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Social media: Why algorithms show violence to boys - BBC News

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Social media: Why algorithms show violence to boys - BBC News

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Social media: Why algorithms show violence to boys

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An insider tells the BBC why teenage boys are being targeted with extreme content.

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Bill Rogers: How teachers should lead for good behaviour | Tes

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Bill Rogers: How teachers should lead for good behaviour | Tes

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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:
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.

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Bill Rogers: Where we are going wrong on behaviour

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Rather than trying to be liked and accepted, teachers need to call every student to account, and craft their language to lead for better behaviour, says Bill Rogers

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Once more: this is disastrous policy, guaranteed to make children’s lives miserable. Only people who will never be affected by this policy could invent something so unsuitable and cruel. 

School bullies shouldn't be punished, says Fife Council https://t.co/iHcrCFtlfL

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School bullies shouldn't be punished, says Fife Council

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"Such an approach may, understandably, be challenged by those who believe that children who bully should experience only negative…

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Once more: this is disastrous policy, guaranteed to make children’s lives miserable. Only people who will never be affected by this policy could invent something so unsuitable and cruel. 

School bullies shouldn't be punished, says Fife Council https://t.co/iHcrCFtlfL

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Once more: this is disastrous policy, guaranteed to make children’s lives miserable. Only people who will never be affected by this policy could invent something so unsuitable and cruel.

School bullies shouldn't be punished, says Fife Council https://t.co/iHcrCFtlfL
— Tom Bennett OBE (@tombennett71) November 27, 2023

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School bullies shouldn't be punished, says Fife Council

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"Such an approach may, understandably, be challenged by those who believe that children who bully should experience only negative…

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Once more: this is disastrous policy, guaranteed to make children’s lives miserable. Only people who will never be affected by this policy could invent something so unsuitable and cruel. 

School bullies shouldn't be punished, says Fife Council https://t.co/iHcrCFtlfL

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
Once more: this is disastrous policy, guaranteed to make children’s lives miserable. Only people who will never be affected by this policy could invent something so unsuitable and cruel. 

School bullies shouldn't be punished, says Fife Council https://t.co/iHcrCFtlfL

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
Once more: this is disastrous policy, guaranteed to make children’s lives miserable. Only people who will never be affected by this policy could invent something so unsuitable and cruel. 

School bullies shouldn't be punished, says Fife Council https://t.co/iHcrCFtlfL

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.entities.urls[].title
School bullies shouldn't be punished, says Fife Council

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.entities.urls[].description
"Such an approach may, understandably, be challenged by those who believe that children who bully should experience only negative…

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The trainee teacher behavioural toolkit: a summary - GOV.UK

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The trainee teacher behavioural toolkit: a summary - GOV.UK

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The trainee teacher behavioural toolkit: a summary

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In 2016, in response to the Carter Review of Initial Teacher Training, a review of the behaviour management component of teacher induction was commissioned by the then Secretary of State for Education, Nicky Morgan. Subsequently, another report was commissioned to locate the features of successful s…

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California students can no longer be suspended for ‘willful defiance’. Could nationwide change be next? | Race in education | The Guardian

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California students can no longer be suspended for ‘willful defiance’. Could nationwide change be next? | Race in education | The Guardian

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More than a decade ago, when he was a teacher and school counselor, Amir Whitaker was called into a Los Angeles classroom to support a student in a disciplinary situation. A Black girl had been humming in one of his white colleague's classes. His fellow teacher, Whitaker said, had asked the student to stop humming to no avail.

Eventually, the student was recommended for suspension for "defiance" - a broad, subjective category that, under the California education code, meant a student "disrupted school activities or otherwise willfully defied the valid authority" of teachers, administrators and other school officials. Whitaker later learned the girl hummed to regulate her ADHD.

Years later, in 2021, Whitaker found himself in a similar situation. He had since become the senior policy counsel for the ACLU of Southern California, and was asked by a Black family to intervene at a different school where their young relative had been disciplined for drumming at his desk. "The [school's] initial response was still punitive," Whitaker said. "With some conversations, we were able to redirect." By then, Whitaker could point to examples that showed officials didn't need to resort to punishment when a student's behavior appeared disruptive: several California districts, including Los Angeles Unified, had banned willful defiance suspensions. The school, he said, had a social worker who could talk to and support the student, who, in the end, avoided suspension.

