The Meaning of Discipline: Through Student Teachers’ Perspectives

The aim of this study is to explore how preservice teachers build up the meaning of discipline through the qualitative research method. Twentytwo senior students who had finished their practicum participated in this study. The data collection was done through the collections of their cases, journals and discussions, and analyzed by the method of content analysis. The findings, based on my analysis, are as follows. First, the factors preservice teachers use, when they determine whether a certain behavior requires discipline or not, were the developmental stage of a child, the number of repetition of a misbehavior and family environment of a child. Second, preservice teachers used a set of strategies when they tried to resolve the conflict situations raised by a child’s misbehavior. Those strategies were arbitration, persuasion, and avoiding strategies if they were involved in it, and were information providing and comment strategies if they were just observers. Third, they believed the discipline is ‘the process helping children to tell right from the wrong,’ ‘the process integrating individuality into totality,’ and ‘the process connecting schools to families.’

The Meaning of Discipline:

Through Student Teachers’ Perspectives

Hyo-Jin Ahn

1)

Abstract

The aim of this study is to explore how preservice teachers build up the meaning

of discipline through the qualitative research method Twenty-two senior students who had finished their practicum participated in this study The data collection was done through the collections of their cases, journals and discussions, and analyzed by the method of content analysis The findings, based on my analysis, are as follows First, the factors preservice teachers use, when they determine whether a certain behavior requires discipline or not, were the developmental stage of a child, the number of repetition of a misbehavior and family environment

of a child Second, preservice teachers used a set of strategies when they tried

to resolve the conflict situations raised by a child’s misbehavior Those strategies were arbitration, persuasion, and avoiding strategies if they were involved in it, and were information providing and comment strategies if they were just observers Third, they believed the discipline is ‘the process helping children to tell right from the wrong,’ ‘the process integrating individuality into totality,’ and ‘the process connecting schools to families.’

[Key Words] discipline, student teacher

Children become members of a society by studying the values, motives, attitudes and behaviors of other people upon their contacts with them Families are the first social settings that affect the formation of their characters In kindergarten or child care center, their secondary social setting, children are disciplined by teachers based on their behaviors so that they may learn and do appropriate behaviors (Nimmo, 1997) Therefore, discipline of children cannot be defined without teachers views In fact, its definition largely depends on teachers views on its focus and methods

In addition, its meaning of discipline also changed from a negative connotation to a positive meaning according to perspectives and positions taken (Gartell, 2004) The terminology of discipline is believed to result from the perspective that primarily sees children as ones who act carelessly by their natures, consequently the terminology also have a negative connotation of punishing children for their willful misconducts On the contrary, the more recent terminology of behavior guidance reflects the notion that children are valuable ones In this view, teachers understand

it is possible for children to behave badly when they are in conflicts, in the situation of expressing their own emotions or in cooperation with other children, and they believe the behavior guidance is something that helps children to act appropriately and grow as an independent being through proper education and guidance

Although those two viewpoints seem different, they have something in common in their position, which is that disciplining children is one of the most difficult situations for any teacher and it has never been an easy thing However, discipline

is a must for teachers to administer their classes and schools (Sung, 2000) While the discipline can be defined as corrective actions on 1) disruptive behavior to bother learning activities, 2) behaviors threatening the safety and the order even though not related to the matter of disturbing the study, 3) behaviors beyond social rules and norms, many researchers opinions are that the definition is not limited to what Park contended, but in fact goes beyond them, and various strategies and methods should be used in responses to each case (Hogelucht & Geist, 1997; Tully

& Chiu, 1998) For example, Tully and Chiu (1998) recognized behaviors requiring discipline into 1) disruptions, 2) challenges, 3) attacks, 4) incomplete job, and 5) miscellaneous, and contended that strategies to be used were explanation, threat, ignorance, punishment as a system, punishment as a removal tool, and punishment

as an example Hogelucht and Geist (1997) added repetition, looking down, and pretending to those strategies

However, recent research shows different approaches by emphasizing that discipline methods and strategies should be customized according to cultural, social,

psychological, historical and environmental factors Furthermore, researchers began

to recognize that they needed to understand folk pedagogy theory in order to understand the relationship between a particular culture and the nature of children

as well as child-rearing methods (Miller, Wang, Sandel, & Cho, 2002) Folk pedagogy theory is the logically generalized system of faith, tradition education in a certain culture (Kim, Yun, Han, Cho, & Lee, 2002) and it can be summarized as the ways and methods of child development, study and discipline that are emphasized in

a particular culture One aspect of folk theory is that teachers or parents reflect their own faith or values in regards to education when they teach children whether they re aware of it or not It is also called folk education (Olson & Bruner, 1996)

In other words, one generation passes its values and characteristics to another generation through education and passing social or emotionally functions, experience and expression to another generation is achieved in the context of culture (Markus

& Kitayama, 1991; Matsumoto, 2000)

In the eyes of such view, children learn how to behave appropriately and how to express their emotions properly through the culture According to Deham (1998), children obtain the ability to recognize and interpret their own or others emotions accurately as they participate in daily actions Their process to learn and follow the rules for appropriate behaviors is completed by being placed in the conflict situation (Vygotsky, 1978) In addition, Rogoff (1990) said, by the participation in meaningful cultural activities, children are able to express their emotion in a way proper to the situation, and resolve any conflicts in mature ways

So far the studies about discipline largely dealt with the connection with parents and their faith, not with teachers The studies with teachers, if there is any, mainly dealt with the resolution of conflicts either between teachers or between teachers and children (Miller & Goodnow, 1995) and the primary candidates in those studies were teachers at elementary schools, not kindergartens (Park, 2000; Sung, 2000) Sung s (2005) study dealing with how preservice teachers views on the activity guidance changed may be the closest study, done previously, but even in her study the aspect of discipline was omitted

In this study, therefore, I d like to deal with preservice teachers and their opinions about discipline through case study methods I chose a case study method as a research tool because I believed the case study method is the best way to internalize the information when teachers directly participate in the study, based on active learning theory, as Greek (1995) believed, and I also believed it was the best way to present preservice teachers experience with the richest descriptions in their own contexts (Greetz, 1973) Because of such benefits, utilizing the case study method, I am going to seek an understanding of the meaning and the methods

of discipline that preservice teachers perceived in this paper

1 On what standards preservice teachers determine whether a certain behavior requires discipline?

2 What kinds of strategies do preservice teachers use in the situations requiring discipline?

3 What are the meanings of discipline to preservice teachers?

METHOD

The participants of this study were 22 senior students majoring in childhood education in a university located in Kyoungbook province They were from all over the country and had different living styles and experiences In college, they learned theory for 3 years and spent 2 semesters for practicum at kindergartens and child care centers of their choosing The reason why preservice teachers were sampled as subjects is that preservice teachers are more open to new ideas, have higher experimental spirits and stronger desire for change, feel more comfortable with group discussion and sharing their experience in the classroom, and finally have less stereotypes, compared to regular teachers

Data was collected from April 1, 2006 through June 8, 2006 Twenty-two participants wrote up their cases on their own experiences Their writings totaled

132 cases, 200 case analysis, and 12 discussion papers The topics for writings included six occasions of conflicts 1) between children and children, 2) between children and environments, 3) between children and teachers, 4) between teachers and parents, 5) between teachers and environments, and 6) between teachers and teachers, the explanation of such situations, their own opinions on them, their standards for decision making, the effects of decision, and their opinions on it The participants were asked to read and analyze other participants cases, and had chances to discuss 12 selected cases The names and other personal information were removed from the data upon collection so that it may not violate privacy as well as ethics

As an analysis tool, content analysis was used under the guidelines from Bogdan and Biklen (1982) The basic unit for content analysis was the change of wordings Once different wordings were used, it was treated as the beginning of the new unit Throughout the study, three units were used and those were standards and situations requiring discipline and usage For content analysis, the writings of preservice teachers were not only read and classified by topics When reading their

writings, I marked and recorded keywords and key phrases.

