Bill Rogers: Where we are going wrong on behaviour

This article was originally published on 3 January 2024

Making sure that you call every student to account, regardless of the issues those individuals might be facing, is the cornerstone of good behaviour management.

That’s according to behaviour consultant, university lecturer and author, Bill Rogers.

Teachers need to be leaders of responsible behaviour, he explains, and to consciously craft the language they use in the classroom to that effect. Taking an approach that aims to “appease” students, or to make the teacher “liked”, he adds, simply won’t work.

“You can’t only rely on the goodwill that you bring to these students to address their behaviour,” Rogers says.

Some will disagree with his take on things, but Rogers’ approach has been honed through extensive experience of working in education.

Over several decades - he initially worked as a teacher and then a behaviour consultant for the Victorian Department of Education in Australia, before moving into private consultancy - he has become a go-to name for teachers looking to get to grips with behaviour, via his hugely popular books, including Classroom Behaviour: a practical guide to effective teaching, behaviour management and colleague support, which is now in its fourth edition and has been translated into several languages.

Rogers’ work has taken him to schools around the world, where he team-teaches and coaches staff, as well as lecturing on behaviour management, discipline, effective teaching and teacher welfare.

Bill Rogers on behaviour management

We caught up with him to hear his latest thoughts on behaviour in schools, how it has changed since the pandemic and the pitfalls that he commonly sees in classrooms.

Lots of schools have said that student behaviour has been considerably worse since the Covid pandemic and the long periods of lockdown. Has this been your experience?

I think that’s been somewhat overrated. The pandemic has had an effect on children’s understanding of - and relationship with - school in their normal schooling journey, but I think with the distance we’ve travelled now, we don’t need to keep harping on about that, as if somehow that’s a major block to their ongoing learning.

If we do, we’re reinforcing the worst and effectively saying that these children are now the victims of something that was unfair and difficult and traumatic, which it was. It was traumatic. But I think we’re a long way past that and if we keep returning to it, we’re getting into a form of victimisation, suggesting to these kids that they can’t help behaving in distracting and disruptive ways as learners, and socially, because of Covid.

Children know how school works and what it means to be a learner with 25 others in a classroom, and for most year groups, they knew enough about that pre-Covid for that memory to be rebuilt reasonably quickly. And I do say reasonably quickly, not straight away, but over several months. So to keep returning to it now is only to invest another form of unhelpful and unnecessary victimisation on the child.

What are the main issues you’re seeing at the moment in schools around behaviour?

I think my main concern in addressing behaviour is the rise of an approach to leadership in the classroom that’s more inclined to appease students rather than lead them in their behaviour. I’m coming across a number of younger teachers who find it difficult to appropriately lead for behaviour or even correct for behaviour, although I prefer the word “lead”.

So, if students are chatting or calling out or butting in while the teacher tries to settle the class, they’ll be saying things like, “Guys, come on, please. You know you’re supposed to be listening now, don’t you?” They’re using a more appeasing, questioning approach, instead of using thoughtful, respectful behaviour leadership language to raise students’ awareness of how they are behaving.

Read more on behaviour:

• Why you shouldn’t praise pupils, according to Bill Rogers
• “Why shouldn’t there be issues with behaviour?”
• Watch: Bill Rogers’ behaviour strategies

For example, if a couple of students are chatting while one of my colleagues or I am trying to settle a class, we would say, “Some of you are still chatting over here,” and then make eye contact.

Said respectfully and with appropriate confidence this raises the “behaviour awareness” of the students. Then we follow with a behaviour direction: “You need to be facing this way and listening, without chatting. Thanks.”

We finish with a brief “thank you”, rather than a “please”, because we’re not making a request. 

Of course, this relies on the teacher having already established sensible, age-appropriate classroom routines and rules, based on core rights and responsibilities: the right to a safe environment at school; the right to be treated, fairly and respectfully; and the right to learn without undue distraction or disruption.

What do you think is happening that’s leading some teachers to take less helpful approaches to behaviour?

Some of the emphasis I’m seeing with younger teachers is that they want to be accepted and liked, rather than leading for behaviour and learning. They start with wanting to have a positive relationship with students, which is an important aim, but we build that through the quality of our teacher leadership and the quality of our teaching, both of which are professional obligations. 

I’m very conscious of young teachers not taking the time to think about crafting their language for behaviour leadership, whether it’s settling a class down or dealing with acting up. This kind of diffident connectedness with the students is based in, I think, a misunderstanding of how we ought to relate to young people as the teacher leader. We are the adult in the room, who is responsible for the learning opportunities of our students.

I won’t even say “good morning” to the class until they’ve settled down. Some teachers go into quite raucous classrooms and start by raising their voice, not in a nasty way but in an almost pleading way. It will not be helpful to say “good morning” to a class until they’ve returned to the teacher the respectful calmness they’re seeking to communicate to them. And only when the class has settled should the teacher say, “Thank you everyone, you’re settled now. Good morning. Let’s start.”

What would you say to teachers who find themselves in that mode with their students?

We need to craft our behaviour leadership language as carefully and thoughtfully as we would any other aspect of our teaching. 

My colleagues and I do a lot of work with beginning teachers, and sometimes even more experienced teachers, to think about that language of behaviour leadership and what it seeks to do. The primary aim is to raise students’ behaviour awareness and then cue them to own their behaviour.

For example, when we use behaviour leadership language, we avoid unnecessary use of “don’t” or “why”. We wouldn’t say “why are you calling out?” or “why are you talking when I’m trying to teach?” because we are not looking for reasons why a student is being distracting, at this point. 

