Management Theories Explained

Capturing Kids Hearts is a management theory designed based on the

principle that If you have a childs heart you have their mind. The
developer of this theory is Flip Flippen, a psychotherapist for 16 years who
focused on minimizing negative behaviors in at-risk youths. When he
developed the theory of Capturing Kids Hearts (CKH) his goal was to design a
theory that would be helpful in improving the 5 key factors that school
administrators look for to mark school performance; discipline referrals,
attendance, student achievement, dropout rates, and teacher satisfaction.
When teachers and administrators are able to help improve these factors,
the learning environment improves, and this helps students to better achieve
in the classroom.
The CKH model tries to deal with negative behaviors in two ways.
Firstly, it wants to minimize student misbehavior through creating a safe,
nurturing environment for students to learn in. This involves developing and
using a classroom contract and working with students to discuss rules and
expectations in the classroom, focusing specifically on building relationships
between teachers, students and administrators and having school wide
systems in place to help manage extreme student behaviors when the need
arises. These things help to make students feel safe in the classroom and the
school.
The second strategy of CKH is dealing with problems and conflicts in a
highly effective way. CKH teaches educators to ask questions when students
arent behaving or following the rules. These questions are; 1. What are you
doing? 2. What are you supposed to be doing? 3. Are you doing it? 4. What
are you going to do about it? An optional extra question might be: What will
happen if you do this again? These questions are designed to help students
admit and recognize their own misbehavior so that they can learn to be more
self-monitoring in the future. If students are repeating misbehavior or in an
extreme case (such as a physical altercation) the student will be removed
from the classroom and taken to the principle or other administrator to
discuss their behavior and to develop a plan of action for the students.
These practices align with the research done by MacSuga-Gage et al.
in their article Effective Teaching Practices that Promote a Positive
Classroom Environment. These authors outlined many practices that are
included in the CKH model of management. These practices were shown to
be the most effective at developing a positive classroom environment which
is what CKH intends to do. This shows that the inventors of the CKH model
are promoting correct strategies to help teachers encourage better
classroom behaviors and atmospheres. Other researchers such as Holtzapple
et al. back up the claims made by the developers of CKH, showing its
effectiveness over a large sample size of around 5,500 schools as of 2009.
These schools include all types of demographics and show the effectiveness
of the strategies.
Capturing Kids Hearts is a management theory that gives tools to
teachers who care about the welfare of their students and want to acquire
tools to build and promote a safe, positive environment that teachers and
students can enjoy. Schools do not need to be scary places for children. They
should be safe, welcoming, positive environments for learning.