THEORIES OF DEMOCRATIC

TEACHING

RADOLF DREIKURS
Definition
Dicipline
Mutual respect - motivates students to behave
constructively because of their high sense of social interest.
All humans have a primary need to belong and feel part of a
group.
All students desire to feel they have value and to feel they
can contribute to the classroom
Need to belong the genuine goal of human social behavior.
Description
Democratic teachers- traits of democratic teaching:
leadership, friendliness, inviting nature, stimulation traits of
ideas, cooperation, guidance, encouragement,
acknowledgement, helpfulness and shared responsibilities
more likely to help students become self-disciplined
central focus was on constructive behavior rather than
coercive discipline
did not consider punishment as an effective method of
discipline- humiliating and offensive

Why?
Involved both the teacher and student in the decision
making process
Sense of understanding for the reasons behind rules and
consequences.
Through logical consequence, teacher gives choice to the
students to change the behavior and teacher anticipates how
the students respond.
When students are not able to gain their genuine goal of
belonging they turn to a series of mistaken goals.


Gaining attention
Power seeking
Revenge seeking
Display inadequacy
Gaining attention
Does not have a sense of belonging
Feels that they are not useful in the classroom
Ex- being disruptive and refuse to complete the work

Attention seeking pattern
Active-constructive
Passive-constructive
Active-destructive
Passive-destructive
Active-constructive

Cooperative and conform to expectations.
Highly ambitious and willing to do almost anything with
adult expectation in order to meet the teachers praise and
recognition.
Ex- very competitive, some students like to be teachers pet

Teacher should ignore the behavior so that the students will
learn to associate attention with inappropriate behavior.

Passive-constructive

Receive attention through manipulating others
Use the power of persuasion in order to achieve their goal.

Active-destructive

Persistent in achieving their goals, they will not stop until
they get the attention.
Ex- bullying
Passive-destructive

Characterized as lazy
Pretend that they do not understand the task or the lesson.

Power seeking
Does not get attention from the parents or the teacher.
Want to control others
Ex- throwing tantrum, talk-back
Attempting to control this misbehavior will only increase
the power seeking behavior.

Revenge seeking
Seek revenge through behaviors such as defacing property,
cheating or spreading lies.
Students tend to take revenge when they feel that the
teacher is being unfair to them.
Ex- destroying their property and hurting people beside
them.
Displays inadequacy

Students do not feel appreciated in the class.
Ex- withdrawing and refusing to participate in classroom
activities and overly sensitive.



Strategies
Identify the mistaken goal.
Confront the mistaken goal.
Avoiding power struggles with students.
Positive 4 steps against revenge seeking behavior.
Encourage students who display inadequacy.



Helping students reach their genuine goal of belonging.
Provide a teaching environment that supports students
sense of belonging.
Come up with a set of classroom rules as a group.
Support responsibility through freedom of choices in lesson
plans.

Avoid power struggles and encourage students who display
inadequacy.
Encourage students rather than praise them.
Provide students with logical consequences to mistaken
goals to support responsibility and avoid punishment.

Encouragement vs praises
Encouragement very specific, convey respect for students
abilities and increase student confidence.
Praises is more general and only given when a task is well
done.
Two types of consequences: logical and
natural
Logical consequences - reasonable results that follow
behavior either desirable or non-desirable.
if Marisa does not complete her work during class, she is
required to do it for homework - know in advance the
consequences of her misbehavior because as part of the
classroom she helped formulate the consequences.
Natural consequences differ from logical consequences in
the sense that the results following the behavior occur
naturally
if Jonathan tips his chair backward and as a he result falls,
leaving him hurt or embarrassed this would be a natural
consequence because the hurt and embarrassment alone is
sufficient consequence for his misbehavior.

Strength / weaknesses
Strength
- Helping students gain a sense of belonging
- Promote mutual respect
- Learn to take responsible
- More discipline
- Caring classroom community

Weaknesses
Weaknesses
- difficult for the teacher to identify and understand the
students reason for misbehaving
- Teacher might not be able to respond properly
- Teacher need to be very consistent and careful when
implementing the rules.
- Extensive training is needed in order to implement this
model.

Practicality
Theories of Democratic Teaching is suitable to be practiced
in the ESL Malaysian classroom. The issue regarding
English is not as their first language need to be taken into
consideration whereby the teacher need to gain their
attention and interest to learn the language. Any disruptive
behaviours, need to be addressed by the teacher so that the
class is under control.
In class situation
Mr Fandi is teaching in the class whereas, a student is
misbehaving. The boy named Charlie is disturbing his
friends.
Strategies to overcome
As Democratic theory is being practice by Mr Fandi, he
should encouraged Charlie to involved in the classroom
activity.
Reference
Azizi, Jamaludin, Shahrin, Mohd. Ali, Raja Roslan, &
Noordin. (2009). Discipline Problems among Secondary
School Students in Johor Bahru, Malaysia: European.
Journal of Social Sciences, 11 (4), 659 675
, R., Ford, M., & Arthur, M., (2011). Classroom
management: creating positive learning environment.
Australia: Cengage Learning Australia Pty Limited


Kohn. A., (2006). The nature of children (2
nd
ed.). USA:
ASCD Publication.
Krause. K., L., Bochner, S., & Duchesne, S.(2011).
Educational Psychology (5
th
ed.). New York: The McGraw
Hill Companies, Inc
Thomas, H., (1996). Seven Models of Discipline: Retrieved
March 20, 2013, from
http://www.humboldt.edu/~tha1/discip-options.html