We’re also not trying to be overly negative by saying things like “don’t call out”, and “don’t swing on your chair”, as this only tells students what we don’t want them to do.

Instead, by giving cues that raise awareness, followed by directional and reminder cues, we are more likely to get students to take ownership of their behaviour. 

We need to be conscious about crafting behaviour leadership language so that when we’re under pressure, we’re not left merely to goodwill. By crafting our language, we will be more able to lead for behaviour and get back to the core business of teaching and learning.

And when incidents do occur, what’s your approach to restorative behaviour conversations?

We do a lot of work on following up with students one-to-one and working through a restorative conversation. But that doesn’t mean restorative conversations at the cost of not calling the student to account for their behaviour. A restorative conversation is not a restorative conversation if it does not acknowledge what the student has been doing that’s distracting, disruptive or worse. It needs to lead them to be aware of the impact of their behaviour and of the possibility of a restorative outcome.

Again, we do a lot of work on crafting our language so that those restorative conversations meet our responsibility to call the student to account - for example, when they were being highly distracting in the classroom - and working with them to call them back from that to their responsibility, with our support. Our role is not to hold grudges with our students but to work with them so that next time we’re in the classroom, they’ll be aware of their behaviour, and always aware of our support.

Where students are having difficulties outside of the classroom that may be having an impact on their behaviour, how should teachers respond?

In most schools in Britain, Australia and America, the statistics range from about 5 to 10 per cent of students designated as “at-risk”, in terms of behaviour that is significantly affecting their learning and social relationships. That may arise from family trauma; some of those children go back to deeply disturbing family situations and school is the one safe and secure place in their lives, thank goodness.

School is one of the key places in any community. It’s not just a school; for some students, it’s a place where they can come and feel safe, have sane adults around them and feel emotionally and psychologically secure. Schools need to work to support at-risk students who have trauma, or have been diagnosed with behaviour disorders or have emotional issues that are related to those complex issues, or to neurodiversity. The question is, how do we support them in a way that doesn’t deny the need to still call them to account for their behaviour?

“We have to address the behaviour, no matter how difficult the situation is at home”

If you’re working with a young person who is in an asylum seeker situation, for example, who has possibly been in unimaginable situations, when they behave in a way that is highly disruptive or aggressive in the classroom or the playground, how do we deal with that student with an awareness of their causative pathology, yet still call them to account for their behaviour? Because ultimately, we have to address the behaviour, no matter how difficult the situation is at home.

The worst thing you can do for at-risk children is to revictimise them when they come to school. If we effectively say, “You can’t really help your behaviour, son. Your father’s an excuse for a man, your mother’s coping on medication and alcohol, there’s no nutritious food in the family home and there’s lots of screaming and shouting and guilt trips, so we can’t help you behave yourself; we can’t help you to be literate, numerate, socially engaged, and socially aware,” we’re not helping that student at all. So we need to work with the student at school to “devictimise” them and build their hopeful life chances.

The least helpful teachers are the ones who try to overprotect these children, even well-meaningly, by not giving them clear direction about their behaviour, as well as crucial affirmation and encouragement.

What do you say to those who would challenge that approach?

There are lots of people outside of our profession - like some academics and social commentators - who are unreflectively critical of schools in the way they work with children with trauma backgrounds, but the best research that I’ve read, and the best practice I’ve seen in schools who work with children with trauma, shows that we are are able to support these pupils with all sorts of programmes within the school and build links with people outside of school in terms of psychological and professional counselling (although I appreciate that support is thin on the ground) while at the same time still calling them to account for their behaviour and enabling appropriate behaviour support at school.

And that applies even to autistic children, or those with other special educational needs. Because it is a teacher - not a psychologist, or an academic, or a social commentator - who has to deal with that student’s behaviour in the public domain of a classroom of 25 or so students. And they can’t teach every child if there are four or five children disrupting the class.

If you imagine 25 children in the classroom and you’ve got a child running around, mainly for attention, notwithstanding a diagnosed or symptomatic behaviour disorder, you can’t treat him uniquely  at that point. You have to deal with his behaviour. That is the point. No matter how difficult the home life is, once he comes to school, and his behaviour is significantly affecting the rights of others, we can’t treat him uniquely; we can’t start a counselling session in the classroom. We can do those things outside of class, however, and we should do. But we’re also going to teach him how to behave in the school setting.

The best work being done in the literature - by good people, who are on the ground doing research - is helping children through programmes that teach them to be behaviourally aware and socially aware in relation to their behaviour, and teaching them how to behave through modelling and rehearsing the behaviours in a one-to-one context. The teacher, or a teaching assistant or a Sendco, will work with the child on a guided programme to teach them the academic and social behaviour skills they need back in the classroom.

The emphasis here is not primarily on a counselling model (although this approach supports that), but an educational model: teaching the student how to take charge of his behaviour, both cognitively and emotionally so that when he’s back in the classroom, there’s a much higher likelihood that he will be a more consciously aware learner, even on a restricted timetable or in a slightly different class structure. The student is also more aware of how his behaviour is affecting others.

The best practice builds on this, within a whole-school approach to behaviour leadership and 
buttressed by significant colleague support. And that’s the best work I’m seeing in schools.

A lot of these commentators just have no idea what it’s like in a classroom. They make ill-informed comments about schools and, unfortunately, some make comments about teachers that are so significantly far from the reality of what they have to face, day after day, that their commentary becomes almost ludicrous.

Bill Rogers works regularly in the United Kingdom each year. He was talking to Zofia Niemtus, who is a freelance writer