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The Benefits of Behaving ‘Badly’- Jo Lange
As teachers, one of the most difficult aspects of managing challenging student
behaviour is constantly dealing with the same small number of students who seem immune or inured to classroom consequences
and school sanctions. Despite consistent interventions and punishments these students continue to misbehave, increasing teachers
sense of frustration, powerlessness and sense of defeat. Many schools aim to minimise ‘inappropriate’ behaviour,
however, in psychological terms, most students’ misbehaviour is entirely appropriate, when it is seen in the context
of purposeful strategy to met social and emotional needs. These needs are best clarified by Alfred Adler who recognized the
importance of group belongingness. As social beings, we are motivated to connect, to feel significant to others and to be
accepted within our social groups. With our primary carers, families of origin and community connections acting as a mirror
to our behaviour, as they give us feedback about who we are and what we do, we develop self-esteem. Adler’s social
goals of behaviour can be seen as four core motivations, these being the drives to be noticed & validated, to feel power,
choice and some sense of autonomy, the importance of interpersonal relationships and the need for safety, trust and security.
Ideally, children and young people are acknowledged when they are being kind, caring and fair, and for cooperating with and
contributing to the group. Through this positive process, these needs are met and resolved. Adler saw social behaviour as
a process where children initiated, then consolidated, behaviours that worked best in getting core human connectedness and
self-esteem needs met. In reality we operate on a dysfunctional, and defeatist definition of discipline within many
family and school cultures. This has been reflected in the work I have conducted with parent groups. Many compassionate and
well-intentioned and parents document that most of their day is spent on guiding their children’s behaviour with approximately
eight negative comments to one positive acknowledgement. In the same way, teachers considered strong and effective disciplinarians
are those who criticise and correct students when they are being disruptive, non-cooperative, irresponsible, or anti-social.
Hence Rudolf Dreikurs’ notion of the ‘defeated’ student, who learns quickly and efficiently to get social
and emotional needs met through challenging classroom behaviours. Though these behaviours are not chosen consciously, they
are purposeful and certainly appropriate in getting students what they need. Dreikurs identified four key responses
in children and young people to get much needed attention, autonomy, relationship and security, when they were denied opportunities
to have these needs met in positive ways.
1. Attention-seeking behaviour where students behave in disruptive,
distracting and annoying ways that frustrate and irritate teachers. These behaviours are not usually severe but need to be
seen as serious in that they are often frequent and on-going.
2. Power struggles, with students openly defiant,
provoking teachers by threatening the teacher’s sense of control and power. These power struggles are founded on the
mistaken belief that students work for and behave for teachers, rather than for themselves and the benefit of the group. Students
can also be passively resistant, such as avoiding work, or not cooperating with group tasks.
3. Learned helplessness,
where students constantly want teachers to ‘rescue’ them. These problems are based on the student’s poor
sense of capability and competence. Teachers can feel over-whelmed, exhausted and overly-responsible for fixing student problems
up. These behaviours may relate to students only working if a teacher is there to prompt or help, where students expect teachers
to always intervene to address issues, not taking responsibility for their work or social issues.
4. Revenge
and sabotage. When students lack a sense of ritual, routine, and safety, these feelings of insecurity can lead to a sense
of mistrust, anger and fear. Any significant change can lead to a desire to withdraw to establish a sense of the new environment.
Unfortunately students deemed ‘at risk’, with lives defined by abandonment, neglect, & abuse, and its consequential
anxiety and anger, often make a subconscious but understandable choice to disconnect from others. They withdraw from interaction,
feeling respite in isolation and seclusion, in an effort to minimize the pain they associate with social connection.
It is a common complaint of teachers that the same small minority of students take the most time, energy and effort within
the classroom as well as in individual interventions, and collegial commitment. From observation and teacher comment, one
skilled ‘attention seeker’ consumes about ten minutes every teaching hour. This does not account for the additional
time spent on teacher follow up, school discussion and professional support. With this in mind, it becomes evident that many
of the current consequences and punishments that are implemented when students misbehave not only don’t solve the problem
but contribute to it. Discipline interventions consistently give students what they socially and emotionally need and so act
as strong reinforcers, ensuring that the behaviours are maintained and strengthened, not eliminated. Some of the most
common, but subtle, benefits of challenging student behaviour has been outlined by Alfie Kohn, who has summarised research
that indicates that the most rewards go to those students who are misbehaving. These students tend to also receive ‘special
rewards’, for improving behaviour, where other students who have not been challenging receive no external reward. As
a young boy nonchalantly once told me, “I haven’t got ‘Student of the
Week’ yet this year. The teachers give it to kids who stopped hitting.” Also students on behaviour
contracts often receive special privileges when they complete them whilst once again those students who have never needed
to commit to better behaviour do not have these made available to them. The rewords of challenging behaviour became even
more evident to me during my time working within and alcohol and drug centre. Contrary to common perception, people with high
dependency on drugs are often aware of the inherent harms in their drug use. They had overdosed, spent time in jail, and lost
loved ones and jobs, yet the benefits of their drug use offset these negatives. Often it was a pivotal moment that defined
their serious attempts to stop their drug use. Suddenly the ‘costs’ of their drug use was more than the benefits
of it. William Miller, a pioneer in the drug counselling sphere, defined these shifts through what he called the decisional
balance. I saw many parallels between the alcohol and drug centre clients and those students with difficult behaviour I have
dealt with over my teaching career. These students were not in denial about their behaviour, they knew the punishment schedule
often better than the teachers did, and kept on misbehaving regardless. This could only mean that though the costs were there,
the benefits of the challenging behaviour countered these. It also explained that, despite increasing school sanctions and
classroom consequences, student kept on misbehaving. From this, I adapted Millers work to develop ‘the behaviour balance’,
an examination of the current costs and benefits of the students’ behaviour. Core principles of this approach were to:
