As a teacher, you're the one with the ultimate authority over your classroom. No one is telling you how to manage your classroom except for your administrators. You decide how the students are going to learn. It's easy to set expectations and rules for your students, but what it isn't easy is making sure they meet them 100% of the time. A teacher can reinforce and punish for all good and bad behavior, but the students' behavior may never change if they don't understand the rules and expectations. However, the students can take control of their learning by setting expectations, rules and goals for themselves that align with the teacher's expectations. This may take the whole year to get the students adjusted to what they believe they're capable of, but worth it in the end. They've taken responsibility for their actions and behavior and the teacher just has to make sure they're on track. Since they set the rules themselves, they stated that it was capable for them to do so. Constant discipline shouldn't be necessary if the students are accountable for following their own rules.
The teacher whose classroom I participated in firmly believed in student-control. The students did a lot of collaborative work using their personal computers. They could work on math facts together in the form of a game that would later be tested in a times test. The students were responsible for learning their math facts to pass such tests. However, the teacher would take control when it was time to teach a math lesson. He would explain the process of what they were learning and do practice problems with the class. He didn't have control for long because he required the students to translate the lesson into their personal math notebooks. The students had control because they were responsible for learning the lesson when they transferred it to their own notebook.
There are definite motivation differences when it comes to students taking control of their own learning. A lot of students would simply do the required work in class when the teacher would dictate the lesson, but would never transfer their work to their math notebook. Nor would some students take the initiative to practice their math facts on their own. Maybe this is learned helplessness because they believe they'll never be able to learn without the help/guidance of the teacher.
I like how your teacher used both techniques, giving his student control and controlling the class whenever it was needed. Group work was also included when the students were doing math problems, which is always a good thing because the students can always choose who they want to work with.
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