CLASSROOM DISCIPLINE: REALITY THERAPY VERSUS COOPERATIVE
Classroom management and effective discipline are skills that all beginning teachers must learn. Classroom management refers to those procedures or routines a teacher uses to maintain a smoothly running classroom; discipline refers to those techniques or strategies a teacher uses to respond to specific acts of student misbehavior. (p.1)
The purpose of this essay is to compare and contrast the application of Reality Therapy as a form of classroom and school discipline with the Cooperative Discipline model. The first section of the essay examines the two models in terms of their basic philosophies of discipline, underlying assumptions, and key terms. This is followed by discussion and illustrations of overt teacher behaviors associated with the two discipline models. The final section of the essay delineates the strengths and limitations associated with both approaches.
Basic Philosophies, Assumptions, and Key Terms
According to Welch and Dolly (1980) reality therapy, as applied to the educational setting, derives from a philosophy of counseling in which efforts are made to help counselees deal with personal problems by creating more realistic "quality worlds" (what they want), and/or figuring out better choices (what they do) to satisfy what is in their quality worlds. When clients do this, they are said to feel better and to be more effective in terms of controlling of their lives.
Reality therapy focuses on the present and not the past and is said to be based on "control theory" a term changed to "choice theory" in Glasser's later writings. In general, choice therapy states that regardless of what has occurred in the past, to be happy and effective, we must live and plan in the present (Welch & Dolly, 1980).
The concern of reality therapy is to create warm, trusting, relationships with clients which are said to need help from counselors in terms of...