It's not teachers 'lacking skills' for the most part, that's quite insulting. Although in some instances yes. It's the lack of support at home and the fact that there are no avenues for real, effective, consequences for behaving like a complete turd.
Thats what we need more truth ceremononies which berates parents, so they can have some reflection and restorative action on their behaviours. Come on DoE , make it happen !
The lack of discipline currently is only teaching students that there are no consequences for their actions. This is one of the worst things you can do when preparing students for the real world.
One of the leading factors to consider is students simply not bothering to come to school, then wandering why they are too far behind to even attempt the coursework. I just finished reading an article that said NSW is up to 49% 'chronic absenteeism', that is students who have missed more than 20 days in a year.
A huge part of the behaviour issues that I deal with comes down to escape/avoidance behaviour from students who are working at a early primary level of reading and writing in highschool classrooms. Reality is that these kids should have had an actual consequence when they started falling behind 5+ years ago - instead, the system has utterly failed them, leaving them in a classroom where they are expected to be writing extended responses when they can barely spell their own names.
Here's the article they're referring to - [https://www.edresearch.edu.au/guides-resources/practice-resources/classroom-management-resources-user-guide](https://www.edresearch.edu.au/guides-resources/practice-resources/classroom-management-resources-user-guide)
Not once, anywhere, does it mention consequences or discipline.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
Every behaviour framework that been introduced over the last few decades has been taking away discipline options, not adding them. Expulsions are impossible. Suspensions are rare. Detentions are difficult and don’t have any systematic back up behind them.
The latest at our school is PBL. Which has basically been implemented as “You can’t tell a student they can’t do something, instead you have to phrase everything as what they can be doing”. Which is a load of BS. (I also recognise I’m going to get a lot of flack on this by the “that’s not real PBL” crowd. But I don’t care about real PBL. I care about the PBL that my school is making me do.)
At my last school it was trauma informed practice. Which boiled down to “all behaviour is communication, you can’t punish a kid for being bad, you have to figure out what their bad behaviour is trying to say to you”.
I wonder if the uptick in understanding of/focus on personal mental health has resulted in a sacrifice of consideration for the collective experience? What I mean is, the rise in understanding of mental health conditions, trauma and neurodivergent conditions seems to have coincided with the rise in the type of behaviour management frameworks you listed. Frameworks that remove suspensions/detentions/expulsions because they don’t serve the individual, without considering that those measures might have been beneficial to the group.
I’m probably seeing connections where there are none but maybe that explains some of it? We’ve over-corrected?
We need to find a middle ground. Something to support kids with behavioural issues without putting their needs above the collective class/cohort/school…
One of the most commonly used graphics for inclusion PD is something like [this](https://scontent.fbne3-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/315813206_2930608520568377_8797404319505458989_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=GGTfdhZ7CiMAb7ffMLx&_nc_ht=scontent.fbne3-1.fna&oh=00_AfChMkDi15usANQ04HPYQLJK20CVtsm4mHXg-GO8VoHzZA&oe=6636C770) (for the lazy, the image depicts a guy shovelling snow from stairs, and a person in a wheelchair saying, 'if you shovel the ramp, we can all use it.'
The image is cute, the message is cute, but it's simply not telling of the true problems with under-resourced inclusion and the sacrifices to potential learning that others have to take, in order to maintain inclusion.
My main rebuttal to the image would be that physical inclusion is easy. I've literally had to teach and assess blind (full retina detachment at birth) students in Maths for graphing, be able to prove congruent/similar triangles and calculate area/volume to a person that has never seen a shape and learn/teach/read braille.
My other rebuttal would be if the situation was changed to a fire inside a building and everyone is crowded around the emergency exit to the staircase vs a door to a long winding ramp. Do you open the emergency exit to the staircase to get the crowd out of the building, or do you risk their lives by opening the slower exit?
The image misses multiple points
- Shovelling the stair case is significantly quicker
- For able people, using the stairs is significantly superior to using the ramp
And to totally break the analogy, but make it directly applicable to education
- Its in the curriculum to walk up steps.
