L&T Blog: Term 3 Week 1: Behaviour management strategies of beginning teachers in classrooms!

Dear WA,

I hope everyone is well! This week I was interested to read a recent study that looked at behaviour management strategies of beginning teachers in classrooms.

Objectives: To understand the strategies used by novice teachers in classrooms to manage behaviour, and to examine which are the most effective.

Summary: 

• This study determined that in aiming to stop the misbehaviour of one student, novice teachers often ‘lost the rest of the group’, resulting in more chatter and unfocussed behaviours.

• It compares this to more experienced teachers who navigated the balance between collective and individual behaviour. For example, when faced with a disruptive student, more experienced teachers would often continue teaching the class, making subtle changes including with their body language and moving closer to the disruptive student.

• The study proposes that ‘intentionally ignoring’ disruptive students was one of the most impactful strategies, rather than one-on-one confrontations with disruptive students.

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• How do my experiences with behaviour management align with these strategies in the study? Are they similar? Are they different?
• What can I take from the findings of this study?
• What support or actions might I need to implement strategies from this study?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!