At least 25 states and the District of Columbia allow schools to suspend students for "willful defiance", according to the LawAtlas Project's Policy Surveillance Portal. This week, California became the first state in the US to ban such suspensions for all students, expanding a pre-existing ban on the disciplinary practice for students in grades kindergarten through eighth grade.The new law, signed by the governor, Gavin Newsom, last Sunday, could represent a model for how other states approach reforming disciplinary practices, which disproportionately affect Black and Latino students, as well as those with disabilities and those from low-income backgrounds.

Black students accounted for 14% of willful defiance suspensions by the end of the 2021-22 school year, even as they made up just 5% of students across the state, according to data from the California department of education. Latino students, who account for 55% of students in California, received 57% of willful defiance suspensions. Latino boys, in particular, who make up 29% of students, accounted for 43% of defiance suspensions.

Rachel Perera, a fellow at the Brookings Institution's Brown Center on Education Policy, said California's decision to ban defiance suspensions is an acknowledgement that the criteria for these kinds of suspensions is overly broad. The more discretion educators have, she added, the more likely implicit and explicit bias will influence how they punish students, leading to disparate treatment of Black and Latino kids.

The more discretion educators have, the more likely implicit and explicit bias will influence how they punish students. Photograph: Blend Images/Alamy

Perera noted that before the pandemic, a growing movement among states was already moving away from suspensions as a disciplinary practice. Research shows that suspensions don't improve the climate inside the classroom and instead hurt children, who lose critical instruction time. She said that suspension bans are effective toward reducing discipline disparities in schools when they are paired with support resources, such as counseling that allows for mediated conversations to get at the root causes of so-called misbehavior.

A decade before Newsom's ban of willful defiance suspensions, Los Angeles Unified had eliminated the practice for all students. The district had also incorporated behavioral support. Researchers at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education found that six years after such suspensions ended, the racial disparities reduced. Black students were still punished at higher rates, but the gap in suspensions between white and Black students narrowed. Latino students were suspended at similar rates to white and Asian students.

The combination of reforms and alternatives to discipline has worked beyond California. In Chicago, after the district limited suspension use and invested in a restorative justice program, researchers found that schools that had alternatives to suspension showed an 18% decline in out-of-school suspensions over the course of a decade. Black boys in particular saw a rise in both school attendance and math scores.

"It's a two-part solution," Whitaker of the ACLU of Southern California said. "It's taking away the ability to remove students for trivial reasons. And the second is increasing the amount of support: restorative justice, more counselors, more school psychologists and school social workers who can actually redirect the behavior and meet the needs of the student."

It's a two-part solution: taking away the ability to remove students for trivial reasons, and increasing support

Amir Whitaker

An entrenched ideology of zero tolerance for misbehavior still exists among teachers and administrators, even as the research suggests such logic is harmful. That makes it difficult to predict whether California's latest ban will be an influence or an outlier for the rest of the country. In some parts of the country, such as Missouri and Mississippi, harsh disciplinary practices, including corporal punishment, persist. The Brookings Institution found that three-quarters of US schools still allow educators to punish students for "defiance".

The pandemic has complicated the pursuit of school discipline reform. A rise in misbehavior cases as students returned to school after the quarantine period prompted at least eight states, such as Nevada, Kentucky and North Carolina, to consider harsher punishment practices. In February, a federal appeals court ruled that laws in South Carolina that allow elementary, middle and high school students to be criminally charged for cursing and other acts of disorderly conduct were "unconstitutionally vague" and gave "unbridled discretion" to enforcers. The opinion noted that between 2015 and 2020, law enforcement charged Black kids with disorderly conduct at seven times the rate of white kids.

Perera says that those beliefs - that punishment will curtail misbehavior and keep students in order - are hard to change: "That doesn't mean we don't try. But I think it's going to be a longer road towards reforming school discipline in some places."

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California students can no longer be suspended for 'willful defiance'. Could nationwide change be next?

