Mike Blamires

Canterbury Christ Church University College, England
Email M.Blamires@canterbury.ac.uk

Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University of Geneva, 13-15 September 2006

Abstract: This paper considers the current guidance and discourse underpinning positive approaches to behaviour management in England and compares this to the clinical and conceptual framework articulated and developed by Adler(1930a, 1930b 1963,) and his followers including Driekurs (1972,1998) and Dinkmeyer (2000). The paper will argue that much of what is presented as the folk wisdom of classroom behaviour or as popular catchphrases in TV behaviour management have their origins in the work of Adler and his colleagues. Furthermore, the paper will outline what can be gained by a re-examination of this work in the current climate to provide a conceptual framework and a consequent research agenda.

Methodology: This takes the form of a qualitative analysis of current guidance, popular publication on behaviour management and English Teachers' TV programmes. Concepts and strategies are related to the conceptual framework advanced by Adler and his followers in order to identify gaps, inconsistencies and the attribution or otherwise of key ideas. Material includes best selling guidance on behaviour management and UK Government guidance documents.

Conclusions: The study has found that much that is presented on behaviour management in the UK owes an unacknowledged debt to Adler and his followers. Furthermore, the guidance that is presented as good practice is an impoverished and technical rational model that lacks many of the insights of Adler's conceptual framework which itself has much potential utility in multi agency and parent involved work for children at risk.

The English government’s two current initiatives in this area Every Child Matters (DfES, 2005) which emphasises the centrality of schools in the delivery of services from health and social agencies and ‘Extended Schools’ which extends the school day at the beginning and end by providing child care activities and breakfast clubs could be seen as the only area of social policy where nationalisation has been seen as a solution and we see an attempt at nationalising parenthood.

This paper argues that issues of behaviour management in school, that are held to be central to academic achievement, can only be addressed if the social dimension of education is acknowledged. Teaching is not ‘Social Work’ which is a profession that has its own concerns and ways of operating that may or may not impinge on education. Teachers, however, work in the social domain due their interactions with parents, children and the community and, to that extent, they can be seen as ‘social workers’ and should be equipped with understandings that help them in this area.

I will further argue that the current catchphrases that underlie the guidance and suggested strategies are partial applications of the work of Adler and followers that impoverish rather than inform the understanding of behaviour development in schools.

A key influence on UK policy and practice in behaviour management has been Australian Bill Rogers (e.g. 2000 a, 2000b, 2000c) who has published highly regarded books and videos on his approaches to difficult behaviour. For many they provide a set of strategies and concepts that aid them in dealing with difficult teaching settings.

Rogers has been influenced by Adler and his followers who, have worked in the United States, so, it could be argued that these ideas have circumnavigated the globe during the last century from Austria to the UK via the pacific. However some ideas of importance may have been lost in transit.

Adlerian ideas harnessed by Rogers and then by the English Department of Education and Skills include a critique of rewards, sanctions and the appropriate use of praise, natural and logical consequences as applied to classroom rules, the use of Time Out from peers and a democratic teaching style. These approaches have been then demonstrated and modelled in government guidance and on English Teachers’ Television but they have lacked a conceptual framework that can help in understanding why and how well behaviour is developed.

Recent English media coverage aided by Teacher Unions’ press releases and surveys may also have militated against the take up of Adlerian approaches because it has focused upon authoritarian demands rather than the Adlerian concept of encouragement.

