Classroom Behavior Management in the Pacific, Developing an Approach to Create Meaningful Shifts in Teacher Thinking

Introduction

A child’s unproductive behavior can detriment their own and others’ learning. Thus, it is necessary for school staff to implement some form of effective classroom management to ensure students are engaged in their educational tasks. At the extreme end of classroom management is the disciplinary teacher approaches of corporal punishment. Once common, it is now banned in most classrooms around the world; however, the percentage of students reporting to be subject to corporal punishment is still as high as 40% in some South Pacific countries (Gershoff 2017). If it were effective at maintaining appropriate student behavior, school corporal punishment would be expected to predict better learning and achievement among students, yet there is no evidence that school corporal punishment has a positive effect on children’s learning in the classroom (Gershoff 2017). Although corporal punishment is prohibited, globally, classroom behavior management philosophies have persisted with...