Teacher presence, the key to excellent pupil behaviour and attitudes to learning!

With student behaviour high on the government and many schools priority list it’s important that as leaders and teachers we understand the impact different factors make on the behaviour of children in our classrooms. It’s not rocket science that stimulating lessons, clear boundaries and mutual respect will improve attitudes to learning and therefore improve behaviour for learning. It’s important that as leaders we give teachers the opportunities to reflect on their relationships with the class and individual pupils and how this might affect how they engage with school.

A simple activity that you can complete is to plot your approach to teaching and how you present yourself in the classroom on the matrix below and ask the class teachers to do the same...

Where do you fit on this matrix and where would you like to be?

One thing is clear, leaning too much in any direction on the matrix will hinder progress but where is the best place to be?

It’s important to start by understanding what each term means and how these traits will impact on teaching and learning…

Dominant
• You have a strong sense of purpose in pursuing clear goals for learning and behaviour
• As a leader you tend to guide and control
• You will discipline without apology
• You need full control to feel comfortable and productive

Submissive
• Lack of clarity of purpose
• Keeps a low profile within the classroom and extended learning
• Tendency to submit to the will of the class or individuals
• Entirely unassertive and can be apologetic

Cooperative
• Great concern for the needs and opinions of students and colleagues
• Helpful, friendly, approachable
• Avoids strife and seeks consensus

Preventative
• Treats students as the enemy
• Expresses anger and irritation, can be sarcastic
• Need to ‘win’ if there is a disagreement between teacher and students

So now you understand in more detail these aspects, where do you fit on the matrix? Where do you think your staff fit and do they agree with you? Educators and leaders need to access elements of all these traits at times but the best place for a teacher to be is...

The best teacher find themselves in an optimum balance between dominance and cooperative. The next phase of this reflection is to understand that if you’re not sitting in the optimum zone how can you develop your dominance and cooperative skill sets?

Some ideas to develop your dominance (and leadership) might include, creating clear rules and boundaries for the students and adults, ‘selling’ learning through effective and persuasive justification of learning outcomes and processes, setting rules and objectives with student ‘buy-in’ and being highly organised with learning and day to day organisation.

Some ideas to develop your cooperative aspect might include, dealing with concerns, issues and behaviour in your direct control through a positive and fair approach, negotiating clear rules and boundaries with students, being patient and understanding and removing your emotion from a simulation in order to make rational decisions.

Through coaching and reflection this simple matrix could improve behaviour and attitudes to learning within the classroom. Sometimes teachers need to reflect on their own behaviour before pointing the finger at the children… we have all experienced the same class or individual respond well and make great progress with one teacher and not with another!

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