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Governor Gavin Newsom banned the punishments that disproportionately harm Black, Latino, disabled and low-income students

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Reporting abuse on social media platform TikTok

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Reporting abuse on social media platform TikTok

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Reporting abuse on social media platform TikTok

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TikTok has issued new guidance explaining the best way to report any abuse that teachers or leaders are subjected to on its platform. New guidance: a message from TikTok We are aware that students have been using TikTok to create false accounts and post inappropriate content that seeks to cause ha…

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The Guardian view on biometric technology in schools: watch closely | Editorial | The Guardian

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The Guardian view on biometric technology in schools: watch closely | Editorial | The Guardian

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he news that schools in North Ayrshire in Scotland have introduced facial recognition technology to support payments in their canteens prompts many questions. The company behind the scheme, CRB Cunninghams, says valuable time will be saved by speeding up the process whereby children queue up and pay. North Ayrshire council says that 97% of children or their parents have given their consent. Alternative ways to buy food will be provided for the rest.

But this deal between a local authority and a technology company, whose stated aim is to remove cash from UK schools, is not the no-brainer that its backers present it as. Facial recognition technology is still relatively new. Its various forms and applications are unfamiliar to most people and their use remains controversial. The Scottish meal payment system is said to differ from "live" facial recognition software, where computers scan through crowds to match faces. Encrypted templates of the children's faces will be stored on the schools' servers. But privacy campaigners and others are rightly concerned about the decision to make facial scanning a part of children's daily routines.

The use of biometric fingerprints has been widespread in UK school canteens for years. Time pressures aside, it is easy to see why headteachers and other managers were keen to move away from cash, which has come to seem messy and labour-intensive in our electronic age. But just because pupils and their families have become accustomed to the use of some biometric data, it does not follow that these systems should be extended. Nor does the idea that facial recognition is a more Covid-secure technology than fingerprinting, as has been suggested with regard to North Ayrshire, provide sufficient justification for the decisions that have been taken. On the contrary, the deal with CRB Cunninghams should be seen as a significant step towards the normalisation of the use of facial recognition technology by public authorities.

What people think about this, and similar developments, depends on the importance that they place on privacy and personal data, and the extent to which they trust technology companies to handle them. There is no question that companies are eager to test out new capabilities, and work out how to make money out of them. In several countries, the use of such technology has been found to be illegal. Last year, the court of appeal ruled that the use of facial recognition technology by police in Wales breached privacy and equality laws. In the US and Sweden, schools have been stopped from using it to monitor attendance or security.

Typically, the buyers and sellers of these systems present them as useful tools and nothing more. But as Prof Kate Crawford, the author of a recent book about AI, and other critics have pointed out, the companies at this point are running ahead of democratic debate and decision-making. The challenges of how to regulate and secure consent for the kinds of information gathering that digital technology makes possible are a long way from being answered. And while this is the case it is ethically dubious, to put it mildly, to use children as guinea pigs.

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The Guardian view on biometric technology in schools: watch closely | Editorial

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he news that schools in North Ayrshire in Scotland have introduced facial recognition technology to support payments in their canteens prompts many questions. The company behind the scheme, CRB Cunninghams, says valuable time will be saved by speeding up the process whereby children queue up and pay.

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Project Overview ‹ AttentivU - MIT Media Lab

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Update 10/29/2019: This project has two open positions for UROPs/visiting students or interns. One position focuses around electrical engineering, another o...

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Hattie has divided this into the separate categories of: Hattie has used polemic labels for influences below the hinge point of 0.40 e.g., 'also-rans', 'disasters', 'going backward' and 'distractions' - see 2005 ACER Conference - Hattie's Lecture
Decreasing Disruptive Behavior - d = 0.34 (Rank = 80)
Classroom Management - d = 0.52 (Rank = 42)
Classroom Cohesion - d = 0.53 (Rank = 39)
Classroom Behavioral - d = 0.80 (Rank = 6)
There is a lot of overlap in these categories which is a problem concerning confounding variables. Teacher experience would suggest that improving behavior would increase achievement and some of these results verify this. However, the result for 'decreasing disruptive behavior' is below Hattie's hinge point d = 0.40.

here and Slides here, and his 2008 Nuthall lecture.

