Teach behaviour

Hey 👋

Excited good to be back in your inbox. Hope term is going smoothly. To make it even silkier, let’s crack open a new series on securing effective behaviour…

Big idea 🍉

Student behaviour is a big deal. When behaviour is strong in school, students feel safe and can devote more attention to learning. When it’s not, school can be a painful experience for both students and staff. Excellent behaviour is a pre-condition for success.

However, excellent behaviour is not always the status quo across our system. A recent report by the DfE found that, on average, around a quarter of learning time is lost to poor behaviour. That’s over 44 days a year 😱

Part of the reason this is so high is that we tend to assume that behaviour for success is naturally occurring phenomena. But it’s really not. What constitutes behaviour for success is rarely obvious to children. And even when it is, it’s not always easy to enact, especially in a sustained way. Hey, even us adults sometimes struggle to behave in ways that are beneficial for us.

This un-obviousness and hard-to-enact-ness means that: when we leave behaviour in the hands of our students, it’s those at the greatest disadvantage who are the ones that lose out the most.

Helping students achieve behaviour for success isn’t just good for safety and learning, it’s critical for equity too.

How can we help students develop behaviour for success?

First up, just communicating expectations is rarely sufficient. Like any type of complex cognitive performance (such as in sport or music), behaviour must be taught, not just told. The effective teaching of behaviour entails:

1. Explaining what to do and why it’s important

2. Modelling what it looks like (and what it doesn’t)

3. Providing opportunities for practice

4. Maintaining via never-ending celebration & correction

🎓 For more, check out this meaty guide on teaching behaviour for success, and these highly practical books from Tom Bennett and Ollie Lovell.

Summary

• Student behaviour for success is vital for learning, safety and equity.

• However, it’s not a naturally occurring phenomenon—behaviour for success in school must be taught, not just told.

• This entails explanation, modelling, practice, and maintenance.

Little updates 🥕

• Review of dyslexia knowledge & practice → finds substantial variation in assessment methods and misconceptions (even by professionals)

• Study exploring the pairing of retrieval practice & elaboration → suggests this combo improves student comprehension and metacognitive accuracy (more than retrieval alone)

• Working paper exploring the effect of ‘drop-ins’ (unannounced observations on teachers) → finds they improve teaching, behaviour, and student outcomes ✨

• Plus free TLAC + Steplab joint ‘teaching clip analysis’ webinar with Doug Lemov, Claire Hill, Josh Goodrich & moi on 14th Sep @16:00 London time → Summary thread & register here

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