Theories and Understandings of Behaviour - Essay Example

? Behavioural theories Theories and Understandings of Behaviour. Theories involve concepts that are interrelated, propositions, and definitions which give an explanation or a prediction of situations or events through the specification of relations in various variables. A theory may display a systematic way for one to understand behaviours, situations, and events (Akers, & Krohn, 2009). The idea of broad application or generality is quite crucial hence theories are abstract by nature. Despite the fact that different theoretical health behaviour models could give a reflection of similar and general ideas, each and every theory apply a number of unique vocabularies in the articulation of the specific factors that are vital. Different theories may vary depending on the manner in which they are tested and developed. For instance behavioural theories are theories that attempt to give an explanation concerning the reasons behind the changes in a person’s patterns of behaviour. Behavioural theories cite personal, behavioural, and environmental traits as a key factor in the determination of an individual’s behaviour. In recent studies, there has been a demand for the utility of these theories in education, health, energy, international development, and criminology areas with the wish that when the behavioural theories are understood, then the services that are given in this area would be improved (Nutbeam, 2000). This paper explores different behavioural theories and the understanding of behaviour. Recent studies have shown that that the key theories, which are the baseline for the current understanding of the behaviour theories, were documented in the 1980s. Some of these theories include icek Ajzen’s and Martin Fishbein works on the ‘reasoned action theory’ (Ajzen, 1985). Later on, Ajzen’s modified this theory into ‘planned behaviour theory’, social, cognitive theory by Albert Bandura, and ‘transtheoretical model’ by Carlo Diclemente’s and James prochaska (Bandura, 1977). To date, there has been an increasing interest towards the behaviour theories since these theories have a massive application in fields like education, criminology, and health, resulting to further research. This has also led to different research towards the understanding of behaviour change management alngside widening the base of the research so as to revise the current theories whose key focus is on initial changes (Akers, & Krohn, 2009). Certainly, the behavioural theories focus on a variety of factors that attempt to give an explanation of behavioural change. Example of these theories include social, cognitive theory, reasons action theory, learning theory, transtheoretical theory, health process action theory, and the planned behaviour theory (Bandura, 1989). There are some specific elements that could be applied in these theories. One key example of the elements is self efficacy, which can be applied to almost all these theories. Self efficacy is a person impression concerning his ability in performing a challenging task like going through surgery. Such an impression relies on factors such as a person’s prior success in that task, tasks that are related, the physiological state of an individual, and the persuasion source from outside (Bandura, 1989). Self efficacy is believed to be a prediction of the level of efforts that an individual will release in maintaining and initiating a change in behaviour (Elton, 2003). Learning theory, on the other hand, is a theory that originated from behaviourists such as B.F Skinner. The theory argues out that behaviour that is complex could be learnt slowly by modification of behaviours that are simple (Skinner, 1957). In this theory, reinforcement and imitation have a significant role to play. In this respect, an individual will learn through copying the behaviour that he observes in other people. Additionally, rewards are useful in ensuring that the desired behaviour is repeated. Whenever behaviour comes about due to reinforcement and imitation, there would be the development of complex behaviour (Skinner, 1957). For instance, if verbal behaviour is done, an individual could learn by the rule that governing behaviour. This means that not all actions in an individual require a contingency shaping. The first psychologist to identify the key role of reinforcement and imitation in language learning was Skinner (1957). This is one of the theories that have been extremely efficient in bettering the condition of humans. For Social cognitive theory, it is a theory that could also be referred to as the social learning theory. As stipulated in this theory the changes in the behaviour are determined by personal, behavioural, and environmental elements (Nutbeam, 2000). Each of these factors has an effect to another factor. In comparison to the self efficacy principle, a person’s thought has an effect to his behaviour and ones characteristics evoke certain responses out of the social environment (Elton, 2003). On the other hand, the environment of a person may affect his development of the personal traits, and personal behaviour. Additionally, one's behaviour may alter his environmental and the manner in which such an individual feels or thinks (Nutbeam, 2000). The Reasoned Action theory is a theory with an assumption that people consider a behaviour consequence before undertaking such behaviour. The main effect is that the intention is a crucial issue in the determination of the behaviour change and behaviour of an individual (Elton, 2003). Research has shown that the development of intention comes from the perception of an individual concerning a negative or positive behaviour and the manner in which the society perceives such behaviour (Nutbeam, 2000). Planned behaviour theory as a theory came about due to the expansion of the reasoned action theory by Ajzen. Just like the former, this theory holds on the function of intention in the performance of behaviour, though, it is meant to deal with cases for which an individual fails to be in control of the factors that affect real behaviour performance (Nutbeam, 2000). In this regard, this theory argue out that the actual behaviour performance incidences is proportion to the quantity of control that one possess over his behaviour and the force of the intention of an individual in undertaking such a behaviour. Ajzen hypothesized that self efficacy is one vital aspect in the determination of an individual’s strength concerning his intention in performing behaviour (Gordon, 2006). Transtheoretical theory is one other behavioural theory that could also be referred to as the change stages model. This theory argues out that the change in behaviour is a process involving five steps. These five stages include the stages for which one would oscillate before obtaining a change that is complete, contemplation, pre contemplation, maintenance, action, and preparation (Webster-Stratton, 2009). In the stage of pre contemplation, a person could or could not be informed of a problem yet has no thought concerning the behaviour change. To the contemplation from pre contemplation, a person comes up with a desire to establish a behaviour change. In the preparation, a person has intentions of changing his behaviour in a period of a month. In the action stage, a person starts slowly to display a new behaviour (Gordon, 2006). A parson would lastly enter the stage of maintenance once he displays new behaviour promptly for a period of six months. Health process action theory involves a continuous process that is self regulatory, motivational or phase of goal setting, and volition or phase of goal pursuit (Webster-Stratton, 2009). The following phase is divided into action phase and pre-action phase. The risk perception, outcome expectation, and motivational, self efficacy are thought to be the intention predictors. This is referred to as the model’s motivational phase. The motivational self-efficacy predictive on behaviour is thought to be connected by the self efficacy recovery (Gordon, 2006). On the other hand, the intention effects are thought to be connected by planning. This process is known as the model of volitional. Approaches of Dealing with Challenging Behaviour Researchers have done a considerable work that has seen them successful in finding approaches that deal with notable challenging behaviours. Challenging behaviour, in this context is defined as behaviour of certain frequency, duration or intensity in which the safety of individual or others could be jeopardized. This means that, challenging behaviour in a school situation may include behaviour that may tamper with the student’s and other student’s learning, give challenge to the daily functioning of the school, tamper with the students or staff rights to orderly and safety environment, has a frequency, duration, persistence, or intensity above a normal range that schools can tolerate, and fails to respond to the normal intervention range that is utilized by the school for students misbehaviour (Paul, 2003). The different types of challenging behaviour that could be identified in some children include: aggressive behaviour such as punching, biting, kicking, threatening, and scratching behaviours; behaviour that is disruptive such as screaming, verbal abuse, noncooperation running, and tantrums behaviours; destructive behaviour like environment and property destruction; behaviour of withdrawing like failing to respond, stereotypical behaviour, repetitive vocalisation, rocking, ritualistic movements of hands, behaviour of self injuries, poking, scratching, banging, and people avoidance (Zebman, 2008). A child may behave in a challenging manner due to some reasons. A child with difficulties with difficulties in communication may take part in one of the challenging behaviours. Whenever a child fails to express his wants or needs, due to lack of the potential to utilize language, behaviour that is inappropriate could develop for expressing these needs. In this respect, teachers should try to teach such a child to use communication methods that are acceptable thus establishing one of the solutions (Skinner, 1957). Early intervention and intensive intervention from a language and speech therapist will be of considerable importance to such children. Apart from this some factors in the environment may be one of the problems. In many situations, children may have a negative reaction towards heat, noise, space invasion, or cold. Other children especially those having autism disorder could be extremely sensitive to some stimuli like noise thus reacting through the display of behaviours that are challenging. Additionally, a challenging behaviour is characterized by the attention seeking behaviour. One could wonder why a child should seek attention in such a manner. Different children may fail to manage a specific task and get frustrated (Zebman, 2008). On the other hand, the behaviour seeking attention could also be behaviour that a child has learned. In this case, such behaviour may be effective to the child since it helps him to obtain whatever he needs. For some children, negative attention may be one motivating factor. The occurrence of challenging behaviour could also be evoked by some socio-economic disadvantage towards a child. Poor language and social skills development that may be linked to skills of parenting could lead to a child displaying challenging behaviour (Paul, 2003). In this case, this behaviour is used as a technique of survival in the environment of a child. Apart from all these, the prevalence of challenging behaviour may be due to some medical reasons like illness, sensory, or pain difficulties (Paul, 2003). Some of these challenging behaviours could be linked to certain disabilities and conditions like involuntary and repeated movements in the body and vocal sounds that are not controlled. With the provision of behavioural theories, there arose need to learn how to manage the challenging behaviours. Managing challenging behaviours is the process that is often followed in promoting positive impacts of the overall climate in the classroom and the school could reduce the existence of behaviours that are negative (Skinner, 1957). Even though, best efforts have been developed to establish approaches that are shared in promotion of behaviour that is positive, it is certain that schools and teachers will go through circumstances of challenging behaviour (Paul, 2003). This means that the analysis of different behaviour approaches among student is extremely crucial. The most common approach is the use of antecedent consequences and behaviours. An antecedent is a word that is used to represent whatever occurred before the beginning of behaviour that is problematic (Skinner, 1957). A pupil could have experienced a task that was hard to complete, respond to another student’s allegations, or distressed by a situation that occurred outside the school. It could be easy to acknowledge a behaviour pattern like a child starting to fidget after a particular duration of time. In this regard, the analysis of the student’s behaviour could assist in preventing reoccurrence. In this case, analysis splits the behaviour to the extent that i can be dealt with in small portions (Skinner, 1957). For instance handling outbursts that entail obscene language could focus on tackling obscene language before dealing with other aspects. A consequence analysis of behaviour could provide clues on the development of a situation. For example after a specific outburst, a child is told to go home, which could have been the desired outcome of that child. In other words, behaviours of seeking attention could be considered a success by some children as they attract the teacher’s negative attention, or attention from other students (Skinner, 1957). In other cases, the first misbehaviour response could be an element of escalating the situation. A clear example occurs whenever a response that is aggressive towards behaviour may elicit an increase in aggression from the student. An effective response towards challenging behaviour is dependent on the behaviour type exhibited by a student or a child (Knott, 2008). The response towards behaviour that is challenging should always be fair, consistent, and have minimum disruption for the management of that behaviour. A proactive response that is considered could be effective in managing challenging behaviour compared to the reactive response that could be influenced by the response of emotions towards the incidence. Another significant response that can be used in managing challenging behaviours is ignoring such actions. This is an effective strategy as it can be used to deal with this challenging behaviour that could be annoying like pouting, whining, tantrums, and screaming. Most of these behaviours are normally geared towards getting something, like an attention or an object. In the start of this behaviour, it may appear to worsen since the pupil may work hard so as to obtain attention. Whenever such behaviour is ignored consistently, the child will find out that such behaviour could be not effective (Knott, 2008). This approach, however, should be used together with positive reinforcement of behaviour that is appropriate. On the other hand, ignoring could not be a favourable way of handling some behaviour especially those that are destructive, abusive or that behaviour like stealing, lying, and noncompliance. Teachers should not ignore those students who may seem to be out of task, or those who appear to be withdrawn. An effective teacher should identify a range of strategies for redirecting such students without being attracted to the pupil’s behaviour, or affecting the class. In this respect, a teacher could move close to that child, using some visual clues like hand movements, and maintaining an eye contact with that child. A teacher could also use specific and direct statements, or films to make children recall the rules or the effects of breaking the rules. When a pupil follows the required direction his behaviour could be identified as positive. Those outbursts that are serious in which a pupil decides to act inappropriately should be satisfied with consequences that are logic and clear. For instance, if a student fights while, in the yard, it is a consequence that is of logic hence they need to move out of the yard. When a pupil distracts other pupils in the class, such a pupil will be compelled to work at a distance from the other pupils. In this regard, it is vital for a teacher to make the consequences of challenging behaviour to be appropriate, implementable, and immediate (NIH Guide, 2003). Some of the consequences that could be given to children due to challenging behaviour may include being moved out of the class, staying in when others go for a break, privileges loss, or cleaning up a mess (Zebman, 2008). More often than not, consequences should not be psychological, humiliating, or physical. Apart from this code of a school on behaviour should highlight sanctions that would be utilized in the school. In addition to this, another approach that could be used in managing challenging behaviour of preventing the escalation of such behaviour is through the provision of time out. In this case, a student moves to a specific place within the class, set aside as the time out. In this respect, time outs should only be for some specific behaviour that is challenging and should be a component of the response hierarchy. The area of time out should always be at a distance from the rest of the students, but still in the teachers view (NIH Guide, 2003). Additionally, the approach should follow a limited period more specifically five minutes. Research conducted in this field has showed that this is one method that is proven to manage challenging behaviour (NIH Guide, 2003). Whenever the classroom is disrupted it would be vital to exit a child from the class. T his is an intrusive approach that could be taken by the teacher thus a planned intervention. This approach should be organised according to the school and taking into consideration specific demands of the school. For instance, teachers could agree to host a child from another class to have time out in his room, and vice versa. Nevertheless, a repeated child exiting leads to a burden that is unfair towards a specific staff member thus giving a child a message that such a teacher is not able to manage the class (Dwyer, 2003). When a child comes from a time out, he should be helped in re-establishing a relationship that is working with the teacher. Such a behaviour plan may benefit many students with challenging behaviours. The focus of this plan should be on behaviour and the target achievement should be positively reinforced (Jeffery, 2005). Children should take part in target setting. There are behaviours that are beyond measure and these in the words of behavioural researchers are referred to as aggressive challenging behaviour. Violent or aggressive, challenging behaviour may not be a usual occurrence in different schools. Whenever they occur, they always appear to be extremely serious and leads to increased stress for the parties involved (Dwyer, 2003). If one is faced by a violent situation, he or she should follow the following steps in curbing the situation. A school should come up with a system in which a teacher can request assistance whenever he encounters such a situation. If possible the pupil should always be put in isolation. Another alternative is the removal of the entire class from the place that is aggressive (Government of South Australia, 2007). A teacher should take the responsibility of speaking in a calmly, respectively, and assertively to the child. In the process of talking to the child, the teacher should maintain a safe distance from the child. In this case, the child should be made to realize that the teacher has given the audience. This means that it would be easier for the teacher to establish when and how the behaviour came up (INTO, 2002). The student should be helped in the development of positive behaviour, and given space to respond to the request. Managing aggressive behaviours can also be achieved with the use of physical containment (Chen, & Land, 2006). A group of children with a disability may it hard to respond to sanctions or there can be a situation in which sanctions may fail to operate. In this case, physical restrain could be the only way of managing the challenging behaviour (INTO, 2002). A teacher should put it clear that the policy used for restrain has to be approved by the management board and added in the school’s discipline code as a constituent of the management of behaviour Various theories have been put forward to help deal with challenging behaviour. One of the theories that could be used in dealing with the challenging behaviour is known as the reinforcement motivation theory. This is a theory that was identified by B. F. Skinner (Skinner, 1957). According to this theory the behaviour of an individual is a role of its own consequences. This theory relies on the ‘law of effect’ (Chen, & Land, 2006). This means that the behaviour of individual having consequences that are positive will appear to be repeated, but the behaviour of individuals having negative consequences may not be repeated. This theory tends to ignore the individual internal state like the inner drive, and feeling (Humphreys, 2003). The key attention of the theory is on whatever occurs to an individual whenever he takes an action. In the argument of Skinner (1957), the organization of the external environment of a student needs to be designed positively and effectively in order to motivate the child. In order to deal with the challenging behaviour of students, a teacher would use different methods to control the students’ behaviour. The first approach that the teacher would use is the positive reinforcement. A positive reinforcement means providing a response that is positive whenever an individual displays the required and positive behaviour (Bandura, 1977). For instance, a teacher would immediately praise a student whenever he displays a change in behaviour. This would make the chances of an outstanding behaviour occur again to increase. A positive reinforce could be referred to as a reward, although not in all cases. Whenever the behaviour of a student improves a reward could be identified as a positive reinforce (Dwyer, 2003). In this case, positive reinforcement is a tool which stimulates behaviour to occur. An increase in the number of rewards would increase the improvement of behaviour (Atlanta, 2007). Negative reinforcement has also been documented as an approach that helps in dealing with challenging behaviour. This approach involves rewarding the challenging behaviour by withdrawing an undesirable consequence (Bandura, 1977). For example if a teacher likes to carry a cane during the lesson, he can stop coming to the class with the cane. This is what is known as negative reinforcement (INTO, 2004). 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