Jacob Kounins Instructional Management Theories

Jacob Kounin started as an educational psychologist at

Wayne State University in 1946. Afore Kounins theories,
many people felt as though discipline and instruction
were separate entities. They believed teaching was only
helping students learning information and skills.
Discipline was how a teacher kept the students working,
paying attention, and maintaining proper behavior. He
began studying how teachers manage classroom behavior but found that no matter
what they did, the behavior did not change. He concluded that what teachers do
to prevent management problems was the key to successful classroom
management. His experiments took over five years to complete. He worked with
college, high school, middle school, and elementary students. He wrote a book
called Discipline and Group Management in Classrooms. His book summarized
the behaviors of classroom managers. His studies were based off of video tapes
of 80 elementary classrooms.

Briefly About the Theory

In a broad contrast of effective and ineffective classroom management,

Jacob Kounin found that the teachers differed very little in the way they handled
classroom problems once they arose. The key difference was in the things the
successful managers did that have a tendency to avoid classroom problems. They
were totally aware of the whole thing in the classroom environment, they kept
students actively engaged, and they conducted well planned lessons with smooth
transitions. Kounin concluded that some teachers are better classroom managers
because of skill in five areas: withitness, overlapping, momentum, smoothness,
and group focus.
Approaches and Strategies

Withitness

Group
Overlapping
Focus Kounins
Basic
Classroom
Management
Behaviour

Smoothness Momentum

Withitness

Withitness is the skill to tell what is going on in all parts of the classroom at
all times, nothing is missed. Withit teachers respond instantly to student
misbehaviour and know who started what. A most important element of withitness
is flick through the class frequently, forming eye contact with students individually,
and having eyes in the back your head. Withit teachers dont make timing errors,
waiting too long before intervening, or target errors, blaming the wrong person and
letting the real perpetrators escape responsibility for misbehaviour. Withit
teachers prevent trivial interruptions from becoming major and know who the
mastermind is in a problematic circumstances.

A good teacher is in general superb at multitasking. Their mind is able to

process numerous sensory inputs at the same time, the random sounds in the
classroom, the voices of her students, people walking by her classroom door, all
while conducting a lesson and focusing on the educational content that needs to
be presented. This is a characteristic that educators refer to as withitness.
 Overlapping

Effective classroom management are also capable of overlapping. Overlapping

means control two or more activities or groups at the same time. Basically, it is the
ability to observer the entire class the whole times. It includes keeping a small group
on task, for example, while also assisting other students with their seatwork, teachers
ability to meritoriously handle two or more classroom events at the same time, rather
than becoming occupied in one and letting the other be abandoned. When instructing
one group, a teacher should be able to recognize teething troubles that students
outside of the group may be having so that instruction may continue. A different
example is when a teacher is conducting small group assignments, and a pair is off
task, a teacher may address them from a distance while still conducting the activity.
This also takes account of interruptions from outside the classroom such as notes
from the office or students walking through the hallways.

Momentum

Momentum speaks of to the energy and flow of a lesson. Effective teachers

move through the lessons at a brisk pace and appear to have very few slowdowns in
the flow of activities. Maintaining such momentum and having a firm sense of
movement all the way through the lesson helps engage the learners in activities and
helps avoid student misbehaviour. Teachers often cause slowdowns over dwelling on
a task, and dividing activities into trivial steps when it might have been better to
formalize the activity as a single activity. Teachers who spend excessively time giving
detailed instructions on an activity can reduce students' interest. Lecturing for too long
a time period is another form of over dwelling.

According to Kounin's, momentum seemed to be the primary management

behaviour for stimulating active participation among students and reducing
misbehaviours. The daily lesson plan is conceivably the greatest tool to ensure that
momentum is maintained. When a teacher has done a in-depth job of planning the lesson,
the class can move along at a brisk pace.
Smoothness

Smoothness is the teacher's ability to be able to continuous transitions in

the middle of learning activities. Kounin identified a number of classroom
behaviours that tended to impede smoothness. To begin with, providing on a group
or the whole class with brand new information or instructions when the students
are not ready for it. Perhaps, what if the teacher told the class that groups had ten
minutes to complete an activity in which they were categorizing word class. With
four minutes of the students' time left, the teacher bursts in with these instructions:
"In addition to what you are doing, now I want each group to name the word classes
and to report their findings to the whole class." It would be better to either one
include this task as part of the original instructions or wait until the ten-minute
period was up and then announce the new instructional procedures.

