Date of Award

12-4-1996

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Liberal Studies

First Advisor

Rachel Mathews, Ed.D.

Second Advisor

Ruth L. Meese, Ph.D.

Third Advisor

David M. Carkenord, Ph.D.

Abstract

One of the purposes of this study was to examine types of classroom management methods used by regular education teachers and special education teachers. Another purpose of this study was to·investigate which management strategies were the most successful and unsuccessful in regular education and special education classrooms . The subjects of this study included 96 elementary school teachers (N=96) from four counties in the state of Virginia. A self­ developed questionnaire, containing a Likert-type scale in Part A and open-ended questions in Part B, was used to collect data for this study. Fifty-six percent of the questionnaires were returned to the researcher with 54% being scorable . An independent sample t-test was used to determine the significant difference between the strategies used by regular education and special education teachers . Results of the study indicated that there was a significant difference between regular education teachers'and special education teachers'use of Token Economy (t = -3.31, p < .05) and Classroom Arrangement (t = -2.38, p < .05) strategies in classroom management. No significant differences were found between the seven other classroom management strategies used by regular and special education teachers. A qualitative analysis of the open-ended questions indicated positive reinforcement was perceived as the most successful method in classroom management by both regular and special education teachers. Regular education teachers perceived the most unsuccessful method of classroom management strategies as Punishment, while special educators perceived the most unsuccessful method to be behavior contracts.

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