Keywords

Introduction

Behavioural support is a movement with links to several literatures that will be outlined in this chapter. First, the twenty-first century shift to inclusive schooling has fostered the emergence of multilevel instruction for the diversity of learners in the modern classroom. Second, the continuing research-to-practice gap between recommended educational theory for students with special educational needs (SEN) and implementation of practice in schools has pointed to the need for precisely documented practices and operational procedures of mutual interest to researchers and educators. Third, developmental sciences have described and explained core concepts and principles that advance student behaviour and learning in school settings.

Across these literatures, the need for systems-level change and school improvement is an intersecting theme. Within this framework, inclusive school communities can use behavioural support as a vital pathway for improving learning outcomes and wellbeing for all students. Given gaps between recommendations for research-informed practice and actual practice in educational settings, behavioural support provides tools and procedures that can reduce ongoing lags in school-wide capacity building, poor sense of connectedness between regular and specialist teachers, and boundary riding by staff that hinders service delivery for students with SEN. Western perspectives on behaviour, learning, and development also challenge inclusive schools to be better prepared to proactively reduce problem behaviours, to include social-emotional learning in school curriculum, and to provide needs-based and authentic learning experiences for all students.

Practice and related terms that refer to the way in which instruction is provided to students with SEN occur many times throughout this book. Views about what makes practice effective in producing meaningful student outcomes vary a great deal. The popularity or unpopularity of practices does not align neatly with a scientific basis of professional judgements and decision-making: Evidence can be ignored; evidence can be limited, flawed, or not yet available. “Much confusion exists regarding the meaning and potential applications of evidence-based practices in special education” (Cook, Tankersley, Cook, & Landrum, 2015, p. 310).

Throughout this book and in this chapter, research-informed practice is the term used generally to encompass the subset of practice interchangeably called research-based, empirically supported, and recommended. In the first part of this chapter, evidence-based practices refer to a very small subset of instructional strategies that are concretely defined and replicable. In the final part of this chapter, the focus is on educational practices that make learning environments safe for students across ages and abilities, that enact protections against educational risks, and that create opportunities for scaling up improvement in individual practitioners, in the education profession as a whole, and in the organisation of schooling.

The Past and Future of Education

Western perspectives on teaching, learning, and behaviour in its education systems have implications for education systems around the Pacific Rim. Western studies of mass education as a societal phenomenon are reframing the understanding of schooling to pay more attention to the wellbeing of its participants and also are reframing the understanding of teaching to pay more attention to the developmental complexities of the learning process and learning systems. Western studies of the education of students with SEN are helping to reframe our understanding of the importance of mental health, wellbeing, social and academic aspects of school belonging, and behavioural support to the experiences and outcomes of schooling across the whole population of students. These understandings can inform the future directions of education systems in the Pacific Rim in societies that span agrarian-preindustrial, industrial, and digital-postindustrial economies.

In Western societies, opportunities for students with SEN to participate in special education opened up with normalisation of mass education. Later opportunities for some students with SEN to experience fuller participation together with the broader community of students then opened up with access to inclusive education. Western populations became participant citizens when opportunities for schooling were extended beyond elitist access to formal education for a relatively few people associated with privilege and patronage. Western investment in many years of schooling and a broad range of humanist, scientific, technical, and professional studies replaced the initial reformist focus on a few years of basic literacy, numeracy, and religion in the early phases of the industrial revolution of the twentieth century. Expenditure of material wealth on education and advanced training created more opportunities for more people to rise out of poverty and to enrich these societies as a whole.

Gaps in the mass education agendas and inclusive education frameworks of Western societies have been recognised. Not all students complete secondary school and achieve a secure and fulfilling adulthood, and not all students with SEN obtain an inclusive education with positive life outcomes. As some gaps were closed during the industrial revolution of the twentieth century, other gaps have appeared during the technological revolution. As new digital elites have emerged during this technological century, it has been observed that there is a decline in the Western success of mass literacy during the last century.

Coping positively with the changing nature of work (e.g. job uncertainty in a “gig economy”), redistribution of material wealth within and between countries, and global vulnerabilities in climate instability, population growth and mobility, and related shortages in basic resources of land, water, and air makes it important for education systems to pay attention to education for citizenship of the whole population in order to sustain the inclusive virtues of civil society.

Shift to Inclusive Schooling

In Western countries, inclusive education is an expectation that all children in a society can participate in formal schooling together. Two key parts of this expectation is that (a) students with SEN will receive adjustments that will help them to participate more fully with typically developing peers and that (b) teachers will use adaptive instructional technology to facilitate participation and monitor its effectiveness in improving learning and behaviour in the inclusive classroom. The history of formal education in the West and in the East shows ongoing expansion of opportunity to participate and ongoing refinement of educational supports for participation. One major barrier to greater participation of students with SEN is the boundary wall separating curriculum-based practice for mainstream classrooms and the more specialised needs-based practice for students with SEN. Another barrier is the increasing severity of problem behaviour among students with SEN who are accessing mainstream classrooms. These barriers impose an increasing burden on classroom teachers.

The Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation, 1994) urged nations to provide inclusive schooling for all students. It projected the idea that a 20-year period would be sufficient to achieve the building of inclusive school communities throughout the world. Around the Pacific Rim, countries have formulated policy guidelines to deliver an inclusion agenda. In various ways, these countries are pursuing a coherent framework for professional practice consistent with their education systems. The particular features of the inclusion agenda and framework for practice stretches from mass schooling to inclusive education to behavioural support for those learners whose behaviour affects learning outcomes and classroom harmony.

Within this book, inclusive education is viewed as an active process for reframing practice. This perspective is derived from the present position of the United Nations on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Specialist settings evolved much of the successful pedagogy, curriculum, and organisational practice base for educating students with SEN. The shift towards inclusive settings for instructing diverse learners brings with it the need for schools to change existing ways of working.

Inclusion involves a process of systemic reform embodying changes and modifications in content, teaching methods, approaches, structures and strategies in education to overcome barriers with a vision serving to provide all students of the relevant age range with an equitable and participatory learning experience and environment that best corresponds to their requirements and preferences. (United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities General Comment No. 4, in Hehir et al., 2016, p. 3)

Special education has established a large and effective practice base for its person-centred approach to the needs and preferences of specific individuals with developmental disabilities and difficulties. Person-centred education, with its individualised instruction and strength-based approach, has been articulated in an extensive literature published towards the end of the twentieth century, mostly in the USA. Learning outcomes that address the urgency of a young person’s immediate needs have fostered a practical emphasis on what works rather than what doesn’t (Vandercook, York, & Forest, 1989). At the same time, the philosophical aspirations of a person-centred value for self-determination have justified the long-term commitment towards improving quality of life (Freeman et al., 2015). Special schools, often staffed by people with a strong interest in helping children with severe disabilities, provided a setting for the development and appraisal of specialist practices, procedures, and policies distinct from the practices commonly used in regular school environments.

A systematic and explicit technology of teaching has evolved alongside person-centred values and practices. For example, three instructional methodologies have been found to be highly effective teaching practices for students with SEN. These practices have involved intense teacher-student interaction during teacher-directed lessons, close monitoring of student progress within and across these lessons, and precise analysis of the individual’s learning and behaviour within the classroom. Students with SEN have responded well to instruction when task analysis has been used to break down learning activities into manageable chunks and thus to present lesson content in a simpler structure and sequence.

Formative evaluation of student progress towards individual curriculum goals also has improved student outcomes: Teachers have recognised that it is good practice to collect data on success on each step within a task-analysed learning activity and to track the level of assistance required to succeed at each step. Applied behaviour analysis has been a third major methodology for obtaining meaningful change to student learning and behaviour. This technology, when carefully planned and implemented, ensures that learning behaviours pinpointed for attention are socially important, observable, and measurable.

These instructional practices are designed to be relevant and socially valid across educational systems and schools. They have been distinguished from other practices considered (a) promising but still reliant on an emergent body of evidence and (b) controversial and lacking empirical data. Special education practice inventories also have contained more complex service delivery patterns, organisational structures, and programming principles (Beamish, 2008). For example, practices such as maximising opportunities to make choices, teaching new skills in the context of daily routines, and planning collaboratively with parents and therapists were identified by teachers at a large Queensland special school who adapted a state-wide listing to benchmark practice in their school and suites of classrooms (Beamish & Bryer, 2012).

The crossover into inclusive schooling has achieved the physical placement of students with SEN alongside typically developing peers but has presented both students and staff with ongoing challenges. First, many special educational practices did not efficiently transfer into the regular classroom of diverse learners: The instructional knowledge and practice of special education have continued to be separated from that of regular classroom teachers (Sailor & McCart, 2014). Second, the development and documentation of inclusive practices for teaching diverse learners has been slow to evolve: “Despite global and national policy efforts, the practice has been sporadic and elusive” (Sailor, 2017, p. 1).

One comprehensive review of inclusive education literature for the 1980s through to the 2000s examined teachers’ use of research-informed practice. This review suggested that there has been little meaningful translation from research into practice (Grima-Farrell, Bain, & McDonagh, 2011). Educators trying to implement sustainable research-informed practices in real-world settings did not fully appreciate and apply the theory developed by researchers. Lack of appropriate professional development and dissemination of research knowledge has restricted the uptake of that understanding into teacher practice. Second, research-informed practices have not been integrated into teacher preparation programmes.

A sociocultural review of international research (2000–2009) on professional development about inclusion revealed little attention to the organisational complexity of inclusive schooling (Waitoller & Artiles, 2013). Most studies ignored the critical elements that produce better student outcomes (e.g. engagement and participation, quality of relationships among teachers and students, opportunities to learn and develop meaningful identities afforded to students). The main focus of these studies on elements of teaching did not consider the presence of strong boundaries between the respective approaches to practice of regular and special educators. Waitoller and Artiles highlighted the working relationships between regular and special educators in professional development aimed to facilitate the shift to a more inclusive organisation. They called for collaboration between regular and special education teachers and their respective communities of practice, in order to negotiate inclusive goals and resolve tensions: They proposed to call these collaborations a “boundary practice” (p. 344). They also called for more effort to recognise and resolve clashes between visions of child development and learning informing their respective pedagogical and curricular practices: They proposed that regular classroom teachers can act as “boundary brokers” (p. 345) in research partnership with other brokers (e.g. special education teachers, school psychologists, teacher educators) in an inclusive organisation.

