Literature Review

Classroom management is one of the important elements that need to be mastered by

every teachers. Classroom management is also known as classroom disciplines. Without a

good management and some set of rules, a classroom could be turned into a big disaster.

Many of the teachers entered the classroom without have enough content knowledge of the

classroom management and lack of the classroom management strategies.

Teachers in middle level schools face overwhelming demands and challenges in their

classrooms. They are expected to know content and pedagogy, develop engaging lessons that

meet the needs of diverse learners, and use a variety of instructional strategies that will boost

student achievement while they simultaneously develop positive relationships with, on

average, 125 students each day who are experiencing the personal, social, and cognitive

challenges and opportunities of early adolescence (Carnegie Council on Adolescent

Development, 1995; Schmakel, 2008).

Teaching is complex and cannot be reduced to discrete tasks that can be mastered one

at a time. Teachers must "win their students' hearts while getting inside their students' heads"

(Wolk, 2003, p. 14). As Haberman (1995) suggested, this winning of the hearts occurs

through very personal interactions, one student at a time. This perspective is supported by

research suggesting that teachers who develop such relationships experience fewer classroom

behaviour problems and better academic performance (Decker, Dona, & Christenson, 2007;

Marzano, Marzano, & Pickering, 2003).

What is classroom management? Why it is important? Classroom management is

actually refers to the techniques, set of rules and skills used by the teachers in order to

overcome the misbehaviour in the classroom. It is important to produce a positive learning

environment. The positive learning environment would provide more time for learning.

According to (Karweit,1989), it might be surprised to know that how little actually teaching

takes place. Many of the teachers have to spend a lot of time to handle interruptions,

disruptions, late starts and rough transition. As we aware, the classrooms in Malaysia have a

big number of students. Therefore, the teachers need to think and set the effective rules and

procedures to make sure that the students have more time for learning. It is also can help

teachers to avoid wasting their time too much to entertain the same interruptions over and

over again in the same class during the lesson.

The classroom management also important to maintain the quality of the relationship

between teachers and students. When the bonding and the relationship between teacher and

students are strong, the instructional strategies could be more effective. A research has been

conducted by Marzano, and Pickering (2003), in a meta-analysis of more than 100 studies,

reported that teachers who had high-quality relationships with students had 31% fewer

discipline problems, rule violations, and other related problems over a year's time than did

teachers who did not. This research shows a significant result to interpret how important to

develop a positive relationship between teacher and students.

Moreover, the classroom management is important to maintain a good learning

environment as well. That is because it could be a good start for the teachers in order to

encourage students’ engagement. The elementary teachers, especially in the afternoon session

have the most challenging tasks to gain students’ engagement. Afternoon session students are

not easy to be handled. They already became restless and tired at the beginning of the school

session because most of them need to attend religious school in the morning. Therefore, some

of the students will start to become misbehave and tend to disrupt others. Hence, the effective

classroom management and rules can be one of the effective weapon to overcome this issue

and help teachers to encourage students’ engagement. It can be done by using a “reward

chart” for instance. The teacher must tell the students about the rules and regulation of the

“reward chart”. The teacher can give “stars” for each students who behave well and take part

during the teaching and learning activities. Contritely, for those who are unable to behave

well, the teacher can take out their “stars”. Thus, I believe it could help teachers to encourage

students’ engagement and indirectly create a positive learning environment.