A tale from three countries: the classroom management practices of pre-service teachers from Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to (i) identify Australian, Canadian and United Kingdom (UK) pre-service teachers’ use, confidence and success of various classroom management strategies and (ii) to ascertain any significant differences between the three cohorts. Significant differences were found amongst the cohort with the UK pre-service teachers using significantly more strategies to promote or guide positive student behaviour (namely strategies related to differentiation, prevention and rewards) than the Australian and the Canadian cohorts. Differences may be accounted for by the way in which classroom management is taught. This study highlights the need to actively model and teach preventive-based strategies to pre-service teachers.

Keywords:

• Classroom management
• pre-service teachers
• prevention
• correction
• differentiation