"The NUT is concerned that there exists in the minds of some pupils and parents a belief that a teacher has little or no authority at present to discipline children. Some teachers too lack confidence in imposing reasonable sanctions on children who breach what is considered acceptable behaviour in schools. This contributes to the persistence of low level disruption and sometimes defiance."
National Union of Teachers, (September 2005)

Dreikurs (a key follower of Adler) describes the ‘Autocratic tradition’:

Dinkmeyer and Dreikurs (200)P 118

Just in case I am being biased in my quotations from English Teacher Unions, let us consider what another English union the Association of Teachers and Lecturers have to say:

"…an NQT from a secondary school in West Sussex, said: ‘As a new teacher I was well aware that students were going to test the boundaries with regards to behaviour, and they did! They pushed me and on occasions, some of them still do. There are times when a student will flair up – being told you’re a bad teacher (add appalling language and a very loud voice to that image) on the first day of an Ofsted inspection is a recent incident that springs to mind!’"  
ATL Union report on behaviour 2006

Dinkemeyer and Dreikurs (1963) state that "traditional methods of influencing children come from an autocratic past where reward and punishment were the effective means of influencing and stimulating subordinates and promoting conformity to the demands of authorities like parents and teachers" (p.2)

From discussions with ITE tutor colleagues, there is anecdotal evidence that some trainees do see the issue of discipline in classrooms initially in traditional autocratic terms which they can move on from if they are mentored and supported in developing appropriate longer term strategies.

ATL report on behaviour 2006

Dinkemeyer and Dreikurs suggest a move from autocratic methods to democratic methods of child guidance. Indeed the term ‘child guidance’ will ring bells with some readers in terms of the child guidance centres of the past that were a development from Adler’s original work. Democratic methods encourage choice and responsibility in order to foster democratic relationships that are at the heart of effective behaviour training. This is, in turn, based on encouragement, a respect for order through clear expectations, the experience of natural consequences for misbehaviour, and the avoidance of conflict.

I am not denying the validity or importance of the concerns expressed by teachers who are dealing with challenging teaching environments but suggest that they could be better served by theory and understandings that can guide what they do.

The recent Steer Report (2005) entitled ‘Learning Behaviour’ made a range of recommendations mainly from the view point of the Head Teachers who made up the committee. It recognised the importance of the interplay between behaviour and learning and supported the various related English Government initiatives. One of the key recommendations, however, had an authoritarian emphasis that largely ignores the complexity of the debate as noted by Elton that has since grown to encompass fast food, label consumerism, today’s technology and diminishing public space.

Steer 2005

The recommendation is made despite the fact that Nerf (2005) has noted a number of gaps in the research on student behaviour. These included the need for improved understanding of home-school relationships in the promotion of good behaviour and the lack of the student perspective on indiscipline and exclusion.

Education practice might benefit from revisiting Adler’s theoretical standpoint as it could provide a theoretical model to inform the emerging English agendas of extended schools, every child matters and workforce remodelling where non qualified staff have a larger role in classrooms. Furthermore, reconsidering Adler can also emphasise a positive long term view of emotional and behavioural development that counters the short term authoritarianism of current public debate.

To some, Adler might be dismissed as a revisionist of the Freud’s psychoanalysis whose main contribution was to explain Hitler’s rise to power in terms of sibling rivalry and the ‘inferiority complex’. This would, however, do him somewhat of a disservice as it ignores a successful career of pioneering work on the education of children encountering difficulty. (Adler, 1930a, 1930b). Alfred Alder developed Individual Psychology and also later known as Adlerian Psychology in 1911 after his split with Freud. Its tenets are optimistic in that people are unique, social decision making beings whose thoughts and actions have purpose and goals. Each person is part of a social setting with a capacity to decide and choose.

Kurt Adler in the forward to Alfred Adler’s The Problem Child page iv

For Adler, the ‘life style’ determined how the child perceived the world and was pretty much fixed by the age of four. This may chime with theories of critical periods but may stand at odds with the current principles of life long education, in that, change can occur throughout life. The validity of the concept of life style and its rigidity are open to question. In this article, I am not arguing for a whole sale uncritical acceptance of Adler’s Individual Psychology but that his ideas are worth re-examination and perhaps re-purposing in the context of present day policy and practice.

