A review of your essential guide to effective behaviour management.
Reviewed by Kat Cauchi
Each and every school has a behaviour management policy – a set of instructions for teachers on things such as how many warnings should be given before a sanction, what rewards can be given for good behaviour choices, etc. But often, these policies don’t really scratch the surface of effective behaviour management because they tend to focus on reactive strategies.
Where Cowley’s book really shines is in teaching you how to be proactive with behaviour – a far more effective way to manage your classroom with less stress and more purpose.
Key principles of positive behaviour management
Cowley’s first chapter defines nine strategies to help you cultivate appropriate behaviour. As she explains, they don’t guarantee that appropriate behaviour, but they increase the likelihood. These principles are also essential in helping you build positive relationships with your learners, as they focus on ways you can be clear and consistent in your approach while showing students that you value them as individuals and are interested in them as people, not just learners.
The key principles are:
- Be definite
- Be aware
- Be calm and consistent
- Give them structure
- Be positive
- Be interested
- Be flexible
- Be persistent
- Engage them
I won’t go into any details on these (I’ll leave that to Cowley) but I just wanted to give you a snapshot into the strategies that she outlines in this book and some insight into her general approach to behaviour management.
Content
The book is split into four parts:
- Part one – In the beginning: This section includes understanding the key principles above as well as how to manage the first meeting with your students, as well as key strategies and techniques for establishing and maintaining boundaries.
- Part two – The teacher and teaching: This part delves into the psychology of teaching, being an effective role model and the principle of unconditional positive regard (in short, that a child’s behaviour does not ‘define’ them – they are a person separate from their behaviour).
- Part three – The learners and the setting: In this section, you will find information on supporting different types of learners including those with special educational needs. Advice is broken down by age groups, to help give more specific practical steps you can put in place in your classroom. Cowley also includes a section about different settings and effective support systems and behaviour policies.
- Part four – When things get tough: The last part of the book focuses on managing confrontation and stress, with support for not only dealing with confrontation but understanding why it arises and steps to help avoid it.
Book highlights
There are so many great things about this book but I wanted to highlight three things that I really liked:
- Scenarios
- Ways to engage
- Manging confrontation
Scenarios
I loved the example scenarios in the chapters as I thought these clearly illustrated why something works/doesn’t work. For example, in Chapter 4 – ‘The Effective Teacher’, Cowley shares two examples of how a teacher responds to inappropriate behaviour and what this models to the student. In the first response, the teacher replies ‘in kind’ which gives a tit for tat exchange that only escalates behaviour and stress. Whereas, in the second response the teacher models polite behaviour. This doesn’t excuse the poor behaviour, it is still acknowledged in the response, but with the teacher also demonstrating the kind of behaviour they want to see. This will put the student back on task and diffuse the situation rather than adding fuel to the fire!
I thought this was a really relatable example as sometimes, especially when we’re stressed, off-hand and sometimes hurtful comments from students can really rub us up the wrong way. So it’s good to be reminded to take a moment to respond in the manner of a positive role model for the student.
Ways to engage
I think sometimes education books can be a little too eager to say that we need to ‘plan engaging lessons’, ‘make learning fun’ etc., without actually sharing some examples of how we could do that! Whereas, in Cowley’s book she actually shares a couple of cross-curricular activities that are really engaging for you to use, including the areas of learning they cover, how to carry out the activity and the resources you will need. These are a great starting point as not only can you use them as they are but they can help spark ideas for similar activities and approaches for your lesson planning.
I also like how she shared some helpful tips on using resources creatively, as this means even if the resources you can use in lessons are limited, you can still best utilise what you have for maximum engagement. For example, ‘a resource could be placed in a magic box and can only be opened with a magic spell’. This already gets me thinking that you could, for example, have a maths lesson with a resource in a box that needs a code to be opened, that pupils must crack in the lesson using their problem solving and mathematical skills.
Manging confrontation
As much as the focus of this book is on proactive behaviour management, I do also think this chapter, which is more centred on reactive behaviour management, is really important. Dealing with confrontation can be difficult particularly if a pupil is behaving aggressively towards themselves, you, or others, so it is really important to have support strategies in place for how to manage confrontation. It is also crucial to know what to do afterwards. Once the situation has de-escalated, where do we go from here with the pupil? How can we best support them and also how can we best support ourselves if we have been impacted by the situation?
I would definitely recommend reading this chapter to answer those questions. Of course, alongside this, you should ensure you understand your school behaviour polices and make sure you know who in school you can ask for support when needed.
Why you should read it
In our Q&A with Cowley, she talked about some common misconceptions about behaviour management:
“I think one key issue is where behaviour gets seen as separate to teaching and learning, whereas in reality, it is part and parcel of learning. When children struggle to learn to read, we don’t jump to sanctions, we scaffold and support them to build their understanding and knowledge. I think it’s useful to approach behaviour in a similar way, seeing it as a set of skills that can be built, not just something that children do (or don’t do) that means we can ‘get on with’ teaching.”
And that, dear reader, is why I think you should read this book – so you can build a set of skills for behaviour management as part of teaching and learning, and support your learners with skills such as co-regulation to help them manage their own behaviour too.
