How to Tackle Management Strategies in The Educational Setting: High Need Students their categories and Teaching Responsibilities In Nursing Education.
High Need Students their categories and Teaching Responsibilities: Management Strategies in The Educational Setting
What are High-Need Students
Be aware of the needs of different types of students (Marzano, 2003). Although the nursing education instructor is not in a position to directly address severe problems, instructors with effective classroom management skills are aware of these high-need students and are able to come up with a variety of responses to such problem students.
Categories of High-Need Students Include:
- Passive
- Aggressive
- Attention problems
- Perfectionist
- Socially inept
Passive Students are Characterized as Follows
- Fear of relationships
- May be victims of abuse (physical/verbal)
- May suffer from medical problems
- For example, depression, social phobias, etc.
- Fear of failure
- Students may suffer from a deeply engrained belief that they do not have the requisite skills to succeed in school Possible ways to deal with the passive student include providing safe peer relationships and protection from aggressive people, assertiveness and positive self-talk training, rewarding small success quickly and withholding criticism. Aggressive students may present themselves as:
- Hostile
- Poor anger and impulse control, low empathy, sense of entitlement, inability to see the consequences of their actions, low self-esteem, thrill seeking, aligning themselves with deviant peer groups, and committing criminal behavior
- Opposition
- Consistently misbehaves, argues with adults, inappropriate language, apt to criticize, blame, and annoy others
- Covert
- Often around when trouble starts, never quite do what is asked of them
Possible solutions to deal with an aggressive student include helping the student to recognize his/her behavior, contracting with the student to reward correct behaviors and giving consequences for incorrect behavior, giving the student responsibilities to help the instructor and other students in order to foster successful experiences, and keeping in mind that aggressive students are often masking hidden fears and inadequacies
Attention Problems Appear in the Following Ways
- Hyperactive (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder [ADHD])
- Poor impulse control
- Inability to stay seated or work quietly
- Tendency to blur out questions/answers
- Trouble taking turns
- Tendency to interrupt others
- Inattentive (attention-deficit disorder [ADD])
- Fails to pay close attention
- Rarely appears to listen
- Forgetful
- Easily distracted Possible solutions include contracting with the student to manage behaviors; teaching skills of concentration; study and thinking skills; helping the student with planning, outlining, and time management skills; and rewarding successes. Perfectionist students may have the following characteristics:
- Closely resembles the diagnosis of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)
- Drive to succeed that is close to unattainable
- Self-critical
- Low self-esteem
- Deep-seated feelings of inferiority and vulnerability
- Only way they feel loved, respected, or get attention is to be perfect
- Believe they are liked for what they can produce, not who they are
- Can be self-destructive
Possible solutions include showing the student that mistakes happen and that they may be acceptable, teaching the students that mistakes can be a learning experience, and having this type of student tutor other students. Socially inept students:
- Have difficulty making and keeping friends
- Stand too close
- Talk too much
- Make “stupid” or embarrassing remarks
- Are well-meaning students but try too hard to relate to others
- Often feel sad, confused, and different from others
- Are often labeled immature, tactlessness, and insensitive
Possible solutions include teaching the student social skills, such as appropriate physical distance or politeness; teaching the student to recognize the meaning of facial expressions, such as anger or hurt feelings; and making suggestions regarding hygiene, dress, mannerisms, and posture.
Responding Appropriately to Levels of Misbehavior
Barbara Coloroso is another theorist whose views are consistent with recent thought that students must take a more active role in taking responsibility for their own behavior. She believes that students should work with instructors to develop “inner discipline.”
She defines inner discipline as the ability to behave creatively, constructively, cooperatively, and responsibly without being directed by someone else. She bases her teachings on the “golden rule” saying, “I will not treat a student in a way that I myself would not want to be treated” (Coloroso, 1994). Colorado states that teachers should try to use “proper discipline,” which includes:
- Showing students what they have done wrong
- Giving them ownership over the problems they have created
- Providing them ways to solve the problems
- Leaving their dignity intact
She states that the consequences of behavior need to be “reasonable, simple, valuable, and practical (RSVP)” (Charles, 2002, p. 149). She divides misbehavior into three levels: “mistakes, mischief and mayhem.” Mistakes are described as errors in judgment or trust. Instructors should deal with these students after the class.
A simple question posed to the student may be, “I want to be able to trust you again. How can we do that?” The mischief level of misbehavior involves showing students what they did wrong, giving them ways to make restitution, making them responsible for their actions, and helping them to save face and leave the related problem with their dignity intact.
The mayhem type of misbehavior may result in serious harm to other students. Coloroso suggests that to fix their behavior, students could take the following routes: restitution, or making good; resolution, preventing it from happening again; or reconciliation, healing the students who were harmed. Coloroso would emphasize that any solution to a discipline problem must leave the dignity of both the instructor and the student intact. She would strive for a “win-win” solution to problems and disputes.
The Fourth Pillar: Supporting Learning and Student Success
Management Strategies in the Educational Setting the fourth and last “pillar” of effective classroom management is making effective use of classroom management strategies that support the previous three pillars and keep the momentum going throughout the semester. Some instructor goals supported by this pillar include:
- Getting students back on track through signals, expressions, and gestures
- Showing interest in student work by observing, commenting, and discussing
- Restructuring work that is too difficult
- Assisting students in learning appropriate social skills
- Facilitating students’ self-control
- Redirecting students’ focus to academic tasks
- Encouraging peer support and appropriate classroom behaviors
- Relieving tension by injecting humor (not sarcasm).
These goals might be simplified into three main areas: teaching responsibility, teaching students that they are capable, and developing a professional “mentoring” relationship with students.
Teaching Responsibility
Teaching responsibility can be described as teachers modeling and actively lending assistance to help the students achieve valuable prosaically behaviors. Teaching content is always the primary focus of an instructor but for a nursing student to go out into the world and work with others, he also needs to know how to live and work with others and to apply what he has learned in the university in his interactions with others.
Patricia Kyle and Lawrence Rogien (2004) in Opportunities and Options in Classroom Management list the following behaviors that instructors should actively teach and model to their students. Dr. Goleman’s 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence, argues that human competencies like self-awareness, self-discipline, persistence, and empathy are of greater consequence than intelligence quotient (IQ) in much of life that we ignore the decline in these competencies at our peril, and that teachers can and should teach these abilities.
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