Effective Teaching and Parenting

This week I have borrowed heavily from an article by Kim Marshall in which he explains the parallels between what is seen as good parenting, with good teaching practice. In his summary he cites the work of Joan Walker, the author of Authoritative Classroom Management: How Control and Nurturance Work Together. Walker states that to have a significant long-term impact on students, classrooms must provide good instruction and build positive relationships.

Walker believes that good teachers incorporate many of the learnings from the “authoritative” parenting model in their teaching. She cites the work of Diana Baumrind (1967, 1978) who identified four parenting styles:

–    Authoritative – High control, high nurturance: these parents expect mature behavior, use reason to gain compliance, and are warm and supportive.

–    Authoritarian – High control, low nurturance: these parents value strict obedience but rely on coercion and are less nurturing.

–    Permissive – Low control, moderate nurturance and involvement.

–    Neglectful – Low control, low nurturance.

When Baumrind followed children who had been raised under each parenting style through adolescence, she found that those raised by authoritative parents consistently had the best academic and social outcomes; they had high self-control, were achievement oriented, friendly with peers, and cooperative with adults. Children reared in authoritarian homes had less positive academic and social outcomes; boys tended to be more aggressive, girls less independent. Children reared in permissive homes had low levels of self-control and self-reliance, lower academic achievement, and were often unsuccessful in social relationships. And children raised in neglectful homes had the worst outcomes: low self-esteem, and high levels of aggression and impulsivity. Since Baumrind’s groundbreaking work, other researchers have consistently found authoritative parenting to be the optimal model.

Parenting style has a direct bearing on how open children are to adult influence. Children raised in authoritarian homes (Do it because I say so) often resist rules and injunctions, whereas children raised in authoritative homes (Here’s why this is important,) are more likely to internalise their parents’ values and goals. Part of what makes authoritative parents more effective is that they listen.

“Authoritative parents seem to know when to get out of the child’s way,” says Walker. When helping their children with homework, for example, “The best teachers were parents who provided increased support in response to failure and did not interfere with the child’s autonomy after success.

Walker believes the key crossover points from the parenting research to teaching are that control and nurturance are both essential for teaching to be effective, and nurturance isn’t just a nice add-on. Young people pick up on this from a young age, she says, and by adolescence, they can articulate it very well.

This also works the other way, teachers acknowledge the importance of positive student/teachers relationships to their effectiveness. Positive relationships allowed them to help students to do more challenging work. It also creates a positive classroom culture where students are happier to take more risks in their learning and this relationship helps teachers be able to try different and creative ways of learning and teaching with their boys.

Whether at home or in the classroom, positive relationships and high expectations are important norms to help your son develop into the best version of himself. At Lindfield, we understand about the importance of teachers controlling the learning and at the same time building a connection with the boys in their care.

“Authoritative Classroom Management: How Control and Nurturance Work Together” by Joan Walker in Theory Into Practice, Spring 2009 (Vol. 48, #2, p. 122-129)

Ben Barrington-Higgs