Behaviour for Learning and Classroom Climate

The basics of classroom management:

• Consistency: being unscrupulously fair even in the tough times
• Persistence: keeping going in the face of students ignoring you
• Follow-up: when you need to see a student after a lesson, after school, always do so
• Certainty: students realise that what you say you will do … you WILL do

 Factors influencing classroom climate:

• Pupils' willingness to learn;
• Pupils' sense of community;
• Teacher-student relationships;
• Teacher's skills of managing culturally diverse classrooms

Van Tartwijk and Hammerness (2011)
'learning is much more difficult, if not impossible, in a disorderly environment'
 Low level disruption can impede progress.

Relaxed and assured control of the classroom VS not in complete control of the lesson

The moves towards a ‘market’ in secondary schools has created a system which means that (for understandable reasons), schools strain every sinew to present as positive a picture of pupil behaviour and classroom climate as possible (to both Ofsted and parents). As a government advisor on behaviour has noted:

What is very interesting around behaviour is that schools are very reluctant to admit they have an issue with behaviour. . . it’s also interesting because it shows an emotional component to behaviour. There’s an element of threat around behaviour that there almost isn’t around any other issue. Deep down, behaviour is our biggest fear. (Taylor, 2011).



Golden Rules

Jenny Mosley’s Golden Rules which cover all aspects of behaviour help staff to explain to pupils which rule they broke and why their behaviour was unacceptable. The rules are:

• We are gentle - we don’t hurt others
• We are kind and helpful - we don’t hurt anybody’s feelings
• We listen - we don’t interrupt
• We are honest - we don’t cover up the truth
• We work hard - we don’t waste our own or other’s time
• We look after property - we don’t waste or damage things

Value each student. 

Mutual respect.
Build positive relationships individually and as a class.
Ensure students feel they belong.
Clear and consistent behaviour expectations.
High expectation of learning.
Sincere praise.
Bring humour into the room.

Whole school approach: managing poor behaviour

https://www.gov.uk/government/case-studies/whole-school-approach-managing-poor-behaviour 

Staff response to misbehaviour

The school developed a clear response route for teachers to follow to ensure a consistent approach across the school when dealing with poor behaviour in the classroom. The pupil:

• is gently reminded that their behaviour is breaking the school rules
• receives a warning and their name is written on the board
• receives a yellow card, which means the child has to stay behind for five minutes at playtime
• receives a red card, which means they are sent to the headteacher’s office and a letter is sent home to their parents

Collective staff responsibility

It is made clear that all staff have a responsibility for the behaviour of all children in the school and not just the pupils in their class. For example, any teacher who sees a pupil running in the school is expected to positively remind them that they need to walk. Teachers will say ‘walk please’ rather than ‘stop running’.

School ethos

The school has developed a positive and supportive environment in which teachers and pupils respect each other. To help create this atmosphere, the school refers to each form group, including the teacher, as a ‘family’ with responsibility, respect and care for each other.

Inclusion unit

When pupils continually behave inappropriately they will be taken out of lessons and placed in the inclusion unit for a day. The inclusion unit is supervised by senior staff, with a separate timetable, and class teachers provide the pupil with their work for the day. The separate timetable means pupils are not able to socialise with their friends for the entire day and, at least in part because of this, it is an effective deterrent against poor behaviour.


References:

Haydn, T. (2014) To what extent is behaviour a problem in English schools? Exploring the scale and
prevalence of deficits in classroom climate.

Taylor, C. (2011) There’s an element of threat. . . deep down, behaviour is our biggest fear, The
Times Educational Supplement, 22 July, pp. 20–21.

Taylor, M. (2012) Our schools are being undermined by a constant rhetoric of decline, The Observer,
2 September,
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/sep/02/matthew-taylor-schools-are-getting-better

Questioning Knowledge

Procedural knowledge = knowing how

Declarative knowledge = knowing that

Schemata = thinking structures crafted from connected knowledge enabling us to think critically.

Substantive knowledge = facts, concepts, rules - the building blocks of subject e.g. understanding the process of evaporation. This “substance” is central to thinking scientifically (or mathematically, historically etc).

Disciplinary knowledge = knowledge about how the decisions behind what knowledge “makes it” into the accepted corpus of each subject are made, and, just as importantly, how accepted knowledge can be challenged, superseded or rendered obsolete. A curricular term for what pupils learn about how that knowledge was established, its degree of certainty and how it continues to be revised by scholars, artists, or professional practice.

Neil Postman (1970) Teaching as a Conserving Activity
“Biology is not plants and animals.  It is language about plants and animals. It is a way of talking about planets and stars.”

