Session two of module EV681 focused on behaviour management with the lecture being held by guest speaker Paul Dix from Pivotal Education. A key message that flowed throughout the session was that effective behaviour management is not something that can be read and learnt or taught from a lecture. Paul emphasized that effective behaviour management is something that requires hard work and patience with consistency, certainty and relationships being the three building blocks to successful future practice.
Behaviour management is an area of particular focus in education at present, with OFSTED stating that unannounced behaviour inspections can be conducted on any school which raises a cause for concern (OFSTED, 2014). One key aspect that inspectors highlight they will be evaluating is the consistency of how well behaviour is managed on a day to day basis.
During the session Paul highlighted that along with personal consistency in your responses to behaviour, it is the consistency of the whole school which will help to achieve the most positive changes. This is also highlight by Rogers (1995) who discusses that effective and significant change occurs when individuals within a system work together to follow a collaborative model. If we consider the Asch Experiment (1951) in relation to this collaborative approach, we can see that in most cases the innate human need to fit in within a social group will usually lead to an individual conforming to the majority (Andersen and Taylor, 2008). I found this message particularly stood out to me after the session as although it is widely recognised that praising those children who are behaving positively can lead others to copy, I had not really considered how young children also feel the need to conform within a group.
However although the Asch experiment showed conclusive results, it did only focus on one demographic of people and therefore the validity of the results could be questioned when applying to children. Therefore in order to build upon this research and demonstrate how young children respond to peer pressure, Hanayama and Mori (2011) conducted a similar experiment with children between the ages of 6 and 7 which concluded that the children did change their behaviour/responses in order to conform to the majority of their peers. This conclusion did surprise me as through my experience of working with children within Key Stage 1 I have observed that children are often quite competitive and keen to show they are able to answer questions correctly. This research has demonstrated to me how important it is to not underestimate the power of peer pressure even with young children and is something I intend to observe and reflect upon in my future school based training.
Along with consistency, Paul emphasised that the building and maintaining of relationships with pupils is essential if a teacher is to achieve effective behaviour management. I believe that this is particularly important when teaching in Early Years where children are still developing the ability to manage and adapt their behaviour appropriately to the situation. Vygotsky (1978) discusses the essential role the teacher plays in supporting children’s learning (Lytle, 2003), however I believe that in order for a child to feel comfortable enough to take risks in their learning without being afraid to fail there first needs to be a positive relationship between them and the teacher. A quote from Drifte (2008) highlights this point for where she simply states that “an unhappy child cannot learn effectively” so whilst it is important for teachers to set fair boundaries and reinforce these this should be done positively and with encouragement in order to maintain the relationship between teacher and child.
Another key aspect that has particularly stuck with me since Paul’s lecture is the impact that our innate reactions have in our quest for effective behaviour management. Although I was familiar with the flight or fight response that is triggered in the event of excessive stress, I was unaware of the scientific explanation behind it. Paul demonstrated that with the simple gesture of showing someone a sad face the amygdala in the brain often responds by shutting down the part of the brain responsible for rational thinking, resulting in a purely emotional reaction (Hooper, 2014). With this in mind, when dealing with circumstances of disruptive and unwanted behaviour within a classroom it becomes clear that demonstrating negative emotions to the child may result in their ability to think and react rationally to become compromised and the negative situation escalating. Despite this a well-known behaviour management strategy within schools is the showing of red and green cards with happy and sad faces to demonstrate whether a child is meeting behaviour expectations within the session. This conflict of strategies and theories demonstrate that those who work with children have a complex task of finding behaviour management strategies that suit both them, the children they work with as well as the larger school community.
However despite the disparity between effective behaviour management strategies, one point that has been highlighted throughout all the reading I have done around this area is the paramount need for consistency. Although it is clear that some behaviour strategies are more favoured than others and are more supported by theory, I would conclude by referring back to Paul’s three building blocks of consistency, relationships and certainty and say that no matter what strategy and policy is implemented by a setting, it is these three aspects that should form the basis of all practice.
References:
Andersen, M. and Taylor, H. (2008), Sociology – Understanding a Diverse Society, Thomson Learning Inc: USA
Drifte, C. (2008), Encouraging Positive Behaviour in the Early Years, SAGE: London
Hanayama, A. & Mori, K. (2011), Conformity of Six-Year-Old Children in the Asch Experiment without Using Confederates. Psychology, 2, 661-664. doi: 10.4236/psych.2011.27100.
Hooper, D. (2014), Savannah Business Journal, ‘Does Your Amygdala Hijack Your Rational Thinking?’ [Online], Accessed: https://savannahbusinessjournal.com/index.php/news-categories/featured-columnists/4145-aug-11-%E2%80%93-columnist-dennis-hooper-%E2%80%9Cdoes-your-amygdala-hijack-your-rational-thinking%E2%80%9D.html
Lytle, D. (2003), Play and Educational Theory and Practice, Praeger Publishers: USA
OFSTED, (2014), Unannounced Behaviour Inspections, September 2014. Rogers, B. and McPherson, E. (2014), Behaviour Management with Young Children, SAGE Publications Ltd: London
Rogers, B. and McPherson, E. (2014), Behaviour Management with Young Children, SAGE Publications Ltd: London
Sorrel,Martin&Lauren 