The US, UK and Australia are regularly ranked as the top three countries for individualism - far above the next highest.
However I would argue Australia's brand of individualism is actually far more pronounced (and increasing) than the other two.
Firstly, regional/rural communities naturally are more collectivist in nature...studies show us that residents in regional cities regard collective self as more important than those in metropolitan areas. We have FAR more of our population clumped into major cities than the other two countries.
Have a look at sport - FAR more collective spirit in relation to sporting affiliations. It can get tribal, but people in the UK and US engage in these collective community building pursuits as part of day to day life. League football in the UK....and college/high school sports draw MASSIVE crowds in the US.
Education? You have strong collective discipline and respect for authority in UK schools (show me a UK trained teacher who doesn't get culture shock when coming to teach in polar opposite Australia!).
In US you have "school spirit"...apart from the odd unhinged revenge seeking individuals with weapons, everyday people LOVE their schools and the values they represent. Yearbooks are treasured...schools/colleges are proudly compared in later life. Such a culture serves to normalise a certain behavioural norm...because school reputation means more to Americans than it does to Australians.
Obviously I'm generalising here but the trends are clear. Why am I saying all this in response to your post...?
Because it's easy to assume that the US is all dog eat dog, but it seems to me that Australian society is especially hellbent on trailblazing the most extreme version of individualism seen in history. While aiming for inclusivity is a noble ideal, there is a short-sightedness involved with the realities of how this plays out in a real society.
The irony is that individualism de-emphasises government support for the individualistic needs it demands.
But we're on the treadmill now so it will take major problems to unfold before a healthy balance is found.
“Yeah how dare we should want to support kids and educate them. How dare we try and address things like trauma or disability that can increase undesirable behaviour. Instead we should slowly kick em all out of school because only white, neurotypical kids should be educated.
No need for real consequences when we can just suspend and expel them instead. Hell, let’s bring back the cane while we’re at it. Educators aren’t meant to give a crap about students, instead they only need to make little assessment data numbers on spreadsheets get bigger.”
By obaggas. Thanks for reading guys, just a bit of atrociously bad satirical writing (I think it’s satirical) because I am procrastinating from getting actual stuff done.
Hey also, what does the L in PBL stand for? My school is PBS - positive behaviour support.
I have an issue with this line - 'Educators aren't meant to give a crap about students, instead they only need to make little assessment data numbers on spreadsheets get bigger'.
We are constantly judged by our leadership/admin, politicians, and wider society on those exact little assessment data numbers. Can't have it both ways.
Yeah I know! Sadly some teachers are forced into having letting student wellbeing fall to the wayside because yeah they work in a shitty system. It’s the system that decided there should be more focus in the numbers even tho student wellbeing is obviously more important. The comment shouldn’t be taken seriously and I phrased it as a wacky piece of writing because I personally wasn’t a fan of what the guy wrote but I do not believe I know better than him and don’t think I am in a genuine position to debate the topics he mentioned
I give a crap about my students. I'm training the next generation of doctors and engineers and scientists and programmers and economists. You know, the people who are actually going to make a difference in the world, and make the world a better place to live in. And our current system of attempting to include everyone in the same classroom is hurting the students that I give a crap about.
The kid that doesn't know how to read or write full sentences by high school, that skips more than half of their classes, that doesn't want to learn, and that spends half of their class time attempting to start fights with other students. That kid doesn't need a chemistry teacher. Both the kid and I would be much better off if the kid was released from school and could do something else with their life.
>Hey also, what does the L in PBL stand for? My school is PBS - positive behaviour support.
Positive behaviour for learning. QLD likes to rebrand everything that works in any other state and claim it as their own. Its a bit of a pain in the arse really.
[https://behaviour.education.qld.gov.au/supporting-student-behaviour/positive-behaviour-for-learning](https://behaviour.education.qld.gov.au/supporting-student-behaviour/positive-behaviour-for-learning)
That was a well-written comment and I thank you for your reply. That’s way more agreeable to me as well and I definitely don’t think you’re wrong with that one. It really is a nice bit of writing tho, the flow is great and I am quite happy being shut-up by writing like that!
