Democratic Classroom Environment

Abstract

A democratic classroom environment is the most basic form of democratic education, an educational approach that involves students in the decision-making processes related to their education. While all that is necessary for a classroom to be democratic is to give students more control over what happens in the classroom, typically this also involves different teaching approaches and less didactic lecture material. Democratic classrooms are most common in democratic schools, of which there are several related models.

Overview

Most education, especially at the K–12 level, is authoritarian and didactic. In a classroom, the teacher holds nearly all the power, which is delegated to them by the administration. Most of the activity in the classroom consists of the teacher delivering information to the student in the form of lectures, assigned readings, assigned individual activities (homework and classwork), and tests. There is an element of competition in the form of grades, whether or not they are curved, and an emphasis on mastering prescribed skills and sets of information, which is demonstrated by repeating it on command or drawing inferences from it. Students have little control over what they learn, except in choosing elective courses (usually available only at higher grades) and paper topics.

One of the things that reinforces the prevalence of this mode of teaching is that it produces bodies of students whose progress can be measured fairly easily. That is, all students are expected to learn the same things, the mastery of which is easily confirmed through simple diagnostic tools. Therefore, schools that rely on these traditional modes can demonstrate to parents, government agencies, and other entities their performance relative to past years or to other schools. These demonstrations are key to funding, whether it is raised through public budgets or through private tuitions.

A democratic classroom environment is a key element in democratic education, which is an approach to education in which importance is assigned to students' voices, self-determination, and trust. Under this model, school curriculums and administrations may be constructed according to democratic values. For example, students may play a role in setting real policy beyond the traditional purview of student councils, and may have a voice in determining the courses that are offered. It should be noted that, even within a traditional school where it is not the default mode for all classes, individual instructors may oversee classrooms in a democratic way.

Democratic education can be organized in many different ways. The school as a whole may be democratic, or simply the classroom. Democracy may be direct, meaning that each student participates directly in some, most, or all decision-making processes, or may be representative, which usually means that student representatives are part of a decision- and policy-making body that also includes members of the staff, faculty, and possibly parents. Parental involvement also varies. In some democratic schools, parental involvement in the democratic processes is extensive, while in others it is strictly limited.

Advocates argue that allowing students a choice in the material they study, along with other decision-making processes related to the classroom, is one of the best strategies for increasing student engagement. Such an approach is believed to promote the idea of education as a volunteer process, rather as being something a student is subjected to or competes in. Further, it gives students a sense of autonomy in and ownership of their education. While democratic classrooms lend themselves well to effective conflict mediation strategies—because every party is included in resolving that conflict, rather than discipline being something that is handled external to the involved parties—they can also be effective in reducing the frequency of conflicts in the first place, by increasing interactions among students and reducing competition and dissatisfaction.

Further Insights

The history of democratic education theory is roughly as long as the history of democratic political theory. John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau both wrote about applying principles of democracy to education, though notably they did so at a time when it was taken as a given that education was by and large for the children of the wealthy and the aristocracy—an inherently anti-democratic distribution of educational resources. Public education, free for all and eventually mandatory for all, did not become common until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

One of the first democratic schools, and the oldest still in operation, is the Summerhill School, a British boarding school founded in Suffolk in 1921. In stark contrast with the most common models of British (and American) schools of the time, in which rote memorization was emphasized and every child was expected to assume a very specifically circumscribed role as student, the Summerhill School reflected Scottish educator A. S. Neill's (1883-1973) belief that education should be molded by the needs of the student. Neill based his school in part on progressive schools had he visited in Germany and inspired numerous other schools in the United Kingdom. Neill's vision was eventually put into practice in a number of U.S. schools (most of which opened in the 1960s after the 1960 publication of a collection of Neill's writing).

The core principle of Summerhill and Summerhill-like schools is that coercion is anathema to education. In student-centric schools like Summerhill, lessons are optional, and students choose what to learn, as well as participating in governing the school community. There are many possible forms of democratic school governance. In Summerhill's case, school meetings are held twice a week and attended by both students and staff, in order to discuss new or ongoing issues, set policy, and make decisions facing the community.

Furthermore, schools like Summerhill often eschew, as Summerhill does, the concept of a "grade" in the sense of a year in school (often called "form" in British boarding schools). Children are not grouped according to age as in most American schools, in which children who are six years old at the start of the school year begin in first grade, then advance to second, and so on). Rather, students are, on a subject-by-subject basis, grouped according to their level of mastery or interest in the subject—in the same way foreign language and mathematics classes are handled at the high school and college level. Note that this is not the same as "skipping a grade" at other schools. Generally most students at gradeless schools still graduate at the traditional age.

