In January 2009 the HSA Teacher Workshop, organized by the Engineering Education Research Center, highlighted the need for effective classroom management skills.  The session led by Dr. Janay Sander, entitled “Building Positive Relationships with Students and Improving Classroom Climate to Support and Enhance Academic Achievement,” addressed the functions of behavior in the classroom environment and provided teachers with a new approach for dealing with problematic student behavior.  Dr. Sander is an Assistant Professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Texas whose research interests include juvenile justice systems, intervention with at-risk youth, and classroom management.  In this workshop, she introduced a system of Positive Behavior Support that synthesizes the neurological and psychological explanations of adolescent

behavior in order to help teachers understand and improve their relationship with their students.

The Positive Behavior Support system for classroom management emphasizes the importance of positive teacher-student relationships to academic success.  This system could be implemented school-wide or in individual classrooms, but it requires a more pro-active mindset than traditional, punitive classroom management systems.  It requires that appropriate behavior be taught in the same way that academic disciplines are taught, and to do this, teachers must first understand the motivations that inform common adolescent behaviors.

According to Thorndike’s law of effect: if a behavior results in something desirable, then the behavior will most likely be repeated; if a behavior results in something undesirable, then the behavior will most likely not be repeated.  Dr. Sander related this psychological principle of reinforcement to the motivations of classroom behavior.  For some students, the attention incurred by disruption and even punishment is desirable; therefore, the misbehavior that brings about such attention will be repeated.  Inversely, students with unnoticed social anxiety may repeatedly incur disciplinary action in order to escape other, more undesirable results.  For instance, a student may accept a zero on an assignment if it means not having to present their work in front of the class.  Dr. Sander emphasized the need for teachers to understand the variety of motivations that influence student behavior in order to better understand the ways in which behavior appropriate to the learning environment can be encouraged.

The Positive Behavior Support system provides one way for teachers to attempt to modify the behavior in their classroom and improve their relationship with their students.  In this system, teachers must define expected behaviors, teach these expectations as they would their subject matter, remind students of the expected behavior, reward desired behavior, and correct undesired behavior.  By rewarding desired behavior, teachers use the principle of reinforcement to encourage their students to continue to act according to appropriate expectations. In correcting undesired behavior, teachers must be careful that their consequence is consistent with the goal of learning the correct behavior, and is not simply punitive.  For example, instead of threatening suspension for students who miss too much class, teachers should require that missed classes be made up in detention.  In this case, the punishment reinforces the expected behavior by demonstrating the importance of attendance.

In addition to these psychological explanations of behavior, Dr. Sander also discussed briefly the biological development of the adolescent brain, and the implications of this development for behavior.  For example, the adolescent brain responds to positive experiences differently than the adult brain.  In other words, what adults consider to be a clear motivator may not translate to adolescents.  Also, the ability to consider the consequences of a given action is a skill that the brain does not fully develop until late adolescence. 

Dr. Sander engaged the group in several activities, encouraging teachers to imagine how the Positive Behavior Support system could be applied in their classroom.  Dr. Sander stressed that all behavior has a function and is maintained by specific classroom situations.  By identifying these motivations, teachers can then address the classroom situation that encourages them, modify their class environment, and thereby hope to alter the student behavior.