Managing space, energy, and self: Junior high teachers' experiences of classroom management

Abstract

While exploring junior high school teachers' meanings of success, one dimension that emerged was teachers tend to talk about their practice in terms of management strategies. Management was clearly significant for teachers as a metaphor for their ways of living, instructing, developing student responsibility and building community within the fluid contingencies that are junior high school life. However, management is a rich concept stretching beyond controlling routines and discipline, to represent a way of being that teachers seem to have developed to live on the edge of surprise. This article examines what teachers believe they manage in their daily work in classrooms with adolescents, and how teachers think about and use strategies in management. Three dimensions are presented here to convey the complexity and flexibility of teacher management and its strategies. First, teachers manage the space of the classroom, including its objects, movement, temporality, and history. Second, teachers manage the energy of people and pedagogy within this space. Third, teachers manage their own identity or the 'teacher self' by adapting and shifting withinthis energy while remaining firmly anchored to commitment and a strong belief in purpose throughout the fluctuating realities of classroom life.