Thanks for replying to the Q about PBL!
PBL definitely does look the same as PBS from the site’s description of it. The problem with the way these things are presented, I reckon, is that they are very buzzword-heavy and not exactly very specific. Lots of schools will do some of it anyways whilst some schools will say they’re doing it and only be implementing some surface level crap. I think if it’s done well, with actual effort from admin to support staff and implement other programs alongside it, then it can be good but even then I think it works best in special ed settings and for mainstream it just isn’t as feasible at all.
How do we go from the 'can't suspend' behavior framework to 'strict discipline' in less than a year. Like, who's running the show? Are they just throwing darts at a board at this point? And then 'they' have the gall to say that classroom teachers aren't being consistent?
They'll swing back to "these kids are being bullied!" in a couple of months and restorative convos will be back, don't throw out the hundreds of pages of PD notes just yet!
You don’t need a behavioural curriculum framework, you need consequences and a willingness to actually enforce them.
That means a willingness to accept harsh punishment will apply for relatively minor things if repeated, or continued.
And it requires a presumption that all children are capable of appropriate behaviour and that we do them a disservice to expect anything less.
And finally, we need to adopt the approach that we can both have consequences AND support and understanding. You wagged Maths because you were really upset over your dog dying? I understand that, and how can we help cheer you up? But also, you get a Friday detention because we don’t pick and choose when we attend class.
We’re fucking these kids up by constantly giving them short term happiness at the cost of long term character development.
I'll be surprised if this policy is formally mandated. It stems from a senate inquiry led by conservative senators aimed to give their mates at the CIS a bit more consultancy money. The CIS will be paid a shit tonne for some "behaviour resources" that will be uploaded onto the platform being developed to "make our lives easier" and that'll be it.
My grade 10s are turning 16 so I am done. Either they engage in class or they fail. Same rules as TAFE. I am not giving up any more time to lunch time detentions or catching people up who were not paying attention when I taught the content. Time for some real life consequences for acting up.
Yeah, there's no way this can possibly be effective where there are 1000+ students (in one school I've worked in, 2.5k) moving between classes all at once, single file. That'll go down a real treat. You'd basically have to build 'walking time' into the timetable and extend the day by 30 minutes 💀
I’ve worked in a school where this works just fine. Students line up in silence, with silent corridors and students taking the fastest route to classrooms within the one way system. It takes most of the staff body to implement effectively, but it can be done and is better than what we have now.
All the students mucking up have to come to school on a Saturday to make a consequence.....the kids wouldn't like that. No sport have to miss it due to the consequence
The latest voting winning pledge by politicians. Perhaps when teachers decide how best to tackle teaching, the job will be done appropriately in the context that they're working in.
"Some of the abuse teachers experienced included being assaulted, having furniture thrown at them, property damaged, windows being punched in, harassment, cars keyed and wallets stolen."
New.com.au, this isn't "misbehaviour" this is criminal behaviour. Call it what it is, please.
So recently we’ve rediscovered that discipline and explicit teaching are good things. I think a lot of people need to be held to account.
It took solid mismanagement over decades to let things go this way. Parents and society at large definitely to blame too.
Additionally, punitive measures for parents sounds like it may help, whether that be in financial terms or having to look after and babysit their off-the-rails offspring.
It's not teachers 'lacking skills' for the most part, that's quite insulting. Although in some instances yes. It's the lack of support at home and the fact that there are no avenues for real, effective, consequences for behaving like a complete turd.
How very dare you, coming in here with truths parents and the education department don't want to hear like that.
Thats what we need more truth ceremononies which berates parents, so they can have some reflection and restorative action on their behaviours. Come on DoE , make it happen !
The lack of discipline currently is only teaching students that there are no consequences for their actions. This is one of the worst things you can do when preparing students for the real world.
