1. Literature Review
Classroom management is one of the important elements that need to be mastered by
every teachers. Classroom management is also known as classroom disciplines. Without a
good management and some set of rules, a classroom could be turned into a big disaster.
Many of the teachers entered the classroom without have enough content knowledge of the
classroom management and lack of the classroom management strategies.
Teachers in middle level schools face overwhelming demands and challenges in their
classrooms. They are expected to know content and pedagogy, develop engaging lessons that
meet the needs of diverse learners, and use a variety of instructional strategies that will boost
student achievement while they simultaneously develop positive relationships with, on
average, 125 students each day who are experiencing the personal, social, and cognitive
challenges and opportunities of early adolescence (Carnegie Council on Adolescent
Development, 1995; Schmakel, 2008).
Teaching is complex and cannot be reduced to discrete tasks that can be mastered one
at a time. Teachers must "win their students' hearts while getting inside their students' heads"
(Wolk, 2003, p. 14). As Haberman (1995) suggested, this winning of the hearts occurs
through very personal interactions, one student at a time. This perspective is supported by
research suggesting that teachers who develop such relationships experience fewer classroom
behaviour problems and better academic performance (Decker, Dona, & Christenson, 2007;
Marzano, Marzano, & Pickering, 2003).
What is classroom management? Why it is important? Classroom management is
actually refers to the techniques, set of rules and skills used by the teachers in order to
overcome the misbehaviour in the classroom. It is important to produce a positive learning
environment. The positive learning environment would provide more time for learning.
According to (Karweit,1989), it might be surprised to know that how little actually teaching
takes place. Many of the teachers have to spend a lot of time to handle interruptions,
disruptions, late starts and rough transition. As we aware, the classrooms in Malaysia have a
big number of students. Therefore, the teachers need to think and set the effective rules and
procedures to make sure that the students have more time for learning. It is also can help

2. teachers to avoid wasting their time too much to entertain the same interruptions over and
over again in the same class during the lesson.
The classroom management also important to maintain the quality of the relationship
between teachers and students. When the bonding and the relationship between teacher and
students are strong, the instructional strategies could be more effective. A research has been
conducted by Marzano, and Pickering (2003), in a meta-analysis of more than 100 studies,
reported that teachers who had high-quality relationships with students had 31% fewer
discipline problems, rule violations, and other related problems over a year's time than did
teachers who did not. This research shows a significant result to interpret how important to
develop a positive relationship between teacher and students.
Moreover, the classroom management is important to maintain a good learning
environment as well. That is because it could be a good start for the teachers in order to
encourage students’ engagement. The elementary teachers, especially in the afternoon session
have the most challenging tasks to gain students’ engagement. Afternoon session students are
not easy to be handled. They already became restless and tired at the beginning of the school
session because most of them need to attend religious school in the morning. Therefore, some
of the students will start to become misbehave and tend to disrupt others. Hence, the effective
classroom management and rules can be one of the effective weapon to overcome this issue
and help teachers to encourage students’ engagement. It can be done by using a “reward
chart” for instance. The teacher must tell the students about the rules and regulation of the
“reward chart”. The teacher can give “stars” for each students who behave well and take part
during the teaching and learning activities. Contritely, for those who are unable to behave
well, the teacher can take out their “stars”. Thus, I believe it could help teachers to encourage
students’ engagement and indirectly create a positive learning environment.