Both models can be used in a classroom, however a limit of common academic articles referencing such systems is that they tend to focus on a sole model in order to convey it succinctly. This can lead to a reader impression that a choice is to be made between the models, and that measurements of success can be how closely real classroom situations compared to the standards laid out in the articles. In actuality, a teacher may find success in setting a path of varying discipline techniques in their classroom and correcting that path throughout the year according to the needs of the classroom situation.
References
Curwin, R., Mendler, A., & Mendler, B. (2018). Chapter 1: Core beliefs and principles. In Discipline with Dignity: How to Build Responsibility and Respect in Your Classroom, 4th ed. (chapter 11). Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/118018/chapters/Core-Beliefs-and-Principles.aspx
Kohn, A. (1995). Discipline is the problem- Not the solution. Retrieved from https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/discipline-problem-solution/
Henry, S.E. & Abowitz, K.K. (1998). Interpreting Glasser’s control theory: Problems that emerge from innate needs and predetermined ends. In R.E. Butchart and B.E. McEwan (Eds.), Classroom Discipline in American Schools: Problems and Possibilities for Democratic Education.