The advent of the whole-school approach also fostered the idea of structural changes in the organisation of education for all students. It has been proposed that a well-designed comprehensive approach to school-wide practice requires integration of current research on everyday classroom routines of instruction, assessment, and classroom management (McIntosh & Goodman, 2016). Three main areas for reorganisation have been identified. First, changes in delivery of curriculum to multi-tiered instruction have focused on lessons geared to the differentiated needs of diverse learners. Second, changes in social organisation have focused on co-teaching staff teams and cooperative student groups to facilitate teaching and learning. Third, changes in communication with family and neighbourhood (school-community partnerships) have focused on building trust and teacher-parent engagement.

From these organisational changes have emerged new areas of practice. The emergent understanding of inclusive schooling is emphasising the capacity of school systems to provide the structures, interventions, and instructional practices that are differentiated for all students at risk of school failure and relevant to their specific needs (Sailor & McCart, 2014). Accommodation of new practices with system changes into more inclusive schooling is now accepted as a critical aspect of the school improvement agenda. Three different kinds of examples of innovation and school reform relevant to this book are (a) the use of multi-tiered systems of supports for students with different levels of needs, together with (b) the differentiated curriculum and assessment provided by Universal Design for Learning, and (c) co-teaching practice for an inclusive classroom from initial planning of lessons to assessment of outcomes.

Bridge Between Research and Practice

Throughout the twentieth century, developmental processes and disorders, learning and learning difficulties, and risk-and-resilience influences on student behaviour and future wellbeing have been well described and explained by behavioural and social scientists. However, understanding and use of research-informed intervention to improve student outcomes in real-world classrooms for diverse student populations have continued to lag behind knowledge and theorising (Achenbach, 1978; Lerner, 2015). The practical utility of experimental research in the classroom, fair access to manualised programmes for those schools and teachers wanting to use them, and practitioner-friendly dissemination of up-to-date research have continued to be persistent concerns for classroom teachers. New issues of barriers to implementation and sustainability of effective practice have surfaced (Blasé, Dyke, Fixen, & Bailey, 2012). For a school attempting to maintain and regenerate initial changes, examples of these issues occur when resources are redirected to other programming initiatives and when training in a new approach to practice must be renewed for current and new staff.

Researchers, service providers, and families have sought effective ways, through inclusion, to enhance the educational opportunities of all students and to counteract educational exposure to cumulative developmental risks. Families have wanted their child to learn social and emotional skills for functional interactions with family, peers, employers, and the general community: Acquiring cognitive skills in functional literacy and numeracy without behavioural disruptions of academic skill building is not their only goal for their child’s inclusion in mainstream schooling. Teachers have wanted their classrooms to run smoothly and their students to be productively engaged in learning activities. Researchers have wanted to contribute to both academic scholarship and community wellbeing. Their shared aspirations to help students with SEN succeed in a least restrictive environment have graduated to more sophisticated ideas about who intervenes and how intervention works.

There have been lively discussions about the relative importance of the research rigour and treatment fidelity of implementation science (Fixen, Naoom, Blasé, Friedman, & Wallace, 2005) compared to the greater flexibility and real-world fit of improvement science. The emerging multidisciplinary field of implementation science has taken up the challenge about how to translate research knowledge into practice (Cook & Odom, 2013). Treatment fidelity (i.e. faithful implementation of a programme in a setting with carefully selected characteristics) provides a way to demonstrate programme effectiveness and thus promote the uptake of interventions of proven effectiveness into routine practice. In research investigating implementation methods and strategies, protocols have been developed about how to engage practitioners with a new practice and motivate them to use the practice and about how to ensure that practitioners act thoughtfully in the implementation of a new practice and perform it with procedural precision.

At the same time, improvement science is another emerging field investigating the research-to-practice gap (Lewis, 2015). This research explores how teachers convert action learning about their practices into professionally meaningful knowledge about how to improve student outcomes. Acceptance of evidence-based tools and practices in particular educational settings may require adaptation that is sensitive to local needs and complexities. A well-known example of continuous adaptation of teacher practice is the Japanese system of lesson study, which involves K-8 Japanese teachers in a routine but intensive collaborative process of designing, teaching, and reviewing lessons (Hiebert & Stigler, 2017). Cycles of reflection and collegial feedback encourage steady improvement in the outcomes of classroom teaching, which is helpful in including diverse learners. Improvement science, however, is not equivalent to selective and preferential introduction of parts of a manualised programme. Instead, this latter approach to educational reform represents chaotic and piecemeal implementation of a research-informed practice and its protocols, and it is typical of the failure of much potentially exciting reform.

