The priority attached to learning about behaviour

The suggestion from the current government’s former expert adviser on behaviour, Charlie Taylor, is that being able to manage pupil behaviour represents a fear for trainee teachers (DfE 2012a). It is also an area in which some surveys (NFER 2008, 2012) indicate teachers consider their training to have been weak. An assumption, therefore, might be that this would be an area the PGCE students surveyed would see as a priority for

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coverage in their training. Data gathered within the first questionnaire and presented in table 6.1.1 would bring such an assumption into question.

Area of Learning Frequency Identified

as a top 5 priority

Help you plan your teaching to achieve progression for learners _70.2%

Provide you with the relevant knowledge, skills and

understanding to teach your specialist subject 69.6%

Help you use a range of teaching methods that promote

children’s and young people’s learning 68.4%

Help you to establish and maintain a good standard of

behaviour in the classroom 63.7%

Prepare you to teach learners of different abilities _59.6%

Help you to understand how to monitor, assess, record and

report learners’ progress 50.9%

Help you understand the National Curriculum _43.3%

Prepare you for your teacher’s statutory responsibility for the

welfare and safety of children and young people 25.7%

Provide you with the knowledge, skills and understanding to use information and communications technology (ICT) in your subject teaching

10.5%

Prepare you to work with learners with special educational

needs 11.1%

Prepare you to work with teaching colleagues as part of a team _7%

Prepare you to communicate with parents or carers _5.3%

Prepare you to teach learners from minority ethnic backgrounds _1.8%

Prepare you to work with learners with English as an additional

language 1.8%

Prepare you to work in a team with staff supporting you in the classroom (e.g. nursery nurses, technicians, teaching assistants)

1.8%

Table 6.1.1 Frequency with which particular areas of professional learning were identified as a top 5 priority at the beginning off the PGCE course (n = 171)

For this question respondents had been asked to identify their top five priorities for coverage on the PGCE course from a range of 15 areas of professional activity provided. Though Help you to establish and maintain a good standard of behaviour in the classroom was selected by a sizeable proportion (63.7%) of respondents, it was not the universal priority that Charlie Taylor’s observation would suggest it might be. Three other areas of professional learning appeared more frequently within respondents’ top 5 priorities. These were Help you plan your teaching to achieve progression

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for learners, Provide you with the relevant knowledge, skills and understanding to teach your specialist subject and Help you use a range of teaching methods that promote children’s and young people’s learning. An implication of this is that, on entering the course, the focus of attention was on learning more than behaviour. Nevertheless from the results it is still reasonable to conclude that behaviour featured prominently in the thinking of many of those surveyed.

The PGCE course exposed the trainees to school practice and also to input during the university based elements of the course. A question to consider is whether this exposure to the realities of classroom experience would lead to a sense of conscious incompetence (O’Connor and Seymour 1998) as described in Chapter 4 (pg 112), with trainees recognising how much there was still to learn about behaviour – or even simply that behaviour represented more of an issue than they had originally imagined. Conversely the combination of taught input and classroom experience may have led to trainees feeling that behaviour was less of a priority than they initially thought it would be. Underpinned by an awareness of these possibilities, the second questionnaire revisited the question of the level of priority attached to training in relation to behaviour, this time in the context of priorities for their professional development in their NQT year. In interpreting the results (see Table 6.1.2) it is important to recognise that this question required respondents to select up to five areas and so the implication is that any item identified was seen as a priority worthy of mention rather than the result of an obligation to identify five responses.

Establishing and maintaining a good standard of behaviour in the classroom was the most frequently identified as a top five priority. The most frequently identified priorities remained relatively consistent between the two questionnaires. Both Establishing and maintaining a good standard or behaviour in the classroom and Understanding how to monitor, assess, record and report learners’ progress’ were identified more frequently as top five priorities in the second questionnaire.

These findings offer some support to the notion that behaviour is a concern for beginning teachers – or at least an aspect of practice they feel it is a

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priority to learn more about. From being the fourth most frequently identified top five priority at the start of training (see table 6.1.1), it moved to the most frequently identified top five priority for professional development in the first year as a qualified teacher (see table 6.1.2). The difference between a concern or worry and recognition of a need for more learning is an important distinction to make. The second questionnaire also revealed, for example, that 60.8% of respondents saw Understanding how to monitor, assess, record and report learners’ progress as a priority but, unlike behaviour, this is not talked about nationally as teachers’ biggest fear.

Area of Learning Frequency Identified

as a top 5 priority Establishing and maintaining a good standard of behaviour in

the classroom

66.7%

Understanding how to monitor, assess, record and report

learners’ progress 60.8%

Planning your teaching to achieve progression for learners 57.3%

Using a range of teaching methods that promote children’s and

young people’s learning 56.1%

Developing relevant knowledge, skills and understanding to teach your specialist subject

42.7%

Teaching learners of different abilities 40.4%

Understanding the National Curriculum 28.7%

Communicating with parents or carers 26.9%

Working with teaching colleagues as part of a team 25.7%

Developing your awareness of the teacher’s statutory responsibility for the welfare and safety of children and young people

22.2%

Working with learners with special educational needs 17.0

Developing the knowledge, skills and understanding to use information and communications technology (ICT) in your subject teaching

12.9%

Working with learners with English as an additional language 8.2%

Working in a team with staff supporting you in the classroom (e.g. nursery nurses, technicians, teaching assistants)

7.6%

Teaching learners from minority ethnic backgrounds 4.1%

Table 6.1.2 Frequency with which particular areas of professional learning were identified as a top 5 priority at the end of the PGCE course (n = 171)

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