Dissertation
Student teachers’ practical knowledge, discipline strategies, and the teacher-class relationship
Social aspects of the learning environment, also called classroom climate, are important for students’ cognitive and affective learning outcomes. In this thesis the classroom climate is operationalised by means of two components: the teacher-class relationship and classroom discipline.
- Author
- Romi de Jong
- Date
- 11 April 2013
- Links
- Fulltext in Leiden University Repository
The teacher-class relationship is described with the dimensions of control and affiliation, and classroom discipline is described with sensitive, directive and aggressive discipline strategies. Practical knowledge is thought to be extremely relevant in classroom situations that call for immediate teacher actions, such as disorderly situations, or students’ misconduct. A merit of this thesis is that it showed that in the context of education, it is worthwhile to perceive discipline strategies as consisting of three (sensitive, directive and aggressive) instead of two (sensitive and coercive) factors. This thesis also showed that there are clear and meaningful relations between discipline strategies and the teacher-class relationship. This connection appeared to be much stronger than the direct connection between student teachers’ practical knowledge and the teacher-class relationship. However, teachers’ practical knowledge was found to be related to the way the student teacher disciplines. Results of this thesis provide insight into which components of practical knowledge are related to student teachers’ discipline strategies.