Disciplinary ways of talking have certain features, e.g. diagrams, tables, formulae in science. Disciplinary knowledge in science also involves knowing about how empirical experimentation is used to test if hypotheses about physical reality can be corroborated or disproved. It involves knowing how scientists go about testing, what might count as corroboration or disproof, and the specific ways scientists communicate their ideas, for example by using diagrams.

Learning disciplinary knowledge makes no sense unless accompanied by swathes of substantial knowledge. It would be like trying to understand the complexities of a football match purely through the application of the offside rule.

Primary school teachers, in particular, are prone to thinking th

Managing Pupils in Science Lessons (2010:173)

Teaching Secondary Science (Ross, Lakin, McKechnie and Baker) Notes - Chapter 19

Starting the Lesson

Enter the lab - establish and maintain routines.

Start work quickly - engage / starter work. Register. Ground rules set and strategies developed to avoid potential dangers.

Variety of activities → achieve learning outcomes

Sts move promptly form one task to another.

Make sure they are clear about what they are learning 'tell each other what you expect to see/have to do'

Identify critical moments - moments or turning points when  comment or action is decisive in determining the flow of the rest of the conversation or interaction, e.g. student indicating complete lack of understanding.  Checj uderstanding with everyone in class 'tell each other what you think'.

Crisis points & critical moments

The unexpected → put to the test

Childern can sense weakness.  Expect higher standard from teacher than themselves or parents.

School bags!  >>> under benches
Eye protection

Disruptive pupils or disruptive behaviour

Know problematic students and the school behaviour management system (e.g. Ready to Learn p48 at CVHS).

Criticise the behaviour and not the pupil. Take the opportunity to praise the pupil as soon as possible after the incident for behaving appropriately.

Rewards and punishments - ratio of 20:1

Provide a purposeful, challenging and useful set of learning activities → happy and well-behaved classroom.

Keep them busy, focused and challenged and they will have little time to be disruptive.

Ending the lesson

Consolidating a good lesson requires the allowance of time to review the outcomes of the lesson. 
→ The pupils and teacher need to know to what extent they have met initial learning outcomes (Formative Assessment!). SHort quiz / true/false questions / mind map etc.

Teacher intuition

LEARN NAMES!

• Seating plan with names written by the students → to know their handwriting;
• School photos → seating plan;
• After correcting work/jotters put in pile so handing out is easier ie follows seating plan;
• Each lesson ask 3-5 pupls something about themselves → record (e.g. dog, brother Joe, football).

Develop a knack for ignorong low-level unacceptable behaviour and praising acceptable and desirable behaviour. 

Summary

Plan and execute a well-prepared lesson.
Reflect.
Ask for advice. 

Essential Teaching Skills - Discipline (Kyriacou 2007:83-104)

Notes on Discipline - Essential Teaching Skills (p83-104)

Discipline = classroom order which permits pupil learning.

> Involves establishing a clear framework to manage pupils' behaviour constructively and to promote pupils' self-control and independence, and requires student teachers to be able to use a range of behaviour management strategies.

Skilful + Effective teaching → Management of behaviour

♡ If learning activities are well planned and prepared; and presentation elicits and maintains pupil's attention, interest and involvement; and if the activities are challenging and offer realistic opportunities for success; then the necessary order will be established as part of these qualities.

HOWEVER, even the most skilful teacher will have to deal with misbehaviour.

Dominating and engendering fear - NOT good.

CONVENTIONS, ROUTINES and EXPECTATIONS - Pupil/Teacher/School ethos

Mutual Respect and Rapport.

Teachers' task is to make it as easy as possible for pupils to sustain good behaviour.

Causes of misbehaviour include: boredom, prolonged mental effort, inability to do the work, being sociable, academic self-esteem, emotional difficulties, poor attitudes, worries and anxieties, and lack of negative consequences.

Captive audience → coerced to participate → tension + frustration ∴ great sensitivity required

Assert authority via management of learning rather than as a power relationship. 

USEFUL ANALOGY → Tour Guide. One obeys instructions about where/when to go & what to do because of trust and expectations.  This relies on expertise and skills.

• convey status - act appropriately (relaxed, self-assured, confident - tone of voice, posture, facial expression, eye contact);
• teach competently - knowledgeable, interested, lessons well planned and prepared, manner.  Being taught competently can engender a feeling of pride and self-respect, and affirms a sense of worth and importance;
• exercise managerial control - prompt starts, keep them involved, transitions, rules, routines. Smith and Laslett (1992:3-12) 'Get them in, get them out, get on with it, and get on with them!';
• deal with misbehaviour effectively - well-thought out rertoire of techniques.

 Wragg (2005:24) Eleven classroom rules explicitly stated by teachers:

1. No talking when teacher is talking (public situation).
2. No disruptive noises.
3. Rules for entering, leaving and moving in classrooms.
4. No interference with the work of others.
5. Work must be completed in a specified way.
6. Pupils must raise hand to answer, not shout out.
7. Pupils must make a positive effort in their work.
8. Pupils must not challenge the authority of the teacher.
9. Respect should be shown for property and equipment.
10. Rules to do with safety.
11. Pupils must ask if they do not understand.