Decreasing Disruptive Behavior:

Mary Hudson in her best selling book,
Public Education's Dirty Secret, detailed extensive examples of teaching in New York, and concludes,

"Disruptive students must be removed from the classroom, not to punish them but to protect the majority of students who want to learn."

Hattie used the following 3 meta-analyses to get his average, d = 0.34. Note: the negative probability value ( CLE) -49% is a major mistake now admitted by Hattie.

Reid et al. (2004) seem to contradict the other 2 studies by indicating that decreasing disruptive behavior decreases student achievement. How can 'reducing disruptive behavior' decrease achievement to that extent?

Reid, et al., compared the achievement of students labeled with 'emotional/behavioral' disturbance (EBD) with a 'normative' group. They used a range of measures to determine EBD, e.g., students who are currently in programs for severe behavior problems e.g., psychiatric hospitals (p132).
The effect size was calculated by using (EBD achievement) - (Normative achievement) / SD (p133).
The negative effect size indicates the EBD group performed well below the normative group. The authors conclude:

'students with EBD performed at a significantly lower level than did students without those disabilities across academic subjects and settings' (p130).

Hattie clearly misrepresents this study, as it is not investigating 'decreasing disruptive behavior' as a teaching strategy. Also, the sample is from a population of 'abnormal' students. Therefore this meta-analysis If this study was removed, the average effect size would then be, This is the Prof Adrian Simpson identifies this problem in ' should not be included in Hattie's work.
d = 0.86 which would rocket its ranking up to #6.
Hattie's lack of consistency in interpreting effect sizes is a major problem, e.g., using Frazier et al (2007) (see below) students were identified as having ADHD and proxies for achievement were used: GPA, class and parent rating, etc (p51).
The ADHD group was the control group and the normative group was the experimental group. So effect size was calculated using (Normative - ADHD) getting a large positive result.
REVERSE of Reid et al (2004) study who calculated effect size using (EBD - Normative) getting a large negative result.
The misdirection of public policy: comparing and combining standardised effect sizes',

'the experimental condition in some studies and meta-analyses is the comparison condition in others' (p455).

Skiba, et al (1985) investigated reinforcement and feedback as strategies for reducing behavioral problems. They measured indicators of behavior, like noncompliance, off task and withdrawal; they did not measure achievement.
They conclude,

'Results indicated that both reinforcement and feedback type procedures are highly effective in the remediation of classroom behavior problems across a variety of behaviors, settings, and administrative arrangements' (p472).

So the effect size is an indicator of behavior NOT achievement.
Stage et al (1997) also measured disruptive behavior, not achievement,

'the treated students reduced their disruptive behavior compared to nontreated students' (from abstract).

Hattie should have adjusted for this inconsistency. If this were done the average effect size would rocket up in Hattie's rankings to #6. If other studies were removed then ranking would rise further to #3.
This would then be consistent with teachers' experience.
A key tenet of the scientific method is reliability, this simple analysis demonstrates how unreliable Hattie's rankings are.
Professor Adrian Simpson summarises,

'Using unequal comparisons or using unspecified ones makes it impossible to compare or combine effect sizes meaningfully' (p455).

'As such, using these ranked meta-meta-analyses to drive educational policy is misguided' (p451).

Classroom Management:

Hattie uses 1 study Marzano (2003) 'Classroom management that works', to get d = 0.52. Note: an excellent blog detailing the issues with Marzano's research can be found
here.
The study does measure achievement and aims to have randomised control and experimental groups, so the result is worthwhile. However, there are only 553 students used (p10) - Hattie does not mention this.

Classroom Cohesion:

'The socio-psychological environment is typically measured by asking students to agree on a three-to-five point scale to such items as "The students enjoy their work in the class" and "The goals of the class are clear." The purpose of the study is to estimate the magnitude of this relationship between learning and the environment of the classroom, and the relation of its variability across grades, subject areas and aspects of the learning environment' (p113).

