A classroom discipline plan that teaches democracy.(Report)

This article has two purposes. It presents a classroom management model that both works and teaches democracy by having students use the democratic process to create their learning environments; and it presents the model's impact upon the interest of 60 college seniors as they prepared to enter the classroom for their secondary social studies student teaching the next semester in a pretest-posttest/control group study .

This work represents a teacher's effort to assist students in becoming stewards of democracy by drawing up and adhering to behavior contracts in the classroom. The intent of this article is not to criticize nor critique other classroom management plans, but rather this work is presented as a method to fulfill a need in current American classrooms. As early as 1779, our founding fathers charged that public schools should be considered a means for educating students about democratic citizenship (Jefferson, 1779). In large part, it was this assumption that led to the creation of social studies as part of the American public school curriculum (Shinew, 2001). Is there a way to improve classroom management that gives more time for subject mastery and, at the same time, teaches democracy by allowing students to discuss, debate, and vote on not only how they want their classroom to be managed but how they want to learn?

The National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS, 1994) says that there are four goals in social studies education that teachers should have for their students:

1. Have subject mastery;

2. Be a life-long learner capable of problem solving;

3. Be a good participant in democracy; and

4. Be a contributor to the common good.

While the present presidential administration is attempting to reform education from the top down, it might be possible to do a better, more lasting reform from the bottom up by bringing democracy into daily classroom procedures (including management). Using the classroom management program discussed in this article, students learn democratic procedures first-hand as they create a better classroom learning environment. The result is that there is less time taken away from instruction by student misbehavior, while students learn social skills.

To provide the best learning environment for their students, teachers need to have good classroom management skills. Teaching future teachers how to infuse democracy into student discipline offers them a way to improve such skills. Sixty secondary social studies education candidates engaged in such a process in their social studies methods class and the results of this process had a positive impact upon their interest in learning to become teachers. The contracts used are at the end of this article (see Appendices A, B, and C). In addition, each student had an equal vote in approving the three class contracts that set up the classroom environment.

The following sections will review the literature on the need to bring more practical knowledge of democracy into American classrooms, state the conceptual framework for teaching democracy within a classroom discipline program, explain the program as it was created for both college seniors and their future high school students, and describe through the data collected the effects of teaching this program had on the college seniors.

Review of the Literature

Social studies educators need to provide their students with citizenship education of "the highest quality " (Social Education staff, 2005, p. 414). American public schools are "the only institutions with the capacity and mandate to reach virtually every young person in the country" (Social Education staff, 2005, p. 415). While all subjects can be appropriate vehicles for teaching democracy, social studies is particularly involved because the subject was placed in the public school curriculum to promote knowledge of democratic principles (Jefferson, 1779; Shinew, 2001). Therefore, educators are urged to set up learning communities in their classroom "in which young people learn to interact, argue, and work together with others, an important foundation for future citizenship." (Social Education staff, 2005, p. 414). One of the best outcomes of such an approach would be students creating contracts by which they "buy" into their classroom management and how they want to be taught. In the process, they can discover how people want to be treated-thus, learning social skills.

The idea of classroom contracts has existed since the 1980s. Studies have shown (Adolina, Jenkins, Zukin, &…