"Rewards usually are given by someone in a superior role to someone in an inferior position which is not a mutually respectful stance. They are often used as bribes which in the end teach that nothing worthwhile is given freely. Rewards given by parents often come back to haunt them when children refuse to do anything unless they receive a tangible reward. The focus is removed from internal controls to external one. (Dreikurs, 1971) cited in Chew P 53

This links to notions of intrinsic versus extrinsic rewards and the guidance and evidence from the ERIC Digest (Kohn, 1994) on the use of rewards. Extrinsic rewards do appear to play an important role in social organisations including schools where they reinforce whole school policy on behaviour. Chew (1998) questions this process "if children are taught that every thing worth doing must be compensated, when are they to learn and feel the value of giving and helping?" (p 53)

The current guidance refers to sanctions rather than punishment although the need for punishment has an enduring appeal in the media for pupils at risk of exclusion. E.g. Parsons (2004) Chew states that "Venting anger and making children "pay" for their misbehaviour is short sighted, selfish way to handle problem situations. When punished, children learn to go underground with their behaviour, if not choosing to directly challenge the authority figure." P 53

As alternative, followers of Adler suggest that good discipline "builds within the child the courage to function effectively" (Dinkmeyer, 1965) using natural and logical consequences which enable the child to see her responsibilities to her family and social group. Encouragement and discouragement are key concepts for Adlerian Psychology as they have an impact of the child’s courage to take responsibility for aspects of their life and this will be discussed later in this paper.

Kurt Adler in the forward to Alfred Adler’s The Problem Child page iv

Natural consequences represent reality for the child with no interference from adults. This would include a child getting cold because they did not put on a coat when they went out to play. Logical consequences are those that follow a violation of a social order or tacit rules for co-operation within society. This could include the child forgetting to take lunch money or losing a fellow pupil’s possession. Logical consequences are concerned with the child locating the choices to be made instead of relying on adults around them to come up with the solutions (Dinkemeyer, 1989). Adler suggests that, where adults dominate this issue however, children rarely learn the power of their own choices. If the "logical" consequence is contrived by the adult and not related to the misbehaviour, then the aims of the adult may become suspect so that power and control are the issue rather than the correction of the problem. This has echoes of solution base approaches currently favoured by the English Behaviour and Attendance strands of the primary and secondary strategies.

Dreikurs (1972) states that a child must come to understand why he behaves as he does, how this behaviour affects others, how it is "successful" behaviour from the child’s point of view and how appropriate behaviour can gain him more acceptance.. The selection of logical consequence also depends a great deal upon the goal of the child as well as his method of obtaining it. Again Comic Strip Conversations and Social Stories, (Gray, 1994, 1999) are current approaches that address these issues.

In Discipline and Dignity (1988), Curwin and Mendler suggest that consequences work best in the classroom when they are clear, specific and spelled out ahead of time because predictability is important in helping students choose behaviour. Dinkmeyer’s (1987) guidelines for the effective use of consequences will be familiar to readers of Bill Roger’s work

Chew suggests that having a range of alternative consequences gives the teacher discretion in matching consequences to situations. This may lead to the accusation of being unfair in applying different consequences for the same misbehaviour which Chew addresses with the "Fair is not always equal" principle. He illustrates this using an example of the Doctor who enters his waiting room and says, " I’m going to dispense equal treatment today by giving all of you an aspirin." "We always treat children all the same" has been used as an apologetic mantra in defence of inflexibility in response to inclusion and some trainees are very vexed by notions of what is equitable practice in relation to classroom behaviour. This principle does acknowledge that different people have different needs so that fair, not equal treatment can be appropriate. This is an important issue for inclusion and diversity.

This distinction is closely related to natural and logical consequences. Encouragement helps to build the self confidence of the child so that he or she can handle difficulty. The aim is to develop internal rather than external motivation by focussing on effort and improvement towards a goal rather than the achievement of the goal per se. From an Adlerian perspective, praise teaches a child to conform, to please others and to feel worthwhile only when moving ahead of others.