'Learning outcomes and gains, including student achievement, performance and self-concept, were found to be positively associated with student perceived Cohesiveness, Satisfaction, Task Difficulty, Formality, Goal Direction, Democracy and Material Environment. Negative associations were found with Friction, Cliqueness, Apathy and Dis-organisation" (p114).

They warn howver that, 'given the correlational basis of much of the research, however rigorously controlled by conventional statistical methods, the next steps in the research should emphasise continued true experimentation' (p114).

Evans & Dion (1991) found a large effect size relating cohesion to group performance. However, the studies were mostly on small sports teams and military units. Also, they state performance criteria for these types of groups are simple, e.g., win/loss record of a sports team. In contrast, the performance criteria for normal work groups are not easily identified (p696).

'Given the nature of the studies used here, caution is suggested in generalising these results to "real" work groups' (p690).

'Results showed that both methodologically strong and weak studies demonstrated significant behavioural deficits of children with learning disabilities compared to their non-disabled peers in each of five overall areas: on-task behaviour, off-task behaviour, conduct disorders, distractibility, and shy/withdrawn behaviour. Both observational and teacher rating data demonstrated these differences. Effect sizes for both groups of studies seemed to cluster around 1 standard deviation, suggesting noticeable and educationally significant impairment in the behaviour of children with disabilities' (p298).

'that drastic increases of handicapped students in certain mainstream classes may result in a more negative classroom climate, as mainstream teachers attempt to deal with increased behaviour problems' (p305).

'The purpose of the present meta-analysis is to provide a quantitative review of school-based intervention studies for students with ADHD' (p389).

'The results of this meta-analysis indicate that school-based interventions for students with ADHD yield moderate to large effects for both behavioural and academic outcomes' (p401).

'randomised control trials are considered the scientific gold standard for evaluating treatment effects ... the lack of such studies in the school-based intervention literature is a significant concern' (p408).

'It is difficult to compare effect size estimates across research design types. Not only are effect size estimates calculated differently for each research design, but there appear to be differences in the types of outcome measures used across designs' (p408).

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Hattie has divided this into the separate categories of: Hattie has used polemic labels for influences below the hinge point of 0.40 e.g., 'also-rans', 'disasters', 'going backward' and 'distractions' - see 2005 ACER Conference - Hattie's Lecture Decreasing Disruptive Behavior - d = 0.34 (Rank = 80) Classroom Management - d = 0.52 (Rank = 42) Classroom Cohesion - d = 0.53 (Rank = 39) Classroom Behavioral - d = 0.80 (Rank = 6) There is a lot of overlap in these categories which is a problem concerning confounding variables.

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Schools need a new approach to behaviour management | Teacher Network | The Guardian

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Schools need a new approach to behaviour management | Teacher Network | The Guardian

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When I first started teaching in 1995 the great behaviour guru was Bill Rogers. His book You Know the Fair Rule was my constant companion and Bill's practical, thoughtful and above all else effective advice was invaluable in helping me survive my first few months in the classroom as a newly qualified teacher.

You Know the Fair Rule is about establishing with the children a set of clearly defined rules, which tell children how to behave in school and allow everyone to live together and get on with their learning. The rules are fair because they are negotiated and everyone agrees to them at the beginning.

This is a very effective strategy and I still start the year by creating a contract with my new class. The wording is drafted and agreed and everyone, including the adults, signs his or her name on the contract before it goes on the wall. My job, as the teacher, is to be consistent in enforcing the agreed rules. Occasionally this involves me being a bit mean, which I do not like, but it is my job.

After a while everyone realises the rules are fair, they benefit everyone equally and life is easier if they stick to the rules than if they break them. Job done.

Except when it's not.

Every teacher will eventually come across a child who won't respond to the Fair Rule approach. These are what my dad used to call the 'head-bangers': the children who test your patience to the absolute limit. In modern jargon, I guess they're called outliers and they cause disproportionately large amounts of trouble and damage. My guess is these are the children who are responsible for the dramatic headlines we see every year with tedious monotony. And make up a very large number of the 6,000 plus children who are currently excluded from the school system.

I'm also guessing very many of them go on and cause even greater problems and unhappiness as adults. Although I'm not a social scientist, so I can't be sure.

