Challenging Behaviour in Schools: The Psychological Contribution Part 2

1
Challenging Behaviour in Schools The
Psychological Contribution (Part 2)

• Andy Miller
• School of Psychology
• University of Nottingham
• 18th February 2008

2
Some properties of systems
3
Some properties of systems

• parts are connected together in an organised
  (often very complex) way (e.g.cells in the brain)

4
Some properties of systems

• parts are connected together in an organised
  (often very complex) way (e.g.cells in the
  brain)
• parts of the system are affected by being within
  the system (eg heart in the body, child in a
  family)

5
Some properties of systems

• parts are connected together in an organised
  (often very complex) way (e.g.cells in the
  brain)
• parts of the system are affected by being within
  the system (eg heart in the body, child in a
  family)
• causation is usually recursive rather than linear

6
Some properties of systems

• parts are connected together in an organised
  (often very complex) way (e.g.cells in the
  brain)
• parts of the system are affected by being within
  the system (eg heart in the body, child in a
  family)
• causation is usually recursive rather than linear
• homeostasis

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Linear causation ?
8
.. or?
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Circular (or recursive) causation
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and so on

• wheels within wheels eg
• other staff at school
• partner at home
• headteacher at school
• sibling at home
• etc. etc

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Homeostasis

• analagous to the maintenance of room temperature
  at a constant level in a central heating system
  or a biological system.
• parts of the system act together in a concerted
  way so that over a period of time the system
  displays regularity (implicit rules).
• over time a system functions so as to maintain a
  dynamic equilibrium deviations from equilibrium
  are continually corrected (Dallos 1991)

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The school as a psychosocial system (Miller and
Leyden 1999)
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The Nottingham Psychology of Behaviour in School
Project

• Sequence of studies with teachers and students
  (primary and secondary) and parents, including
• studies of causal attributions for difficult
  behaviour in schools
• various views of causation
• studies of agents judged to be most likely to
  bring about improvement

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Some studies (1)

• Survey of 428 junior school teachers across 10
  LEAs seeking their explanations for difficult
  behaviour of any of their pupils
• Croll, P. Moses, D. (1985) One in Five. The
  Assessment and Incidence of Special Educational
  Needs London. Routledge and Kegan Paul.
• In-depth interviews with 24 primary teachers
  across 8 LEAs (The Successful Strategies Study)
• Miller, A. (1995) Teachers Attributions Of
  Causality, Control And Responsibility In Respect
  Of Difficult Pupil Behaviour And Its Successful
  Management. Educational Psychology. 15(4)
  457-472.

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Some studies (2)

• 105 Yr 7 pupils from the same inner city
  secondary school.
• Miller, A., Ferguson, E. Byrne, I. (2000)
  Pupils Causal Attributions For Difficult
  Classroom Behaviour. British Journal of
  Educational Psychology. 70, 85-96.
  
• 144 parents (106 mothers and 38 fathers) from the
  same inner city primary school.
• Miller, A., Ferguson, E. Moore, E. (2002)
  Parents and Pupils Causal Attributions For
  Difficult Classroom Behaviour . British Journal
  of Educational Psychology.72, 27 - 40

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Adverse home circumstances as a cause of
difficult behaviour in schools

High
?
?
teachers parents
?
?
Yr 7 students
Low
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Elton Report

• Our evidence suggests that teachers picture of
  parents is generally very negative. Many teachers
  feel that parents are to blame for much
  misbehaviour in schools. We consider that, while
  this picture contains an element of truth, it is
  distorted
• (Department for Education and Science 1989.
  p.133)

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Teacher unfairness as a cause of difficult
behaviour in schools
?
High

?
Yr 7 students parents
?
?
teachers
Low
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The contribution of Bernard Weiner

• Weiner (1986, 2000) identified 3 dimensions
  along which most attributions were found to lie
• Locus (whether the cause was internal or external
  to the person)
• Stability (whether the cause is fixed or can
  vary)
• Controllability (whether the person is able to
  control the cause)

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Types of causation

• Predisposing
• e.g. experiences in early life, uninspiring
  curriculum planning
• Precipitating
• e.g. a chance remark, a dispute among students
  over equipment
• Prolonging
• e.g. reaction of other students, having some
  temporary need met
• Perpetuating
• e.g. change in peer status, change in teachers
  class management style

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Relationship between attribution, blaming and
help giving

• .when teachers assume that student failure is
  attributable to forces beyond the students
  control, they tend to respond with sympathy and
  avoid giving punishments. If, however, the
  failures are attributed to a controllable factor,
  such as lack of effort, the teachers response is
  more likely to be anger retribution and
  punishments may follow (p203)
• (Woolfolk Hoy and Weinstein (2006) summarising
  Weiners studies)

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Attribution of controllability

• Direction of high controllability attributions
  for cause of challenging behaviour made by 24
  teachers (from Miller 2003)

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Changing attributions?

