The behaviourist in the classroom

Concerns about pupil behaviour have existed as long as schools have had pupils. Socrates no less, complained about unruly students who 'show disrespect for elders and love chatter…' For generations teachers relied on every increasing punitive punishment; the use of the ruler, cane and taws was not only commonplace, but an essential part of every teachers' armoury until it was finally banned in British schools as late as July 1986. Teachers' reliance on punishment as a method of control didn't end with the abolition of the cane - an increased use of detentions, exclusions, and vicious verbal reprimands are in daily use in classrooms today.

I had the privilege of working with Professor Alex Harrop who was one of the pioneers of the uses of behavioural techniques in British schools. Alex said it was a book by psychologist B F Skinner that inspired him. That book, The Technology of Teaching (1968) bemoaned the use of aversive control used by teachers and pointed out the relative infrequency of their use of rewards as key. It heralded the adoption of systematic observational techniques in classrooms and the use of what was then called behaviour modification to improve children's learning and behaviour through reward.

Probably the first published account of the use of behavioural approaches in British schools was a paper by Jim Ward, (Ward, 1971). Jim ran the Educational Psychology (EP) training course in Manchester at the time and trained a whole cohort of EPs to use such approaches, including one Eddie McNamara. Alex, who was then Head of Psychology at C.F.Mott, a teacher training college in Liverpool, worked with Eddie and a friend and colleague Colin Critchley who was then Principal Educational Psychologist for Liverpool, to set up a series of workshops to train classroom teachers in the area, in the use of what was called 'Behaviour Modification interventions' in their classrooms, see Harrop and Critchley (1972) and Harrop and McNamara (1979).

Eddie in particular, was keen to examine a number of different approaches including the use of pupil self-recording to change the behaviour of secondary pupils, and of a token economy system in which the whole class is rewarded for good behaviour, McNamara (1978) and McNamara and Moore (1978). An account of this work is recorded in the widely-read book Behaviour Modification in the Classroom (Harrop, 1983).

Teacher praise

Slightly later, a group of educational psychologists from Birmingham University lead by Frank Merret and Kevin Wheldall produced a series of studies of interventions in mainstream classrooms using behavioural techniques, Merret and Wheldall (1978). Much of their work seemed to have been inspired by a classic American study by Madsen, Becker and Thomas (1968), entitled 'Rules praise and ignoring…' which demonstrated that a set of simple classroom rules reinforced by teacher praise seemed to improve pupil behaviour no end.  Wheldall and Merret (1988) used their research to devise a training package for use in schools called 'BATPACK', which consisted of six one-hour training sessions. Evaluations of the package were shown to be very effective in improving pupil behaviour. They also trained Educational Psychologists across the country to use the package in their own schools.

This did not always go down well with everyone. In Liverpool the local paper the Liverpool Echo got wind that the local EPs where about to use 'BATPACK'. It ran a headline which read: 'Local Psychologists to train teachers to combat disruptive pupils'. The following day the EPs were told by their Chief Education Officer not to use the resource they had just purchased. The following day the Echo reported that, 'Education Chief says there's no need for training as all Liverpool pupils are well behaved'. It must have been the only city in the country where this was the case!

Elsewhere there was growing political pressure on governments to be seen to do something to improve behaviour in schools. So it was in 1988 the government of the day set up the Elton Committee to examine 'Discipline in Schools' (1989). The Elton Committee received evidence from a wide variety of sources, including Frank Merret and Kevin Wheldall and also from an Australian behavioural expert, Bill Rodgers. It made a series of recommendations for schools, including the suggestion that all schools have a written Discipline Policy, that included published classroom rules and that teachers placed a heavy emphasis on rewarding children rather than relying on sanctions to maintain classroom order.

Hierarchy of sanctions

Schools across the country responded in a positive fashion, probably in the knowledge that their next Ofsted inspection would examine the extent that they had followed the 'Elton' guidelines. Advice to schools came from a number of sources including a series of books by Rodgers, i.e. You know the fair Rule (1998), advice and training from their local Educational Psychology service, and an American programme called Assertive Discipline, Canter and Canter (1992).

Assertive Discipline received a very good review in the Times Educational Supplement but was heavily criticised by others on two grounds, see, Robinson and Mains (1995). Firstly they claimed that there was no evidence at that time of its effectiveness, and secondly that it contained advice on ways to sanction those children who misbehaved in class. The advice given was to use what was called a hierarchy of sanctions, so that the first time a child misbehaved their name was written on the board, if they misbehaved again a tick was placed beside the name indicating five minutes loss of play. Repeated infringements led to ten minutes loss of play and then referral to head teacher and parents being contacted.