Nevertheless, I've seen a fair number of these children over the years, more than most and less then some, and they are a real and ongoing problem. After four years as a teacher working in an area of severe social deprivation I had seen three in my class come and go, at different times, all boys and all drove me close to distraction.

Bill Rogers had helped, but not entirely, he got me and the boys through the year, just, but I was always left feeling it was more through force of will than genuine educational insight. I can't say, hand on heart, those boys learnt much - other than to comply - or the other children didn't have their experience of education unfairly disrupted.

Clearly, I needed a supplementary strategy, not to replace Bill - he was still working for most of the time - but something in addition. An entirely different way of working that would help me find a way to reach these troubled children.

It was at this time I heard about the solution-focused approach from Geoff James who was working for the local authority as an advisory support teacher. Geoff was engaged in his PhD and working with children close to permanent exclusion. He and I talked about how the 'outliers' in my class resisted conventional behaviour strategies and how it was increasingly difficult to keep them in school.

Geoff explained that the consistent rule approach would work fine with the majority of children who understood the benefits of working together as part of a community, but was nothing more than a red rag to a bull to a child who saw power only as something to oppose. These children were not prepared to back down and just kept going until the school was forced to remove them in the best interests of the other children and the staff.

Behaviour management approaches, he explained, depend on the enforcement of authority and only work so long as the person exerting the authority is prepared to enforce it and the person under the influence of the authority it prepared to submit to it. With a person who refuses to submit, for whatever reason, the results are a disaster.

Tom was one of these people. When I first met him he was on his own in a room at the city's Inclusion Unit with two adult minders. He had been excluded from a string of schools for violence and was on the point of permanent exclusion. I was shown a file a foot thick of recorded misdemeanours and concerns that put him 'at risk'. Tom was seven.

The plan was to bring Tom into my class on a managed move. Everyone agreed this was likely to be his last chance. I remember the day he arrived; he spent the first part of the morning looking round the school, before I met him at playtime. The other children were outside, and I asked him if he would like to join them. He nodded without looking at me. I stayed close, worried about what might happen and ready to intervene at the slightest hint of trouble. But when it happened it was so fast I did not have a hope. A small boy walked past us, two years younger than Tom, the boy did not look at him and did not say a word. Tom in the blink of eye punched him hard, full in the face, with all his power. The boy screamed and fell to the floor, clutching his head. Two learning support assistants rushed to help him, with shocked expressions. Tom ran as fast as he could across the playground. I set off after him.

Tom was small and I soon caught him up. Keeping close I followed him until he reached the wall of the hall, at which point the air seemed to go out of him like a balloon and he slumped to the floor, his head in his hands.

I stood over him, breathing heavily, and I can still remember thinking, what can I possibly do to help this situation? In desperation I sat down beside him. I could hear he was sobbing into his hands, his small body, wrapped up tight, shaking with the effort. I looked at the playground, everyone else was busy getting on with his or her lives. The boy who had been attacked was gone, whisked off by caring adults, and the rest of the children probably had not noticed what had happened, it was all so quick. As I sat there I realised I could not fix this, there was not a fair rule to remember here, no behaviour strategy to apply, or appropriate punishment to enforce. Tom was beyond strategies and rules, and he was beyond my expertise as a teacher to fix. I decided to follow Geoff's advice and do something different. To look at what was happening not from my own notions of natural justice or from the application of unbending boundaries, but to try and understand what was happening from Tom's perspective.

"You know," I said, "you don't have to be like that here. And although I know it is going to be hard and sometimes things will go wrong, and when they do you will need to try to put them right, I promise I'm not going to shout at you and I'm not going to punish you. I will always listen to your side and I will always do what I can to help you to be happy."

Tom didn't answer, why would he? He sat and cried. After a while playtime ended and the rest of the children disappeared inside, I was replaced by the headteacher, who sat with Tom until he finally agreed to come and sit in her office. At lunchtime he went home.

As a staff we discussed what happened. The headteacher talked to the parent of the boy who had been attacked and Tom's mother. It was decided Tom would have to stay inside at playtime until we felt sure he would not attack any of the other children. We also decided to use a solution-focused approach to support Tom. I explained what I'd promised him at break time and we agreed to keep this as a consistently as possible.

