Dealing with Disruptive Students in the Classroom

Paul Cooper, Jerry Olsen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781138145856
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135375133
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Behavioural Management

Designed for individual teachers and school teams alike, this text demonstrates how to approach and manage disruptive students and behaviour. At the book's core is a series of detailed strategies for dealing with commonly occurring problems. Some of the chapters in the book focus on:

* The Nature and Causes of Disruption
* Responding to Disruption
* Basic Principles
* Understanding and Dealing with Gambits
* Sharing Good Practice

The ideas and theories are presented in the context of a research base and come complete with case studies.

This text is published in association with the Times Educational Supplement.

1

Dealing with change effectively

Problem behaviour and the problem of change

It was late one black autumn night, and there was a drunk on his hands and knees rummaging in the dead leaves beneath a street light. After a while a woman came by and stopped. Although aware of the woman’s presence the drunk ignored her, and, not unlike a pig searching for truffles, continued to prod and probe in the disc of light beneath the lamp.

After watching the drunk for some time, the woman asked, innocently, ‘Have you lost something?’

‘Quiche,’ slurred the drunk without looking up. ‘I’ve losht my quiche.’

‘The poor man must be starving, to be searching for food in such a filthy place!’ thought the woman. But after watching the drunk scraping tracks through the leaves for another minute or so the woman understood. ‘Keys!’ she said out loud. Then she added, with an air of triumph, ‘You’ve lost your keys!’

‘Thash what I shed,’ said the drunk, still continuing with his search. ‘I losht my quiche.’

Wanting to be helpful, the woman tried to re-engage the drunk. ‘So you dropped your keys somewhere under this streetlight!’

For the first time since the woman’s arrival the drunk stopped his foraging and fixed her with the unsteady gaze from one bloodshot eye. He was becoming irritated by this unwelcome and inquisitive stranger. ‘Although it is none of your bishnish, for your info-mayshun, I losht my key-sh over there!’ With that the drunk raised an unsteady hand and, swaying on the rickety tripod of his knees and one arm, pointed to the other side of the street, which was in complete darkness.

As the drunk resumed his search, the woman pondered the situation, but failing to make sense out of it asked, ‘But if you lost your keys over there, why are you looking for them over here?’

The drunk now looked up from his search, annoyed by the stupidity of this question. This time both bleary eyes were directed at the woman, as the drunk said condescendingly, but with surprising clarity: ‘I am searching over here because the light is better over here. Nobody could find anything over there in the dark, because it is too dark to find anything over there!’ Now it was his turn to feel triumphant. ‘So if you don’t mind, I cannot waste any more time answering your childish questions. I still have to find my quiche.’ Then, as he once again plunged snout first into the illuminated pile of dead leaves, the drunk mumbled to himself, ‘and after that I’ve got find my damn car!’

This old joke illustrates a lot about human behaviour. Like all good jokes it points to some kind of basic truth that most people instantly recognize. On the one hand we sympathize with the woman’s compassionate and logical approach, on the other hand we see something undeniably human in the drunk’s behaviour. Most of us know exactly what it feels like to be engaged in a totally irrational pursuit and to be resentful of the intrusions of others, however well meaning and even potentially helpful these might be. Of course, at the time when we are engaged in the irrational behaviour we do not see it as irrational. When we are looking for our keys where the light is, rather than where we lost them, we are doing it for what seems to us, at the time, a very good reason. In fact the more some interfering busybody tries to tell us how irrational our behaviour is, the more we want to show them that it is they who are wrong. In order to do this we put more effort into our irrational pursuit. In return the busybody will sometimes put more effort into their mission of telling us that we are wrong. And so on…

At the heart of this situation is the problem of change. Somebody deviates from the pattern of behaviour that is expected, and some one else decides that this is unacceptable and must be stopped. The change to the normal pattern of things has to be irradicated or reversed and circumstances restored to how they were before the change took place. Sometimes this is a very straightforward process, and the perpetrator of the unwanted behaviour responds to the demand to stop what they are doing. This happens everyday in classrooms and families all over the world: the child begins to make a loud and irritating noise, the parent/teacher says, ‘Stop doing that!’; the child stops. In other cases, however, the child doesn’t stop, and the more the parent/teacher demands silence the louder and more irritating the noise becomes.

At the heart of this book is a simple argument: If the approach adopted by the school doesn’t work, change it to an approach that does work, preferably one that is supported by research evidence.

Of course, in the case of the drunk, there would be no joke if he simply accepted the young woman’s logic, and adjusted his search strategy accordingly. And, by and large, it has to be said that most employees do not get the sack, most families do not fall victim to estrangement or divorce, and most students do not find themselves excluded from school. It is surprising, perhaps, the extent to which human beings accept and submit to the behavioural demands and limits that other people assert. On the other hand it is cooperation of this kind that keeps social interaction in general positive and productive. It is the guiding principle of this book that we can understand and exploit the processes by which people gain each other’s cooperation, even in circumstances where an individual appears to be bent on being, at all costs, uncooperative.

Emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBDs) and antisocial behaviour in schools

Schools and classrooms are excellent places for learning about this to-ing and fro-ing of control, consent, cooperation and resistance in social and interpersonal relations. In many classrooms much of the time the emphasis is on consent and cooperation, with most students and teachers working harmoniously toward common goals. Sometimes, however, things go wrong, and when things go wrong teachers and students sometimes adopt one or other of the roles of the drunk and the woman in the story that opened this chapter. In this section we explore the range and nature of some of the problems that teachers in schools may experience.

It is estimated that in England, at the time of writing, between 10 per cent and 20 per cent of school students in the 4 to 16 age range experience emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBDs) to a degree that causes significant impairment to their social and educational development (Young Minds, 1999). The problems that fall under the heading of EBDs include, among others: depression, phobias and conduct disorder. The prevalence of these problems increases to its peak in the adolescent years. It is difficult to make national comparisons, because of differences in classification systems, but current evidence would suggest that in the United States similar levels of problems exist (Walker, Colvin and Ramsey, 1995). In practice, of course, it is often difficult to separate the emotional problems from the conduct problems.

In addition to these severe behavioural problems is a range of more minor, but, to teachers and their classes, often equally disruptive patterns of unwanted behaviour, which might be termed ‘routine indiscipline’. The British government published one of the most comprehensive surveys of this problem ever undertaken (DES, 1989), and revealed the following key problems as being most commonly cited by teachers in primary and secondary schools in England and Wales:

• talking out of turn;
• calculated idleness and work avoidance;
• students who hindered other students in their work;
• students who were not punctual;
• students who made unnecessary non-verbal noises.

The authors of the report concluded that, in contrast to the more deep-seated problems referred to earlier, these routine acts of indiscipline were largely the product of contextual factors in the classroom or school situation. The major remedies for these problems were seen as residing in the need for improved school effectiveness, through the development of carefully targeted, clear and comprehensive whole-school policies, and the improvement of teachers’ classroom management skills.

An important thing to bear in mind here is that in the school and classroom context it is sometimes difficult to draw a clear-cut distinction between emotional and behavioural difficulties and routine indiscipline. The methods by which the school and teacher create an environment that promotes the positive engagement of students from both of these groups are often identical.

A unifying feature of all EBDs, whether they are seen as reflecting underlying disturbance or as routine indiscipline, is that they are disturbing to schools, teachers and others who come into contact with the child who appears be at the centre of these problems, in that they undermine, subvert or detract from the formal educational functions of schools. The array of behavioural manifestations that might fall under the heading of EBDs is enormous and, at times, seemingly paradoxical. Students’ emotional difficulties may manifest themselves in terms of extreme withdrawal from social involvement, leading to social isolation within school, and possibly truancy or school refusal. At another level, the student with emotional difficulties may simply be preoccupied with emotional concerns to the extent that this interferes with the learning process. Students with emotional difficulties may be involved in bullying, either as victims or perpetrators. They may be violent towards others, or, in some cases, be self-harming. Children with such difficulties may also engage in attention-seeking behaviours, which can involve activities that attract the positive or negative attention of others. The energy that is devoted to such behaviour is often at the expense of ‘legitimate’ classroom behaviour, and consequently tends to attract the negative attention of teachers, in the form of reprimands and punishments. To the attention-seeking child, however, negative attention is a desirable alternative to no attention at all.

As already noted, the most commonly cited forms of behavioural disturbance in classrooms take the form of unauthorized student talk, the hindrance of other pupils from working and other forms of behaviour that interfere with teaching and learning such as the use of verbal and non-verbal interventions, as well as forms of student behaviour that directly challenge the authority of the teacher (from straightforward ‘cheek’ to verbal abuse, and, in rare cases, physical assault) (DES, 1989; Wheldall, 1987). Other sometimes extremely severe problems include: hyperactivity, bullying, problem sexual behaviour and damage to property. Less disturbing (in the sense of disruptive) but evidently ‘disturbed’ behaviours include extreme inattentiveness, socially withdrawn behaviour, and phobic and obsessive patterns of behaviour (Blau and Gullotta, 1996). Of related concern is a group of problems that whether or not they are enacted in the school environment are often related, directly or indirectly, to dysfunctional conduct or under-performance in school. This group includes delinquency and substance abuse.

