Monitor and punish in the classroom

Abstract

Far from being overcome, the “punishment” appears as one of the most common teaching actions in school classrooms. So much so, that within the Educational System were created the so-called “classroom of coexistence” to try to respond to the behavior of some students that prevented teachers from teaching their classes in a desirable way. For this, an alternative of “classroom” (in the sense of physical context) is outside the ordinary classroom. These coexistence classrooms were converted, taking into account their purpose and execution, in “punishment classrooms”. Other habitual forms of punishment are usually the prohibition of recess time, expulsion from class or from school, or incidents.
The proposal of this article is double: on the one hand, to delimit the conceptualization of punishment within the broader framework of teaching and learning processes, contemplating the different ways of understanding and addressing it; and, on the other hand, offer an alternative to the resolution of conflicts in the classrooms that prioritizes its preventive and enriching character over the corrective one; that promotes actions based on a vision that enhances the collective and not only individual character in its approach. In short, that enhances the sense of community and coexistence within the classroom. To achieve this, different actions are proposed (among many other possible ones): the elaboration of the Plan of Coexistence within the Educational Project of the Center; the programming of activities within the Tutorial Action Plan and, finally, the cooperative learning as a structure of the activity that promotes both the cohesion of the group-class and the co-responsibility in the learning processes in a broad sense.