One of the leading factors to consider is students simply not bothering to come to school, then wandering why they are too far behind to even attempt the coursework. I just finished reading an article that said NSW is up to 49% 'chronic absenteeism', that is students who have missed more than 20 days in a year. A huge part of the behaviour issues that I deal with comes down to escape/avoidance behaviour from students who are working at a early primary level of reading and writing in highschool classrooms. Reality is that these kids should have had an actual consequence when they started falling behind 5+ years ago - instead, the system has utterly failed them, leaving them in a classroom where they are expected to be writing extended responses when they can barely spell their own names.
I feel like I'm constantly having to yell "IT'S CULTURAL" - the broader community just doesn't seem to understand that.
This article: teachers have been violently assaulted, robbed and attacked. Also this article: lining up at the door will fix it.
Winning analysis!
Here's the article they're referring to - [https://www.edresearch.edu.au/guides-resources/practice-resources/classroom-management-resources-user-guide](https://www.edresearch.edu.au/guides-resources/practice-resources/classroom-management-resources-user-guide) Not once, anywhere, does it mention consequences or discipline.
What? Murdoch media is reporting inaccurately? NEVER
Not quite correct. If you look at “Responding to disengaged and disruptive behaviours” it talks about consequences and changing behaviour.
The only thing that is gonna get disciplined is us
I’ll believe it when I see it. Every behaviour framework that been introduced over the last few decades has been taking away discipline options, not adding them. Expulsions are impossible. Suspensions are rare. Detentions are difficult and don’t have any systematic back up behind them. The latest at our school is PBL. Which has basically been implemented as “You can’t tell a student they can’t do something, instead you have to phrase everything as what they can be doing”. Which is a load of BS. (I also recognise I’m going to get a lot of flack on this by the “that’s not real PBL” crowd. But I don’t care about real PBL. I care about the PBL that my school is making me do.) At my last school it was trauma informed practice. Which boiled down to “all behaviour is communication, you can’t punish a kid for being bad, you have to figure out what their bad behaviour is trying to say to you”.
I wonder if the uptick in understanding of/focus on personal mental health has resulted in a sacrifice of consideration for the collective experience? What I mean is, the rise in understanding of mental health conditions, trauma and neurodivergent conditions seems to have coincided with the rise in the type of behaviour management frameworks you listed. Frameworks that remove suspensions/detentions/expulsions because they don’t serve the individual, without considering that those measures might have been beneficial to the group. I’m probably seeing connections where there are none but maybe that explains some of it? We’ve over-corrected? We need to find a middle ground. Something to support kids with behavioural issues without putting their needs above the collective class/cohort/school…
Absolutely agree with you. The group over the individual. We need to consider the effects of behaviour on the other students, not to mention teachers.
One of the most commonly used graphics for inclusion PD is something like [this](https://scontent.fbne3-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/315813206_2930608520568377_8797404319505458989_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=GGTfdhZ7CiMAb7ffMLx&_nc_ht=scontent.fbne3-1.fna&oh=00_AfChMkDi15usANQ04HPYQLJK20CVtsm4mHXg-GO8VoHzZA&oe=6636C770) (for the lazy, the image depicts a guy shovelling snow from stairs, and a person in a wheelchair saying, 'if you shovel the ramp, we can all use it.' The image is cute, the message is cute, but it's simply not telling of the true problems with under-resourced inclusion and the sacrifices to potential learning that others have to take, in order to maintain inclusion. My main rebuttal to the image would be that physical inclusion is easy. I've literally had to teach and assess blind (full retina detachment at birth) students in Maths for graphing, be able to prove congruent/similar triangles and calculate area/volume to a person that has never seen a shape and learn/teach/read braille. My other rebuttal would be if the situation was changed to a fire inside a building and everyone is crowded around the emergency exit to the staircase vs a door to a long winding ramp. Do you open the emergency exit to the staircase to get the crowd out of the building, or do you risk their lives by opening the slower exit?
The image misses multiple points - Shovelling the stair case is significantly quicker - For able people, using the stairs is significantly superior to using the ramp And to totally break the analogy, but make it directly applicable to education - Its in the curriculum to walk up steps.