To improve the validity of the data, I employed two methods, such as de-familiarization and peer review The peer review was the process to get the second opinion on the accuracy of cases, compared to written analysis, and this was completed by another professor in another college who also holds a doctorate degree in early childhood education The de-familiarization was the process to make the familiar strange and interesting again (Erickson, 1986), and the primary purpose of utilizing such process was to keep their reflectiveness on their experience in the contexts free from any stereotypes

RESULTS

In this section, I wanted to seek understanding of preservice teachers standards to determine what behaviors are allowed and what not in their classrooms and their resolution strategies on their cases

Based on data analysis, preservice teachers were found to count, as the standards, the status of children s developments, the degree of children s habits and the environmental effect on children s behaviors

Preservice teachers used children s age and the status of children development as one of the standards because they believed those measures would tell them whether they can allow a certain behavior or emotional state to reside with the children Out of many factors, the key factor they came up with was self-centeredness It was based on the developmental theory that younger children are more self-centered And, for participating preservice teachers, it took a large part

of their understanding on children behaviors

Preservice teachers, with such a viewpoint, believed the primary reason of misconducts would result from the self-centeredness of children, and their behaviors would be improved as they become mature Preservice teacher, in other words, believed they needed to help children to behave appropriately in accordance with the development stage because different tasks needed to be achieved Here is one preservice teacher s story

I believe there will be differences in development even if two children are

in same class in case he is a few months younger The most important thing is to see children as who they are and wait with patience until time brings them to the next stage of development (Preservice teacher S)

Preservice teacher S saw that children could become less selfish as time goes by, and consequently contended that they should understand the developmental

characteristics coming from their ages and wait for the time when they become more mature Such interpretation reflects the ethics of care, which means younger children need more considerations, love, kindness and help (Gilligan, 1982)

As far as behavioral habits go, preservice teachers think of the number of repetition and the degree of such repetition of a certain behavior as an important standard They believe disruptions, challenges to others, attacks and bursting into tears may not be problems if those actions occurred either once or in short period

of time However, they take them as serious problems if those previously mentioned continue to occur or to be repeated The following is what preservice teacher G experienced everyday in her 3-year-old classroom

Soohyun plays a game every day upon coming When the teacher greets him, saying I love you, Soohyun, he starts to crouch down On the teacher s invitation for fun activities, he doesn t move On the teacher s demand to move around, he just crouches down and smiles Finally the teacher drags him to new activities That s the game Soohyun plays everyday One day when the teacher ignored him, he did not move until 30 minutes passed (Preservice teacher G)

The main teacher tried to help him to adapt himself well to new situations, but it really did not work out for him at all Upon watching this, preservice teacher G believed there might be a need for alternative actions Related to this, preservice teacher K had a story of a child who cries habitually

During free activity time, one child busted into tears It seemed like one of the other children took her color paper away This child was crying out until she heard stop from the teacher and she was ready to go back to playing Other children were making fun of her and made her cry again by taking her toys away (Preservice teacher K)

Preservice teacher E believed the reason why this child repeated an unallowable action was that she did not know or learn the behavior or expression accepted by other people Therefore she pointed out that teachers should help her to behave appropriately

A child with a crying habit seems to use crying as a problem solver It looked like she let others know she had a problem by crying out and waited for help from either teachers or others In my opinion, however, this habit, if continued, will make her more dependent on others even after she becomes an adult Therefore the teacher should discipline such behavior by letting her know crying out does not solve the problem Of course, this needs to be done in a lovely and gentle way (Preservice teacher E)