The form of behaviour most disruptive to schools, families and communities is what might be termed ‘antisocial’ behaviour. This is behaviour that is characterized by rule infringement, hostility to others, defiance of authority and aggression towards others (Walker, Colvin and Ramsey, 1995). Patterson, Reid and Dishion (1992), in their study of antisocial boys, defined antisocial behaviour in terms of ‘coercion’. This empirically derived definition proposes that a core feature of antisocial behaviour is a range of behavioural events, experienced by others as socially aversive, that are characterized by the application, by an individual, of physical or psychological force in order to achieve desired ends.

The development of serious behavioural problems

Patterson, Reid and Dishion (1992) identified nine variables that they found to be consistently associated with the development of delinquency and antisocial behaviour in boys. These are:

• social disadvantage;
• ineffective parental discipline;
• lack of parental supervision;
• parental use of physical punishment;
• parental rejection;
• peer rejection;
• membership of deviant peer group;
• academic failure;
• low self-esteem.

These variables are incorporated in a four-stage model, which describes the sequence of events commonly leading to what Patterson, Reid and Dishion term ‘the career antisocial adult’. The stages are:

1. Basic training: this is the pre-school phase in which the child is ‘trained’ in coercive behaviour in the home setting. Parents and family members are often the unwitting trainers, who provide models and reinforcement for coercive behaviours through their daily interactions with their children.

2. The social environment reacts: behaviours which were, for the child, functional in the home situation are challenged when he enters school. The child becomes increasingly unmanageable as the antisocial behaviours escalate. This leads to conflict and rejection by parents, peers and the school.

3. Deviant peers and polishing antisocial skills: the experience of rejection leads to emotional problems, and as the child enters early adolescence he is drawn to a deviant peer group in which his skills of coercion are further reinforced and developed.

4. The career antisocial adult: this stage is characterized by the social marginalization of the adult. He will experience disruption in his personal relationships; will have difficulty securing and sustaining employment. He will be at greater risk than non-antisocial adults of mental health problems, substance abuse and imprisonment.

There are obvious limitations to this model. First, it deals exclusively with males. Second, it deals solely with long-term antisocial behaviour. Third, it focuses entirely on social and psychological issues, with no reference to individual predisposing factors, such as the biological dimension. This said, the model illustrates the interactive and cumulative nature of the way in which emotional and behavioural problems often develop. Put another way, the model illustrates the way in which a perceived problem (eg a child’s non-compliant behaviour) is met with an attempted solution (eg direct opposition), which in turn leads to the exacerbation of the original problem (eg increased intensity of non-compliant behaviour), which in turn has further negative consequences (eg peer rejection) and so on. At the heart of this book is the conviction that it is only when we can begin to understand the complexity of such interactions that we can begin to intervene effectively in order to change a negative impetus into a positive impetus.

The biopsychosocial perspective

The biopsychosocial approach draws on insights gained from research in genetics and cognitive neuroscience, and seeks to utilize understanding of the ways in which individual biology might interact with social and psychological factors. This paradigm is associated with sociobiology (Wilson, 1975), evolutionary psychology, and evolutionary psychiatry (Stevens and Price, 1996), each of which stresses the biological and evolutionary foundations of human behaviour.

The phenomena of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and Asperger’s syndrome are examples of problems which may fall under the umbrella of EBDs and are believed to have biological bases. It is not necessary to elaborate in detail on the nature of these medically defined conditions. It is important, however, to stress two things about them: they affect a significant proportion of the school population, with a prevalence rate of 3–5 per cent for AD/HD, and 1:300 for Asperger’s Syndrome; and they provide sources of disquiet for academics and professionals socialized into the psychosocial perspective and the rejection of the medical model.

The crucial aspect of the biopsychosocial approach is that it is interactional. It is not the same as the traditional medical model, which is often portrayed in terms of crude biological determinism. For example, a biopsychosocial approach does not suggest that a child born with a particular biological tendency is doomed to a particular pattern of life and behaviour. Rather the biopsychosocial approach highlights potential risk factors that can be averted by intervention (Frit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Dealing with change effectively
• 2. Teaching, learning and disruptive behaviour
• 3. The power–caring balance: sources of biological power
• 4. Establishing a regime for positive behaviour in the classroom
• 5. Creating a culture for positive behaviour: the importance of values, atmosphere and attitude
• 6. The importance of SALAD
• 7. Systems: the power of linking stakeholders together
• 8. Enabling students to behave well: access, limits, acceptance and direction
• 9. Gambits: understanding and dealing with the games students play
• 10. Working with parents: systems theory
• 11. Working with parents: a case study
• 12. School refusal
• 13. Evaluating progress
• 14. Systems approaches in action: cross-sector educational liaison programmes
• 15. Conclusion
• Appendix 1: Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)
• Appendix 2: The TOAD system
• References
• Index