Linda Albert – Cooperative Discipline
Linda Albert’s Cooperative Discipline Model was designed to allow teachers to utilize specific strategies to reach individual students and help modify their behavior. According to Albert, students choose their own behavior. As teachers, we cannot control a student’s behavior choices, but we can influence them. “Using a comprehensive approach, "Cooperative Discipline" deals with all three discipline types: corrective, preventive, and supportive. It addresses the topics of student motivation, avoiding and defusing confrontations, ways to reinforce desirable behavior, building student self-esteem, when and how to involve parents and others, and how to discipline cooperatively.” (Albert, L., (1990))
Teachers need to find a way to interact with students so they will want to choose appropriate behavior and follow the rules. It also helps for students to have perceptions of their teachers as trustworthy authority figures. Teachers may earn the trust and cooperation of students if they use relationship building to prevent discipline problems. (Gregory, A., & Ripski, M. (2008) pp. 337-340.)
Rudolf Dreikurs first proposed the idea that students misbehave because they want something. The first step of Cooperative Discipline is to identify the cause for student behavior and figure out what it is the misbehaving student wants. There are four main reasons for misbehavior: attention, power, revenge, and avoidance of failure. These are the most common reasons for misbehaving. Students seeking attention might disrupt the class with noises, foul language, or other interruptions. They want to be the center of attention and use these tactics to gain the attention of the teacher and their classmates. Students who want power want to be in control of the classroom and everyone in it. They are likely to refuse to follow rules and to disobey the teacher. They will argue with the teacher to prove that they are in control and that they cannot...