1. Identify the goals of the behaviour. Students were acting out to get needs met.
2. Give students what
they needed in productive and positive ways.
3. Examine the real costs of the behaviour.
4. Build in active accountability
rather than passive punishment as a consequence of negative behaviour.
The following case studies outline how these
strategies are implemented.
Adam the Destroyer and Brad the Annoyer.
Adam was a 16 year-old young man, in an alternative educational setting after suspensions from several schools, predominantly
for aggression and violence. Adam was asked two guiding questions, these being “What are some of the good things and
not so good things that come with being a fighter? The following is a summary of Adam’s perceptions, and his rating
of how important these are, out of a possible score of ten.The benefits of being a good fighter are that I:
Get ‘respect’
from others (9)
Can get others to do/get things for me (8)
Gets me out of work I don’t like. (7)
I pick
fights in these classes to get kicked out (7)
Teachers ‘back off’ (7)
My footy coach says my aggro helps
me play (Adam is used as the ‘enforcer in his local football team) (7)Some girls like a guy that’s tough. (7).
Total 46 points of ‘benefit’
Some of the ‘not so good’ things about being a fighter
are that:
My mum gets upset when she’s called to the school (7)
I lose my privileges at home (7)
My last
girlfriend broke up with me because of my temper (6)
Other kids want to take me down (4).
I’m behind
in my school work (2). Total of 26 points of cost
It was interesting to note that the consequences the school
implemented did not even rate a mention. He had repeated visits to senior administrators, sat through countless detentions,
unrelated punishments and timeouts. He had also received bad academic reports, particularly in the past two years, and being
suspended was seen as an opportunity to watch videos and hang out at the local mall. The true costs of Adam’s behaviour
were not evident to him, with the school’s attempts to show him the error of his ways, sounding like “them just
droning on”. As a teaching team, the priority was for Adam to get more positive status in the group, to give him
the peer respect and leadership he craved. He was asked to do some footy coaching students with an intellectually disability,
where teachers saw him work with fun, fairness and compassion. Along with another strong, but positive leader, he became the
group representative in all home group meetings. As with many ‘power players’, he had a keen sense of entitlement,
fairness and justice. It was also apparent that Adam needed to have curriculum that was more engaging and ensured success.
Though he was smart, his absences throughout school had made it hard for him to keep up. It made sense that he deliberately
exit himself to avoid losing face as a poor learner. Adam was asked to become actively involved in clarifying what academic
areas he would engage in. He kept a diary of all activities and give feedback over four weeks, as to how relevant they were
for him. He was also given the option to take on alternative work, as were several other remedial and gifted students, to
avoid the possibility that he was singled out. The teachers also removed some of the apparent benefits of his behaviour
and increased the costs. All his teachers made sure that when he had to be exited from the group, he had to take work with
him. He could also not come back to the group until work was completed, and he had made restitution with those he had intimidated.
He hated it when he was put in in-school suspension, reducing contact from his peers, those that gave him his power. Adam
also had to call his mother every time he crossed the line, he would plead for any other punishment, proving that students
are protected by punishment. As with most challenging students, he worked from the perspective that the people he annoyed
with his behaviour were teachers, and this was most likely a positive for him. It was decided that ‘secret surveys’
would be conducted, after particularly challenging times with Adam in the group. Students were encouraged to give individual
and anonymous feedback. Teacher found this to be very effective, Adam would shrug and act nonchalant, but it was evident that
he was perturbed by the possibility that his sense of status, position and power were not as solid as he had thought. The
revolving door of being exited then ‘told off’, then coming back to the group was also stopped. A system of ‘trust
time’ was established. This was a strategy I had developed which had proved very effective in positively reintegrating
students with challenging behaviour into the group situation. After three exits, students are only back in the group for a
short period of time, about ten to fifteen minutes. If there are no incidents, then the teacher quietly gives private, positive
encouragement and the student is entitled to a further short time in the group. It is not taken for granted that a student
that has repeatedly interfered with the learning environment, or who has been intimidating to others can return to the group. A
more formalised exit plan was also organised, where students with frequent patterns of negative behaviour needed to spend
escalating periods of time out of the group, starting from a class to on-going in-school suspension. Where behaviour had been
threatening, Adam was also excluded from the yard, not just the classroom, and where appropriate, students with support from
teacher advocates gave feedback about the impact of Adam’s behaviour on them. Here Adam learnt the real consequences
of his behaviour. He internalised quickly that when he misbehaved, he negatively affected the majority of the group. When
others were threatened, they had the right to move normally within the school, and his movements were restricted. The group
members had fundamental rights to feel safe and to learn, so the more often he disrupted and intimidated others, the longer
he was removed from the group. His on-going behaviour had made it hard for others to trust him, and so he had to actively
rebuild this trust. It would be wonderful to say that he was wonderful from then on. In reality, he had very bad days,
particularly when things were difficult at home, but there were many more good days and teachers saw a sense of pride
creeping in, replacing his defiant and resistant attitude . Though the arrogant swagger was still there, his strong need to
belong to the group motivated him to become more cooperative and contributory.
