Positive Psychology for Teachers

Jeremy Swinson,Alex Harrop

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136622038
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Practical, actionable information about the positive, behavioural approach to education is in desperately short supply, and yet when implemented properly the impact on school behaviour and achievement can be enormous. Positive Psychology for Teachers aims to address this gap. Written by experienced practitioners, it gives teachers simple and direct

Chapter 1

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Emergence of the positive
approach

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Background

If we look at accounts of teaching in the nineteenth century, we find they are peppered with references to unwilling pupils being punished by their teachers. Schools are not described as having been happy places. The literature is replete with stories of children being beaten. Schools are generally described as punitive institutions, and we get the impression that they were run completely on the basis of punishment and fear engendered in their pupils. Stories of such institutions are firmly embedded in our culture. In fact, Charles Dickens was so concerned at the state of what were called ‘Yorkshire schools’, schools to which unwanted children were sent and sometimes died at the hands of their carers, that he wrote his second campaigning novel, Nicholas Nickleby, on the subject.

If we look deeper, however, we find that some schools also included a measure of reward for their pupils. Practices that existed included awarding certificates to pupils who never missed attending, were always punctual, passed tests, etc. These certificates were taken home and often received with great pride by parents. In some schools, pupils would be shown magic lantern slides at playtime, or a class might be given extra playtime for doing well during an inspection. We hear little about such practices probably because they were few and far between and at least partly because they don’t contribute as well to novels as do tales of brutal, sadistic schoolmasters.

Although there appear not to have been any systematic surveys undertaken in the early part of the twentieth century, much of the teaching in schools seems to have been authoritarian with severe consequences for pupils who broke the rules and not a great deal of reward or praise given for good behaviour. Sarcasm and ridicule ruled the day. Moreover, breaking the rules was often accompanied by corporal punishment. Put bluntly, pain was deliberately infl icted on the pupils by the use of the ruler, the cane, the strap and the tawse (in Scotland). The old saying, often used to justify a beating, ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’, comes to mind.

The first major source of evidence on the use of punishment and rewards in schools is found in one section of the report of a large-scale investigation that took place in the 1970s into the effectiveness of 12 inner-city London secondary schools (Rutter, et al. 1979). The team of investigators followed over 2000 pupils throughout their years of secondary schooling, and collected data on attendance, exam results and behaviour. Among the numerous findings, it was noted that while the particular kinds of reward and punishment employed varied considerably between schools, observations showed that, on average, punishments occurred twice as often as rewards. It was also observed that the average number of positive comments across all the schools was as few as three or four instances per lesson. Significantly, the use of punishment was found to be generally unrelated to pupil behaviour while the use of rewards was generally associated with better behaviour.

Punishments included teacher disapproval, detention, writing lines, being sent to the head teacher and corporal punishment, while rewards included teacher approval, public praise for good work, comments on individual pupils in assemblies and putting pupils’ work on classroom walls.

The report concluded that while some sanctions are clearly necessary in secondary schools, the results of the investigation indicated that some schools were too negative in their approach. That section of the report ended by emphasising the value of a positive approach to teaching based on reward systems rather than a negative approach based on punishments.

The secondary school investigation was followed in the 1980s by a similar one undertaken in 50 junior schools in the London area (Mortimore et al. 1988). Some 2000 pupils were observed over four years. Among the findings, it was noted that the quantity of teachers’ critical comments was related negatively to pupils’ progress in a number of areas, while the quantity of teachers’ positive and neutral comments was related positively to pupil progress. It was emphasised that teachers’ praise and approval should be given as direct and immediate feedback to pupils for it to have maximum effect. It was also noted that teachers’ criticism exceeded, on average, teachers’ positive comments. Among the conclusions of the investigation was the recommendation that student teachers be made aware of the value of praise and the limitations of being negative towards their pupils.

Around the middle of the twentieth century public opinion began to change and the use of physical punishment began to be questioned, but it was only as late as 1987 that corporal punishment was banned in state schools and 1999 when it was banned in private schools. Teaching was becoming less negative. An important benefit to education, which appears not to have been noticed by many, was that the removal of corporal punishment forced those teachers who relied on physical punishment to look for other ways of keeping order in their classrooms.

First beginnings of the positive approach

Although many had doubts about the wisdom of the generally punitive methods used in teaching in the nineteenth century and in the early parts of the twentieth century, there was little evidence on which to base their doubts. It was only in the 1960s that any form of systematic investigation into the relative value of reward and punishment in schools took place. At that time, teachers and educational psychologists were becoming aware of research in human learning that demonstrated that children’s behaviour was strongly influenced (reinforced) by adults’ use of social rewards (praise, approval, smiles, nods, attention, proximity). As a consequence, a number of related investigations were conducted in the mid- to late 1960s in the USA to investigate the extent to which teachers could change their pupils’ behaviour by their use of social reinforcement. They were aimed at making the teachers more effective in their teaching by encouraging pupils to become more engaged in their lessons and by generally making classrooms happier places through the application of the principles of human learning.