Unacceptable behaviors in the eyes of preservice teachers include disruptive behaviors, challenging behaviors, and attacks One noticeable thing here is that preservice teachers agree that the origins of such unacceptable behaviors are the environments in which children reside The following is one of such cases

I believe the reason why YoJean is so disruptive and self-centered is that his parents threat him like a king (Preservice teacher D)

In her opinion, preservice teacher D determined the origin of YoJean s self-centered behavior was the way his parents had treated him A similar interpretation was made by preservice teacher K, too

Kyungho lives with only his mom due to his parents being divorced I m not sure whether it affects him or not, but he was, for sure, aggressive and not attentive at all Teachers at kindergarten already classified him as a menace, trouble maker, and difficult child one thing obvious to me was children tagged as trouble makers mostly came from single parent families

Of course over-generalization should be avoided, but teachers at kindergarten told me that children from single parent families generally behaved with great similarity I do not think such over- generalization will

be beneficial to either me or them And I decide to give more steadiness and calmness feeling to children with troubles (Preservice teacher K)

In her interpretation, preservice teacher K believed Kyungho s bad behaviors were largely based on lack of emotional support, which was a result from his parents divorce

One variation, from family environment, to be noted is that they believe not only typical family environmental problems such as a single parent family, but also the stresses children receive cause them to behave badly Let s take a look at the following statement

It seems like Joonyoung gets a lot of stress over his studies, and he becomes furious with others if he feels bad in the slightest degree His parents, according to the teacher in charge, were already notified such facts but it looked like they decided to do nothing (Preservice teacher C)

Other preservice teachers also agreed that the environments in which children reside could be sources of their bad behaviors

Preservice teachers employ two different groups of strategies, depending on whether they are directly involved or not If they were actively involved in the conflict, they used arbitration, persuasion, and avoiding strategies However, they used information providing and comment strategies if they were only observers of

other teacher s conflict situations.

Arbitration strategy Preservice teachers used the arbitration strategy as a tool to discourage unacceptable behaviors in their classes In this strategy, there are two variations The first variation is to make teachers the middle men between children

or between a child and the situation With this strategy, teachers are the third person who helps children to realize their own mistakes The following explains better,

(A girl comes up to a boy)

Girl: you are a really fat boy

Teacher: how will you feel if one of your friends tells you so?

Girl: I ll feel bad

Teacher: Right Won t he feel the same? What should you do then?

Other children: Make an apology! Say sorry!

Girl: I m sorry

Even after this, making fun of this boy continued I wasn t able to come up with a solution relieving him from this sort of situation (Preservice teacher C)

As you see above, preservice C made an attempt to use the arbitration strategy She tried to make the girl in the situation feel sorry but the outcome was not so successful

The second variation of arbitration strategy to discourage unacceptable behaviors is

to change children through play specializing in children s weakpoints or repeated conflict situation Preservice teachers believed the play would help children to obtain required social skills as well as unselfishness

I am going to find and read a book that has a similar situation to Jane, or I will try role plays so that I may provide a chance for them to know how to

be friends of Jane s (Preservice teacher C)

I will help children to learn the importance of peer relationship through play with other friends as well as to know the pleasure of play during play time

or activity time (Preservice teacher D)

Preservice teachers believed it was important for children to learn and follow the rules, and play would teach them the importance of it They also thought that the best discipline was to help children to realize their own faults and to correct them Through play they believed it would be possible

When a child behaves aggressively, a teacher needs to teach hima lesson and to correct his misbehavior immediately In doing so, I believe the best way is to show related pictures to them, and to discuss with them for the solutions (Preservice teacher W)

Avoiding strategy This strategy is a passive strategy andis generally used when they encounter children who respond differently to preservice teachers The

following stories may explain why this strategy is needed.

