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What is 'challenging behaviour'? It is likely that your own definition will largely depend on when and how you experience it (or even when you behave in a challenging way yourself). Aggression or violence towards you or others; not carrying out tasks or activities in teaching sessions; talking constantly; winding everyone up; disrupting the work of others; dominating a group discussion .. these could all be described as challenging behaviours. My own definition is:
Behaviour by individuals and groups, which causes others problems, and which limits the potential of all concerned to learn and live their lives in as full and free a manner as possible. (Crawley 2005: 89)
A strategy for managing challenging behaviour
This strategy is based on the commitment to ensuring the freedom of all students to learn is not prejudiced through challenging behaviour. There will be varying degrees of severity associated with challenging behaviour, but there are some key strategies which can be used in all cases, and they are:
- Establish rules for appropriate behaviour, so that learning may take place.
- Go to peace not war .. our goals are to motivate students towards achievement, and celebrate that achievement, not to win a war with them.
- Stay together .. make sure that your own teaching team and other colleagues (up to and including senior management) take a consistent and common approach.
- Analyse what's going on.. gather information about why the behaviour is taking place, and plan what can be done to avoid, stop or change it
Specific actions There are also actions you can take and questions you can ask which will make a difference, including:
(Crawley 2005: 93-4)
- Assess the potential risks and plan accordingly - risk assessments will result in clear courses of action
- Why is it happening? - what is the person's history, what triggers can produce the behaviour, how can the environment affect them?
- What is it for? - is this new or established behaviour, is it to gain attention?
- What effect is it having? - damage to property, personal injury, effect on others
- Applying the rules - remind all parties of the agreed rules, and apply them fairly and firmly
- Stop it - where risk is greatest, call assistance to intervene or withdraw to minimise risk to you and others
- Diffuse it - using diversionary activity to shift the behaviour into another mode
- Use available help - working with others is often more successful than working alone. Try to deploy peer / group pressure.
- Review and make changes - review the actions you take and make changes to prevent or stop challenging behaviour on an ongoing basis
From Crawley, J. (2005) In at the Deep End: A survival guide for teachers in Post Compulsory Education. London: David Fulton Publishers
Additionalneeds.net - The exhibition of challenging behaviour by some pupils is a concern to all teachers. The fact that sessions aimed at managing challenging behaviour are always well attended shows that there is no 'quick fix' solution. The pages on this site are designed to offer some guidance to teachers concerned about challenging behaviour in the classroom. Part of a schools related web site called 'Additional Needs Net', at http://www.additionalneeds.net/Challenging_Behaviour/mainpage.htm
Basic Information on Challenging Behaviour Peter McGill - Challenging Behaviour Foundation. A short and useful introductory piece, which does effectively explain some parameters in a difficult area. The article starts as follows:
What is it?
The term "challenging behaviour" has been used to refer to the "difficult" or "problem"
behaviours which may be shown by children or adults with a learning disability. Such
behaviours include aggression (e.g., hitting, kicking, biting), destruction (e.g., ripping
clothes, breaking windows, throwing objects), self-injury (e.g., head banging, self-biting, skin picking), tantrums and many other behaviours (e.g. running away, eating inedible objects, rocking or other stereotyped movements). Characteristically, challenging behaviour puts the safety of the person or others in some jeopardy or has a significant impact on the person's or other people's quality of life. Download (pdf 50k)
Behaviour for Learning The Behaviour 4 Learning website aims to ensure that teacher educators and trainees are provided with high quality relevant resources that enable trainers and trainees engage with the principles of behaviour for learning to improve the management of classroom behaviour, enable achievement and foster the emotional wellbeing of learners. At: http://www.behaviour4learning.ac.uk/
Behaviour Management - a whole organisation approach. From LSDA N Ireland. Describes itself as follows: This publication has been written to:
promote a whole organisation approach to addressing challenging and disruptive behaviour
Challenging Behaviour - The pages on this site are designed to offer some guidance to teachers concerned about challenging behaviour in the classroom. Part of a schools related web site called 'Additional Needs Net', which is introduced as follows: 'The exhibition of challenging behaviour by some pupils is a concern to all teachers. The fact that sessions aimed at managing challenging behaviour are always well attended shows that there is no 'quick fix' solution.' http://www.additionalneeds.net/Challenging_Behaviour/mainpage.htm
Geoff Petty - Here is a free chapter
from ‘Evidence Based Teaching’. It reviews the evidence on classroom
management and discipline, and points to the strategies that teachers
have made work best in controlled experiments.
Download Evidence based discipline and classroom management
Managing challenging behaviour - a
report from OfSTED (2005) This report gives an account of behaviour in
schools based on national evidence and provides an analysis of
behaviour in a range of educational settings based on visits by OfSTED.
The settings included early years provision, mainstream and special
schools, pupil referral units, secure training centres and colleges.
They set out to establish the types of behaviour that schools and other
settings find challenging and to evaluate their responses to it. A
variety of sections and findings in the report are of interest, and you
should be able to pick those out reasonably easily. Download (pdf 720k)
Strategies for Challenging Behaviours from the 'Yours, Mine, Ours' website about inclusion from Florida (the layout looks like Florida too !!) Has some clever quotes which teachers will like, and some useful advice, even though it is again intended for schools. http://www.rushservices.com/Inclusion/strategies_for_challenging_behav.htm
What's your problem? - An excellent LSDA publication which describes itself as follows: "This report is one of a series of resources from the project, 'The Disability Act: Taking the work forward 2003-05', managed by the Learning and Skills Network (LSN) in partnership with NIACE and Skill, supported by the Disability Rights Commission and funded by the Learning and Skills Council. More than 100 organisations have been involved in a total of 20 projects related to DDA implementation in further education, adult community learning and work-based learning. What's your problem? is relevant to the full range of staff working in FE colleges, adult and community learning organisations, work-based learning and offender contexts. Because of its strong emphasis on the importance of a whole-organisational approach, it is equally relevant to practitioners and managers. Download (pdf 240k)