Tom returned the next day and although he still tested us and still occasionally lost his temper and acted unpredictably, he stayed in school for the whole year. Gradually, as we worked with him using solution-focused inquiry, he learnt to manage his own behaviour and to comply with the fair rules that applied to the rest of the children. As far as I know he finished High School and is doing well.

I'm writing about this story because I've become convinced we need to look at the problem of behaviour in school in a completely different way. Our current approach is all about managing children's behaviour for them, this works well most of the time but it is an ineffective strategy for those children who are prepared to resist to the point of self-destruction: The system is failing these children, they are, in effect, our collateral damage.

That day with Tom was the first time I realised what needs to be done to help these outliers. It means trying to see the world from their perspective, believing that Tom was not acting in the way he was because he was evil or did not know the difference between right and wrong, but that he was stuck in a cycle of behaviour (a kind of habit) where it was better/safer for him to fight than it was to comply. I realised I needed to change my approach, I had to resist using my authority to put things right and make him conform to the fair rules of the school. As a staff we had to help him with patience, consistency and understanding, treating him as a child with genuine agency.

This was hard at first, Tom tested us every day, and we had to keep the other children safe, but gradually, through a consistent use of solution-focused support he began to relax and to find his own place in the school community and he stopped being dangerous and disruptive. Our work with Tom taught me that we should think about learning social behaviour in the same way we think about all learning in school. Social behaviour for some children is as difficult for them as learning to read is for a dyslexic child. We stopped punishing children who struggle with academic learning many years ago, isn't it time we stopped punishing children who struggle with behaviour?
Tim Taylor is a teacher working in Norwich, a visiting lecturer at Newcastle University and a teaching and learning consultant for mantle of the expert. He edits and writes for Mantle of the Expert and Imaginative Inquiry.
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Schools need a new approach to behaviour management

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When I first started teaching in 1995 the great behaviour guru was Bill Rogers. His book You Know the Fair Rule was my constant companion and Bill's practical, thoughtful and above all else effective advice was invaluable in helping me survive my first few months in the classroom as a newly qualified teacher.

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'Secret shopper’ pupils sent to ‘spy’ on teachers | Tes

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'Secret shopper’ pupils sent to ‘spy’ on teachers | Tes

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A school in the north-east of England has sparked controversy by using pupils as "secret shoppers" to anonymously observe lessons and provide feedback to the senior leadership team, Tes can reveal.

One teacher said the scheme was "outrageous" and amounted to children being "sent in to spy on us".

However, the school's headteacher said the initiative was being used to "celebrate success and promote sharing of good practice".

Longfield Academy, a secondary school in Darlington, County Durham, started using secret shoppers last half-term as part of teachers' continuing professional development.

The scheme is modelled on the "mystery shopper" concept from the retail and hospitality sectors, where observers visit a shop or restaurant incognito to give feedback on its goods and customer service.

According to a slideshow presentation shown to teachers, which has been shared with Tes, the pupils chosen to be the "shoppers" are "briefed early in the half term" and give "feedback in the penultimate week to SLT".

Anonymous feedback based on the secret shopping is then given to each of Longfield's six faculties in the last week of term, which the school has dubbed "Customer Service Week".

The slideshow says that planning time will be provided to teachers to "build on positives and address customer dissatisfaction".

'It's absolutely outrageous'

Tes has spoken to two teachers who have been part of the Longfield scheme - both of whom asked to remain anonymous - who were highly critical of the idea.

The first teacher said that the scheme was launched without any consultation with staff. "I personally think it's absolutely outrageous," they said. "Basically, the kids were sent in to spy on us."

"We don't know what information was shared [with SLT], we'll never know and I'm just not comfortable with that at all."

The teacher also felt that the process undermined their authority. "We have to be seen as the authority in the classroom and we are giving the students the power to take that authority away from us," they said.

A second teacher agreed that the system "definitely" undermined their authority, and also queried whether pupils were well placed to critique lessons.

"They're not experts. The children cannot identify why you are doing what you are doing - they just don't have the nous," the teacher said. "It's not their fault, they're kids; that's not their job."