Summerhill has two "drop-in" classrooms, an art room and a workshop, in which instructors supervise students who may come in at any part of the day, rather than there being specified meeting times for art classes. This encourages hands-on experiential learning, as well as valuable solitary activities for students who gravitate toward those. Though the Summerhill approach is clearly well suited to a boarding school, in which the educational experience is immersive as compared with a traditional school students "go to" on weekdays, many American day schools adopted similar approaches.

Many of the American schools inspired by Summerhill were part of the free school or new school movement of the 1960s, a movement that influenced both K-12 schools and colleges. The free school movement encompassed a variety of approaches, without a single guiding ideology beyond an interest in child-centric education and a desire to explore alternatives to the traditional modes of education dominant in the United States at the time. Some were utopian in approach, including schools operated on or by communes. Many adopted democratic classrooms and student-centric governance, and the free schools that continued to operate after the 1970s were almost all democratic schools, with varying degrees of freedom extended to individual students, and an emphasis on student participation in decision-making. A number of colleges survive and are usually labeled "experimental liberal arts colleges," such as New College of Florida, Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.

One of the oldest schools still operating provides an interesting comparison to Summerhill. The Albany Free School was founded in 1969, with Summerhill as an inspiration. It includes an open schedule for students, who design daily learning plans, and has no grades or tests. Unlike Summerhill, which was a boarding school, the Albany Free School is a day school whose student population is almost entirely working class, with tuition billed on a sliding scale. In 2006, the Harriet Tubman Democratic High School was opened as a complement to the Albany Free School. It also inspired the founding of the Brooklyn Free School, which operates on similar principles and was the first free school to operate in New York City since 1975, in 2004.

Closely related to the free schools and Summerhill-type schools are the Sudbury schools. Though the Sudbury Valley School (founded in 1968 in Framingham, Massachusetts) for which they are named eschews any official definition of a Sudbury school, schools that build themselves on the Sudbury model have in common their concern for egalitarianism and their use of direct democracy in governing some or all aspects of the school. There are dozens of such schools around the world, with some overlap with the free school movement. The Altadena Free School in California, for example, operates on the Sudbury model. Sudbury schools operate at the K-12 level, and typically students have complete control over and responsibility for their education, being allowed to spend their time however they wish, with resources and instruction made available to them in order to further those wishes. As with the Summerhill model, Sudbury schools group students according to interest or competence, not age. Parents are usually not involved in the administrative processes of the school, in contrast with many private and boarding schools.

Perhaps the most famous model of a democratic classroom is the Montessori, named for Maria Montessori, who first developed the model in the early twentieth century. Montessori schools emphasize student freedom of choice in their education, and Montessori schools focusing on early education are the most common. Much of the Montessori approach lies in the training of the teacher and the considerations given to the classroom. Because students choose their own activities, the educator is most involved in making resources for those activities available. Students are encouraged to learn by working with things rather than through didactic instruction; Montessori schools are known for their typically wooden educational materials and "discovery" model of learning, and the day is organized into long blocks of time, usually at least three hours, in which students pursue whatever interests them most.

Not all free schools are democratic schools, though they are the more common type. Anarchist free schools are completely decentralized, lacking the hierarchy of a democratic free school. They are by nature informal, and most are adult education collectives with an emphasis on mutual skill- and knowledge-sharing, rather than offering education for minors.

Issues

Cooperative learning is a tool that can be used to create a classroom environment that is both democratic and inclusive. In cooperative learning approaches, classroom activities emphasize social learning whenever possible, deemphasizing the competitive nature of individual learning activities. While non-democratic classes that aren't employing cooperative learning also often put students in groups for activities, the methodology and motive behind constructing those groups differ. In a traditional classroom, for example, the groups may be formed randomly (such as according to seating) or by student choice. In a cooperative environment, students may or may not choose their group members, but at some level of organization the instructor or administrator has made choices designed to maximize the benefits of group work. For example, democratic schools usually have mixed-age classes, leading to groups consisting of both older and younger students. Teachers may facilitate cooperative work by pairing more experienced students with less experienced students, or by designing group activities that draw on multiple skill-sets in order to increase the contribution of each group member. The focus is on interdependence in the group and learning interpersonal skills at the same time as the academic material at hand. Activities common in cooperative group work include peer review of one another's work, reciprocal teaching, and assignments focusing on group decision-making and problem-solving, in which every student has a voice.

Proponents maintain that cooperative learning helps involve the students to a greater degree than traditional didacticism does. While cooperative learning doesn't require a democratic classroom, or vice versa, each complements the other, and both tend to be favored by the same pedagogical schools of thought. Further, because democratic decision-making is itself a form of cooperation, increasing the opportunities that students have to work with one another face to face—rather than relegating most of those interactions to "off time" such as lunch and recess—increases their understanding of one another, and assists with those decisions, especially with resolving conflicts.

