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Managing Classrooms

Learning Resource > Managing Classrooms

Classroom co-ordination and management

What is this all about?

This topic draws attention to the importance of issues related to classroom coordination and management. This includes issues of classroom organisation, such as the handling of disruptions, the fostering of appropriate behaviours (e.g. minimising student uneasiness), ensuring student understanding of classroom/course rules and procedures (how work is assessed, directions and guidelines for tasks), time management (e.g. ensuring sufficient time is given to meaningful activities), or monitoring class activities (e.g. checking students are on task, monitoring group interactions, or identifying when students are having difficulties). As well as issues of student behaviour in the classroom, academics also shared issues relating to their own behaviour, performance and development in and outside of the classroom.

It was interesting to us that these issues arose from our data from the IntRef activities because this aspect of teaching tends not to be discussed a lot in the higher education literature, whilst there is considerable discussion and literature in the school sector which focuses on what tends to be referred to as ‘classroom management’ or even ‘discipline’. In higher education relatively little advice and guidance is provided about the details of planning, timing, managing and monitoring classroom activities and the finer grained nature of interactions between higher education teachers and their students.

What did academics discuss?

Here we provide vignettes to illustrate what academics involved in the reflective sessions facilitated by the Intref project  said relating  to classroom coordination and management.


What resources are there to help with issues like this?

The following lists contains a range of different resources designed to further your exploration of these issues, both from a practice and scholarly perspective. This is intended as a community resource which will grow over time and to which we invite you to contribute. The lists contains resources that explore these issues in both a school and a higher education context because we feel there are things we can learn by going back to school-based materials.  

Classroom management

Dealing with disruptions

Establishing ground rules

Session planning

Do you want to contribute?

Would you like to offer further reflections or examples emerging from your experience and or research?  Do you have other resources or references you would like to share with the community?