The psychology of behaviour management (part 1)

The topic of behaviour management and the problems teachers face in dealing with disruption to lessons continues to evoke strong argument within the profession. The extent of the problem was explored in a 2014 paper by Terry Haydn which argued that whilst ‘official’ reports like Ofsted inspections appeared to rate behaviour as at least ‘satisfactory’  the majority of schools, there was evidence that deficits in classroom climate continue to be a serious and widespread problem. Examples of blogs detailing the sorts of issues in school approaches to behaviour are plentiful (an excellent example from Andrew Old can be found here).

Systems of rewards and punishments have long been the norm in schools but perhaps because of a growing feeling that behaviour has become increasingly difficult to manage, behaviour management has become the focus of experimentation. Some schools have started looking for novel solutions to the problem of disruption in…