Leaving an activity hanging by starting an additional activity. Let's say, an

English teacher initiates the lesson by check-up the homework, and asks three
students to go to the board to write the answers to the first three problems. While
they are on the way to the board, the teacher asks the class if they are ready to
review yesterday's lesson activity. Many students raise their hands and start talking
about yesterdays activity. In the meantime, one student at the board is having
trouble with one of the homework problems. The teacher's attention is now drawn
to the class talking about yesterdays activity.

Calling attention to a problem during an activity, which could have been

dealt with later. Examples are minor misbehaviours, a student in English class
looking over a Malay term paper. Occurrence like this one can be controlled by
merely walking to the student and touching the paper. A problem come about when
the teacher goes to the student and asks if he or she is reading a Malay paper in
English class and gets into a discussion. By this time, the whole class is
interrupted.
Group Focus

Group focus as the ability to take part the whole class. Build up suspense
or ask questions though the questions may appear random, it draws the groups
attention and intrigue. The teacher must integrate procedures to handle multiple
circumstances all together to keep up group focus. Say, if a student finishes a
worksheet early, teachers must have a backup plan such as providing an additional
task or enrichment activity while teacher helps other students that are struggling.

It is very significant for teacher to make sure know all what to do. A teacher
possibly will say, This is a fact that you will need to know for this weeks test. A
different example could be the following: Class, today and for most of tomorrows
class we will be using a variety of chemicals. Some of them can bleach your
clothing, and so I am asking each of you to be very careful! Effective grouping
maximizes active participation and keeps students engaged in learning.
Strengths and Weaknesses

A teacher once said, The better I am prepared, and the better I do in the
classroom, the better my student behave. Obviously Teachers who use effective
instructional management keep their students focused on learning tasks and
minimize behaviour problems. Some more of the advantages are maintain
students attention, helping teachers create withitness image in the classroom,
Helping detects inappropriate behaviours early and accurately. Additionally
teacher could attempts to involve all learners in learning task and indirectly help
teachers handle misbehaviour/discipline problem in the classroom

Here some of the advantages of instructional management are does not

indicate how to handle threat. Therefore, teachers have to use their own instinct
and intuition to handle the problems. Students do not take responsibility for their
behaviours, for example, students do not did their homework. It is the teachers
responsible to use force or not to make sure they finish it next time.

The theory was intended only to handle daily routine classroom

management problems and students in the middle and secondary school might not
be affected by Kounins ripple effect, but students in elementary school does.
Additionally, Kounin does not address the issue of teaching learners to discipline
themselves and less-relaxed students & reduces feelings of teachers and
helpfulness and likeability.
Practicality

Teacher can apply the theory with satiation, the feeling students get when
they are too full, so stuffed, and replete with instruction that they have no more
interest or desire to learn. Thus, teachers should avoid satiation by trying to make
learning interesting and students successful rather than bored or frustrated.
Teacher could aware students by pick out reciters randomly, building suspense,
using chorus responses, or signalling children that they may be called on.

Valence and challenge encouragement refers to teachers displaying

enthusiasm and using a variability of activities when teaching students, so learners
have a positive reaction to the lesson. A seatwork variety and challenge refers to
the idea that teachers should strive to make seatwork interesting to students.
Staying on a topic further than what is required for the childrens understanding
and focusing on a smaller subpart of an activity or instruction when it might have
been dealt with as a in one piece. If students are off-task and fooling around, the
teacher needs to send a clear message that communicates to the students that
the teacher sees that they are not working and they need to get started.

Todays teachers still use Kounins theory on classroom management and

discipline to decrease misbehaviour problems in the classroom. The theory to
decrease misbehaviour actually works if applied successfully. Kounins theory is
common sense, but he gave a name to the different ways on controlling students
misbehaviour and bring to an end it from happening in the future.

I agree with Kounins theory because I have seen it successfully

implemented in a classroom and I myself have used his theory to watch over and
control a class. His theory helps tell the students that the teacher is in control and
has eyes in the back of the head to see everything. Applying Kounins theory in the
classroom has benefits that will set the tone and control in the class. His theory
explains that if the teacher is there then the setting of the classroom under control.