How do we go about managing learner behaviour?

Beginning teachers regularly say that they feel unprepared for their role. Their supervisors agree and argue that universities have too many theoretical programs without practical application to prepare them effectively. And, we have a very disappointing rate of separation from the profession for people early in their careers.

Popular media and some researchers cite workload, teacher selection practices, and teacher knowledge as underpinning the dash from teaching for those early in their careers. I don’t think the problem is workload, although workload could be lightened with a positive effect on wellbeing. I don’t think the problem is how clever teachers are. We select the best and the brightest to enter courses, separate the wheat from the chaff through a rigorous assessment program and evaluate practical and professional placements. So, beginning teachers are competent and well-versed in their discipline content, ways of knowing, and conceptual de-learning design. They have demonstrated grit, determination, and smarts to get through the pre-professional assessment of the performance maze and into the school. Why don’t they feel prepared?

Despite what the everyday discourse would have us believe, I think that career dissatisfaction from the early days is not predominantly due to a lack of collegiality, poor mentoring, or missing personal support and professional and systemic support systems. So, what is it? Why the stress, the anxiety, the tears, and the collapse of self-worth? I feel that the dirty words are “behaviour management”. If a graduate teacher could get behaviour management right… then all other issues would be more easily tackled.

Behaviour management. The words themselves strike fear and anxiety for most teachers. The whole idea that you can be held responsible for managing another person’s behaviour is confronting and unreasonable. But there are some handy-dandy considerations, principles and approaches to teaching that can improve the likelihood that students will choose to behave nicely in the classroom. That is, to become self-regulated learners.

Considerations

There are fundamental considerations that confront teachers and interrupt the self-regulation of behaviour displayed by learners.

1. Classrooms are unnatural environments. People aren’t designed to sit in formally arranged seats for hours. Nor do they have a natural inclination and preference for nutting out problems all day, alongside people whose only reason for being in the room is that they are within 12 months of age of each other.
2. Not everything that we teach will have a general application. We tend to teach learners how to learn by exposing them to information they don’t need to know, and if they do need to know it, it may not be relevant to them for a very long time.
3. It’s not possible to like everyone. Group work, classroom organisation, and just the confines of the classroom force people upon each other when they have nothing in common and may reasonably dislike each other. As adults, we choose our companions, and in situations where we can’t select them, we are not required to endure endless hours in confined contact with those we don’t like.
4. There’s seemingly no end to assessment. School and judgment stretch out in front of learners like an endless magic carpet leading to nowhere, or at least to the great unknown.
5. Our values and beliefs can’t be set aside, and irreconcilable differences may underpin conceptual understandings, misconceptions, and engagement in learning.

These considerations are often forgotten, or we, as teachers, assume they are simple, brutal facts that cannot be addressed directly. Let’s start with handling them. We should implement actions to undermine these considerations’ influences on behaviour. To counteract Consideration 1, for example, plan and implement learning activities that are not stilted and physically confining, cut across age groupings, connect with the community beyond the classroom walls, and so forth.

There are, of course, many more considerations. Still, just this little fistful is sufficient to highlight the fact that there is no single solution to behaviour management, and indeed, it is impossible to prepare a teacher for every potential constellation of classroom elements impacting “behaviour management”.

Principles

I propose six fundamental principles that support effective behaviour management:

1. Learning needs variety to be fun and immediately relevant.

If you miss this first principle, the result is disengaged,  bored, distracted and discouraged learners.

1. People need a break from other people.

It is essential to switch groups around while ensuring not to force people who do not get along together. Allow for discretionary individual time.

• Listening is more important than talking.

Designing classroom activities that allow learners to talk to and listen to each other is more valuable than chalk and talk by the teacher. Even Q&A managed through the teacher as “Chair” undermines the free-flowing conversations underpinning deep learning.

• Every person in every classroom, every day, needs positive attention.

This is self-explanatory.

• Choose the hill you want to fight up carefully.

It is not wise to jump on every misdemeanour. Choose the ones that truly matter while remembering that the behaviour you ignore is the behaviour you accept.

• Responding is not the same as reacting.

Oppositional defiance should not be tolerated, but at the same time, there should be no escalation to a war of wills. If you are on the back foot with a student and you feel like lashing out, give yourself time out and plan a more professional approach.

A teacher who reflects at each stage of their teaching, at the planning stage, during implementation, following assessment, and asks, “Have I fully catered to Principle x?” will be well on their way to co-constructing a positive learning environment with their learners.

Approaches

With considerations and principles addressed, the next area for attention is approach. How can we start to work in ways that promote and support positive learning behaviours? Let’s have a look at a few standard events.

• General chatter. Your class won’t be quiet, what do you do? I suggest eye contact, conspicuously waiting, building something or doing something to arouse their curiosity, lowering your voice (not speaking over the class), quietly writing the main protagonists’ names prominently somewhere without explaining why, and using your physical proximity to interrupt conversations.

Do not yell over the talking or threaten them. If you yell, you have nothing more in your it bag. You have nowhere to go, and your relationship building is broken. If you threaten, you have to follow through; it becomes a new rule for you and the students and may be counterproductive to establishing a positive relationship.

• Calling out. A student continually calls out across the classroom; how should you respond? Answer their questions briefly, stand near them, and invite them to sit near you. Discuss with them after class.  Alternatively, you could directly bring them into the conversation: “What do you think, Wayne?”
• Defiance. A student refuses to do as they’ve been asked. If they are not disrupting others, ignore them. Discuss with them after class.
• Disrespect. Ask for an apology. Discuss with them after class.
• Inappropriate language. If possible, ignore it. If you are not likely to ignore them, ask them to watch their language and discuss it with them after class.
• Students won’t stay in their seats. Wait for them to sit. Use eye contact.

Of course, there are many different scenarios, but the most successful approach in any event is to project confident expectations. You don’t ask for conformity; you state what is required and thank them for complying. For example, you don’t say, “Could everyone please open their books?” instead, you say, “Books out, turn to page x, thanks.”

Summary

The hallmark of successful teaching is mutual respect. The whole enterprise rests on the existence of a positive relationship between the teacher and the learners. Since learning is personal a teacher benefits the learners by connecting with them as individuals. If you start here, behaviour management will not be your lasting problem as a beginning teacher.

I could write much more, but this is a good start. Why not add a comment to this post so we can learn from each other?