An underlying assumption of the investigations, albeit one not specifically stated, was that pupils in classrooms tend to behave in ways that have been learned as a result of the way they have been managed by their teachers. Consequently, the investigations were concerned with examining the effects of the use by teachers of positive comments, praise and/or approval, of negative comments, telling off and/or disapproval and of the rules that teachers imposed on their classes. These investigations were characterised by careful attention to defining behaviours to be observed and by seeking to ensure that observers’ records were accurate representations of what took place in classrooms. The results of the investigations showed that, in general, the problem behaviour of pupils could be reduced by changes in teachers’ behaviour.

In the 1970s one of the writers, a former schoolteacher, then involved in teacher training, read reports of the American studies with some scepticism but, seeing the potential value of their findings, decided to put his scepticism to the test in a British context. After some discussion with a Liverpool education authority senior educational psychologist, who was equally interested in setting up an investigation, the aid of three teachers in Liverpool primary schools was enlisted. These were teachers who were known to the educational psychologist as being experienced and confident in their abilities. They were all willing to try out what was described to them as a new method of improving pupil behaviour. Initially, each teacher selected one pupil in their class whose behaviour was a cause for some concern and left room for some improvement. From that point on the three cases followed the same general procedure, as typified by the case conducted with the pupil we called Victor.

Preliminary investigations

Victor

Victor was nine years old, of average ability, in a state primary school situated in the inner city in what was then designated an educational priority area. His teacher was a woman who had some ten years’ teaching experience. Victor showed little interest in his lessons and spent much of his time talking to other pupils and walking about the classroom. He was learning little and disrupting the work of other pupils. He would settle down to work for short periods when reprimanded but rapidly returned to inappropriate behaviour when other pupils required his teacher’s attention.

The teacher’s permission was obtained for an observer, a trainee-teacher, to be present in the classroom for two or three lessons per week and it was explained to the teacher that the observer would be recording Victor’s inappropriate behaviour and that this was to get an estimate of the extent of that behaviour before any attempt was to be made to bring about an improvement. In other words, it was to be a baseline against which any improvement could be measured.

The observer was informed that the recordings were to be made of Victor’s inappropriate behaviour, i.e. talking or walking around the classroom when not allowed, and that it was important that recordings should be as accurate as possible. It was also emphasised that the observer should be unobtrusive in the classroom. That wasn’t too difficult at the time since the school regularly had student teachers in the classrooms and the observer was introduced to the class as a student teacher who would be watching lessons during the next few weeks.

In the first, preliminary week, the observer sat in the classroom at the back and recorded Victor’s behaviour during three lessons, while seemingly being engaged in watching the teacher and the class in general. The recording was done by dividing the observation time into 20-second intervals and checking an interval when an observed behaviour occurred, so that for example, after 30 minutes’ recording, 90 intervals would have been observed and the observer would have noted in how many of these intervals Victor had been engaged in each of the two behaviours. After each lesson the results were discussed with the teacher and any necessary adjustments were made to the observer’s understanding of what was to be observed.

Following that preliminary week the observer recorded Victor’s behaviour for two lessons a week for one month. By the end of that month it was considered that a good baseline estimate of the extent of Victor’s inappropriate behaviour had been obtained.

The investigators looked at the results of the baseline with the teacher and then outlined what they had read about the success of the American studies, in particular explaining that in those studies pupils’ behaviour had been improved by the use of praise/approval/attention for appropriate behaviour, the ignoring of inappropriate behaviour and the statement of classroom rules. The teacher professed to find the technique of approval, ignoring and statement of rules very interesting but wasn’t totally convinced that such techniques would improve Victor’s behaviour. As a compromise, ignoring inappropriate behaviour was changed to ‘minimising attention to inappropriate behaviour’ The teacher then agreed to do the following with the whole class as a treatment (intervention) aimed at improving Victor’s behaviour:

1. Make the class aware of the classroom rules and repeat the rules when necessary. Include in the rules that pupils should not talk to others when they are working and that they are expected to remain in their places and not wander about the classroom.
2. Give praise/attention/approval to Victor and to other pupils for behaviour that facilitates learning. Tell the pupils why they are receiving this positive feedback and try to give positive feedback to behaviours that are incompatible with Victor’s behaviour that is not permitted, i.e. working quietly and staying in his seat.
3. Minimise attention to Victor when he does indulge in the unpermitted behaviours.

