Could time out be promoting further disruptive behavior?
I posted this section to reflect on the article about young children’s perceptions of time out. After my first year of teaching kindergarten I was wondering what the effectiveness was of this strategy. I had tried it in my classroom but with little success in my opinion.
This article discussed the observations of fourty-two children that were interviewed after a time out experience. They worked with 11 different child care centers in this study. The article stated that "more children were observed to be isolated for reasons of noncompliance than for aggression." (Readdick and Chapman, 2000, p.81). They observed children when they were sent to time out, and after awhile they tried to talk to these children that were in time out. They asked them simple questions to get an idea of how they felt when they were sent to time out. Some of the students interviewed expressed the feelings of being alone, ignored or even the feeling of being disliked by their teacher. To a very young child they are viewing this as a punishment instead of a time to calm down and think about their actions. The article states that many children are not even able to tell you the reason they were in time out, which means they have not gained any knowledge or schema of the situation. It will do little to deter the same behavior in the future. Children's perceptions of time out may help adults weigh the appropriatness of using time out in their classroom.
With the child’s limited knowledge and experience (schemas of how things are suppose to be), they might even feel rejected or humiliated. The article goes on to suggest that because of their social inexperience they could internalize these negative labels and react accordingly. If this were true, we are developing the exact opposite schema that we had intended.
Sometimes children need time to think about what they have done wrong and need a “cool down” spot. I always talk with them after a few minutes of time out and see if they know why they are in time out. We talk about how we should be behaving and how to improve upon it in the future. With the difficult class that I had this year, I am not going to say time out doesn’t work, but I enjoyed little success with it. I found this article interesting because it touched on some of the reasons as to why timeout might not work for some young children. It also tied in with how young children do not have the semantic knowledge, schemas or scripts encoded in their long-term memory when they first come into my classroom. I must start from scratch, with some students, in building up their knowledge so that I do not humiliate a child when they are sent to time out.
Article Reference:
Readdick, C. A., & Chapman P. L. (2000). Young Children’s Perceptions of Time Out. Journal of Research in Childhood Education. 15(1). 81-87.
I posted this section to reflect on the article about young children’s perceptions of time out. After my first year of teaching kindergarten I was wondering what the effectiveness was of this strategy. I had tried it in my classroom but with little success in my opinion.
This article discussed the observations of fourty-two children that were interviewed after a time out experience. They worked with 11 different child care centers in this study. The article stated that "more children were observed to be isolated for reasons of noncompliance than for aggression." (Readdick and Chapman, 2000, p.81). They observed children when they were sent to time out, and after awhile they tried to talk to these children that were in time out. They asked them simple questions to get an idea of how they felt when they were sent to time out. Some of the students interviewed expressed the feelings of being alone, ignored or even the feeling of being disliked by their teacher. To a very young child they are viewing this as a punishment instead of a time to calm down and think about their actions. The article states that many children are not even able to tell you the reason they were in time out, which means they have not gained any knowledge or schema of the situation. It will do little to deter the same behavior in the future. Children's perceptions of time out may help adults weigh the appropriatness of using time out in their classroom.
With the child’s limited knowledge and experience (schemas of how things are suppose to be), they might even feel rejected or humiliated. The article goes on to suggest that because of their social inexperience they could internalize these negative labels and react accordingly. If this were true, we are developing the exact opposite schema that we had intended.
Sometimes children need time to think about what they have done wrong and need a “cool down” spot. I always talk with them after a few minutes of time out and see if they know why they are in time out. We talk about how we should be behaving and how to improve upon it in the future. With the difficult class that I had this year, I am not going to say time out doesn’t work, but I enjoyed little success with it. I found this article interesting because it touched on some of the reasons as to why timeout might not work for some young children. It also tied in with how young children do not have the semantic knowledge, schemas or scripts encoded in their long-term memory when they first come into my classroom. I must start from scratch, with some students, in building up their knowledge so that I do not humiliate a child when they are sent to time out.
Article Reference:
Readdick, C. A., & Chapman P. L. (2000). Young Children’s Perceptions of Time Out. Journal of Research in Childhood Education. 15(1). 81-87.
5 comments:
Perhaps you should present first a little more detailed the article (a short abstract) then present your reflection and example of how you applied it in your classroom.
I am wondering if this type of discipline may have a negative effect on a child, what would be the best way to discipline. I thought that that was the nicest way to discipline. Your blog looks really good Casey and is very informative. It has definitely made me think about how to discipline the children in my classroom.
If you would have asked me ten minutes ago if discipline issues in third-grade are different than discipline issues in kindergarten, I would have said Yes. Your blog has underlined the similarities between the grades. I teach third-grade and although I do not use an official “time out”, when students begin to loose control, I also need to remove them from the situation, give them time to calm down, and help them come up with a script for the next time a similar situation happens. Third-graders also have a hard time pinpointing the real reason why they are upset and how to better handle this situation in the future. I try to do this as privately as possible and strongly reinforce the idea that they are not a bad kid, they just made a bad choice which everybody does at one time or another. It is surprising to me to learn how similar our “teacher scripts” are even though my students are three years older than yours.
I understand how a student may feel humiliated because of not understanding what they may have done wrong. I like how you took time after a few minutes of the student being in time out to ask them if they understood why they were in trouble. I think by talking to them and telling them what they may have done wrong will be more effective then sending the student to the corner for a certain amount of time without discussing their actions. I'm also curious if students may look at being sent to timeout as an opportunity for attention from the teacher or classmates. I'm not sure if this thought might include students that are 5-6 years old, but I do see it to be more apparent in the higher grades. Great Job!
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I understand what you mean when teaching young children about schema and script and sometimes as teachers, we forget that our students do not have the semantic memory that we take for granted. Even as a middle school teacher, I forget that my students experience new situations every day and they do not have the experience to handle these situations appropriately. It is the job of the school and the parents to develop and prepare our children for as many experiences as possible.
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