Materials supporting a professional development session on behaviour management and challenging behaviour.

1. Addressing Behaviour That
Challenges
Mike Blamires

2. The quality first model
Source: behaviour and attendance national strategies

3. The Elton Report (1989) Discipline in Schools
London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1989
http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/elton/elton00a.html
• From the selected recommendations
• a) Choose two that you consider to be of
key importance
• b) choose one that is of least importance
Ignore recommendations less than 4 and
remember to turn the page at some point

4. Harnessing Rewards and
Sanctions
The results of the 2012 NFER survey showed
that a range of strategies were used by
respondents to manage pupil behaviour.
Those used most often included praising
desired behaviour; having a system to follow
through with sanctions; and using a reward
system (NFER, 2012,).
Videos: Rewards Sanctions

5. What rewards and sanctions
have you seen or used?
How effective were they?
Were they used selectively and/or consistently?
Is it more important to be consistent or
selective?

6. Trainees talking about their
experiences and strategies
Behaviour2Learn.co.uk

7. Visual Timetables

8. Visual structure

9. • I recently read the ‘Checklist Manifesto’ by Atul Gawande,
a surgeon who was concerned that so many patients seemed
to suffer serious complications in the days after their
operation.
• He realised that many of these problems were caused by
operating staff failing to follow basic procedures.
• For example, a surgeon failing to wash his hands could
cause an infection, or failing to account for all the swabs
used in the process could lead to one being left in the
patient’s body. Gawande developed a checklist to be read
out before each operation to ensure that all of the simple,
but essential procedures were followed.
• The outcome was a marked decrease in the number of
patients becoming seriously ill or dying after surgery. I took
the idea of a checklist and adapted it to help schools to
improve behaviour. My list is a menu of ideas from which
schools can develop their own checklist.

10. The checklist in use
• Woodend Park School on their behaviour
checklist
• Whitehall Infants on their behaviour
checklist

11. The Steer Report
Steering The Right Course: Primary

12. Soft skills for hard schools
At classroom level:
• the timetable being an inaccurate guide to academic time usage;
• the presence of inconsistency, including some high-quality teaching;
• the possession of low expectations;
• an emphasis on supervision and routines;
• low levels of teacher–pupil interaction about work;
• the pupils perceiving their teachers as not caring, praising, etc.;
• the presence of high noise levels and lots of non-work-related
movement;
• the use of negative feedback from teachers.
Which soft skills might you employ to tackle these challenges ..
and how?

13. The 9 Key Strategies (?)
Clarity of what is expected negotiation/conflict (Choice)
Strategy 6:
Strategy 1:
Predictability / Novelty level of work (Complexity)
Strategy 7:
Strategy 2:
Feedback (Rewards & Sanctions) Modality
Strategy 3: Strategy 8:
Interaction/ group work Language demand
Strategy 9:
Strategy 4:
Available time for tasks
Strategy 5:

14. Can we learn from past lessons?
Adlerian Approaches to behaviour in
Classrooms

15. Adlerian or Individual Psychology
was developed by Alfred Alder in 1911 after his split with
Freud. Its tenets are optimistic in that people are unique,
social decision making beings whose thoughts and
actions have a purpose and goals. Each person is part of
a social setting with a capacity to decide and choose.

16. The well adjusted child, Dreikurs, 1972
has a sense of self worth Is willing to share
has a feeling of belonging is honest
has socially acceptable goals puts forth genuine effort
is able to meet the needs of a situation
thinks in terms of “we” rather than “I”
assumes responsibility
is interested in others
respects the rights of others
co-operates with others
encourages others
is courageous

17. Discipline, the media and political influence
It is worth considering the “Individual Psychology”
approach to the promotion of discipline as the
development of personal responsibility where parents,
teachers apply the skills of encouragement, consistency
and the use of natural and logical consequences so that
the child can “respond correctly to the demands of social
life”.

18. Dinkemeyer and Dreikurs (1963) autocratic methods
suggest that “traditional methods of influencing children
come from an autocratic past where reward and
punishment were the effective means of influencing and
stimulating subordinates and promoting conformity to the
demands of authorities like parents and teachers”

19. Dinkemeyer and Dreikurs (1963) on democratic
methods
suggest a move from autocratic methods to democratic
methods of child guidance that encourages choice and
responsibility and further suggest that democratic
relationships are at the heart of effective behaviour
training which is based on encouragement, a respect for
order through clear expectations and the experience of
natural consequences for misbehaviour, and the
avoidance of conflict.

20. (Driekurs, 1971) cited in Chew P 53 on rewards
“Rewards usually are given by someone in a
superior role to someone in an inferior position
which is not a mutually respectful stance. They
are often used as bribes which in the end teaches
that nothing worthwhile is given freely. Rewards
given by parents often come back to haunt them
when children refuse to do anything unless they
receive a tangible reward. The focus is removed
from internal controls to external one.”