Wagg also found that primary teachers were generally characterised by a friendly smile, business-like manner and benign firmness, whereas secondary school teachers are more aggressively assertive.

Misbehaviour: Prevention is better than cure!

Careful monitoring → misbehaviour nipped in bud.

Investigating and Counselling

Choice to investigate or reprimand misbehaviour.

Effective counselling → allow pupil to do most of the talking.

Pastoral care - general behaviour and attitudes, personal and social development.
Be alert to behaviour giving cuase for concern that may not undermine discipline or be considered misbehaviour e.g. excessive shyness, working slowly, day-dreaming, inattentiveness, unwillingness to participate. These could be signs of PERSONAL PROBLEMS (bullying/illness).
→ GIRFEC
→ SEN

Reprimands

Reprimand = an explicit verbal warning or comment which indicates disapproval of misbehaviour.

Skilful and effective use:

• Target correctly;
• Be firm - tone and content;
• Express concern;
• Avoid danger → undermines positive classroom climate;
• Emphasise what is requires;
• Maintain psychological impact;
• Avoid confrontations;
• Criticise the behaviour not the pupil;
• Use private rather than public reprimands;
• Be pre-emptive;
• State rules and rationale;
• Avoid making hostile remarks - avoid deprecating remarks → disaffection/alienation; 
• Avoid unfair comparisons - 'Your sister's work....' / stereotypes;
• Be consistent;
• Do not make empty threats.  Explicitly stated consequences → maintain credibility;
• Avoid reprimanding the whole class - used as last straw.  Try discussing with whole class;
• Make an example.

Reprimands → the oil to the engine (a few drops!)

Punishment

Misbehaviour consists - punishments may be effective.

Punishment = a formal action which the pupil is intended to experience as unpleasant, as a means of helping the pupil to behave appropriately in the future.

Formal & unpleasant :/

Three main purposes:

• Retribution - justice requires wrongdoing to be followed by punishment;
• Deterrence
• Rehabilitation - the most important!!!

p92.

References

Smith and Laslett (1992) Effective Classroom Management: A teacher's guide

Wragg, E.C. (2005) Art and Science of Teaching and Learning

NOTES - Article Review for School Experience 30-9-19

Harlen (2005) Teachers' summative practices and assessment for learning - tensions and synergies

Assessment for learning vs assessment of learning (formative vs summative) → +ve & -ve
↑ teachers' judgements in summative assessment
Summative assesment → 'some seriously detrimental effects'
BUT ∴ issues with reliability and validity

Assessment systems shld be planned and implemented enabling evidence of sts' ongoing learning to be used formatively and summatively.

Intro

Summative assesment  → internal (record keeping, choosing course, parents' meetinsgs) / external (certification, vocational, employment, FE/HE)

HIGH STAKES → pressure → learning experience and assessment

Impact of Summative Assessment on Teaching and the Curriculum

High stakes testing → focus on test content, repeated practice tests, training sts to answer test Qs, & transmission style teaching ↓ formative assessment

↑ Test scores ↓ achievement

Gordon Rees (1997) - teachers can train students to pass any test, even those intended to assess higher thinking skills.

Kellaghan et al. (1996:53) threat to test validity

Black and Wiliam (1998) achievement can be raised without teaching to the test.  Formative assessment requires lots of support and courage ↑ learner-oriented ↓ test-oriented

Impact of Summative Assessment on Student Motivation

Direct impact = ↓ anxiety, ↓ self-esteem.  Indirect = teacher & curriculum

MOTIVATION includes aspects relating to learning, incl. self-esteem, self-regulation, interest, effort, self-efficacy, and a person’s sense of themself as a learner.

Harlen and Deakin Crick (2002) Main findings:

• Ts resort to transmission style teaching;
• High stakes test become rationale classroom focus / dominate ts' own assessment interactions;
• Repeated practice test ↑ low self-image of lower-achieving learners;
• Sts misinterpret teachers intentions ↑ summative assessment;
• ↑ test anxiety;
• Judgemental feedback may influence sts' views;
• Teacher collegiality;
• Emphasis on evaluation & selectivity produces sts with strong extrinsic orientation towards grades and social status.

Suggested action:

• explaining to sts the purpose of tests and involve them in decisions about tests; 
• use assessment to convey sense of progress in their learning to students; 
• provide explanations to sts about the purpose of tests & other assessments of their learning; 
• provide feedback that helps further learning; 
• develop sts’ self-assessment skills & their use of criteria relating to learning, rather than test performance.

