What are the policies and practices of maintaining discipline in a private secondary school in Karachi, Pakistan

The term discipline\u27, especially classroom discipline is an essential component in the teaching and learning process in schools. There is no single definition of this term, on which, the teachers and teacher educators have built a consensus. Much of the current literature discusses teaching opportunities that enable children to learn how to develop self-discipline, and to handle problems that arise within the school system. This contrasts with the authoritarian approach to discipline, that appears to be prevalent in most of the schools. The above two perspectives indicate that no consensus has been reached as far as definition and maintenance of discipline is concerned. This study was conducted to find out the existing approach to discipline in one of the private secondary schools in Karachi. For this purpose the qualitative case study approach was adopted where the data was collected through interviews, observations and documentary analysis. A number of key stakeholders (discussed in chapter three) were interviewed about their views of school discipline and their approach to maintain the discipline. The whole study revolves around Faris\u27 (1996), view of discipline, as he argues, Today educators have moved away from trying to control students behaviour and instead focus on the teaching process to create, implement and maintain a classroom environment that supports learning The findings of the study indicate that there is a consistency in stakeholders expectations about what discipline is, and what discipline is for. The school has set certain rules and subsequent reward systems, which have been made known to stakeholders. The study further indicates that the school maintains discipline through: Empowering teachers and students by giving them leading responsibilities in various academic and co-curricular councils within the school and also supports students\u27 learning by creating an appropriate learning environment. In addition, the school organizes professional development programmes for its staff and informs and involves parents in solving discipline- related problems in school. There is a monitoring and follow-up of the students\u27 social skills. At classroom levels, the teachers have a pro-active approach to discipline. Lastly, the turnover of teachers, high ratio of students, especially in primary classes and some strict rules at pre-primary level, were found to be the challenging factors