Classroom Management as a Field of Inquiry

Classroommanagement is a topic of enduring concern for teachers, administrators, and the public. Beginning teachers consistently perceive student discipline as their most serious challenge; management problems continue to be a major cause of teacher burnout and job dissatisfaction; and the public repeatedly ranks discipline as the first or second most serious problem facing the schools. Indeed, one noted author of a text on effective discipline describes the situation in these blunt terms: Despite the concern of educational practitioners and the public, few researchers focus explicitly on classroom management or identify themselves with this field. An examination of the annual meeting program of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) provides a telling example. With over 22,000 AERA members, the annual meeting is an event of enormous proportions, attended by approximately 13,000 people, with 3,000 presenters, and more than 1,500 program slots. Nonetheless, there are generally only two or three sessions explicitly devoted to classroom management, and these tend to be poorly attended. The lack of interest is also exemplified by the pitifully small membership of the AERA Special Interest Group on classroom management.