• by explicit programmes - attribution retraining?
• by more implicit means - consultative skills,
  modelling?

24
Attribution retraining

• usually an attempt to help somebody move away
  from external and uncontrollable attributions and
  towards internal and controllable ones (an
  explicit component of cognitive behavioral
  therapy)
• teaching students to attribute failure to their
  use of an ineffective strategy transfers their
  focus from themselves as failures to their
  specific actions and assures them that a change
  in strategy will produce better results (Porter
  2007)
• National Institute for Clinical Excellence
  recommends CBT as treatment of choice for
  childhood depression (NICE 2005)

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Attribution retraining (an example)

• Attribution retraining to reduce peer directed
  aggression among 384 male 3rd - 6th grade
  students (Hudley et al. 1998)
• moderate to strong effects for many students
• no effects for some students
• treatment effects generally diminished over time

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Consultative skills

• accessible reasoning
• positive reframing
• (e.g. hostile vs protective parent)
• (in the context of full range of consultant
  skills - Miller 2003)

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Who is most able to help make an improvement?
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Who is most able to help make an improvement?
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Who is most able to help make an improvement?
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Who is most able to help make an improvement?
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Who is most able to help make an improvement?
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Who is most able to help make an improvement?
(Miller Black 2001)
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Home-school tensions (getting uncaught in the
middle)

• Sometimes, before meeting, parents or teachers
  proposed angry confrontations with each other ..
  Sometimes the teacher thought the school social
  worker was siding with the parents, while the
  parents thought the opposite
• Kolvin et al 1981

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References

• Dallos, R. (1991) Family Belief Systems, Therapy
  and Change. Buckingham. Open Univerisy Press.
• Dowling, E. Osborne, E. (1995) The Family and
  the School. A Joint Systems Approach to Problems
  with Children (2nd edition) London. Routledge.
• Department of Education and Science (1989)
  Discipline in Schools (The Elton Report). London
  HMSO.
• Frederickson, N. Miller, A. Cline, T. (2008)
  Educational Psychology (Topics in Advanced
  Psychology). London. Hodder Arnold. (available
  28/3/08)
• Hudley, C., Britsch, B., Wakefield, W. D., Smith,
  T., Demorat, M. Cho, S.-J. (1998) An
  attribution retraining program to reduce
  aggression in elementary school students
  Psychology in the Schools, 35, 3, 271-82
• Miller, A. (2003) Teachers, Parents and Classroom
  Behaviour. A Psychosocial Approach. Milton
  Keynes. Open University Press.
• Miller, A. Leyden, G. (1999) A Coherent
  Framework For The Application Of Psychology In
  Schools. British Educational Research Journal.
  25, 3, 389-400.

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References (contd)

• Miller, A., Ferguson, E. Byrne, I. (2000)
  Pupils Causal Attributions For Difficult
  Classroom Behaviour. British Journal of
  Educational Psychology. 70, 85-96.
• Miller, A Black, L. (2001) Does support for
  home-school behaviour plans exist within teacher
  and pupil cultures? Educational Psychology in
  Practice. 17, 3, 245-62
• Miller, A., Ferguson, E. Moore, E. (2002)
  Parents and Pupils Causal Attributions For
  Difficult Classroom Behaviour . British Journal
  of Educational Psychology.72, 27 - 40
• Porter, L. (2007) Behaviour in Schools. Theory
  and Practice for Teachers. Open University Press.
  
• Woolfolk Hoy, A. Weinstein, C. S. (2006).
  Student and teacher perspectives on classroom
  management. In Evertson, C. M. Weinstein, C. S.
  (Eds.) Handbook of classroom management
  research, practice and contemporary issues.
  London. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
• Also, Learning Behaviour. The Report of The
  Practitioners Group on School Behaviour and
  Discipline (2005). Led by Sir Alan Steer.
  www.teachernet.gov.uk/publications (Search using
  the ref 1950-2005DOC-EN)