William Glasser’s reality therapy or control theory as a discipline model.

For some teachers confronting a classroom management problem might be a daily occurrence due to factors like infractions of school, poorly organized classroom rules, disrespect, cheating, obscene words and gestures, bullying etc. Therefore, when a person becomes a permanent teacher for any grade , I strongly suggest to start developing trusting relationships with her students. She can be an effective instructional leader when she is successful in developing mutual feelings of trust and respect with her students and this will eventually help her in having an effective classroom climate.

 

I suggest beginning teachers using William Glasser’s reality therapy or control theory as a discipline model. Here, human needs are redefined as successful social relationships. This approach will enable Aisha to help students to identify behaviors that are in consisted with accepted social norms, accept them as irresponsible and replace them as more socially desired ones.. According to William Glasser Reality therapy model of discipline, Teacher must interview these groups of student to identify their level of satisfaction of human needs. Therefore, a relationship of trust is essential in reality therapy (Glasser, 1969).

 

Reality Therapy is put into work with Four Steps. Among them, first step for Aisha will be identifying inappropriate behavior. Students are made responsible for their behaviors and they are asked to judge about the behavior – whether the behavior is a desired one or undesired one.

 

Secondly, Teacher should identify the possible consequences associated with certain behavior. Again, students are convinced and they are asked to tell about possible consequences. So that these group of students who cause discipline problems may be convinced that adverse consequences are outcomes of their inappropriate behavior. For example, Teacher can ask the student who caused discipline issue like copying in an exam or bullying with other students about consequences, the student may responds telling like it will be recorded in his discipline record/ he may be called to Leading Teacher’s Room.

 

Thirdly, a value judgment should be made by the students who have undesired behaviors. So Aisha would get confidence that the undesired consequences arising from undesired behaviors will not be repeated by the Student.

 

Also Teacher can use the “time-out” to direct students with undesired behaviors to create a written plan that they believe will solve their discipline problems. The phrase “time-out” is used to explain a simple isolation process from class. The idea behind the time-out technique is to collect statement of intentions from students.

 

The Control theory (Glasser, 1984) aspect developed by William Glasser also will help Teacher to address the forthcoming discipline issues. It emphasis the central role of need of gratification. Again, this is more humanistic in approach where, love control, freedom and fun are considered basic human needs for students. Students may believe more what Teacher says when they feel they are being loved by the teacher and they may feel aggressive when they feel teacher uses excessive control over them. Again, Aisha must know that unrestricted freedom can cause chaos at times. Also with students diversity different students level of needs for these basic human needs elements of love, control, freedom and fun may differ and therefore, when Teacher tries to balance the needs, conflicts in satisfying these needs are observed. The reflection from this is , Aisha must admit that fact of unfulfilled needs may cause misbehavior.

 

Again, William Glasser advocated that “boss-management” rule adhered by school principals and administrators may increase discipline problems. Therefore, Aisha can promote the ideology of lead-management where students are involved indirectly in decision-making process. Also Quality school programs (Glasser, 1990) will help to solve the discipline issues. Teacher first needs to satisfy the basic needs of love, acceptance, control, freedom and fun and can promote learning teams with cooperative learning environment together with indirect instructional strategies like debate, role model, group discussion so as to avoid misbehaviors arising from de motivation and not engagement in the lesson. Goals of instructions must be defined well students for this to happen.

.Too rigid classroom rules may not work but a set out, properly framed classroom rules should be designed. Also Teacher needs to be committed on the task. However, it is believed that Teacher might face some challenges in implementing and using William Glasser’s Reality Therapy or Control Theory. Aisha might need to spend more time with class room meetings than teaching with social interactions with misbehaved students and teacher alone cannot fulfill all human needs to a desired level; parental and society role is more again here. There are some students who do not want to be at school for studying, so the question arises would it be possible for Aisha to use “time-out” and expect from them writing their plans to correcting their undesired behaviors.