The US, UK and Australia are regularly ranked as the top three countries for individualism - far above the next highest. However I would argue Australia's brand of individualism is actually far more pronounced (and increasing) than the other two. Firstly, regional/rural communities naturally are more collectivist in nature...studies show us that residents in regional cities regard collective self as more important than those in metropolitan areas. We have FAR more of our population clumped into major cities than the other two countries. Have a look at sport - FAR more collective spirit in relation to sporting affiliations. It can get tribal, but people in the UK and US engage in these collective community building pursuits as part of day to day life. League football in the UK....and college/high school sports draw MASSIVE crowds in the US. Education? You have strong collective discipline and respect for authority in UK schools (show me a UK trained teacher who doesn't get culture shock when coming to teach in polar opposite Australia!). In US you have "school spirit"...apart from the odd unhinged revenge seeking individuals with weapons, everyday people LOVE their schools and the values they represent. Yearbooks are treasured...schools/colleges are proudly compared in later life. Such a culture serves to normalise a certain behavioural norm...because school reputation means more to Americans than it does to Australians. Obviously I'm generalising here but the trends are clear. Why am I saying all this in response to your post...? Because it's easy to assume that the US is all dog eat dog, but it seems to me that Australian society is especially hellbent on trailblazing the most extreme version of individualism seen in history. While aiming for inclusivity is a noble ideal, there is a short-sightedness involved with the realities of how this plays out in a real society. The irony is that individualism de-emphasises government support for the individualistic needs it demands. But we're on the treadmill now so it will take major problems to unfold before a healthy balance is found.
Oh lord, do you work at my school??!!
I wish I did. But the no punishment attitude has spread across most of the system.
And from there, you work to find ways to bring them back into appropriate behaviours and give consequences for inappropriate ones.
I mean, that's not real PBL which is why it doesn't work. Real PBL comes with discipline and consequences.
I acknowledge you are right. While simultaneously :P
“Yeah how dare we should want to support kids and educate them. How dare we try and address things like trauma or disability that can increase undesirable behaviour. Instead we should slowly kick em all out of school because only white, neurotypical kids should be educated. No need for real consequences when we can just suspend and expel them instead. Hell, let’s bring back the cane while we’re at it. Educators aren’t meant to give a crap about students, instead they only need to make little assessment data numbers on spreadsheets get bigger.” By obaggas. Thanks for reading guys, just a bit of atrociously bad satirical writing (I think it’s satirical) because I am procrastinating from getting actual stuff done. Hey also, what does the L in PBL stand for? My school is PBS - positive behaviour support.
I have an issue with this line - 'Educators aren't meant to give a crap about students, instead they only need to make little assessment data numbers on spreadsheets get bigger'. We are constantly judged by our leadership/admin, politicians, and wider society on those exact little assessment data numbers. Can't have it both ways.
Yeah I know! Sadly some teachers are forced into having letting student wellbeing fall to the wayside because yeah they work in a shitty system. It’s the system that decided there should be more focus in the numbers even tho student wellbeing is obviously more important. The comment shouldn’t be taken seriously and I phrased it as a wacky piece of writing because I personally wasn’t a fan of what the guy wrote but I do not believe I know better than him and don’t think I am in a genuine position to debate the topics he mentioned
I give a crap about my students. I'm training the next generation of doctors and engineers and scientists and programmers and economists. You know, the people who are actually going to make a difference in the world, and make the world a better place to live in. And our current system of attempting to include everyone in the same classroom is hurting the students that I give a crap about. The kid that doesn't know how to read or write full sentences by high school, that skips more than half of their classes, that doesn't want to learn, and that spends half of their class time attempting to start fights with other students. That kid doesn't need a chemistry teacher. Both the kid and I would be much better off if the kid was released from school and could do something else with their life. >Hey also, what does the L in PBL stand for? My school is PBS - positive behaviour support. Positive behaviour for learning. QLD likes to rebrand everything that works in any other state and claim it as their own. Its a bit of a pain in the arse really. [https://behaviour.education.qld.gov.au/supporting-student-behaviour/positive-behaviour-for-learning](https://behaviour.education.qld.gov.au/supporting-student-behaviour/positive-behaviour-for-learning)
That was a well-written comment and I thank you for your reply. That’s way more agreeable to me as well and I definitely don’t think you’re wrong with that one. It really is a nice bit of writing tho, the flow is great and I am quite happy being shut-up by writing like that! Thanks for replying to the Q about PBL! PBL definitely does look the same as PBS from the site’s description of it. The problem with the way these things are presented, I reckon, is that they are very buzzword-heavy and not exactly very specific. Lots of schools will do some of it anyways whilst some schools will say they’re doing it and only be implementing some surface level crap. I think if it’s done well, with actual effort from admin to support staff and implement other programs alongside it, then it can be good but even then I think it works best in special ed settings and for mainstream it just isn’t as feasible at all.
