Promoting Behaviour for Learning in the Classroom

Effective strategies, personal style and professionalism

Simon Ellis, Janet Tod

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317622741
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Promoting Behaviour for Learning in the Classroom offers essential support to help you develop capacity and confidence in managing behaviour in the group setting of the classroom.

It provides a concise analysis of established behaviour management strategies, recognising that no single approach will work for all pupils and that central to effective practice is an understanding of the different personal attributes and experiences teachers and pupils bring to the classroom

Illustrated by examples from the classroom, Promoting Behaviour for Learning in the Classroom uses the tried and tested 'Behaviour for Learning' framework to show how teachers' expertise in promoting learning can be used to improve behaviour. Key issues considered include:

• Developing positive relationships in the classroom
• Understanding personal style and self-management
• Effective use of feedback and rewards
• Using positive correction and sanctions
• Working with school systems and frameworks for managing behaviour
• Individual differences and special educational needs
• Dealing with challenging behaviour

Written by experts in the field, Promoting Behaviour for Learning in the Classroom offers much-needed in-depth, realistic support and guidance to show teachers how to improve learning and behaviour in the group setting of the classrooms.

Chapter 1

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The Behaviour for Learning framework

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Introduction

The term ‘behaviour management’ is an established part of the discourse on behaviour in schools, appearing no less than nineteen times in the Steer Report (DfES 2005a) and five times in the DCSF (2009a) guidance on School Discipline and Pupil-Behaviour Policies. Current professional standards (DfE 2011a: 8) do not use the term, but they do require teachers to ‘manage behaviour effectively’. Additional guidance intended to improve teacher training in relation to behaviour set out to describe ‘the knowledge, skills and understanding that trainees will need in order to be able to manage their pupils’ behaviour’ (TA 2012: 1). A search of a popular online bookseller’s website using the term ‘behaviour management’ will produce a plethora of texts on the subject. It is also likely that many readers will have read books about behaviour management and attended courses to learn about it. The phrase has a respectable, quasi-professional tone and its provenance is rarely explored. This chapter invites the reader to critically consider the limitations of a focus on behaviour management when narrowly construed to mean a set of methods used to establish and maintain control over pupil behaviour. The Behaviour for Learning conceptual framework is then introduced as a means of reframing behaviour management in terms of promoting learning behaviour.

Behaviour management: truisms and part truths

A popular text on behaviour management begins: ‘Behaviour management: if you get it right, your life is easy, you’re free to do what you’re meant to do, which is of course to teach!’ (Cowley 2003: xiii).

In some respects Cowley is right; there are undoubtedly some ways of responding to pupil behaviour that are less effective than others and either escalate the situation or lead to the teacher becoming embroiled in an extended disciplinary interaction at the expense of the pace and flow of the lesson. Both outcomes get in the way of the teacher’s core focus, which is the promotion of learning. Yet, as we argued in our previous book (Ellis and Tod 2009), Cowley’s comment typifies a separation between learning and behaviour that may ultimately be unhelpful. The implication of an emphasis on behaviour management is that there is a discrete set of skills that can be learned by the teacher. In itself, this notion is not a problem and may even have some value in challenging any assumption that skills in behaviour management are a natural gift (DES 1989). The problematic element is when these skills are seen as a distinct aspect of the teacher’s role without due recognition of the influence of factors such as the curriculum, teaching approaches and the teacher–pupil relationship. Ofsted have highlighted the link between behaviour and the quality of teaching, suggesting:

Where teaching does not meet pupils’ needs or does not engage pupils sufficiently they can lose attention, demonstrate poor attitudes to learning and eventually interrupt the learning of others. In these cases teaching can then focus too much on continually managing low-level disruption at the expense of providing interesting and relevant opportunities for pupils to learn.

(Ofsted 2011: 59)

Assuming Ofsted’s attribution of cause to be correct, the priority in such situations would seem not to be working on becoming better at behaviour management in order ‘to do what you’re meant to do, which is of course to teach!’ (Cowley 2003: xiii) but to strengthen the quality of teaching. Yet in making this point there is the risk that we, and Ofsted, are guilty of ‘ . . . the pious platitude that provided you have spent enough time preparing your lessons properly, you will never have discipline problems’ (Wheldall and Glynn 1989: 2).

The challenge is to live with the complexity rather than dealing in truisms and part truths. The influential Elton Report was clear that ‘Reducing misbehaviour is a realistic aim. Eliminating it completely is not’ (DES 1989: 65). The implication is that inevitably, however well planned and executed the lesson, there will be times when a teacher will need to respond to unwanted behaviour. There are some principles and practices that, if learned and rehearsed, can allow teachers to deal swiftly and effectively with behaviour more often and with more pupils. It would be professionally foolhardy not to develop capacity in this area. However, in acknowledging this, it should not lead us to neglect the potentially powerful influence of the curriculum and teaching and learning approaches in securing more positive behaviour within the classroom.