The essential ingredients of courage according to Dinkmeyer and Dreikurs seem to be confidence in oneself and one’s ability to cope either with the particular situation at hand or more importantly with what ever situation may arise. This echoes O’Brien’s (1998) critique of the unitary concept of self-esteem which he suggested was more likely to vary across situations. It also has links to self efficacy which is in turn suggested to be a component of recent models of resilience that have found utility in guiding interventions with looked after children (Jeyarajah Dent & Cameron, 2003). Courage could also be seen as a vital factor in dealing with change and challenge, key elements of education. Indeed, self efficacy has been found to be a significant factor in the success of Newly Qualified Teachers (NQTs) in dealing with behaviour (Giallo & Little, 2003). An often noted feature of autism is anxiety and a dislike of change. It would be easy to place a value judgement on this behaviour as a lack of courage but recent successful intervention with learners with autism have focused on the development of social skills and understanding that encourage participation. E.g. Gray (1999) and Mesibov and Howley (2003)

‘Social Interest’ is the expression of our capacity to give and take, one’s feeling of belonging to others and one’s concern for the common welfare. This has clear links to emerging citizenship agendas and also the constituents of Theory of Mind as suggested in the work of Wellman (1992) and Wild Astington (1993) but it maybe manifests itself in the English DfES Social Emotional Aspects of Learning and Social Emotional Behavioural Skills(SEBS) initiatives. Some might also make links to emotional intelligence and emotional literacy. The DfES strands of the strategies are, however, preferred to the latter fashionable terms as the former do not suggest fixed or unitary entities or additional curriculum areas.

Driekurs states that the child is not the passive object of external influences. Close observation enables one to see that what appears to be reaction is purposeful activity within a life plan. These purposes may not be conscious and the child will not necessarily be aware of them. People make their experiences, not only do they register what fits into their scheme, but very frequently actually provoke the experiences they anticipate or desire.

This interpretation of the world is termed ‘biased apperception’ and resembles more recent concepts of ‘cognitive style’, ‘learned helplessness’ and ‘attribution theory’. Interventions are aimed at enabling alternative perceptions leading to a more socially adapted lifestyle. The life style also links to the muddied waters of self esteem in that it involves self concept, ideal self, environmental evaluation and ethical attitudes of right and wrong.

Biased apperception can lead to difficulties in dealing with the challenges of the world . Four common mistaken goals are suggested for a child’s misbehaviour in an attempt to replace the typical negative attributions used by teachers. Adler suggests that children are not born with a conscience or good manners so that learning what society and teachers expect is not easy for all children. Dreikurs suggests that misbehaviour is the erroneous belief of a child that he can gain acceptance through provocative behaviour by pursuing the mistaken goals of behaviour. These may change and the child is not aware of them as they are part of his way of interacting with the world. In adolescence these goals are directed towards peer group acceptance.

The four mistaken goals are

1. to gain undue attention
2. to seek power
3. to seek revenge or get even
4. to display inadequacy (real or assumed)

Dreikurs suggests that these goals can be interpreted from our ‘gut reaction’ to behaviour and the way that the child responds to an adult intervention. An investigation of the child’s behaviour using this framework has been shown to provide many positive long term benefits and perhaps deserves a refreshed application within the context of new educational practices and partnerships. Such an endeavour is beyond the scope of this paper but it may be a useful future challenge to further explore the social dimensions of education.

Conclusions:

As teachers have to operate in the social domain, they must be social workers. To ignore or downplay this aspect of the teacher role may seriously hinder the professional efficacy of teachers.

The study has found that much that is presented on behaviour management in the UK owes an unacknowledged debt to Adler and his followers. Furthermore, the guidance that is presented as good practice is an impoverished and technical rational model that lacks many of the insights of Adler's conceptual framework which itself has much potential utility in multi agency and parent involved work for children at risk.

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