Australian Professional Teacher Standard: 4.3 – Managing Challenging Behaviour
Throughout the first couple of days of my placement I had to learn how to manage students in one of my classes who challenged me with their behaviour in class. I was teaching this Year 8 class Shakespeare and they were not interested in the topic. The teacher also told me that in general these students were off task and not interested in the school work, therefore she had to incorporate different strategies in her teaching so she could accommodate for these students while still giving the rest of the class equal opportunities to learn.
In the first two lessons the students were very disruptive and because I was not their normal teacher they thought at first that they could get away with not doing work. They would talk over me and their peers. One student refused to write anything in his book.
At first I thought that it would be beneficial to go up to the students and discuss their behaviour with them individually rather than yelling at them in front of the whole class. When I got into the second class I realised that this method was not beneficial as they were still behaving in the same manner. Once I realised this I stopped the class, the all put their pens down and listened to what I had to say. I explained to them that the content they were learning was relevant to them until they finish Year 12 which shocked some of them. I told them that regardless of if I was at their school or not they would be learning this content and I also re-assured them that their teacher overlooked all the work I gave them, therefore enforcing its importance. Most students started to behave after this, however some still misbehaved.
I started to write time down on the board when they talked over me or refused to do their work. Each line representing a minute they wold stay in at recess or lunch. This made their peers get frustrated with them as no one wanted to give up their time especially if they were doing the right thing. On this particular day I kept everyone in at recess and dismissed the well behaved students one by one, only after checking that they had written their homework in their books. The students who mis-behaved had to stay in to makeup the time they lost in class and in the next class I checked their books and only the students who completed their homework were enabled time to work on their assessment tasks in class, the other students completed grammar. This shows the incorporation of both positive and negative reinforcement and punishment as well as what could have become operant conditioning. By rewarding the students who did the right thing and giving the students who did the wrong thing less freedom I was creating a system that the students would find a place in. The good students wanted to be rewarded and get their time to use wisely and the poorer behaved students wanted to be given the freedom their peers did therefore they started to behave accordingly. This also provided opportunity for self-efficacy and humanist approaches to develop as the students were responsible for their results and the environment in which they learnt.
This is further exemplified in a study which showed ‘In the first study, the talking‐out behaviour of one TMR student was reduced when the teacher allowed 5 min of free time for a talk‐out rate less than 0.06 per minute. In a second study, the talking‐out behaviour of an entire TMR class was reduced when reinforcement was delivered for a response rate less than 0.10 per minute.’ (Dietz, Repp, 1973).
I understand the reason why the students were misbehaving and am happy with the way that I handled my response. Next time however I will explain to the my purpose at the school and expectations on my first day so the students know what to expect.
EDFX348 Reflective Blog 