Case Study

“Behavior Management”

In the teachers’ lounge, one of your colleagues is describing an incident from one of his classes earlier in the day. A male student had been wrestling with another young man over some books. The teacher had told them “they looked like a couple of queers. That made them stop!” Others in the room laugh and pat him on the back.

• Have you observed similar approaches to classroom management?

• What are some of the assumptions apparent on the part of the teacher telling the story?

• How have you responded, or might you respond, to similar instances?