Classroom Management in Vocational Schools - a context-oriented analysis

• Applicants: Privatdozentin Dr. Sabine Glock; Professorin Dr. Sylvia Rahn
• Subject Area: General and Domain-Specific Teaching and Learning
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 461631916

Many studies support the importance of classroom management for successful teaching and for student’s academic achievement. Person-centered approaches to classroom management imply that teachers’ classroom management reflects a habit and that teachers represent a special leadership type. Context-centered studies, which might be able to investigate this assumption are rare.Teachers in vocational schools are, due to the manifold school programs realized within these schools, confronted with very heterogeneous conditions. What we do not know so far is to which extent vocational teachers’ reactions to the heterogeneous conditions are person-based and stable or variable and context-sensitive.Among vocational schools, the question about the importance of these different contexts for classroom management still remains to be answered. Therefore, the planned study is conceptualized as a context-centered investigation of classroom management in vocational schools. It focusses on the analysis of the generalizability of classroom management across different contexts and on the determinants which result in successful classroom management. Based on the model of classroom management and adding teachers’ interactional behavior, we investigate classroom management and teacher interactional behavior from the teachers’ as well as from the students’ perspectives. Among a sample of 100 vocational teachers and their students, who belong to three differing school programs we investigate the importance of context variables such as school program, ethnic, gender-related and achievement-related classroom composition for classroom management and teacher behavior. Employing hierarchical regression analyses, a generalizability study and analyses of variance, the project investigates• the determinants of successful classroom management in vocational schools• the generalizability of classroom management• whether we are able to identify successful classroom managers and whether their behavior is stable or context-sensitive.The planned study allows to gain insights into the rarely researched domain of classroom management at vocational schools as well to draw conclusions about trainings to prepare teachers for the demands resulting from heterogeneous classrooms.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants