Behaviour Management - Effective Practice & Policy - Essay Example

Behaviour Management - Effective Practice & Policy In the present society with increased occurrence of behavioral disorders among children the effective behaviour management policies have become extremely important for the educational institutions and the teachers to follow. Behaviour management is aimed at modifying the behaviors of the youths in a productive and socially acceptable manner in order to prepare them for the future professional life they are going to live (Baldwin & Baldwin, 1986). Several techniques are followed for the effective management of behaviour of the school age youths. Three most important amongst them are: peer motivation, effective instruction and self-control. These three policies are complementary to each other and often mesh together successfully to produce an effective strategy resulting in desired behavioral changes in the target youths. The major problems which find their way right from the age of school to the more matured professional life are bullying and violence. When a child affected by Regulation Disorders of Sensory Processing (RSDP) starts going to the school, they undergo a transition of emotional and physical environment. This applies to both the children and family. The children will therefore need guidance from their parents who need to adjust their scaffolding behavior to support their children. This scaffolding is required to help the children adjust to the change in environment and adapt their mental status to the external stimulus caused due to the change in the background. (Reebye and Stalker, 2007) In organizational arena it has been seen that bullying works as a health hazard in about 41 percent cases and about 80 percent of the victims report less productivity at work. It was found that the childhood bullies or the child victims have the increased potential to become adult bullies and thus the problem needs intervention at the school age itself (Harvey, Heames, Richey & Leonard, 2006). At the school level it is often seen that academic failure is related to the anti-social behaviour shown by the students. Thus the most effective approach to deal with behavioral problems in students is to combine the intervention programs addressing both academic and anti-social problems together (McEvoy & Welker, 2000). Peer motivation is one of such approaches, which are able to help students. This process is most effective for the adolescents. This is the age when people tend to be extremely influenced by the friends and peers of their age and positive peer pressure can prove to be extremely beneficial for them. Peer motivation thus can be defined as the strategy in which the individuals are motivated, helped and influenced by their peers to behave in a certain manner. The peer motivation strategy enables students to identify the desires cognitive skills and problem solving abilities and makes them able to face the professional world. Peer mediation program is the most effective part of this strategy. The program makes the peers of the problem student to intervene in the problem situation and help the student solve the problem in an alternative non-violent manner. This program not only creates mediators for the others but also develops the cognitive skills of the students themselves (Russell & Reece, 2000). Keeping in mind the association of academic failure and behavioral problems effective instruction to produce better learning is thought to be extremely important (Scott, Nelson & Liaupsin, 2001). Several steps contribute to the effective instruction by the teachers. Collaboration, faculty involvement, data based decision making system, selection of effective strategies, implementation of the action plan, monitoring and evaluation, all include in this strategy (George, Harrower & Knoster, 2003). The first and foremost responsibility of a teacher is to manage the classroom to create an atmosphere encouraging and relaxing for the students. The classroom settings though not directly influence in changing the behaviour of the students, still it helps in establishing the environment required for effective instruction (Emmer & Stough, 2001). Instead of removing the disturbing student out of the classroom the teachers need to practice effective instruction procedures like providing interesting instructional materials, proper planning for skill development, providing opportunity to the student to present their views, immediate feedback and correction of errors (Christle & Schuster, 2003; Greenwood, Delquadri & Hall, 1989; Lambert, Cartledge, Heward & Lo, 2006). Reinforcement also plays a very important role in terms of managing the behavior of the students in classroom. The reinforcement may be positive or negative. Positive reinforcement in terms of any reward system or praise was found to be extremely beneficial in changing the behaviour of the students (Brophy, 1983). While using punishment or negative reinforcement care should be taken that the student understands and identifies the behavioral flaws, which the teacher wants to change through punishment. While selecting the particular type of punishment for a particular student the teacher must take care of the fact that often a misbehaving student is encouraged to continue with the behaviour to prove to her/his peers that s/he is not bothered about the teacher or the school. In this situation the punishment should be chosen carefully in order to ensure that the particular student takes the consequences to be unacceptable for her/him (Grossman, 2004). The effective instruction from the teacher may also be helpful to encourage cognitive thinking among the students. It can also be effective in deciding the alternative techniques to deal with the situation both at the ends of the students and the teachers and thus can mesh with peer motivation strategies. Patience and rational behaviour from the teacher are always beneficial for the students to decide on the right behaviour. The teacher must keep in mind the background and the socio-economic condition of the student while deciding about a certain punishment and should always take care about not to punish students making significant efforts to improve themselves. A rather soft warning may be more helpful in this regard (Grossman, 2004). Time out program makes an important part of the effective instruction strategy. Under this program the disturbing student is removed from the situation for some time in order to provide her/him with enough time to recover and behave appropriately. It is only applicable in cases of students who are extremely upset for some reasons and are not in a position to behave appropriately and causing problems both for their peers and themselves. Apart from using different types of punishments, the teacher should focus on more and more interactive sessions with and among the students. More collaboration with peers and participation in group activities and consultations are the other effective ways of giving instructions when peer motivation plays a very important role to control the behavior of the students (Grossman, 2004). With proper implementation of strategies like peer motivation and effective instruction the student reaches the position when they are capable of practicing self-control. In an encouraging environment at school the student is interested to foster self-control but it is often the cases that the teachers need to guide them to the right direction. (Crary, 1984) The teacher needs to understand the conditions of the student to decide about the effective practice aimed at developing the self-control and decision making skills. (Crary, 1984) The major behavior problems found in school age mainly relate to conflicts between students as well as between students and teachers other staff. Among various conflict resolution techniques the one that is considered to be the most effective is the SIGEP technique (Crary, 1984). The five steps involved in this technique are: a. Stop, which refers to everyone involved in the conflict, should be stopped to regain self-control to make him or her able to discuss the situation. b. Identify which refers to the children that are encouraged to communicate their feelings and are asked questions by the teacher or the adults to identify the problem. c. Generate which refers to everyone that is given a chance to brainstorm to find a possible solution for the problem identified. The children should be encouraged to be as creative as they can and all ideas should be accepted. d. Evaluate which refers to all the ideas that were generated should be considered for effectiveness. The children themselves should be encouraged to think about whether an idea would work, is fair, and what might happen if they tried it. All the children should agree to try one of the ideas at the end of the entire discussion process. e. Finally, plan which is the last steps, refers to a proper plan should be sketched to implement the entire idea generated. (Crary, 1984) Thus from the above discussion it is clear that any of the strategies of peer motivation, effective instruction or self-control practiced separately may not be able to bring about the desired result and a combination of the three is required for the same. It is also seen that the strategies are not separate in them and are actually overlapping while implemented and thus an appropriate mesh of the strategies is able to provide an effective policy for behavior management. Since children are more likely to be influenced by their peers and associates, the strategy of involving everyone in faculties and group associations might help in developing their cognitive framework. The relation between students is very important in these respects. The teachers may complement the influence of peers by guiding their behavioral patterns. Teachers are required to guide students and the mode of self-control helps the student to learn from their experience and also help choose their behavior. The solution to the behavioral conflict is through self-control strategy and the most effective is called the SIGEP technique. As the times have become different so has the behavioral pattern of students and children and hence the teachers have to be extremely careful when evaluating the behavioral pattern of a student. Although we have already discussed the strategies to control behavior, the effectiveness is still to be studied. References Baldwin, J.D., & Baldwinn, J. I. (1986). Behavior principals in everyday life (2nd Ed.). Engle Wood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Brophy, J. E. (1983). Classroom organization and management. The Elementary School Journal, 83(4), 265-285. Christle, C. A., & Schuster, J. W. (2003). 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Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, 8 (3): 130. Scott, T. M., Nelson, M. C., & Liaupsin, C. J. (2001). Effective instruction: The forgotten component in preventing school violence. Education & Treatment of Children, 24(3), 309-325. Read More