It has been acknowledged that teachers acting as individual agents of change in Western reforms can lead to uncoordinated elements of practice (Hiebert & Stigler, 2017). The problem with the Western focus on teachers rather than the teaching process was illustrated in a study of continuous improvement research in two high schools in the USA (Tichnor-Wagner, Wachen, Cannata, & Cohen-Vogel, 2017). Many plan-do-study-act cycles of small changes produced improvements in the academic and social-emotional performance of students. However, the teachers in this study felt that their participation in the plan-do-study-act innovation was disconnected from their daily work. Although they recognised the value of the cycles for improving their practice, their comments highlighted the need to reorganise school infrastructure to address issues related to time, training, and data collection. Tichnor-Wagner et al. concluded that these teachers encountered practical difficulty integrating other people’s tools and objectives into their established working routines and described them as “boundary crossers” (p. 25). This case makes it clear that crossing a boundary between established practice and new practice requires adjustments and allowances for change, which, in turn, requires considerable thought and preparation.

Teachers and Their Practice

Today’s teachers need a rich repertoire of strategies to interact effectively and sensitively with every student in their class. For evidence-based practices such as instructional strategies, the narrow focus of research and the specific elements presented in lesson use are workable for many teachers and likely to be implemented successfully with many students. Yet, everyday experiences for diverse learners with few additional risks are not always based on research-informed knowledge about practice pedagogy and collaborative teaching that have been found to be helpful for inclusive schooling. Teacher knowledge and skill mediate between student risk and learner access to inclusive education.

Teachers need to be able take at least equivalent care to offset risks that increase student vulnerability, in an additive fashion (i.e. more need, more support). Students with SEN present with different kinds of educational needs and severity of disability. Students with SEN and other students in a classroom also may present with either socioeconomic disadvantage or minority status associated with undervalued cultural, ethnic, and indigenous characteristics. They may be at risk from exposure to abuse and neglect or from living in a rural and remote place with reduced access to educational resources. For example, a student with SEN from an ethnic minority family living in a rural area is at more risk than a student with SEN from a middle class family living in a city.

Teaching has to be regarded as a form of practice based on ethical norms; it should not be regarded as a form of production (Grundy, 1987). Technical competence in curriculum management is the main basis of the adaptive capacity claimed for the Western-trained teacher to know and do well in any classroom context: A professional ethos of the autonomy and independence of the individual teacher is the justification for taking responsibility for a classroom and its learning outcomes. However, the reliance on the energy, creativity, and personal style of teachers in Western classrooms rather than their application of teaching processes and protocols has made it difficult to evaluate their efficacy.

The ongoing focus of much initial teacher preparation on the technical skills to teach a lesson, manage a class, and assess learning continues to support Western ideas about adaptive capacity. These skills can be sufficient to achieve short-term production goals. From the early twentieth century, there have been ongoing debates about the role and status of teaching. The best of practice and scholarship needs to inform each other in order to advance the quality of teaching, to avoid attrition from the profession, and to strengthen the virtuous community in ethical schooling. Themes for debate continue to feature (a) experiential and craft-prescribed knowledge of skilled practitioners versus teachers as action researchers systematically improving their own professional knowledge and practice, (b) teacher education in a school-based apprenticeship to current practitioners rather than a more critical university-based study of knowledge and practice, and (c) the role of teachers in either maintaining social order or challenging social inequities. Yet, an overemphasis placed on basic technical competence at entry to this profession can distract some teachers from the pursuit of longer-term professional learnings, which is essential to the success of inclusive education.

Inclusion has introduced varied and unpredictable working conditions for teacher work. The context-specific organisational features of many practices recommended in special education settings do not adapt easily to inclusive settings. Families of practices embedded within traditional regular education need reorganisation (Kemmis, Edwards-Groves, Wilkinson, & Hardy, 2012). For example, inclusive practice ecologies combine in new coordinated ways to address the needs of all students. This approach also has the potential to provide high-quality instruction in general education classrooms. It distributes resources efficiently but flexibly to meet student needs. It employs school-wide data systems to monitor student progress. Case studies of effective inclusive schools from the UK (Farrell, Dyson, Polat, Hutcheson, & Gallannaugh, 2007) and the USA (McLeskey, Waldron, & Redd, 2014) demonstrate the committed and sustained whole-school efforts that are needed to reorganise practice ecologies for inclusion.

Teachers are expected to interpret events in their busy mainstream classrooms and to find ways to manage unexpected disruptions. All regular classrooms experience the “wild triangle” of teacher-peer-task interactions identified by Ball and Forzani (2007). These interactions comprise major aspects of classroom ecology. Teachers can recognise and predict some behaviours arising from a student’s interactions with that individual teacher, their particular class of students, and a set of tasks to be learned and assessed. Teachers also can establish predictable routines that encourage student self-management within and across class activities. However, any student’s interactions with the teacher, peers, and learning tasks throughout a school day and from day to day can trigger apparently surprising “out of the blue” events. Therefore, preparing supports and interventions that help a student with SEN adapt to mainstream interactions is an important task; this forethought can also help other students in their classroom interactions.

Kemmis (2009) challenged the notion that teacher action consists of the performance of technical tasks with static, linear progress through a series of routine everyday activities. Teachers as action researchers engage in a dynamic process of acting and then reflecting on action to bring about beneficial change in their own practice and, working with other teachers, in the educational system in which they practise. This process revisits and refines practice in a metamethod that cycles through repeated phases of an action, reflects on the effectiveness of a practice through each cycle of learning from action, and spirals back over that previous action in a better way. Continuous refinement of the methods of action research together with the collection and interpretation of student data can converge towards an even better understanding of practice and its many external influences from cultural thinking, social connection, and economic forces in play (Kemmis, 2010).

