The Profiles of Teacher’s Classroom Management Styles in Terms of Reward and Praise: A Latent Profile Analysis

Abstract

Classroom management is one of the key elements that influence the quality of education in the classroom. However, most teachers view classroom management as an important challenge. To address that challenge, teachers use different classroom management tools, two of which are reward and praise. However, there are different views about the effectiveness of reward and praise. While the behavioral school views them as positive classroom management tools, Self-Determination Theory argues that reward and praise are the tools of a controlling teaching style. It suggests that an autonomy-enhancing teaching style, such as establishing warm relationship with students, is a better classroom management tool. The aim of this study is to explore different profiles of teachers in terms of their classroom management styles, especially in terms of how teachers use reward and praise as well as punishment and warm relationship by using Latent Profile Analysis (LPA). The data were collected a sample of 579 teachers. Teachers completed four scales (The Reward Scale, The Praise Scale, The Emotional Punishment Scale and The Warmth Scale). Teachers were profiled, based on their use of these four classroom management tools. As a result of the LPA, five profiles of teachers in terms of classroom management styles emerged. They were named as “Disengaged Teachers”, “Cold Punishers”, “Cold Extrinsic Motivators”, “Warm Extrinsic Motivators”, and “Warm Intrinsic Motivators.” As predicted, Warm Intrinsic Motivators who do not use reward, praise or emotional punishment but warm relationships are the best in classroom management. Unlike our prediction, Warm Extrinsic Motivators, who use reward and praise, were also good at classroom management since they were warm towards their students. However, they were using emotional punishment. These findings suggest that teachers who use reward also use emotional punishment. Teachers do not have to use reward, praise or punishment to manage their classes. Teachers could manage their classroom perfectly well by forming warm relationships with their students. It is essential for school leaders to incorporate relationship-building as an important classroom management tool into their professional development activities for teachers.