MinGyu was a menace while Chanee was handicapped I saw MinGyu pinch Chanee in the back I told him not to do so But MinGyu smiled at me and pinched Chanee again I frowned at him, but MinGyu did not pay attention

to my reaction and hit Chanee in the back I said to MinGyu, I will tell what you have done to your teacher in charge As soon as MinGyu heard

it, MinGyu apologized (Preservice teacher E)

Children knew the difference pretty well between the teachers in charge and the practicum teachers Because of it, they used to tell me, when I wanted to do something, Why do we have to do this with you? We ll do it with our teacher In another situation when the teacher was in charge said, Today, you will learn from this teacher Then children said, No, we don t want her We want you Her class is not fun at all Upon hearing that, it was the most embarrassing and sweaty day (Preservice teacher Q)

In both cases, there were power games between children and preservice teachers And these kind of power games are not unique to preservice teacher E and Q but common to most preservice teachers Because of such power games, preservice teachers find it difficult to intervene in conflict situations directly Simply, they do not want to be in the midst of conflicts

Preservice teacher K explains her positions as follows

Because I am a practicum teacher, I always try to be in good terms with the children However, some bright children look down on us and try to take advantage of us No matter how much I feel betrayed and how deeply

I believe those children need some discipline, it just makes me sad because practicum teachers are restricted to discipline children (Preservice teacher A)

Rephrasing preservice teacher K s statement, we would easily find the connotation that preservice teachers find it difficult to differentiate the unacceptable from theacceptable because they do not have rights in class and they are dual figures as teachers and students Therefore preservice teachers prefer practicing the avoiding strategy

Information providing strategy Once a situation gets out of hand, preservice teachers chose to be an information provider to the teachers in charge Let s take

a look at the following

A child came to me and said Sooyong kept hitting her Meeting with Sooyong, I asked what happened but she did not answer I had them shake hands and say sorry to each other and moved on Later I got another call from another child, saying Sooyong kept hitting a child I rushed to the scene and saw 5 other children surrounding Sooyong and had pushed her into the corner When I tried to secure Sooyong for her safety, one child

slapped her It was fast and I could do nothing to prevent it When the teacher in charge came back to the class, I explained to her what happened Then she pointed out to children it was wrong for them to surround one person and slap her She had Sooyong and another child apologize to each other and make peace with each other (Preservice teacher B)

Preservice teachers used the information providing strategy as the same reason why they used the avoiding strategy Because they were not able to resolve the conflicts by themselves, they chose to provide the information to the teachers in charge

Comment strategy When preservice teachers were related to the situation, they analyzed the situation and imagined what they would do if they were teachers in charge before they criticize the teachers in charge or other preservice teachers The following is an example

Because the teacher in charge tagged him, I used to see Soomin negatively One day I was watching over children s free time activities and I noticed Soomin He was playing with Lego blocks As I saw him, he smiled at me back and told me, This is real easy Let me teach you how to do it That was the starting point of a new relationship Whenever I spotted him, I gave him a lot of attention and said kind words to him When he caused troubles with other children, I told him some sort of I message expressing how I felt bad about the trouble and asked him to be gentler with other children Amazingly, he really changed a lot by the end of the practicum period I suspect what Soomin really needed was attention and love it looked like the teacher in charge tagged him as a difficult child after a few sessions with him This experience made me think what kind of teacher I want to

be I decided to be a teacher who can share a kind heart with children tagged as being difficult (Preservice teacher S)

Preservice teacher S contended a child would not change unless a teacher gave him close attention and a warm heart However, when they were not related to the situation, their analysis became more sharp and logical For example, when they discuss what attitude they should take in the face of a trouble-causing child, preservice teacher A responded as follows

There is a tendency among children to look down on practicum teachers Some brighter children take advantage of such difference and cause troubles with other children I believe when we spot any unacceptable behaviors, we should discipline violators seriously with taking pride in our authority I believe strong authority of preservice teachers should be established for good mutual reactions (Preservice teacher W)

She believed the discipline should be based on higher authority and preservice teachers should be able to hold such strong authority