21. Intrinsic versus extrinsic rewards
Extrinsic rewards do play a important role in social
organisations including schools where they reinforce
whole school policy on behaviour. Chew (1998) asks
that “if children are taught that every thing worth doing
must be compensated, when are they to learn and feel
the value of giving and helping?” (p 53)

22. On Punishment
The current guidance refers to sanctions rather than
punishment although the need for punishment has an
enduring appeal in the media for pupils at risk of
exclusion. E.g. Parsons (2003) Chew states that “Venting
anger and making children “pay” for their misbehaviour is
short sighted, selfish way to handle problem situations.
When punished, children learn to go underground with
their behaviour, if not choosing to directly challenge the
authority figure.” P 53

23. “Good Discipline”
“builds within the child the courage to function
effectively”, (Dinkmeyer, 1965) using natural and
logical consequences which enable the child to
see her responsibilities to her family and social
group. Encouragement and discouragement are
key concepts for Adlerians as they impact of the
child’s courage to take responsibility for aspects
of their life.

24. “The courageous person”
“The courageous person can look at a situation, a
task or event in terms of possible actions and
solutions rather than potential threats or dangers
Therefore he can move without hesitation persist without
slackening and proceed without withdrawing” P32

25. Praise versus encouragement
This distinction is closely related to natural and logical
consequences. Encouragement helps to build the self
confidence of the child so that they can handle difficulty.
The aim is to develop internal rather than external
motivation by focussing on effort and improvement
towards a goal rather than the achievement of the goal
per se. From an Adlerian perspective, praise teaches a
child to conform,

26. Natural & Logical Consequences
Natural consequences represent reality for the child with
no interference from adults. This would include a child
getting cold because they did not put on their coast when
they went out to play. Logical consequences are those
which follow a violation of a social order or tacit rules for
co-operation within society. This could include the child
forgetting to take lunch money or losing a fellow pupil’s
possession.

27. Logical Consequences
Logical consequences are concerned with the child
locating the choices to be made instead of relying on
adults around them to come up with the solutions.
Dinkemeyer (1989)
However, when adults dominate this issue children rarely
learn the power of their own choices. If the “logical”
consequence is contrived by the adult and not related to
the misbehaviour, then the aims of the adult may
become suspect so that power and control are the issue
rather than the correction of the problem.

28. Successful Behaviour
Dreikurs (1971) states that a child must come to
understand why he behaves as he does, how this
behaviour affects others, how it is “successful” behaviour
from the child’s point of view and how appropriate
behaviour can gain him more acceptance..
The selection of a logical consequence also depends a
great deal upon the goal of the child as well as his
method of obtaining it.

29. Discipline and Dignity (1988), Curwin and Mendler
..suggest that consequences work best in the classroom
when they are clear, specific and spelled out ahead of
time because predictability is important in helping
students choose behaviour.

30. Fair is not always equal
Chew suggests that having a range of alternative
consequences gives the teacher discretion in
matching consequences to situations. This may
lead to the accusation of being unfair in applying
different consequences for the same
misbehaviour which Chew addresses with the
“Fair is not always equal”
This principle does acknowledge that different
people have different needs so that fair not equal
treatment can be appropriate.

31. Encouraging Children to Learn
Dinkmeyer & Driekurs (1976)
A focus on purpose rather than cause.
All behaviour is purposive. Behaviour has a social
meaning. Individuals are not merely at the mercy
of drives or impulses…
…nor does heredity or environment force a
particular direction.
Both are used as a stimulus for personal
interpretation (biased apperception) with a
regular pattern of response becoming a lifestyle.
The individual’s aim is significance and belonging.

32. Four Mistaken Goals for Behaviour
1) Attention
2) Power
3) Revenge
4) Inadequacy

33. • Adler, A. (1930) The Education of the Child
• New York Greenburg Publisher Inc
•
• Adler, A. Ed (1930) Guiding the Child: On the Principles of Individual Psychology
• New York Greenburg Publisher Inc
•
• Adler, A. (1963) The Problem Child
• New York: Capricorn Books
•
• Dinkmeyer, D. & Dreikurs, R. (2000) Encouraging Children to Learn
• New York: Brunner Routledge
•
• Dreikurs, R., Casell, P. & Dreikurs-Ferguson, E. (2004) Discipline Without Tears : How To Reduce Conflict And Establish Co-
Operation In The Classroom
• New York: Wiley
•
• Dreikurs, R., Grunwald, B.B., & Pepper, F.C. (1998) Maintaining Sanity in the Classroom: Classroom Management Techniques
2nd Edition
• Florence KY: Accelerated Development: Taylor and Francis
•
• Logan. P. & Richardson,(2006) Report of the Working Group on Student Behaviour
• London National Education Research Forum (NERF)
•
• Rogers. B. (2000) Cracking The Hard Class: Strategies for Managing the Harder than Average Class
• London Paul Chapman Publishing: Sage
•
• Rogers. B. (2000) Cracking The Hard Class: Strategies for Managing the Harder than Average Class
• London Paul Chapman Publishing: Sage
•
• Rogers. B. (2000) Classroom Behaviour
• London Paul Chapman Publishing: Sage
•
• Spencer. H (1861) Education
• Paris

34. The Eternal Verities of
Classroom Behaviour