The ongoing debate about the status of teachers and their practice can be traced back to discussion about reactive and proactive approaches to teaching and instruction in regular education (Rohrkemper & Good, 1987a, b) and in special education (Donnellan, LaVigna, Negri-Shoultz, & Fassbender, 1988). Teachers have been engaged in to-and-fro bridge crossings between teacher-valued knowledge and research-informed practice. For example, co-teaching is part of a set of recommended practices that teachers in regular and special education have been slow to embrace. Despite mounting evidence of effectiveness, this social practice may be viewed by teachers as complicated and time-consuming to implement. It also sits outside the established boundary around teacher autonomy within a classroom. On the other hand, punishment has been part of a set of reactive practices that teachers in regular and special education have been unable to relinquish.

Co-teaching as an Example of Proactive Practice

Early recommendations to shift instructional practice towards proactive strategies of teaching gave value to roles not only as a planful, reflective, and data-driven instructor but also as a socialiser of better behaviour (Rohrkemper & Good, 1987a): They stated that “The more proactive decision-making and behavioural strategies that a teacher engages in, the more predictable the classroom environment becomes” (p. 460). However, the prevailing approach to behaviour and its management in classrooms has not encouraged teachers to make this shift. Combining and recombining the professional skills and resources of general and special educators in a shared classroom is one way to design useful learning experiences and outcomes for students with and without SEN.

Co-teaching is a research-informed inclusive practice, which is an innovative version of the traditional team teaching arrangement (Beamish, Bryer, & Davies, 2006). Villa, Thousand, and Nevin (2008) have advocated several benefits of this multi-element practice. It fosters a positive sense of classroom community; improves students’ positive attitudes, social skills, and academic learning; and facilitates teachers’ professional growth, personal support, and motivation. Collaborative partnering between regular and special education teachers has proven to be effective in meeting the demands of diverse learners including those with SEN (Solis, Vaughn, Swanson, & McCulley, 2012). Collaboration can enhance class interactions as a learning community and staff interactions as a team. Individual teachers with knowledge and enthusiasm for co-teaching can lead and inspire whole-school improvement.

Social dynamics within effective co-teaching teams blur the typical roles of regular and special education teachers and their respective responsibilities for whole-class curriculum versus students with SEN. This blurring promotes the sharing of knowledge and expertise across a co-plan, co-teach, co-evaluate cycle of action learning and shared reflection. Sharing the load of planning, instruction, and assessment, whether across a specific unit of work or across a period of the school year, improves conditions for teaching and learning. Ongoing collaboration among team members enhances communication and feedback loops, which, in turn, promotes the use of new ways of working within a community of practice. Thus, co-teaching relationships can alter the ecology of inclusive practice across a class, a year level, and a school (Kemmis et al., 2012).

This proactive reorganisation of inclusive practice can bring together implementation science and improvement science. Working together equally helps regular and special education teachers to adapt their own practice to each other’s practice instead of maintaining their separate roles and responsibilities (i.e. curriculum managers for the whole class and managers of differentiated curriculum for students with SEN in that classroom). Acting as “boundary riders” who maintain fences between professional territories prevents two-way sharing of knowledge and its translation into action. Co-teaching can also move regular and special teachers towards joint ownership of student outcomes and towards active learning from each other’s strengths with a mixing of rigour and fit-for-purpose adaptation. In this way, co-teachers can become effective boundary brokers of inclusive practice (Waitoller & Artiles, 2013).

Punishment as an Example of Reactive Practice

Punishment-based practices are research-informed practices that rarely improve learning productivity or reduce misbehaviour. Schools often lack a shared and systematic understanding of the meaning of discipline as education in socially acceptable behaviour rather than suppression of misbehaviour (Bear, 2010). From the 1960s, these practices have continued to be employed with students of all ages and abilities, despite having been shown to have negative or minimal benefits for meaningful student outcomes (Maag, 2012). It appears that teachers may value the practice as a powerful and easy-to-implement tool with quick effect within a classroom (Knight, 2009): Effects are mostly short-term, and consequences are often unpredictable. Punishment has relatively little educative value to students as an instructional tool in the learning of more socially acceptable behaviour. Otherwise, punishment often remains a default option for teachers.

In modern usage, teachers have access to an extensive repertoire of punitive strategies to reduce misbehaviour and deal with crisis situations. Sidman (1999) traced the historical origin of this Western preference to public medieval punishments that were employed to communicate the severe cost of wrongdoing and challenges to authority (e.g. torture and exile). Many Western countries ban physical punishment in schools, but alternative emotionally damaging strategies include nonverbal frowns and gestures, chronic verbal nagging, melodramatic threats of severe consequences, and punitive reinforcement-based procedures such as detention (adding an unpleasant consequence for misbehaviour) and response cost (removal of personally valued privileges for misbehaviour). Various strategies used to exit a student from a classroom include a short break from the room (e.g. office disciplinary referral to administration), seclusion within the school, temporary suspension from school, and permanent exclusion.

