Managing the Classroom
One could comfortably say that classroom management, with the condition that it is carried out to the full extent: as planned and effectively, makes up an essential element of educational management at a larger scale. From calculated and designed practices as well as proactive actions to spontaneous executions addressing any emerging issue during class time and even measures taken belonging to classroom management all reflect the philosophies, values and beliefs of the stakeholders, mostly those of the teachers and the school, and thusly making the term a very complicated one. Classroom management is at times embedded within a teaching standard of ‘learning environment’ of an isolated nature (Caldera, Whitetaker and Popova, 2019). Nonetheless, the concept is attempted to be defined by some scholars like Marzano (2003, p.88) as the compilation of ‘establishing and reinforcing rules and procedures, carrying out disciplinary actions, maintaining effective teacher and student relationships, and maintaining an appropriate mental set for management’. Berliner (1998) gives another definition: classroom management is a process that is composed of all the steps concerning the contact between the students and teachers and also the flow of a lesson. In the new millennium it is interpreted as ‘actions taken to create and maintain a learning environment conducive to successful instruction like arranging the physical environment, establishing rules and procedures, maintaining students' attention to lessons and engagement in activities.’ (Brophy, 2006, p.17).
Classroom management indeed is a notion which encompasses all the relationships created and sustained among teachers and learners aiming to better teaching and learning processes by taking them to a desired level at the same time balancing a healthy rapport with the relevant parties in that sense (Emmer, Evertson and Worsham, 2000). Without doubt and as mentioned earlier herein, classroom management constitutes an integral part of any kind of education at a global scale; particularly the face-to-face conducted ones that usually entail a physical setting. It is witnessed that this is valid regardless of socio-cultural contexts, levels, subjects taught and learned and is accurate irrespective of the characteristics of a huge collection of educational institutions. That is to say effective classroom management enhances the overall quality of teaching and learning moving far beyond encompassing the needs of the inherent elements of the process viz. learners, teachers and teaching/learning.