Teaching with Influence

Peter Hook, Andy Vass

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134122455
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

This book brings together a range of powerful beliefs and strategies to enhance the personal development and self-esteem of teachers. It explores practical ways in which teachers can increase their effectiveness and enhance the learning climate in their classrooms, and focuses on the most important resource teachers have - themselves!

Chapter 1

Influence-v-Coercion

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams

Being a teacher is not just a matter of having a body of knowledge and a capacity to control a classroom. That could be done by a computer with a cattle prod. Just as important, being a teacher means being able to establish human relations with the people being taught.

The Bégin-Caplan Report 1995

Commit this to memory:

IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO CONTROL STUDENT BEHAVIOUR IN YOUR CLASSROOM

In a staffroom a few weeks ago the bell began to ring for the start of Period 2. Some teachers had already set off and others were, rather more reluctantly, downing the last sips of tea and stirring from their chairs. A few teachers were already setting the scene for what was to come: ‘OK. Let’s go and show them who’s boss.’ ‘I hope that little **** Kyle isn’t in again, he makes me so mad.’ ‘Let’s see how many pearls disappear down the throats of the swine this time.’ ‘Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes.’ Some of these teachers are emotionally burned out; some have just become cynical; others have come to see the students as the emotional ‘enemy’. All of them have developed the ‘us against them’ attitude that has its roots in the false belief that it is possible to control student behaviour.

Of all the things in your classroom over which you have some element of control, the behaviour of others is not one of them. This is the demanding reality that you forget at your peril. This simple yet, for many teachers, challenging truth is your key to becoming one of that highly successful group of teachers who are genuinely influential in their dealings with students.

Nevertheless, this simple truth is something that far too many teachers never come to understand and accept. They go through their teaching careers believing that the control of student behaviour is possible. They expend vast amounts of physical and, more importantly, psychological and emotional energy on the only part of the behavioural dynamic over which they have absolutely no control.

Some teachers are so firmly convinced that they can control student behaviour that, when faced with the evidence that their controlling efforts are coming to nothing, instead of searching for a better approach, they become even more controlling in their actions, thoughts and intents. They create even more rules in their classrooms and enforce them with increasing rigour. They set up increasing numbers of regulations and procedures. They use more and more severe punishments. The balance between rewards and sanctions (the sanctions always being skewed in favour of punishment with these teachers) begins to tip even more away from rewards. The worst of them begin to resort to sarcasm, insults and humiliation to try and cow the students into submission. They become the living embodiment of the old – and extremely counterproductive – adage ‘Don’t smile until Christmas.’ Only, for them, Christmas is far too soon! Their stress levels show a markedly upward turn. And still their students show no sign of bowing under this pressure. In fact, some of their students are now starting to actively rebel against this increasingly repressive, authoritarian regime.

These teachers then make their last and, sometimes, fatal mistake – they start to develop explanatory models both for their lack of success in exercising control and their increasing levels of stress. ‘It’s them – they’re mad.’ ‘The class is mad.’ ‘What can you do with them? Look where they grew up.’ ‘You only have to meet her mum to see where the problem is.’ ‘His parents can’t even be bothered to teach him good manners.’ Some of these may indeed be part of the setting factors within which students make choices about their behaviour, but as these teachers begin more and more to see these factors as characteristics of the students, they cease to be explanatory models and become excuses. These teachers start to feel even more disempowered. They may begin to send more and more students out of their lessons to the Senior Management Team to be ‘dealt with’. When these students return to their classrooms, unharmed and unchanged, they start to blame others for their increasingly stressful situation: ‘The Headteacher isn’t supportive’, ‘It’s alright for them, they don’t understand what it’s like day in, day out.’ Once this blaming becomes entrenched these teachers are very difficult to help and support. They have established a thick brick wall that says, ‘It’s not me it’s them, so why should I change?’ Many of these teachers will become ill; some will have to leave the profession early; some will have heart attacks.

Essentially this style of classroom management has the following features:

• A reactive stance – these teachers do not plan interactions, they react to circumstances;

• A blaming culture – these teachers hold the students responsible for causing the negative feelings that they experience;

• The teacher as victim – they see themselves as the victim of other people’s decisions and actions;

• ‘Us and them’ – these teachers do not see themselves as part of the classroom dynamic. Rather, they see themselves as external agents trying to control the uncontrollable;

• Win/lose interactions – these teachers win at the expense of the students. Power is everything and is centred (so these teachers believe) within the teacher.

In an era when teachers are under increasing external pressure to constantly improve results, achieve externally imposed targets and provide data to support their work, it makes sense to adopt as many stress-reducing strategies and beliefs as possible. Putting a lot of emotional and physical energy into trying to achieve the impossible not only makes no sense – it can become professional suicide.

Classrooms are infinitely complex systems – take 8Y as an example.