Traditional use of punishment in schools continues to be promoted as both (a) the centrepiece of a “behaviour management” approach in authoritarian school procedures and (b) a “last resort” for teachers who lack alternative ways of managing behaviour that threatens classroom safety and challenges the wellbeing of self and others in the classroom. Everyday use of punitive strategies in real-time decision-making in the act of teaching serves to confront, intimidate, and coerce students. These actions can provide the appearance of teacher control of the classroom, correction of unruly behaviour and emotional outbursts, and student submission to authoritarian demands for compliance.

Cautions about punishment are many, varied, and longstanding (Bear, 2010). Teachers underrate the side effects of using punishment (e.g. teaching aggression; fostering negative emotions in teacher, student, and peers; and undermining day-to-day teacher-student relationship and opportunity to foster longer-term mutual respect). Overreliance on negative consequences to manage behaviour informally teaches students to avoid punishment and to hate the learning environment and everyone in it (Colvin & Scott, 2015). Both teacher and student escape further mutual negative interactions by engaging in more escalation of “go away from me” aversive interactions (e.g. building negative chains of problem behaviour, punishment, more misbehaviour, more punishment, etc.). Punishment is not prosocial, does not improve self-monitoring in the longer term, does not model respectful behaviour, lacks sensitivity to the many reasons for misbehaviour, does not train teachers in good practice, does not regulate student emotions, and does not create a positive school climate.

From the 1980s, teachers have been invited to shift instructional delivery away from reactive practice towards more proactive teaching (Rohrkemper & Good, 1987a). Reactive practice has continued to value the teacher’s role as instructor who tries to minimise behavioural interference with instruction rather than as a socialiser of better behaviour. There is an ongoing need for a more proactive, reflective, and planned stance to replace (a) teacher reactivity to unanticipated and mainly negative events during the interactive or ongoing phase of instruction, (b) unplanned actions in disciplinary encounters with students, and (c) quasi-moral decisions to withhold positive reinforcers from students judged as capable but condemned as disengaged and unproductive.

Western Perspectives on Students and Their Schooling

In Western society, there is broad alignment between developmental research, beliefs about what teachers do, and community expectations with respect to student wellbeing, learning, and behaviour. Important longitudinal research into school success has identified three indicators: (a) friendly and prosocial interactions with classmates, (b) achievement of reasonable learning outcomes, and (c) good conduct in the classroom (Masten & Coatsworth, 1998). It is widely believed that regular teachers can develop key competencies appropriate to student age, address the wide range of learning needs in any classroom, and handle misbehaviour. The community expects that school leavers will be well-adjusted, literate, and productive citizens.

There has been increasing understanding of the extent and variety of the vulnerabilities of students and of the inappropriateness of some practice in meeting their basic needs. For example, longitudinal data from the Australian Temperament Project show that “at any one time-point, approximately 25% of all students exhibit significant adjustment difficulties of some sort” (Sanson, 2016, p. 24). Moreover, today’s schools are dealing directly with the traumatised, disconnected, and antisocial behaviours of abused and neglected children. Furthermore, many schools continue to use punitive rather than positive practices with some students (e.g. learning disabled; hyperactive-impulsive-aggressive or aggressive-impulsive-anxious; anxious and depressed; mood disordered) who have always been in classrooms (Bryer & Signorini, 2011).

Student wellbeing, learning, and behaviour can be affected by the school environment in positive and negative ways. Social-emotional, intellectual, and behavioural differences within and among students, arising from biopsychosocial processes in development, can be increased or reduced. Success in traditionally valued academic literacy and numeracy outcomes of schooling can be linked to psychological and emotional strengths. For all students, including those with SEN, a positive school environment, catering for individual difference, and teaching for academic and social-emotional outcomes are imperatives (Wang & Degol, 2016).

Wellbeing has gradually become a popular idea for school improvement because it broadens the formal purpose of schooling to include personal development and social relationships for all students and for their teachers. Learning is returning to popularity among researchers who emphasise collaborative teacher expertise in helping all students make good academic progress rather than endless conversations about distractions from learning in their classrooms (e.g. more assessment, more technology, more school choices, lower class size, longer school days, and performance pay incentives for teachers). Unproductive behaviour that interferes with academic learning and social connectedness has dominated informal and formal conversations among teachers throughout the modern history of schooling.

Wellbeing

Wellbeing, psychological strengths, and resilience to stress and adversity are becoming increasingly popular topics for school improvement. Discussion about these prosocial topics is beginning to balance the existing concern about youth welfare for distressed students who are coping poorly with negative life events. Related school topics of mental health promotion, prevention, and intervention (McMillan & Jarvis, 2017) and an assess–plan–implement–evaluate teaching cycle for social and emotional learning (Beamish & Bryer, 2017) also help to expand the traditional focus on academic achievement and acquisition of traditional curriculum content to encompass social connectedness and emotional warmth across the school community. These ideas have begun to soften the traditionally rigid boundaries between teachers and students and have lessened the sole focus on student achievements in the cognitive aspect of learning.

