Classroom Discipline in American Schools

Ronald E. Butchart is Professor and Program Director of the Education Program at the University of Washington, Tacoma. He is the author of Northern Schools, Southern Blacks, and Reconstruction: Freedmen's Education, 1862-1875 and Local Schools: Exploring Their History. Barbara McEwan is Coordinator of Elementary Education at Oregon State University. She is the author of Practicing Judicious Discipline and On Being the Boss.

"The strength of this book lies in its successfully bringing so many different conceptual approaches to bear on the topic of classroom management. The authors employ constructivism, critical pedagogy (turning it into critical constructivism), democratic education, the culture of power, judicious discipline, and the ethic of caring to consider their question of how educators can approach classroom management from a thoughtfully democratic stance. The reader is invited to enter the critique along with the authors, pondering how each of their approaches can contribute to a new view of classroom management. By joining classroom management with a concern for both constructivism and democratic education, the authors have tapped into a range of concerns in contemporary schools. The book has a smooth way of bringing philosophical questions into discussion of events and activities that teachers face daily." — Linda Eisenmann, University of Massachusetts, Boston"Classroom management is often analyzed as a distinct entity. However, this book makes a compelling argument to situate the topic in a much larger context; to view it as a central aspect of the politics of schooling and the psychology of learning. As such, it is part of a larger field; namely, the historical and political foundations of education." — Harvey Neufeldt, Tennessee Technological University

• IntroductionRonald E. Butchart Part I: Historical and Political Perspectives on Classroom Management 1. Punishments, Penalties, Prizes, and Procedures: A History of Discipline in U.S. SchoolsRonald E. Butchart 2. "Uncontrolled Students Eventually Become Unmanageable": The Politics of Classroom DisciplineLondon E. Beyer Part II: Ethnographic and Personal Perspectives on Classroom Management 3. The Visceral Pleasures of the Well-Worn Rut: Internal Barriers to Changing the Social Relations of American ClassroomsJackie Blount 4. Why is Michael Always Getting Timed Out? Race, Class, and the Disciplining of Other People's ChildrenBrian M. McCadden 5. Contradiction, Paradox, and Irony: The World of Classroom ManagementBarbara McEwan 6. Interpreting Glasser's Control Theory: Problems that Emerge from Innate Needs and Predetermined EndsSue Ellen Henry and Kathleen Knight Abowitz Part III: Toward a Curriculum of Democratic Civility: Exploring the Possibilities of Critical Constructivist Discipline 7. Judicious DisciplineForrest Gathercoal 8. But Will it Work? The Practice of Judicious Discipline in Southern Minnesota SchoolsVirginia L. Nimmo 9. Emphatic Caring in Classroom Management and DisciplineSharon A. Stanley ConclusionBarbara McEwan Contributors Index