The teacher implemented the package of rules, praise and ignoring for a month and the observer continued to record during two lessons per week. By the end of the month the observer’s recordings showed a considerable improvement in Victor’s behaviour from the baseline recording levels to the end of the intervention, both unwanted talking and wandering about the classroom having been reduced to around two-thirds of their baseline levels. The teacher agreed that Victor had improved and felt that the observer’s recordings were a true reflection of what had occurred.

Ted and Mavis

For the other two teachers, both of whom also worked in inner-city state schools, the investigation with their pupils followed the same format, albeit with some differences in the inappropriate behaviours of the pupils. For example, for Ted, giving other children ‘nudges and kicks’ was included, while for Mavis, ‘shouting out’ was included in the observed inappropriate behaviours. For both of these teachers, the recordings showed considerable improvement in the behaviour of the pupils after the month of intervention and the teachers agreed that improvement had occurred. Interestingly, for Mavis, the inappropriate behaviour became worse for the first week of the treatment before it subsequently reduced.

Research note

That all three pupils improved both in terms of the recordings and in the teachers’ views was good evidence that the techniques could be implemented successfully in a British context. There were, however, at that time, some misgivings about whether it was the treatment given to the pupils, or some other feature of the investigation that had produced the improvement.

When the investigators thought of possible alternative explanations for the results, two that came to mind were concerned with the observers: one concerned the observers’ presence in the classrooms, the other concerned the observers’ expectations.

That the observers’ presence in the classrooms might have changed the behaviour of the pupils was one possibility, but when we examined the recordings day by day there was no evidence of a reduction in the pupils’ inappropriate behaviour during the one month of baseline recordings. Since it was only when the teachers changed their behaviour that the improvements began to occur then it was very unlikely that the observers’ presence had caused the change.

That the results had been caused by the observers ‘expecting’ an improvement when they knew the teachers were changing their behaviour to the pupils and unknowingly making their recordings agree with what they expected was an alternative explanation that we couldn’t rule out initially. We were able to rule out that explanation later by conducting an investigation that involved using two independent observers in classrooms and not telling one from each pair when the teachers changed their behaviour. The results showed no difference between the recordings of those observers who were told of the change and those who were not (Harrop, 1978).

Another concern that these results raised was that we had no measure of the effects of improving the selected pupils’ behaviour on the rest of the class. That was thought to be such an important consideration that another investigation was devised in which the effects on other pupils was measured while the behaviour of one pupil was treated and improved. The results showed that the behaviour of the other pupils improved but not as much as did the behaviour of the selected pupil (Harrop, 1978).

Having ruled out those possible alternative explanations for the results of the preliminary investigation we were able to conclude that the improvement obtained with all three pupils was brought about when the three teachers changed their behaviour by emphasising classroom rules, by giving praise (approval and/or attention) when the pupils were behaving appropriately and by reducing attention to inappropriate behaviour. It appears that previously the teachers had concentrated their attention on the pupils when they had been behaving inappropriately and that the pupils may not have been clear about the classroom rules.

In practice

In a busy classroom, a pupil who misbehaves continually attracts the teacher’s attention. The teacher has to attend to that pupil and one way or another seeks to get him or her back to behaving appropriately and becoming fully engaged in the lesson. Once the pupil is working appropriately, the teacher breathes a sigh of relief and feels free to turn his or her attention back to the rest of the class, feeling perhaps a little guilty about having to spend so much time on that inappropriately behaving pupil while neglecting the other appropriately working pupils. At that point, the teacher’s attention is removed from the previously misbehaving pupil and continues to be removed while the teacher interacts with the rest of the class. If the pupil requires the teacher’s attention, the way to get it back may be by misbehaving again. In other words, it is the teacher’s attention that serves to maintain the pupil’s behaviour.

The implication is that pupils who misbehave need praise and attention when they are behaving appropriately, not just attention when they are behaving inappropriately. That isn’t easy for a teacher to do when the rest of the class also need attention. Moreover, from our experience of working with teachers, we know that some understandably object to doing that, on the grounds that they shouldn’t be praising pupils who are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing. They ma...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1 Emergence of the positive approach
• 2 Teacher feedback and pupil behaviour
• 3 Positive strategies: four essential steps
• 4 Working with particular groups of pupils
• 5 The whole school
• 6 Pupil learning
• 7 Pupil well-being
• 8 Principles of the positive approach
• 9 A research basis
• 10 Critical comments and conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index