7/5/2009
HELPING STUDENTS DEVELOP NEW BEHAVIOURAL
CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT
EST 213
(LECTURE 23)
SELF MANAGEMENT
 The approach that is most beneficial in helping
students change their behaviour is one that
provides the greatest amount of student
involvement, enhances students’ dignity, and helps
students to develop new skills that can be
transferred to other settings
 The behaviouristic strategies that best fulfill these
criteria involve students in monitoring their own
behaviour. In addition to the problem solving
strategies discussed earlier there are three basic
approaches to helping students monitor and control
behaviour.
SELF MONITORING
 Students have a basic need to be viewed positively
and to demonstrate their competence and power by
controlling their own behaviour. Often, however,
students are not aware of the extent of their
unproductive behaviour.
 Self-monitoring involves assisting a student or
group of students in establishing a system for
monitoring and recording their own behaviours and
is reported as effective for changing a wide range of
specific unproductive behaviours with a diverse
population of students.
SKILLS
 Earlier sessions presented you with a wide range of
interventions you might use to create a positive,
successful experience for a student who
demonstrates behaviour problems.
 This session will present several specific methods
for helping students become more aware of their
behaviours and replacing irresponsible,
unproductive behaviours with behaviours more
likely to facilitate their learning and be accepted by
educators and peers.
 The first method is to help them count and record
their own behaviour.
 A second approach is to teach students new social
skills for meeting their needs.
 The third approach involves working with students
to develop some form of agreement or contract to
help motivate them to use skills that are in their
repertoire but which they are finding difficult to use.
This section presents specific procedures for
implementing these three strategies.
 Procedure: - When instructing students in counting
their own behaviour, the first step is to ensure that
the students can accurately describe the behaviour.
Teach the skill by asking them to demonstrate the
desirable and undesirable behaviours.
 The second step is to develop a method for tallying
the data. Especially when working with young
children, it is helpful to start with visual displays of
the behaviour being counted. A countoon can
serve this purpose.
1

 A countoon can include a picture of the behaviour
being tallied and a place for the student to mark a
tally each time the behaviour occurs (eg: Fig 10.1
for younger students and Fig 10.2 for older
students).
 The third step involves implementing the self-
monitoring. Selecting a short period of time is
suggested.
 Read through:
Case Study: Junior High
(P353 -354)
 The basic procedure involves teaching students to
use silent statements to control their behaviour
more effectively.
 Eg: “I can do this if I slow down and relax. What I
have to do is first add the two numbers on the right
…” Similarly a student who becomes aggressive
when losing a game can be taught to say, “Okay, I
didn’t win this time, but that’s alright. The other
students will like me better if I give the ball back
and go to the end of the line.”
IMPLEMENTING A SOCIAL SKILLS LESSON
 The first step in implementing a social skills lesson is to
determine what skills the student(s) need to develop.
This is best determined by completing a functional
assessment.
 Eg: A student who becomes angry and hits others when
rejected at joining a game may be lacking skills in how
to ask to be involved in the game or how to play the
game in a way that does not alienate the peers.
7/5/2009
SELF-INSTRUCTION
 Although self-monitoring can provide excellent
results by itself, it is often combined with strategies
such as self-instruction, self-evaluation, and self-
reinforcement.
 Students who act out in a school setting are often
characterized by their inability to express or control
their emotions productively.
 One approach to helping students involve teaching
them to give themselves verbal instructions that cue
them to behave more appropriately when
confronted with frustration and stress.
SOCIAL SKILLS TRAINING
 Any student who has persistent or serious
behaviour problems (including non aggressive
behaviours such as infrequent contact with peers
and infrequent participation in class discussions) is
demonstrating a lack of certain social skills.
 Similarly, a student who fails to obey reasonable
adult requests may lack skills in accepting
corrections or directions.
 It is not possible to use social skills training to
change a student’s bad attitude. The student may,
however, be taught more positive and productive
methods for responding to corrections from adults.
2
 7/5/2009

DEVELOPING CONTRACTS
 A behaviour contract is an agreement between two
or more parties that indicates the manner in which
one or more of the parties will behave in a given
situation.
 Behaviour contracts frequently indicate the specific
reinforcement or punishment associated with
performing or failing to perform the behaviours
listed in the contract.

 Behaviour contracts provide a specific, often  Therefore, behaviour contracting is a more

written, agreement designating the exact structured intervention than either problem solving
behaviour(s) each individual will emit. or self-management.

ACTIVITY:

 Think of a student who appears to lack skill in one or

more social skills such as accepting critical feedback,
following directions, or responding to comments from
peers.

 Read through:
Case Study: A Contract with a High-school Band class

 Required Readings:
Jones & Jones (1998) chapter 10