CM3

Social Skills

Most new teachers, in order to survive their first few years of teaching, usually use traditional methods of classroom management and teaching. It may be that in the first stages of teaching they are too preoccupied with management problems to apply theory to practice. Veenman (1987) also refers to the reality shock that hits young teachers as they begin their work, referring to it as a concept "used to indicate the collapse of the missionary ideals formed during teacher training by the harsh reality of everyday classroom life." Veenman reviewed a total of 95 studies, most from the U.S., but many from Europe, and identified classroom discipline as the highest ranked problem for beginning teachers, with pupil motivation as the second.

New teachers with whom I have worked say they get burned out from disciplining their students, and discipline is the most stressful part of the instructional experience. Indeed, adequate classroom discipline is generally regarded to be one of the most essential aspects of education as well as an absolute prerequisite to achieving instructional objectives and safeguarding students' psychological, social and physical well-being. As experts have pointed out, the relatively rudimentary stage of the science of classroom discipline may account for the often inadequate preparation of teachers in classroom control techniques and the consequent difficulties in implementing these strategies in the classroom (YOU NEED to PUT CITATION HERE).

Most of the teachers anticipated that by the end of their preparation they would have learned something about how human beings learn new skills and acquire new information. They expected to be in possession of techniques and skills that would enable them to manage groups of children and to bring about good learning outcomes. They believed they would be given opportunities to practice these in meaningful contexts and to receive expert coaching from established, successful practitioners. Rarely were these expectations met. In reality, students tend to be taught a great deal about the content of syllabuses and the planning of lessons but the business of bringing about successful learning outcomes or how to manage a class is rarely addressed. Yet a measure of order in the classroom is an essential prerequisite for any meaningful teaching/learning interaction (CITATION?).