Jacob Kounin was an educational theorist who focused on how a teacher's instructional management could affect student behavior. He observed that correcting one misbehaving student could spread to others and bring order to the classroom. This led him to study how teachers could proactively manage classrooms to prevent misbehavior. He concluded teachers should maintain awareness of all students, have overlapping procedures, keep lessons moving with short activities, and encourage group accountability.

1. Jacob Kounin
Jacob Kounin is an educational theorist who focused on a teacher’s ability to affect
student behavior through instructional management. Kounin brought a novel idea that
incorporated both the instructional and disciplinary aspects of the classroom together.
Before this happened, most educators viewed their role as a straight-forward passing on
of skills and knowledge to their students.
Kounin’s first observation of an intriguing pattern in student behavior was when
he asked a student in his own classroom to put something away; he noticed that the
students around him suddenly followed in focusing their attention. He watched as the
correction of one student behavior actually spread to
other students engaging in inappropriate behaviors, and
resulted in a much more ordered room. He later
described this phenomenon as the “Ripple Effect”.
This first observation led Kounin to conduct
experiments over 5 years with students from all levels,
but later Kounin changed his focus to seeing how
teachers actually prepared or proactively managed their
classrooms before behavior occurred. He noticed how the
reactions of teachers to students affected classroom
management in a negative way. He learned that teachers
were always receiving similar responses from their
students no matter how they reacted to misbehavior in
the classroom. From this observation, he concluded that there must be something a
teacher could do to prevent misbehavior in the first place, which would lead to more
effective classroom management.
Implementation of Kounin's Philosophy
"With-it-ness"
The teacher is responsible for inhibiting poor behavior. The teacher can maintain
this strategy by making eye contact to all students at all times. The teacher should know
each student on a personal basis (i.e. name, interests, strength, weaknesses, etc.)The
teacher can use other non-verbal techniques to show students that they are alert and
care about the well-being of all students.
Overlapping
The teacher can have procedures that will allow the teacher to be effective when
two situations occur at the same time. For example, if a student is done with an

2. assessment or an assignment early have something for them to do such as moving on
to another assignment, reading a book, or a quiet enrichment exercise.
Momentum
The teacher should make lectures short to allow students to group together and
move around to gain more knowledge of the content. The teacher should make sure
that these exercises remain short so students do not get bored. A teacher can keep a
timer and assign roles to students to keep the students moving and on a time deadline.
If students are struggling the teacher can reflect on what they can do to make the
lesson more meaningful and easier to understand for their students.
Smoothness
The teacher can have students make hand gestures that will tell the teacher
whether the student has a comment or question concerning the lesson. This technique
allows the teacher to have an idea of which students may cause an unwanted tangent
and which students may have a good question that could pertain to utilizing the time
effectively.
Group Focus
The teacher can implement this strategy with several techniques:
A. Encourage Accountability: Make students aware that they will be graded for
their participation and contributions to the group.
B. The teacher can have a canister of Popsicle sticks that have each students
name on them. The teacher can pick the Popsicle stick at random to keep
students on track and out of their seats with anticipation for question/answer
time, board problems, etc.
C. The students can facilitate a discussion. Once they have finished a task they
can turn to each other or they could pair up with those who are already done and
compare answers.
Reference:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Classroom_Management_Theorists_and_Theories/Jacob_Kounin