You Must Learn Control

Teachers must exert control over their classes. Without control over the classroom you have chaos. A first grade teacher uses stickers while a high school teacher might use the threat of lunch detention. Sometimes these methods work and sometimes they do not. This is a problem that researchers have discovered some new information about.

We often point out to students those who are behaving. We make comments like, "Look at Sally. She already has her materials out." Researchers looked at how observing behaviors in others effects the observer. In this case the behavior they looked at was self control.

Researchers had one group of participants imagine themselves as someone exerting self control, and another group read about someone exerting self control.

The group that put themselves in the shoes of someone exerting self control felt drained. It made them less likely to exert self control over their own actions. The group that read a story about self control found themselves better able to exert self control.

Application
A teacher wanting students to show more self control should give their students a story about someone using self control. Instead of pointing out how well controlled another student is they could strengthen that student’s self control.