However, no sooner than had the Robinson and Mains article appeared then evidence from two different sources, Swinson and Melling (1995), two educational psychologists from Liverpool, and Nichols and Houghton (1995) from Australia that demonstrated that in classrooms where the techniques of positive feedback to children advocated in the Assertive Discipline package were being used, the behaviour of all the children improved. Closer examination of the evidence showed that where children's good behaviour was being reinforced there was hardly any disruption and therefore no need to use the much maligned hierarchy of sanctions.

Advice to teachers

In Liverpool, my colleague Richard Melling and I, together with colleagues from the Educational Psychology Service managed to take the training into over 70 schools. This came to the attention of the in-coming Labour Government who advocated the use of the approach in the White Paper of 1997, Excellence in Education, page 45. Thus, an essentially behaviourist strategy based primarily on providing pupils with positive feedback for following a set of very simple classroom rules had the encouragement and endorsement of the new Government. Richard and I realised that much of the Assertive Discipline training appeared redundant including use of token economies and the hierarchy of sanctions which were hardly being used, in classrooms where the principle of providing positive feedback to pupils was being applied. In its simplest form Richard reduced the advice to teachers to five simple statements:-

1. Create a set of simple to follow positive Classroom rules, (maximum 5)
2. Always make your instructions and directions to the class absolutely clear
3. Follow any instructions or directions to the class by looking for those pupils who are doing as they have been asked and acknowledging them.
4. Frequently acknowledge or praise those pupils when they are doing whatever they have been asked to do.
5. Always know exactly what to do to deal with inappropriate behaviour.

This became the basis of a short training programme which could be delivered to schools in either a two one-hour sessions for a primary school or half a day's training for a secondary school. This was in contrast to the six hours of training of BATPACK or Assertive Discipline and therefore we argued was more likely to be adopted by schools.

The simple advice formed the core of the training provided to a series of schools in Merseyside and Manchester; see Swinson and Harrop (2005). This study produced similar results to all previous studies; in classrooms where positive feedback was given for pupils working well, pupil behaviour was good, disruptive incidents were rare and therefore use of any sanctions was almost non-existent. Incidentally, although we advised teachers to praise pupils for good behaviour as well as good work they found this very difficult, a finding that appears to be consistent over time, see White (1975), Harrop and Swinson (2000) and Apter, Arnold and Swinson (2010).

Government experts

This advice seems to have lasted the test of time. What is striking is that various governments, over the subsequent 25 years, have not attempted to change or indeed modify this basic advice. Successive governments when faced with public concern over behaviour in schools have chosen to call on nominated experts. In 2006, the Labour administration appointed Sir Alan Steer, (Steer 2006) as their 'School Behavioural Tsar'. Later Charlie Taylor was appointed 'Government Expert Advisor on behaviour in schools' in 2010. He produced a 'check list' for schools and guidance on behaviour policy, (Taylor 2011). In 2015 Tom Bennet was given a similar post (Bennet, 2017). As recently as 2019, advice from the Education Endowment Foundation, Moore et al (2019) was notable in that it reprinted Charlie Taylor's advice of ten years previously. It would seem therefore that nothing has really changed. The durability of this approach is not surprising in that there is an incredibly strong evidence base for the success of such approaches, for example Swinson and Harrop (2012) and Humphry (2016). While schools across the country all have their own policy and practice, the basic principles of positive based response to good behaviour seems enduring.

The advice contained in Skinner's original book of 1968 and in Madsen et al work of the same year remains pertinent today. It may have been modified and adapted by a series of British psychologists from Jim Ward, Alex Harrop, Eddie McNamara, Colin Critchley in the 1970s and more recently by Frank Merret, Kevin Wheldall, Richard Melling and myself, but our advice for teachers remains the same; in any class create a set of simple to follow rules, make sure you frequently praise pupils who are following rules and working appropriately. If you manage to do this effectively there should be few occasions when you might need to admonish pupils, but if you do, mild sanctions appear to be just as effective as more severe ones.

This is not rocket science, but it does work.

Jeremy Swinson is an Independent Educational Psychologist in Liverpool

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Eddie McNamara and Colin Critchley telling me about the early days of behaviourist approaches in the early 1970s.

Key Sources

Harrop A., (1983) Behaviour Modification in the Classroom, Hodder and Stoughton. London

Madsen C. Becker W and Thomas D (1968) Rules praise nad ignoring: elements of elementary classroom control. Journal of Applied Behavioural Analysis, 1,139-50

Merret F and Wheldal K (1978) playing the game: a behavioural approach to classroom management in a junior school. Educational Review, 1,1, 13-38.

Skinner B F (1968) The Technology of Teaching. New York: Appleton Century-Croft

Swinson J and Harrop A (2012) Positive Psychology for Teachers. London Routledge

White M (1975) natural rates of teacher approval and disapproval in the classroom. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis 8. 367-72