On Improving School Climate: Reducing Reliance on Rewards and Punishment

Abstract

This study examined the impact of training early childhood teachers in an emotional intelligence and classroom management program titled Conscious Discipline®. The researchers conducted eight one-day workshops monthly from September through April to an initial group of more than 200 participants. To assess attitudinal changes teachers answered a survey about their school climate and classroom management methods. The survey was initially given in September to participants (n=206) consisting of prekindergarten through sixth grade teachers with no exposure to the Conscious Discipline workshops and then again in April to a subset of the group who completed the workshop (n=117). The statistical discriminant analysis found significant improvement in the teachers’ perceptions of school climate and in their knowledge and use of these new classroom management techniques (p < .05). The study demonstrates that the untrained group was unaware of the social relationship and cultural principles of Conscious Discipline that include releasing external control, embracing conflict resolution and implementing a more emotionally targeted reward structure in the classroom. Initial participants also expressed being unsatisfied with their school climate. However, those teachers who completed the workshops and were highly committed to using the Conscious Discipline skills exhibited a heightened positive feeling about school climate. Though, the more fully-engaged teachers scored somewhat lower on the favorable school climate dimension than those teachers who were only minimally using Conscious Discipline techniques. Many teachers also showed improvement in student/teacher relationships (r=.325) and in mutual support among teachers (r=.306).

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