Providing an effective learning environment includes strategies that teachers use to create a positive, productive classroom experience. Often called classroom management, strategies for providing effective learning environments include not only preventing and responding to misbehavior but also, more important, using class time well, creating an atmosphere that is conducive to interest and inquiry, and per-miffing activities that engage students' minds and imaginations.

Time is a limited resource in schools. A typical school is in session about 6 hours a day for 180 days each year Engaged time, or time on-task, the number of minutes actually spent learning, is the time measure. An important cause of lost allocated time for instruction is interruptions. Interruptions may be externally imposed, such as announcements or the need to sign forms sent from the principal's office; or teachers or students may cause them themselves. Interruptions not only directly cut into the time for instruction; they also break the momentum of the lesson, which reduces students' attention to the task at hand.

What practices contribute to effective classroom management? One practice is called "withitness." Withitness describes teachers' actions that indicate awareness of students' behavior at all times. Some call this awareness "having eyes in the back of one's head." Teachers who are with-it can respond immediately to student misbehavior and know who started what. Effective classroom managers have the ability to interpret and act on the mood of the class as a whole. They notice when students are beginning to fidget or are otherwise showing signs of flagging attention, and they act on this information to change activities to recapture student engagement.

Simple measures include starting the year properly, arranging the classroom for effective instruction, setting class rules and procedures, and making expectations of conduct clear to students. This chapter lists six characteristics of effective classroom managers that may be connected as extensions to these simple measures.

The great majority of behavior problems with which a teacher must deal are relatively minor disruptions, such as talking out of turn, getting up without permission, failing to follow class rules or procedures, and inattention-nothing really serious, but behaviors that must be minimized for learning to occur. In dealing with routine classroom behavior problems, the most important principle is that a teacher should correct misbehaviors by using the simplest intervention that will work such as proximity, non-verbal cues, and/or praise.

When a student refuses to comply with a simple reminder, one strategy to attempt first is a repetition of the reminder, ignoring any irrelevant excuse or argument. Canter and Canter (1992), in a program called Assertive Discipline, call this strategy the broken record. Teachers should decide what they want the student to do, state this clearly to the student (statement of want), and then repeat it until the student complies.

When all previous steps have been ineffective in getting the student to comply with a clearly stated and reasonable request, the final step is to pose a choice to the student: Either comply or suffer the consequences. Examples of consequences are sending the student out of class, making the student miss a few minutes of recess or some other privilege, having the student stay after school, and calling the student's parents. Before presenting a student with a consequence for noncompliance, teachers must be absolutely certain that they can and will follow through if necessary.

Applied behavior analysis is used to manage more serious behavior problems. Simply put, behavioral learning theories hold that behaviors that are not reinforced or are punished will diminish in frequency. A basic principle of behavioral learning theories is that if any behavior persists over time, some reinforcer is maintaining it. To reduce misbehavior in the classroom, we must understand which reinforcers maintain misbehavior in the first place. The most common reinforcer for classroom misbehavior is attention-from the teacher, the peer group, or both. There are seven principles listed in this chapter for the effective and humane use of punishment; however, preventative strategies would be the goal of choice and the first line of approach.

Yes, behavior problems may be prevented, even serious ones. As noted earlier in this chapter, the easiest behavior problems to deal with are those that never occur. There are many approaches that have promise for preventing serious behavior problems. One is simply creating safe and prosocial classroom environments and openly discussing risky behaviors and ways to avoid them. Another is giving students opportunities to play prosocial roles as volunteers, tutors, or leaders in activities that benefit their school and community.

There are several very structured preventative strategies. They include a variety of theoretically-based preventative programs to simple methods of merely trying to identify the cause of the misbehavior in order to eliminate it. Furthermore, educators may use other preventative measures as an entire school system or within one class such as enforcing rules and practices, enforcing school attendance, a model called Check and Connect, non-tracking, intervention, family involvement, peer mediation, and consequences applied only very judiciously. Finally, every child has within himself or herself the capacity for good behavior as well as for misbehavior. The school's approach and the individual teacher's approach must be the ally of the good in each child at the same time that the enemy of misbehavior.