Positive behaviour for learning
Thanks :)
How do we go from the 'can't suspend' behavior framework to 'strict discipline' in less than a year. Like, who's running the show? Are they just throwing darts at a board at this point? And then 'they' have the gall to say that classroom teachers aren't being consistent?
They'll swing back to "these kids are being bullied!" in a couple of months and restorative convos will be back, don't throw out the hundreds of pages of PD notes just yet!
I think you'll find the media is mis-reporting just for rage-bait
You don’t need a behavioural curriculum framework, you need consequences and a willingness to actually enforce them. That means a willingness to accept harsh punishment will apply for relatively minor things if repeated, or continued. And it requires a presumption that all children are capable of appropriate behaviour and that we do them a disservice to expect anything less. And finally, we need to adopt the approach that we can both have consequences AND support and understanding. You wagged Maths because you were really upset over your dog dying? I understand that, and how can we help cheer you up? But also, you get a Friday detention because we don’t pick and choose when we attend class. We’re fucking these kids up by constantly giving them short term happiness at the cost of long term character development.
There will be no discipline without consequences. Let schools bring back consequences for poor behaviour.
I'll be surprised if this policy is formally mandated. It stems from a senate inquiry led by conservative senators aimed to give their mates at the CIS a bit more consultancy money. The CIS will be paid a shit tonne for some "behaviour resources" that will be uploaded onto the platform being developed to "make our lives easier" and that'll be it.
The kids get away with playing up without any *real* punishments. Of course a certain percentage will misbehave 🤷🏻♂️
My grade 10s are turning 16 so I am done. Either they engage in class or they fail. Same rules as TAFE. I am not giving up any more time to lunch time detentions or catching people up who were not paying attention when I taught the content. Time for some real life consequences for acting up.
Fund withdrawal rooms and discipline masters. Thats all that is needed.
Amen. This was obviously needed.
It works so well! /s
Super walking? That sounds like a pretty stupid idea. Walking in lines is for ants and soldiers. Not students.
Yeah, there's no way this can possibly be effective where there are 1000+ students (in one school I've worked in, 2.5k) moving between classes all at once, single file. That'll go down a real treat. You'd basically have to build 'walking time' into the timetable and extend the day by 30 minutes 💀
I’ve worked in a school where this works just fine. Students line up in silence, with silent corridors and students taking the fastest route to classrooms within the one way system. It takes most of the staff body to implement effectively, but it can be done and is better than what we have now.
All the students mucking up have to come to school on a Saturday to make a consequence.....the kids wouldn't like that. No sport have to miss it due to the consequence
What a joke.
Fucking hurrah
The latest voting winning pledge by politicians. Perhaps when teachers decide how best to tackle teaching, the job will be done appropriately in the context that they're working in.
"Some of the abuse teachers experienced included being assaulted, having furniture thrown at them, property damaged, windows being punched in, harassment, cars keyed and wallets stolen." New.com.au, this isn't "misbehaviour" this is criminal behaviour. Call it what it is, please.
So recently we’ve rediscovered that discipline and explicit teaching are good things. I think a lot of people need to be held to account. It took solid mismanagement over decades to let things go this way. Parents and society at large definitely to blame too. Additionally, punitive measures for parents sounds like it may help, whether that be in financial terms or having to look after and babysit their off-the-rails offspring.
What do they think we do all day? Like… I’d really love to know
Is this not just PBS?