The problem of an undue emphasis on behaviour management

McNally et al. (2005) argue that behaviour management might have some value as a temporary conceptualisation for trainees, but if too much emphasis is placed on the management of behaviour there is a risk that ‘it occludes a superior focus on learning, trivialises the life problems of pupils and demeans the place of teacher–pupil interactions in relation to these problems’ (McNally et al. 2005: 183). Essentially McNally et al.’s (2005) argument is that the term ‘behaviour management’ influences trainees’ priorities and limits understanding of a range of interacting variables that may lie behind the behaviour.

Typically behaviour management strategies are conceptualised as a set of techniques used by a teacher to both encourage and maintain positive behaviour and to address behaviour that is problematic in a classroom context. Attention is usually focused on rules, teacher language, rewards and sanctions. This positions the teacher as the manager and the pupil as the managed. The pupil is constructed as a relatively passive recipient of the teacher’s management techniques rather than an active participant in a relationship. In reality of course, the pupil brings a range of life experiences to this relationship and also experiences and interprets any classroom events, including the teacher’s behaviour management strategies, as an individual (Ellis and Tod 2009). This offers the potential for the pupil to react in an entirely different way from what might be expected, whatever the good practice credentials of the strategy employed. This represents a problem depending on the teacher’s interpretation of such an event. One interpretation may be to discard the strategy employed because it has seemingly failed operationally and to embark on a quest for the definitive set of strategies that will provide the solution. The sheer volume of materials produced on behaviour management should be evidence enough that such a set does not exist – if it did, then it would surely have been discovered by now and the definitive text produced. The other interpretation may be that, because the pupil’s behaviour is not ameliorated by the typical approaches to behaviour management, they are in need of something different and possibly more specialised than the classroom teacher can provide. The teacher might even begin to question whether the pupil’s behaviour represents a form of special educational need.

Ultimately, realism is needed. It is not realistic for a teacher to anticipate and prepare for the entire range of pupil responses they will experience in the classroom (Powell and Tod 2004). There are numerous interacting variables that influence classroom behaviour and mean that classroom events will be unpredictable to a degree. As Watkins (2011) points out, in addition to their unpredictable nature, classroom events are multidimensional, with those present having a variety of purposes, experiences, interests and goals, and they often occur simultaneously. Classrooms are also very public places with both the teacher’s and the pupil’s behaviour visible to everybody else in the class. When set in this context, the notion that it is possible to manage every individual’s behaviour through a set of learned behaviour management techniques seems unrealistic. It is therefore important that behaviour management strategies are afforded an appropriate rather than an elevated status. They form a necessary part of a teacher’s repertoire of professional skills. They can be thought of as improving the odds; the types of strategies we talk about in Chapters 5, 6 and 7 are intended to lead to more positive outcomes, with more pupils on more occasions. In themselves, however, they are unlikely to be sufficient to address the range of behaviours that might be encountered in the classroom. Unless teachers can accept this, the risk is that they ‘continue to seek more and more strategies in the hope that they will be better able to cope with anticipated classroom disruption’ (Powell and Tod 2004: 2).

Origins of the behaviour for learning approach

The term ‘behaviour for learning’ has found considerable popularity, probably because it captures the idea that schools should have a focus on learning and that in order for pupils to learn together in relatively large groups there needs to be a reasonable standard of behaviour. However, there is no shared understanding of the term ‘behaviour for learning’ and it is used to describe a variety of approaches. The use of the term in this book refers specifically to a conceptual framework that developed from a piece of research (Powell and Tod 2004) commissioned by the Teacher Training Agency (TTA). This framework is presented and explained later in this chapter. Powell and Tod (2004), together with a team of colleagues from Canterbury Christ Church University, conducted a systematic literature review with the overall aim of informing initial teacher training tutors about the theoretical underpinnings of learning behaviours in school contexts in order to enhance initial teacher training in relation to behaviour management. The central concern was that the review should contribute to training that allowed trainees to reflect upon the purpose of behaviour management. The team held the view that the fostering of learning behaviour or ‘behaviour for learning’ was the foundation for effective behaviour management, and argued that this represented a contrast with the more common perception that behaviour management is solely concerned with establishing control over disruptive pupils. The use of the terms ‘learning behaviour’ and ‘behaviour for learning’ was intended to reduce perceptions that ‘promoting learning’ and ‘managing behaviour’ were separate issues for teachers (McNally et al. 2005).

What is the behaviour for learning approach?

The behaviour f...