A caring and child-centred vision for education emerged from the gradual spread of interest in social justice and equity (Wright, 2014). Between the late 1960s and the 1980s, interest in preparing young people for a rapidly changing world suggested integration of psychological and emotional health and development into a broader educational base for curriculum development. Within a whole-person approach, self-confidence was considered essential to the student’s capacity to learn, and physical, emotional, and intellectual development were considered indivisible parts of curriculum development and delivery.

The emergent construct of student wellbeing places the student at the centre of school experience in a comfortable, happy, and healthy state of being. It is a person-centred construct. It refers to a sustainable state characterised by a high level of satisfaction with self, learning experiences, relationships, and the school experience in general. Wellbeing is an umbrella term for many positive terms associated with different theoretical perspectives. The complexity of the notion of wellbeing and its multiple physical, mental, and social-emotional dimensions is evident in eight domains identified by Danker, Strnadová, and Cumming (2016, p. 67).

  1. 1.

    Positive emotions deal with feelings such as joy, contentment, interest, and affection; from either social interactions or interest in school activities and curriculum.

  2. 2.

    Negative emotions concern worries about school, complaints, and anxieties.

  3. 3.

    Engagement is a multidimensional concept consisting of psychological, academic, behavioural, cognitive, and affective components; sense of school belonging, time spent on school-related activities; school attendance and adherence to school rules; and enthusiasm and effort devoted to learning.

  4. 4.

    Relationships concern positive interpersonal relationships with peers, teachers, and parents.

  5. 5.

    Accomplishment addresses the student’s sense of capability in doing everyday tasks and experiencing a sense of competence and achievement when pursuing meaningful goals.

  6. 6.

    Mental health addresses depressed mood and suicidal thoughts; the regularity with which students experience negative emotions such as gloominess, anger, loneliness, and misery.

  7. 7.

    Intrapersonal domain is about sense of self; emotional regulation, self-esteem, and resilience.

  8. 8.

    Access to resources covers technological tools, highly qualified teachers, positive learning environment, and services and programmes that are affordable and appropriate.

Student ideas about wellbeing at primary and secondary levels of schooling emphasise being safe, being happy, being loved, and being healthy: At primary school, they also want to be listened to, and, at secondary level, they want a voice in decisions affecting them (Anderson & Graham, 2016). Previously, Compas, Hinden, and Gerhardt (1995) found that most students feel happy in childhood through into adolescence. A small number of adolescents progressed along a declining path (i.e. happy in childhood, miserable in transition, and worse in adolescence and young adulthood). Some students with SEN are more likely to appear unhappy because they experience anxiety and fearfulness about actual and perceived threats in the school and classroom environment, intolerance of uncertainty, and difficulties in regulating their emotions (Boulter, Freeston, South, & Rodgers, 2014).

Mental health is frequently paired with wellbeing. Increasing availability of data in the USA, the UK, and Australia reveals the prevalence of developmental disorders in school communities and the ongoing and worsening outcomes of difficulties without appropriate treatment. Less than half can access services from school or elsewhere. For every student in clinical distress, there are more students who are stressed and not coping well with the ordinary stresses of life. Mental ill-health can interfere with participation in daily activities, and exposure to bullying and related reluctance to attend school can worsen outcomes for students anywhere on the continuum to one or more developmental disorder or other psychosocial disabilities of executive attention, anxiety, and conduct. It is even more likely that students with SEN will develop a mental health difficulty.

Learning and Behaviour

Learning as an important construct for teacher practice has become popular again after a long period out of the limelight. Advances in psychological and social learning theories throughout the twentieth century established a conceptual framework for adjusting the environment around a student and for explicitly teaching better behaviours that reduce interference with learning. However, the 1970s emphasis on child-focused discovery learning in Piagetian and post-Piagetian constructivism focused on the role of the student in making meaning from their personal explorations. For several decades, this view of students as their own teacher overshadowed the behaviour in context emphasis of learning theories. Teachers also adopted a strong prejudice against using reward-based strategies because they believed that reward could manipulate students to act against their own interest in learning (Strain & Joseph, 2004).

Modern definitions of learning reject public and professional fallacies about learning (Hattie, 2015a) and call for more science about learning (Hattie, 2015b). Hattie and Yates (2014) disputed the privileging of student action, discovery, and experience over student practice for learning, development of relationships, and teaching expertise. Adult-designed practices that value opportunities for successful learning are highly relevant for students with SEN. Elmore (2016, p. 531), an important school reformer, also argued that most educators are “blissfully unaware” of the growing science of learning. He now views learning as a profoundly developmental practice that is complex, slow, and multilayered. He supports a reform-minded learning system that is always changing and improving its teacher practices and school procedures and distinguishes this view from a more traditional education system that reworks ideas and evidence to the realities of existing institutions.

A major international review of studies of school achievement revealed that popular practices often make little contribution to student progress throughout a school year (Hattie, 2015b). Because the range of learning within a grade can cover several year levels, Hattie stressed that every student deserves to make a year’s worth of progress in a school year. Teachers not only underestimate students’ difficulties in completing tasks but also underestimate students’ emotional pain and distress about their learning struggles (Hattie & Yates, 2014). Teachers frequently expect students to understand what is involved in a task and do not provide sufficient detail about information important to the task activities, its sequence of information, and specific task language. Learners need the classroom to provide a safe environment to learn from errors without being punished. Teachers need to create many opportunities to learn, and classroom learning is slow and effortful. Learning tasks are difficult, and overlearning of complex tasks requires explicit teaching. All of these considerations about the learning environment offered by a teacher are salient to the learning and wellbeing of diverse learners.