Implications:

• use wider range of indicators of school performance;
• more valid approach to tracking standards at national level - sample testing sts;
• more valid info about individual st performance required;
• more use of teachers' judgements. 

Issues and opportunities of using Teachers' assessment for summative purposes

Issues

+ve potential advantages - Ts make judgements about Sts attainment in  the course through normal interactions → attainment across full range of activities and goals = broader and fuller account than tests. This info can be used to help learning.  ∴ more open and collaborative approach to summative assessment → learning goals rather than performance goals.

This practice already evident in Queensland and Sweden - Ts' judgements used for assessment on which important decisions for students are based.

-ve arguments against - unreliability and bias.  Additional work required when considering external use → external moderation procedures. Requiements of moderation wld constrain ts' use of full range of evidence available e.g. ephemeral evidence.

Harlen (2004a, 2004b)

Summative assessment = The process by which teachers gather evidence in a planned and systematic way in order to draw inferences about their students’ learning, based on their professional judgement, and to report at a particular time on their students’ achievements.

Dependability - the interdependence between the concepts of reliability and validity means that increasing one tends to decrease the other.


>Is that so???

= a combination of the two, defined in this instance as the extent to which reliability is optimized while ensuring validity.

MAIN FINDINGS***

Opportunities

• Importance of non-judgmental feedback to help stst know where they are in relation to learning goals;
• Need for teachers to share with sts the reasons for, and goals of, assessment;
• the value to Ts of using assessment to  learn more about sts and to reflect;
• less emphasis on comparisons among sts & more on individual development;
  
• help sts to take responsibility for their learning & work towards learning goals rather than performance goals;

 Using summative assessment to help learning

Let sts know where they are in their learning - self-assessment and feedback / teacher and peers.
Relies on sts knowing the goals and the quality criteris used in assessing it.
T uses feedback to adjust teaching, create materials and provide opportunities for learning.

Dependibility of assessment is enhanced when Ts have thorough understanding of goals and of the nature of progression towards them.

→ Schools being able to make own work plans
→ Regular paticipation in moderation
→ Time and respect for professionalism of Ts

Three main ways of

The Classroom Experiment

Formative assessment is widely misunderstoood despite it being a fundamental aspect of teaching and the learning.  Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam are important proponents of developing a better understanding of formative assessment; their articles and books are mandatory reading on most teaching courses.

•  Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment (Black and Wiliam, 1998)

I was please to come across these episodes of a recent BBC programme investigating education theory and practice in the high school classroom:

Positivism

From ThoughtCo:

Positivism describes an approach to the study of society that specifically utilizes scientific evidence such as experiments, statistics, and qualitative results to reveal a truth about the way society functions. It is based on the assumption that it's possible to observe social life and establish reliable knowledge about its inner workings.

Positivism also argues that sociology should concern itself only with what can be observed with the senses and that theories of social life should be built in a rigid, linear, and methodical way on a base of verifiable fact. Nineteenth-century French philosopher Auguste Comte developed and defined the term in his books "The Course in Positive Philosophy" and "A General View of Positivism." He theorized that the knowledge gleaned from positivism can be used to affect the course of social change and improve the human condition.

The Queen Science

Initially, Comte was primarily interested in establishing theories that he could test, with the main goal of improving our world once these theories were delineated. He wanted to uncover natural laws that could be applied to society, and he believed that the natural sciences, like biology and physics, were a stepping stone in the development of social science. He believed that just as gravity is a truth in the physical world, similar universal laws could be discovered in relation to society.

Comte, along with Emile Durkheim, wanted to create a distinct new field with its own group of scientific facts. He hoped that sociology would become the "queen science," one that was more important than the natural sciences that preceded it.

Five Principles of Positivism

Five principles make up the theory of positivism. It asserts that the logic of inquiry is identical across all branches of science; the goal of inquiry is to explain, predict, and discover; and research should be observed empirically with human senses. Positivism also maintains that science is not the same as common sense, and it should be judged by logic and remain free of values.

From Wikipedia:

Positivism is a philosophical theory stating that certain ("positive") knowledge is based on natural phenomena and their properties and relations. Thus, information derived from sensory experience, interpreted through reason and logic, forms the exclusive source of all certain knowledge. Positivism holds that valid knowledge (certitude or truth) is found only in this a posteriori knowledge.
Verified data (positive facts) received from the senses are known as empirical evidence; thus positivism is based on empiricism.

Positivism also holds that society, like the physical world, operates according to general laws. Introspective and intuitive knowledge is rejected, as are metaphysics and theology because metaphysical and theological claims cannot be verified by sense experience. Although the positivist approach has been a recurrent theme in the history of western thought, the modern approach was formulated by the philosopher Auguste Comte in the early 19th century. Comte argued that, much as the physical world operates according to gravity and other absolute laws, so does society, and further developed positivism into a Religion of Humanity.