Chapter 40: Reality Therapy:

In many ways reality therapy and its underlying theory represent a revolution in educational thinking. While some of the principles are common to other theories reality therapy is at odds with the widespread popular notion that educators can control students’ behavior by force. W. Glasser (1990) asserts that the use of coercion has created many educational problems such as the failure of students to derive maximum benefit from their education. On the other hand, he states, “The persuasive, lead management approach (reality therapy) is not known well enough” (p. 29). Implementing its principles means not merely using innovative ways to teach students and manage the educational enterprise. It includes a redefinition and re-evaluation of such concepts as human motivation, the role of choice and personal responsibility, how to deal with problem behaviors and abandoning punishment (except in obviously heinous cases). It also embraces the adoption of a delivery system for intervening and communicating with students and with all stake holders, as well as employing the same formulation for organizational development and for staff supervision. It even means infusing choice theory into an already glutted curriculum, teaching the same ideas and skills to parents, initiating and maintaining an ongoing training program for all staff. For this purpose, teaching materials are available for conducting brief lessons aimed at helping students satisfy their needs thereby enabling educators to utilize their classroom time more effectively (C. Glasser, 1996a, 1996b, 2008). And finally, a credibility enhancing component consists in an unflagging commitment to researching the effectiveness of this entire effort.