It’s early afternoon and the class has, finally, settled. Jon and Chris have stopped prodding each other with their pens, Alex and Grace have ceased gossiping about whatever happened at lunchtime, and Chloe is no longer shouting out. Mischief has successfully been managed and everyone can get on with their work.
But across the classroom, very quietly, something is up with Alex.
Over the next fifteen minutes, under the radar, he achieves nothing except some innovative graffiti on his pencil case.
When we talk about ‘behaviour’ in schools, we often mean ‘poor behaviour’. In the June 2022 National Behaviour Survey, teachers reported that, on average, for every 30 minutes of lesson time, 6.3 minutes were lost due to misbehaviour. Our time and attention in the classroom is frequently spent tackling this.
However, while we focus on minimising misbehaviour, this does not necessarily or automatically lead to more learning for some pupils. Although quiet passivity like Alex’s is not disruptive behaviour…it’s not a learning behaviour either.
‘A learning behaviour can be thought of as a behaviour that is necessary in order for a person to learn effectively in the group setting of the classroom.’ (Ellis and Tod, 2018)
The EEF’s Improving Behaviour Guidance Report recommends that, alongside managing misbehaviour, ‘the general climate for learning can be improved through the explicit teaching of learning behaviours.’ This explicit teaching of the emotional, social and cognitive behaviours required to thrive in learning could be part of a school’s wider strategy to raise pupil attainment, particularly for socio-economically disadvantaged students.
Remembering a similar task
For example, if Alex’s inner voice defaults to ‘I can’t do this’ when faced with something new or challenging, he might benefit from talking through a similar task from the past to remind and reassure him that uncertainty is temporary (an emotional behaviour).
Supporting with a whole-class sequence
Alex might be supported with a whole class or school approach to help him to get started or unstuck, such as using a ‘Book, Brain, Buddy, Boss’ sequence to support task-based problem-solving (a cognitive behaviour).
Focusing on feedback precision
Or, perhaps Alex’s previous experiences of asking for help haven’t been very effective, so he might benefit from being taught how to communicate more precisely with his teachers. For example, replacing ‘I’m stuck’ with ‘I know my ideas, but please can you give me some sentence starters?’ (a social behaviour).
Crucially, these behaviours can be influenced by schools and individual teachers. This offers us an opportunity to leverage learning through modelling and promoting specific learning behaviours. And, while we might initially have Alex at the front of our minds when planning, all of our pupils are novices so, sooner or later, they will all need to draw on a wider repertoire of learning behaviours.
You might also be interested in…
Supporting knowledge of self through modelling. This resource has been designed to support teachers to plan opportunities to explicitly discuss and model knowledge of self with students, a part of developing learning behaviours.
EEF. (2019) Improving Behaviour in Schools: Guidance Report. London: Education Endowment Foundation.
EEF. (2023) The EEF Guide to the Pupil Premium. London: Education Endowment Foundation.
Ellis, S. and Tod, J. (2018) Behaviour for Learning: Promoting Positive Relationships in the Classroom. (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.