Previous longitudinal evidence has shown bidirectional effects between how students learn and how they behave (Hinshaw, 1992). Bidirectional causation allows some potential for academic difficulties to trigger behaviour problems and for behavioural problems to trigger academic difficulties. Given that academic and behavioural problems can leak into each other, these crossover effects can magnify the frequency and intensity of a student’s difficulties academically and behaviourally. Reciprocally, improvements in behaviour can improve academic engagement, confidence, and learning; similarly, improvement in academic learning can result in more productive student behaviour (McIntosh & Goodman, 2016).

The persistent and progressive problem of student disengagement from schooling through late childhood and adolescence has been investigated through a short-term longitudinal study following students from Year 7 into Year 8 (Wang & Eccles, 2013). Findings revealed complex, multidimensional links between teaching practices and learning outcomes. Evidence showed that student engagement in learning is not only person-centred but also interacts with the teacher-prepared classroom environment as operationalised in its instructional practices. This study provided a sophisticated demonstration that individual students can present with different profiles of engagement. These profiles can affect learning at the same time and in concert with various instructional supports and adjustments provided to every learner in the diverse classroom.

The multidimensional ways in which students feel, act, and think as learners was the basis of differentiation of and interactions among three aspects of student profiles of engagement with learning. Confirmatory factor analysis verified emotional, behavioural, and cognitive factors in a student profile. Wang and Eccles described differences in (a) emotional reactions to and interest in valuing of school activities, (b) behavioural actions towards school and learning (e.g. attending class and completing schoolwork, concentrating and working hard, and participating in extracurricular activities), and (c) cognitive investment in learning (e.g. self-regulated and strategic approach to learning; mental effort to master concepts and exert effort to understand complex ideas). Structural equation modelling showed various pathways by which five aspects of practice in the multidimensional school context, as perceived by individual learners, can affect these three aspects of engagement. These aspects can either increase or decrease each student’s developing sense of belonging in the social environment (emotional), autonomy as learners (behavioural), and competency to succeed (cognitive).

Because academic ability in this study was found to moderate engagement profiles, Wang and Eccles (2013) pointed out that motivation and engagement of low-performing learners may require enhancement to counter greater anxiety and helplessness. They reported that facilitators of engagement likely to be more critical to these learners in a classroom involve clear teacher expectations for the learners, consistent and predictable teacher responding to student input, and simpler and more structured instructional strategies. For students with SEN, problems associated with executive functioning lead to difficulties in understanding, which then contribute to inattention to task and poor engagement. By extension from the low-performing students in this study, effective inclusion of students with SEN may require close attention to these classroom adjustments.

In its broad themes, this sophisticated analysis was consistent with the Western focus of wellbeing, learning, and behaviour outlined in this chapter and with developmental success indicators (relationships, academic achievement, and classroom conduct) previously discussed by Masten and Coatsworth (1998). Moreover, it also confirmed that learner engagement benefits from the same kind of classroom practices previously identified by Hattie (viz. caring and emotionally encouraging teachers and peers; instructional opportunity for active choice and personal meaning; and clear, predictable, and organised classroom management). Furthermore, this analysis also showed how adjusting specific aspects of these instructional practices to learner needs can strengthen a student’s perception of positive relationships with others, confident belief in developing autonomy as a learner, and sense of personal competence in learner actions.

Behaviour-enhancing practices that actively encourage learners to behave appropriately have yet to acquire the popularity and prevalence of behaviour-managing practices. Punitive practices that result in student marginalisation and exclusion limit meaningful opportunities to learn and acquire social-emotional competence. Teacher training in a prosocial approach to discipline remains poor, misbehaviour does not improve, and teacher habits do not change in line with research-informed literature. Teachers in both regular and special education continue to frequently report student disengagement from learning tasks and low-level disruption of the learning environment (Scott, 2017; Sullivan, Johnson, Owens, & Conway, 2014). Despite educational investment in promoting wellbeing and learning, there is continuing evidence that unproductive student behaviour interferes with engagement in learning and that mainstream teacher practice needs to become more involved in educating students for behavioural success.

Synthesis

This chapter provides a synthesis of ongoing debates about educational practice over generations of teaching and research. The unresolved and recurring nature of many of these issues indicates that behavioural support can advance the sense of connectedness to schooling, teaching, and learning for all students, including those with SEN. In this introductory chapter, it has been recognised that there is current need for evidence-based teaching to promote student wellbeing, learning, and behaviour.

In Part 2, Chap. 2 outlines the history and science of behavioural support developed in the USA. It is noted that, whereas the USA uses the American spelling of behaviour, the British spelling is used generally in this book. Behavioural support, moreover, is the term used throughout this book to refer to derivatives of positive behaviour support (PBS), a proactive, preventative, and proven approach to bringing about behaviour change. Behavioural support also claims to be universal; it has been introduced into other English language countries and into Europe. Its introduction into the Asia-Pacific Rim provides an opportunity to test its boundaries.