Classroom Management through the Eyes of Elementary Teachers in Turkey: A Phenomenological Study.

Since classrooms are complex social and cultural settings with multiple events occurring simultaneously (Poole & Evertson, 2013), classroom management is considered to be key to effective teaching. That is, teaching is a complex endeavor which requires teachers not only be effective in delivering the instruction but also maintaining the order (Rosas & West, 2009). Research has supported the importance of classroom management for effective teaching and studies demonstrate that more effective teachers generally have better organized classrooms and fewer behavior problems (Evertson, 1985, 1989). Effective classroom management has been characterized as the process of establishing, maintaining, and restoring the classroom environment in an effective way for teaching and learning (Brophy, 1986). It refers to all actions taken by the teacher to create an effective classroom atmosphere where students could be highly engaged in lessons (Doyle, 1986; Romi, Lewis, & Roache, 2013). This is, in return, expected to strongly influence the academic achievement of learners (Marzano & Marzano, 2003; Wang, Heartel, & Walberg, 1993) because it is widely documented that the actual time students spend on meaningful tasks is fundamental to their learning gains (Kunter, Baumert, & Koller, 2007). However, classroom management has been ranked as one of the major problems that teachers face (Rosas & West, 2009; Wubbels, 2011) because in regular classrooms, the available time is spent not only on learning activities, but also on non-curricular activities, organizational issues, or disciplinary problems (Kunter et al., 2007). As poor classroom management interferes with teaching and learning practices, it eventually becomes a major cause for teacher stress (Friedman, 2006), teacher burnout and job dissatisfaction (Garrahy, Cothran, & Kulinna, 2005; Ingersoll, 2001) and results in teachers transferring to other schools or leaving the profession (Ingersoll & Smith, 2003; Rosas & West, 2009). It is also not surprising that classroom management is especially a high priority concern for beginning teachers (Doyle, 1975; Wubbels, 2011) given the strong possibility that failure to master the essential management skills causes discourage and disappointing experiences with students in class (Doyle, 1975). Especially in today's world, the variety of stimuli in learning environments, the reality of social change leading to a diversity in the interests and needs of learners, and the heterogeneity in the background of the students, such as ethnicity, gender, ability, health, nationality, geographic region, social class, and age (Cushner, McClelland, & Safford, 2009; Gay & Howard, 2000) exacerbate the fact that classroom management has been a more serious concern for teachers than it has ever been before (Emmer & Stough, 2001; Milner & Tenore, 2010). Considering the fact that goals of education on the part of students have changed dramatically in the current era (Evertson & Neal, 2006) and cognitive theories have been more influential on education, educational settings have stronger orientations towards student-centered learning environments over the past years. As a result, teachers are required to address the needs of their students who demonstrate an increasing demographic variety. Therefore, to maximize students' development by matching the school culture with student characteristics, teachers are expected to practice culturally responsive pedagogy. According to Ladson-Billings (1992), culturally responsive pedagogy is a term which is used to describe the kind of teaching in which student culture is used as the foundation for enabling students to understand themselves and others. This mainly implies that teachers should acknowledge the contexts, be responsive to the needs and interests of students, be responsible for the academic progress of all students, and integrate the elements of students' culture in their teaching. …