Teacher training involves several areas, including pedagogical theory and methods, content knowledge, and the interpersonal and performance skills that are gained with classroom experience. One of the challenges of democratic education is that most teacher training assumes that teachers are being prepared for an authoritarian, didactic classroom environment, because most schools where the future teacher might apply for a job have these environments. While training may include some discussion of democratic education, especially in the case of teachers who attended college more recently, the creation and maintenance of a democratic school often requires specific preparation and on-the-job training for its staff.

Terms & Concepts

Classroom Management: Classroom management is the sphere of teaching that encompasses the interactions between the teacher and students while in the classroom, especially the establishment of procedures such as when (or if) the class session formally begins, the order of activities for that session, and rules of conduct.

Cooperative Learning: A teaching strategy in which students are grouped into small groups that perform various activities designed to assist in learning.

Democratic Education: An approach to education that seeks to implement democratic principles such as full participation by all interested parties (students, staff, administrators) in decision-making, and concerns for justice and equality.

Early Education: The education of young children, generally from preschool to age eight.

Engagement: Student engagement is the degree of interest and curiosity a student has in the material with which they are interacting; greater engagement is correlated with greater success in mastering the material. One of the great challenges in pedagogy is addressing engagement.

Bibliography

Angell, A. V. (1991). Democratic climates in elementary classrooms: A review of theory and research. (cover story). Theory & Research in Social Education, 19(3), 241–266. Retrieved November 1, 2017, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=36319761&site=ehost-live

Fallace, T. D. (2016). The origins of classroom deliberation: Democratic education in the shadow of totalitarianism, 1938-1960. Harvard Educational Review, 86(4), 506–526. Retrieved November 1, 2017, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=120311580&site=ehost-live

Goldfarb, E. S., & McCaffree, K. (2000). Toward a more effective pedagogy for sexuality education: The establishment of democratic classrooms. Journal of Sex Education & Therapy, 25(2/3), 147–155. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=3802447&site=ehost-live

Hur, E. H., Glassman, M. G., & Kim, Y. (2013). Finding autonomy in activity: Development and validation of a democratic classroom survey. Educational Assessment, Evaluation & Accountability, 25(4), 303–320. Retrieved November 1, 2017, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=91826189&site=ehost-live

Kesici, Ş. (2008). Teachers' opinions about building a democratic classroom. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 35(2), 192–203. Retrieved November 1, 2017, from EBSCO Academic Search Ultimate http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=33405334&site=ehost-live

Lake, D. (2015). Community building in the classroom: Teaching democratic thinking through practicing democratic thinking. Partnerships, 6(1), 5–24. Retrieved November 1, 2017, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=103146176&site=ehost-live

Sabik, C. M. (2012). Perspective, preparation and sustenance: The experience of the unfamiliar & the democratic classroom. Ohio Journal of English Language Arts, 52(1), 43–45. Retrieved November 1, 2017, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=79457456&site=ehost-live

Şentürk, İ. I., & Oyman, N. N. (2014). Democratic classroom management in higher education: A qualitative study. Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice, 14(3), 940–945. Retrieved November 1, 2017, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=97312523&site=ehost-live

Soares, L. B. (2013). The education students deserve: Building a democratic classroom in teacher education. Critical Literacy: Theories & Practices, 7(2), 69-78. Retrieved November 1, 2017, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=95028730&site=ehost-live

Tannebaum, R. P., Peterson, M., & Tierney, M. (2015). Assisting novice teachers with promoting democratic education in the social studies classroom. Councilor: A Journal of the Social Studies, 76(2), 1–16.

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Suggested Reading

Brookfield, S. D., and Preskill, S. (2012). Discussion as a way of teaching: Tools and techniques for democratic classrooms. New York: John Wiley.

Gibbs, B. (2017). The complicated pursuit of democratic teaching. Phi Delta Kappan, 99(4), 21–25. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=126458870&site=ehost-live

Hawkes, T. E. (2017). Circles and parallels: Democratic governance in a small school. Schools: Studies in Education, 14(2), 191–218. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=125838971&site=ehost-live

James, J. H., Schweber, S., Kunzman, R., Barton, K. C., and Logan, K., eds. (2014). Religion in the classroom: Dilemmas for democratic education. New York: Routledge.

Jerome, L. l. (2017). The Charged Classroom: Predicaments and possibilities for democratic teaching. London Review of Education, 15(3), 551–553. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=126605198&site=ehost-live

Spencer-Waterman, Sheryn. (2013). The democratic differentiated classroom. New York: Routledge.