Mary Bousted, general secretary of the ATL teaching union, said the use of secret shoppers in schools was a "corrosive, nasty...thing to do", which risked turning teaching into a "popularity contest".

"It's underhand, deceitful and it corrupts the proper order of relations in schools," she added.

However, Longfield head Susan Johnson insisted teachers had nothing to fear from the scheme.

"Secret shopper is part of a wider whole-school strategy that aims to celebrate success and promote sharing of good practice," she said.

"We are acutely aware that the pupils are our customers, and gathering pupil voice has always been important to us.

"However, in the past we have not always informed the pupils in advance that we would be asking them for their views. Trialling this strategy has enabled us to give the pupils time to consider what they would like their feedback to be."

Ms Johnson said the students chosen to be secret shoppers were "proud to be asked to participate" and gave "constructive and thoughtful" feedback.

She added: "Although in its very early stages, staff feedback received so far has been positive as a great deal of the pupil feedback validated the success of the strategies that staff are already using."
This is an edited article from the 11 August edition of Tes. Subscribers can read the full article here. Want to keep up with the latest education news and opinion? Follow Tes on Twitter and like Tes on Facebook To subscribe, click here. This week's Tes magazine is available in all good newsagents. To download the digital edition, Android users can click here and iOS users can click here

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Exclusive: 'Secret shopper' pupils sent to 'spy' on teachers

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A school in the north-east of England has sparked controversy by using pupils as "secret shoppers" to anonymously observe lessons and provide feedback to the senior leadership team, Tes can reveal. One teacher said the scheme was "outrageous" and amounted to children being "sent in to spy on us".

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Girl, 11, accuses school of war crime in feedback form - BBC News

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Girl, 11, accuses school of war crime in feedback form - BBC News

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An 11-year-old girl's assertion that her school was guilty of a war crime has gone viral.

Her father, Gavin Bell (also known as author Mason Cross), revealed on Twitter that she had gone rogue on a pupil feedback form.

She criticised the policy of punishing a whole class for one person's bad behaviour - by citing the Geneva Conventions.

"Not sure if I should ground her or buy her ice cream," Mr Bell mused.

Asked what her teacher could do better, Ava Bell wrote: "Not use collective punishment as it is not fair on the many people who did nothing and under the 1949 Genva [sic] Conventions it is a war crime."

The picture showing the suggestion, handwritten in pencil, has been "liked" more than 400,000 times on Twitter.

Mr Bell, who is based in Glasgow, said his eldest child is "11 going on 47".

"I should clarify that she thinks her teacher is awesome," he added. "It's just this aspect of the educational justice system she has an issue with."

He told the BBC he came across the form at a parents' evening, where folders of the children's work are displayed for their guardians to read.

He said it was entirely characteristic, laughing, "She will never let an argument go at home!"

Various fellow parents joked that young Miss Bell was precocious, and this could be just the start for her.

"Frightening... i am genuinely sorry for you for all those hard conversations which you will lose..." tweeted Brian Siddhu.

One more cynical observer accused writer Mr Bell of making it up.

"Meh, no way this actually happened. Shame on you, using your kid for rts [re-tweets]..." wrote tweeter @NagoyaPompey.

The father replied: "Dude, if I'd made it up I would have got her to fix the spelling of 'Geneva.'"

He told the BBC his daughter has "just loves looking into things".

"She has a Google habit," he explained. "Usually it's along the lines of science and technology.

"According to Ava, her teacher thought it was quite amusing!"

Faced with the choice between ice cream or punishment, most Twitter users thought the schoolgirl deserved the dessert option.

"I'm game to crowdfund her entire year's ice cream needs tbh," offered @PedestrianPoet.

Her father's response was more measured.

Mr Bell tweeted a picture of his daughter holding two cones of ice-cream, with the words, "The people have spoken".

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An 11-year-old girl's assertion that her school was guilty of a war crime has gone viral. Her father, Gavin Bell (also known as author Mason Cross), revealed on Twitter that she had gone rogue on a pupil feedback form. She criticised the policy of punishing a whole class for one person's bad behaviour - by citing the Geneva Conventions.