Unlike Adam, Brad was a student
whose behaviour was not extreme. Like many attention-seeking disruptions, his behaviour took a frequent and consistent toll
on almost every teaching and learning minute. Brad was a year 7 student, living with his mother after a difficult family breakdown
which ended with Brad’s father leaving taking two older brothers with him. As a team, his tired, but committed, teachers
conducted a behaviour map, attempting to see a ‘method in the madness’. A brainstorm with the team revealed some
key issues. Firstly, Brad’s behaviours were identified as calling out, silly noises, moving loudly and often around
the room and a range of other ongoing, loud interruptions. It was easy to identify when this happened, and teachers outlined
the behaviour was worse when his aide was not in class with him, in Maths and English classes, and was at its worst after
access weekend with other brothers and his father. More importantly, it was essential to identify when Brad’s behaviours
were less evident. This proved more taxing for the teachers, as they were convinced that Brad was always like this, and that
he never behaved well. This demonstrated the negative global effect these frequent behaviours can have on teacher morale.
More probing revealed though that Brad had some moments where he was more likely to be quiet, cooperative and settled. This
tended to happen when teachers or his aide sat with him, when he worked in remedial classes, during physical education sessions
and when he was directed to Ms Bennett’s office as a consequence of being exited from class. We discussed the possible
benefits of Brad’s behaviour, and teachers identified that Brad got lots of teacher and peer attention with his behaviour;
he continually got out of work and avoided failure by consistently being out of his seat and then being directed to leave
the group. Also teachers and support staff, especially his aide and Ms Bennett became highly engaged when he was disruptive.
He gained so much interpersonal connection with adults when he misbehaved. It was easy to conclude that Brad’s behaviour
was an addictive pattern that gave him the individual attention he so craved. When he was in physical education classes and
in remedial classes, he was more likely to participate positively because he had a sense of success. From this the teachers
developed an action plan. Initially a teacher mentor was appointed with Brad’s input. His physical education teacher
with whom he had no real negative history, was assigned to catch up with Brad three times a week for an informal catch-up.
This teacher was also released to spend the first half-hour of school with Brad after an access visit with his father. His
teachers committed to a ‘3:1’ strategy, aiming to be three times more encouraging and positive, than critical
and correcting, within the class generally, and in particular with Brad. His remedial teacher also compiled an alternative
work folder for Brad. These changes alone saw a much less agitated young man in a few weeks, as they met his hunger to be
noticed in positive ways. His teachers and aide were advised to give brief re-directive statements and disengage when he misbehaved,
ensuring that they exited him quickly. By ignoring Brad’s consistent interruptions to the learning environment to the
point where the tone of the classroom changed, they gave Brad ongoing access to his audience. When Brad was sent out, he sat
in another room doing independent work, and did not have any communication with senior teachers. Follow up sessions always
focussed on the negative impact of his behaviour on the group. The turning point came when a classroom representative, respectfully
and privately read back some of the statements written by others on the classroom regarding Brad’s behaviour. Brad bowed
his head and quietly said, “I guess I better stop mucking around”. As simple as it sounds, from that day teachers
documented that Brad’s negative behaviour was almost non-existent. However, imperative to this was that preventative
strategies continued. Where many discipline strategies focus on what to do and say when the challenging behaviour occurs,
this ignores fundamental social-emotional drives. Students will remain emotionally hungry no matter what the punishments are.
When we, as teachers, focus on developing interpersonal rapport, give student’s leadership and power through meaningful
choices, and see engagement as a core part of our core business, our students will have no need to act out, as we have ensured
that they are noticed, have power and choice, engage in interpersonal relationships, striving to feel safe and secure and
special.
NB Names have been changed, and unrelated comments omitted, to
ensure confidentiality
© Jo Lange 2005-2009
This
article first appeared in "Teacher" magazine- ACER- February 2005
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