It’s 9am. The dawn of a new day. Your lesson has just begun and you’re quietly optimistic that this will go just as you planned. Then a student in the fourth row starts rocking on their chair.

Within a few minutes, the whole thing has escalated. Forget the lesson: you’re now playing a game of behaviour-management chess with a defiant opponent. It’s the latest in a long line of incidents with this young person.

You have to get them over the line academically, but it feels impossible given their current attitude. What’s a teacher to do?

This is a scenario that I’ve quite often been faced with, working in some incredibly challenging schools across the country, both as a teacher and as a deputy head supporting other colleagues.

The approach we should take is simple: look at behaviour through the lens of psychology. What it means to be human is a complex and fascinating thing. We not only have multifaceted, distinguishable personas, but we’re also bound together as a species. I encourage teachers and leaders to see their most difficult students as humans before anything else. If they can appreciate what makes the trickiest characters among them tick, they will also be able to uncover what stands between them and great learning.

Cognitive psychology is revolutionising the way we teach, and I am confident that human psychology has the potential to revolutionise the way we manage behaviour. Here are my top three approaches for managing tricky behaviour at a whole-school level, based on research and some tried-and-tested methods:

1. ‘Let me show you how it’s done’

In the 1960s, Albert Bandura conducted a series of studies known as the Bobo doll experiments, in which groups of children were exposed to adults behaving differently towards a doll. He concluded that children exposed to an adult acting aggressively towards the doll were more likely to elicit aggressive behaviour themselves. These experiments formed the foundation of Bandura’s social learning theory, in which he stated that behaviour is learned through imitation and modelling.

In lessons, we continually model the skills we want our pupils to imitate, but the power of modelling in behaviour management is often overlooked. How we behave as adults - be it during that two-minute conversation with a colleague when they walk in during a lesson or how we interact with others as we stroll down the corridor during a lunch break - can set the tone for our pupils’ behaviour. They very quickly cotton on when a teacher is asking for a certain standard of behaviour and demeanour that they don’t demonstrate themselves. This leads to a “why should I if you don’t?” attitude.

This is why it is so important for us as adults within the school to model empathy, compassion and kindness at all times (even when the daily stresses are testing us). Bandura’s experiments serve as a reminder that children will do as they see. As a leader, it’s very much about modelling this yourself and championing a staff culture in which it is expected that all interactions - be they with pupils or adults - are rooted in mutual respect and understanding.

So, what’s the one thing that should be made a hard and fast rule within the school? That shouting should never be the answer. The implicit message here is clear: the adult has lost control and can’t handle the situation in a calm and measured way. There is a difference between being assertive about your expectations and shouting; as leaders, we need to explore this concept with our teachers.

CPD tailored specifically to managing challenging behaviour can be a great way to encourage staff to hit the pause button and really reflect on how their responses to challenging behaviour can either escalate or de-escalate situations. Equipping our teachers with a toolkit of strategies for given situations will empower them.

2. ‘You aren’t your behaviour’

The link between emotion, thinking and behaviour has long been a contentious issue in psychological research, but it is fairly well established that our thoughts and emotional state influence our behaviour. It is unsurprising, then, that our most challenging pupils are, more often than not, facing challenges of their own.

As a leader, it’s a tricky balance to strike. We very much want to be there to support our teachers in managing challenging behaviour, but we also want to ensure that we don’t undermine our teachers’ ability to handle situations within their own classroom of their own volition.

Again, it’s about establishing a culture in which teachers feel comfortable asking for support with particular pupils, as well as about equipping them with strategies that can work for them. The danger is that the default response is to send the pupil to the principal’s office. We must consider the message received by the student if they are repeatedly being sent out to a different adult, and the weakened position that puts the teacher in when managing that pupil’s behaviour in future.

The best demonstration of managing those with specific behavioural needs I’ve seen came from a principal that I once worked with. He stood in front of staff during a CPD session and shook a Coke bottle.

“That’s having a fight with Mum before school.”

He shook it again.

“And that’s not having any breakfast and being hungry.”

The principal then urged one of us to open the bottle. The point was that before even getting through the school doors, some of our pupils have experienced either small issues that put them in a negative headspace, or more worryingly, larger issues at home over a period of time.

It is crucial that we separate the pupil’s behaviour from the individual: it’s not who they are, it’s symptomatic of circumstances. This is a valuable insight and a great way to encourage candid and open discussion about the challenges teachers face in the classroom.

3. ‘Knowing what’s coming is a comforting feeling’

Understanding challenging behaviour is important, but it must be coupled with something equally important: consistency. Humans are, after all, creatures of habit. Providing pupils with routine and structure meets one of their very basic needs for security and safety (as stated in Maslow’s hierarchy).

They say character is who we are when no one is watching so, as leaders, it’s important for us to give our teachers a clear message about maintaining consistency in the classroom. It should be in service of the pupils and nothing else.

We need to encourage our teachers to embed their approaches, come hell or high water. This is not only necessary to cultivate a positive climate for learning, but also establishes a consistent approach as the norm, making for a happier bunch in general.

This all comes with an important disclaimer: a lot of the suggestions I’ve made are much easier said than done and require a systematic review of behaviour-management systems and support across a school.

It’s always important to consider initiatives from the teachers’ perspective. In the midst of spinning the multiple plates that teaching requires, behaviour management can take its toll on staff. We must be empathetic and compassionate. It takes practice and patience, and is without a doubt a whole-school responsibility.

Shifting from a “What are you going to do about this?” approach to a “What are we going to do about this?” mentality is key.

With the right support and guidance, we can ensure that there is nothing standing in the way of our pupils and the success that they deserve.

Lekha Sharma is a primary teacher and deputy head at a school in South London. She tweets @teacherfeature2

This article originally appeared in the 1 November 2019 issue under the headline “Three simple psychology tips for better behaviour”