Behaviour & Learning Management

Supporting School Development Planning & Continuing Professional Development

News Archive 2008

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Norway training proves big success - Geoff and Elizabeth worked with 30 Norwegian teachers and psychologists in Bergen last term to take them through the Assertive Discipline Master Class programme and the AD Leader Certificate course. Peter Langeland who organised this training in Norway writes to say "Thanks again for great lectures! Everybody is happy about it!" Peter and his colleagues have now begun to roll out the programme to schools in their education authority. We look forward to further visits! 

NUT Leadership Conference - We were represented at the recent NUT conference on school leadership by Elizabeth Floyer.  She ran 2 successful workshops on aspects of Situational Leadership II in the context of school management. The first workshop was about how to diagnose the professional development needs of different teachers for different tasks, using the assessment framework of SLII. Her second workshop focussed on how to select the appropriate leadership style for each teacher, according to each one's various needs. School managers attending these sessions rated them highly and have asked for more training along these lines. They found that SLII provides a clear and positive approach to the otherwise stormy seas of "performance management".

Coping with Kids project - "Coping with Kids" is the UK version of the original Assertive Discipline for Parents programme. We provide leader training for a range of family support professionals. We are also willing to offer training for parent groups as part of our community support remit. In this respect we are currently involved with a local community project - click here for an example of that programme.

More video gaming, more aggression - Research has just been published on the relationship between increased levels of 'blood and gore' in a video game and levels of hostility in the players. The findings show that the bloodier the images in the video games the greater the amount of hostility experienced and demonstrated by those playing the game. The researchers made use of the game 'Mortal Combat: Deadly Alliance' which allows players to select one of four 'blood levels' in the game - from no gore to copious amounts of blood spilled! They found that the more the gore, the more the predisposition to aggressive responses subsequently. Yet again we have clear evidence of the effects of violent video games upon the players' own emotional states. We should note that this effect was seen with intelligent University students. The worry in schools must be that it is often our more susceptible and impressionable pupils who spend more time in these activities, and who are even more likely to be negatively influenced, indeed damaged, by these sorts of images. The research is published in the May 2008 edition of the Journal of Experimental Social Pyschology (see tinyurl.com/6a4ceq).

Feral or cottonwool? We seem currently to be subject to a spate of media and government pronouncements about the state of childhood today. We hear extremes of opinion being aired. Some point to the 'feral' children coming into our schools who are so unsocialised that their teachers need to provide social nurturing before any other teaching can take place. Others point to the neurotically overprotected child, whose parents are constantly in fear for their safety. This overprogramming of family life has led to a meshing of adult and child worlds to create one of the biggest differences between today's childhoods and those of earlier times.   

We were saying all of this several years ago when we offered our rationale for why schools are facing quite different behavioural challenges than in the past. We made the point that 'old style' discipline methods just wouldn't meet the needs of today's children, and proposed the concept of 'Social Mediation' to face it. The article can be found at our downloads page as "Worlds Apart" (originally published as "Social Mediation, cultural disruption and disruptive children" in Managing Schools Today March 2005).

Thomas joins the team. Following his successful completion of the Assertive Discipline® Master Class and Leader's Certificate programme, Thomas Owoo has joined our team of trainers. His details have been added to our "people" pages. Thomas has already acquired a reputation as an inspiring and enthusiastic trainer. Because of his daytime teaching commitments his training and consultancy work with us is normally within the area of London.

Spring Term training completed. Among those undertaking training in Cheltenham this month was another group of Norwegian educators. They flew over from Bergen to take part in our Assertive Discipline® Master Class and AD Leader's Certificate programme. We also ran the same courses in Glasgow at the Kelvin Conference Centre - a change from our usual venue at Stirling - where we were again made to feel very much at home. Thanks to all who contributed in their different ways to the success of these days.

On the television - BBC West recently featured Behaviour & Learning Management on a programme about Violence in Classrooms. Geoff and Elizabeth were interviewed for the programme and shown training with a group of teachers in Maidenhill School, Gloucestershire. Geoff also did several intervies for radio and newspapers about the Assertive approach to managing classroom behaviour.

Teaching and Behaviour Research study 
One of our trainers, Richard Austin, has been commissioned by a Welsh local authority to study the classroom practices in its schools in order to research the ways teaching and learning approaches may impact upon behaviour within the classroom. This research will be undertaken in partnership with the University of Birmingham.
The study is aiming to identify effective local practice which has had a positive impact upon pupils who present with Behavioural, Emotional & Social Difficulties within the authority and how this can be disseminated across the authority via the cluster approach. A questionnaire has been sent to all schools for their completion.

The questionnaire crosses three strands of schooling which previous national and international research has indicated impacts on behaviours within school, namely:

  • The Quality of Teaching and Learning
  • Meeting Pupil’s wider needs
  • Professional Development of Staff
Additionally Richard is visiting all the schools in the coming year to examine current supportive services being provided by the Local Authority to support schools where pupils are presenting with further difficulties despite the intervention of schools via current policy and practice.
This visit enables schools to raise issues in relation to current support provided by the Local Education Authority. This may be via:-
  • Additional support for more challenging pupils
  • Professional development opportunities for staff to enhance their capacity for including more challenging pupils
  • Local authority practice and procedure in relation to information sharing protocols re managed moves and/or placing permanently excluded pupils.
The aim of the research is to provide the local authority with a comprehensive strategic plan which reflects the proposed national agenda within Wales in line with the National Behaviour and Attendance Review which is the Welsh Assembly Government's response to the Steer Report.
The research which is the first of its kind in Wales will enable schools to further develop their range of provision and will place the local authority in a position whereby they can make more effective use of their resources.
For more information on this approach for your own local authority then contact us.

Today's schools worse than Grange Hill? The children's television series "Grange Hill" has been axed because its attempts to portray the 'gritty realism' of secondary school life fall way short of today's reality!  The Daily Mail coverage of this news item includes a quote from one of its original cast that the last 10-15 years has seen a dramatic change in the nature of childhood. We published our views on this 5 years ago. If you want to be ahead of the game, then stick with us.