8Y are by no means the ‘class from hell’. They are what could be described – if ever one could be – as an average class. On a good day they can be a joy to teach. On a more difficult day they can be ‘challenging but manageable’. The students in 8Y bring to their lessons a constantly changing mix of emotions and social agendas. The range of both physical and emotional maturity within the group is extraordinary. They are all at varying and sometimes conflicting points in their own physical, social and emotional development. They come from a mix of backgrounds that can either support or contradict your best efforts. One of them brings in the heavy emotional baggage of abuse and maltreatment. Their friendship patterns are constantly shifting, breaking and reforming. They are all learning and trying out new social as well as academic skills. Into this already intricate mix is thrown the complexity of a range of preferred learning styles, the effects of diet – many arrive without breakfast and then graze on a diet of e-numbers and fizzy drinks – and the constraints and demands of an increasingly prescriptive curriculum, to name just a few!

If you were one of 8Y’s teachers – and many of you will have your own version of ‘8Y’ in mind – to believe that it is possible for you to directly and simultaneously control this entire, ever-changing kaleidoscope of physical, social and emotional development and interchange would be ludicrous in the extreme.

Do not fall for the seductive Siren calling you to try and directly control student behaviour.

Does this mean that you have no control whatsoever in the classroom? Of course it doesn’t. You have a great deal of control. Its focus just isn’t upon controlling student behaviour.

We are sure that almost all of you will have come across the ‘ABC’ of behaviour management:

A = Antecedents

This refers to the context in which the behaviour occurs or what is happening in the environment at the time the behaviour occurs. These factors can be many and varied. They can range from the students home circumstances, through their prior learning experiences to what they had (or didn’t have) for breakfast or which teacher they had for the previous lesson.

B = Behaviour

This refers to the actual behaviour that the student (or teacher) exhibits. Behaviourist approaches lay much emphasis upon the description of what is actually seen – ‘Talking to another student after I asked her not to’ – rather than allowing excursions into explanatory fictions or over-interpretations – ‘Deliberately defying my instructions’. Wheldall and Merrett (1989) describe this approach as ‘pinpointing’ behaviour.

C = Consequences

This refers to those things that happen after the student has displayed the behaviour. In behaviourist terms the most significant consequences are frequently described as positive and negative reinforcers. In other words, they are those actions or events that either encourage the behaviour to be repeated or are likely to deter the behaviour in the future.

The ABC approach is firmly rooted within the behaviourist school of understanding and stems from researchers such as Pavlov. While it can be useful in helping us begin to explain the sequence associated with some of the behaviours we see in classrooms, we believe it can lead to a very ‘sticking plaster’ approach to providing support to students and should not be used as a sole method of identifying supportive strategies. The ABC model provides us with a useful metaphor to identify the variety of ways in which you can become even more effective in the classroom because, to a greater or lesser extent, you have some element of control over the A and C parts of the behavioural equation.

You can manage some, but not all, of the antecedents. You can decide where and how you display student work, where you stand to greet students, how you initiate conversations, utilise seating plans and establish entry routines, etc. You have virtually no control over other antecedents such as poor housing, lack of appropriate parenting skills, etc.

Your prime focus for expending your physical and emotional energy should be on identifying strategies for managing and, whenever possible, controlling the C part of the equation. In particular, the only element over which you have total and absolute control in your classroom is how you choose to emotionally respond to student behaviour.

This is where we need to introduce you to another, but substantially more influential, set of letters:

E + R = O

This is not mathematics. It is the basic formula for personal empowerment and proactivity. It represents the key to both your success in the classroom (or the whole of your life if you choose to use it in all aspects of your interactions with others) and in providing effective support to students in their social and emotional development. Translated, it means:

The Events in your life added to your Response give you your Outcomes.

You can choose how you respond to the events in your life. Effective teachers focus their energies on the only thing over which they have direct control – their own behaviour. In this way they become more and more influential in their classroom. This is one of the essential keys to becoming even more effective in your classroom. Realise that while you cannot control the behaviour of your students, you can become highly influential.

I have come to a frightening conclusion. I am the decisive element in the classroom. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher I possess tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humble or humour, hurt or heal. In all sets it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be exacerbated or de-escalated – a child humanised or dehumanised.

Ginott (1972)

Wayne and Shaqib are chatting away to each other after you have given the specific direction for independent seatwork – ‘No talking for ten minutes. If you have anything to say, put up your hands.’

You have a choice …

You could choose to go over and say, ‘I’m sick of you two! Every time I ask you to get on with your work, you deliberately defy me! If you can’t be bothered to get on with your work, why should I be bothered to teach you? I’ll see you both at lunch-time and you can have a detention after school on Thursday. Get on with your work, now!’

Or, you could choose to say something like, ‘Wayne and Shaqib. The direction was for independent seatwork. If ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About us …
• Acknowledgements
• How to get the most from this book
• Introduction: An ongoing journey
• 1 Influence-v-Coercion
• 2 The influence of beliefs
• 3 The language of influence
• 4 Nine core principles
• 5 Purposeful behaviour
• 6 Influencing solutions
• Appendix A: Maintaining a positive state
• Appendix B: Some strategies
• References