There can be few schools in which teachers are able to take good discipline in the classroom utterly for granted. Usually, in order to establish the kinds of behaviour that are key to a good learning environment, teachers need to invest considerable time, intelligence, patience and planning. Even with such investment, for some teachers – perhaps an increasing number – maintenance of discipline is the concern of their working lives. The purpose of this chapter is to suggest practices which might help teachers avoid or overcome a good many difficulties in this area.

It is organised as follows:

• Part one: Basics of maintaining order – 30 key principles

• Part two: Five routines, or repeating procedures, for improving discipline

• Part three: Peer mediation; four procedures that both develop students' English and introduce a method which, through structured reflection and discussion, addresses causes of poor behaviour

Basics of maintaining order

Establishing foundations for orderly behaviour

1. 1 Decide what basic kind of teacher you want to be

2. Cowley (2001), who questioned a large number of students, concludes that there are basically two kinds of teachers able to maintain order in a classroom: ones who are firm but fair and ones who are scary. A third kind, teachers who want to be their students' friend, were judged to be poor at controlling their classes and were not well respected. I shall assume below that you want to be a firm-but-fair teacher, not one who is frightening or who tries to curry favour and thereby loses respect.

3. […]