Classroom Management in Secondary Schools: Reinventing Our Classroom

We evaluate an educational program, Reinventing our Classroom (RoC), that aims to provide teachers with simple pedagogical tools to manage their classrooms for more effective teaching in overcrowded secondary school classrooms. The core idea is to give students the responsibility of establishing good behavioral norms in their classroom. To this end, the program suggests creating groups within classrooms with rotating group leaders taking charge to ensure a peaceful learning environment for all. With the minimal interference from teachers, students first collectively establish the types of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors in the classroom and put forward a classroom code of conduct outlining good behavioral norms expected (and desired) in their classroom. Then, they offer ways to make these good norms take hold and stick. The most critical component of the program is that students self-assess and self-monitor their progress weekly and announce it to the classroom through charts and evolving graphics.

The program targets secondary schools in Narsingdi district, Dhaka division, Bangladesh. A total of 129 schools were enlisted for the project involving 517 teachers and about 7,000 students. We enlisted one class teacher and one assistant teacher from each school to help implement the program. Baseline data were collected in July and August 2022 when our students were in 6th grade. When they started grade 7 in January 2023, we collected baseline data from their new teachers, and from new students. 64 schools were randomly assigned to treatment. Sixth-grade teachers in 64 treatment schools were trained in August 2022, and seventh-grade teachers in January 2023. The program implementation has been ongoing since September 2022 and will end in March 2023.

Our central hypothesis is that the program will increase teacher and student engagement and well-being by improving behavioral norms and making the classroom amenable to teaching, free from disruptive behavior. In addition, we expect a more cooperative and cohesive classroom environment in treated schools.