The Lyford Model of Classroom Management: Authentication through Continuing “Reflections from the Field”

Abstract

The Lyford model of classroom management was first published as the centrepiece of an Australian undergraduate classroom management textbook in 2011. It was conceptualised and developed by the text authors, drawing on a qualitative analysis of their professional experiences, knowledge, beliefs and understandings. Consequently additional data were sought to test the legitimacy and rigour of the model. Each year the first author has called for “Reflections from the field”: short stories written by practicing teachers explaining what they understood their theoretical and practical approaches to classroom management were in their various teaching contexts. Over six years 54 stories have been gathered and progressively analyzed using a qualitative grounded theory approach. This very rich and growing source of data has consistently delivered substantial evidence supporting the authenticity and utility of the model. The model has “stood the test of time” in that it continues to both accommodate and embrace the evolving positions of the authors, and also of a growing number of exemplary practicing teachers. This paper commences with an introduction into the authors’ views on classroom management as a context for then describing and explaining the Lyford model, and the grounded theoretical process by which it comes to be. The continuing data source: the positions put by a growing number of practicing classroom teachers; is then described, followed by a brief explanation of the continuing grounded theoretical process of analysis. To illuminate this analysis, extracts are included from selected “Reflections from the Field”, with analytic breadth coming from a diversity of smaller extracts, and scope coming from one full Reflection. The authors then discuss various points of interest emerging from this continuing analysis, including suggestions to academic peers around teaching classroom management, and suggestions to their preservice and early service colleagues around doing classroom management.