reflective essay behaviour management

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Behaviour management: experience, reflection, outcome

June 22, 2013 //  by  Admin

Geoffrey Court, co-founder of The Circle Works, argues that teachers need to achieve a balance between experience, reflection and outcome if they are to respond well to young people's behaviour.

The founding question

The Circle Works began some 20 years ago with a question. I was seconded to the Urban Learning Foundation with a brief to develop a teacher support project. I began by asking as many teachers as I could: ‘What new kinds of support do you think would help you do your job better?’

I spent several weeks in staffrooms, headteachers’ offices, and cafés, taping conversations with groups and individuals. It didn’t take long for a coherent picture to emerge. Teachers started saying, ‘What we need is precisely what you’re already doing: you’re giving us space to think about our working lives. Can we come back again?’

It was important right from the start to create a space where people felt respected and valued. This meant being hospitable, and taking care over our surroundings. Then, from our first formal evaluation, we learned how important it was to people that the project had no connection with the hierarchies that dominated their working lives: so independence and confidentiality were also key features of the space we offered. Another was what might be called a quality of attention: a way of taking people seriously, in which careful listening obviously played a big part.

So it was that a space was created where teachers felt safe enough to explore the questions thrown up by their experience. Not, on the whole, managerial questions (‘What’s the best way to organise playground duty?’) but larger questions about the meaning of their working lives. The kinds of questions that were being asked then are still being asked in our space now, questions such as:

• What do I really believe?
• How far am I prepared to compromise?
• Why do I feel so strongly about this?
• Is this the right job for me?
• Can I keep going?

Learning cycle At The Circle Works, we base our work on a minimal version of what’s sometimes called the learning cycle:

1. Experience Experience is the stuff life throws at us all the time. When things go wrong, the first question we should ask is not ‘Who’s to blame?’ or ‘Whose fault is it?’, but ‘What can we learn?’, ‘How can we do it better next time?’ ‘Put it down to experience’ can be translated as ‘Add it to the rich compost of life, and a bit more growth will happen.’

2. Reflection If experience is a compost heap, reflection is more like a clearing in the woods. It’s a space where we can pause and have a go at making sense of where we’ve come from and where we’re going. It’s a space for remembering; for sorting; for making connections; for seeing possibilities.

3. Outcome Reflection is largely pointless unless it makes a difference out there in the world. Where we say ‘outcome’, some versions of the learning cycle use the word ‘action’. For us, though, this is too restrictive, because it doesn’t embrace, for example, the enlightenment that comes from a slight shift in perception, or the transforming effect of a sudden surprising connection in the mind. Both of these examples are outcomes of a very real kind, and may well lead to changes in behaviour. They cannot, though, be construed as ‘action’. So we prefer to stick to the word ‘outcome’, in the sense that people say things like ‘Something will come out of this, I know it will.’

Cycle at work Lately we’ve been offering groups of school staff space of a particular kind, inspired by the work of the educationalist Gerda Hanko. The idea behind each session is that it’s an opportunity to focus on a particular child who is causing concern. Without quoting a real case, the process goes something like this:

Experience ‘This kid’s behaviour is impossible. We really want her to be part of the group, but she’s wrecking the life of the class. We can’t go on like this.’

Reflection ‘Let’s take an hour together, away from the classroom, to concentrate on this child. What do we know about her? What has she learned from her life so far? How does the world look from her point of view? Why might she need to behave like this? How can we make things better for her, while also looking after everyone else?’

Outcome ‘We’ll give it another go. We’re seeing this child rather differently now. We understand what’s likely to trigger one of her outbursts, so we’ve changed some routines in ways that will benefit everyone, not just her. We will make sure she is listened to and feels safe. We will talk to each other when feelings run high ... and so on.’

The need for balance It’s important to notice that, in this small story, each of the three phases is absolutely necessary to the overall process. If any one of the three components were missing, the learning cycle would be incomplete, and change would not take place. In a way, it makes no sense to talk about experience being necessary, because experience is given; it’s part of being alive. Here, though, we are saying that it is necessary for all the protagonists to remain present in the situation, and therefore available for learning.

Outcomes are necessary too. Without them, we are either trapped in self-indulgence, or simply keep going round in ever-decreasing circles. Outcomes take us out of reflection and back into the world, giving us the means to change it and our way of being in it. Outcomes feed new experience, and that leads to new growth, as the learning process cycles round again. In the space between experience and outcome is reflection. Without the hour set aside in our small illustration, the outcomes might never have been arrived at, and although change would undoubtedly have happened, it probably wouldn’t have been change for the better.

Not only is every part of the learning cycle absolutely necessary to the whole, but each part depends on every other part. More than that, each part needs to be present in the right proportion to the others. If too much experience is put into the mix, we become exhausted. Too much reflection, and we become too inward-looking. Too much outcome, and we start to fly by the seat of our pants, which means that sooner or later we will crash.

What is a problem is that so many people not only never have time to answer their own questions, but find that their own questions – arising from their own experience – are simply dismissed as irrelevant

Thinking in circles I’ve described a learning cycle with carefully delineated stages. Linear language provides us with a reasonably clear way of understanding roughly where we are at any one point, and marking out some of the territory. But if we want to think about reflective space, linear language can only get us so far.

The reason, of course, is that what we’re talking about here is relationship. The statements that I made about the learning cycle – that every component makes a vital contribution to the whole and that the balance of the ingredients is critically important – are both statements about relationship.

The space between is a place of learning, but a place of mysterious ingredients and throw-ins rather than tick boxes and targets. It’s an unpredictable place of surprising connections and unexpected encounters, where the imagination dances and plays. Above all, it’s a place of elusive, ever-shifting, infinitely complex relationship.

Behaviour as a question The behaviour of the child in our small story might be thought of as a question. It certainly calls for a response: it’s behaviour that simply refuses to be ignored. Tragically, it may be the only way the child knows of asking for help: ‘I’m in pain here, but I’m only a kid. You adults think you know it all – what are you going to do about it?’ Good educationists understand this. They also understand how often the questions voiced by the marginal children, the ones who are constantly at risk of exclusion and feel they have nothing to lose, are in fact unspoken questions for us all.

Dismissed questions What shocks us at The Circle Works is the number of times people say, ‘This is the only place where I can talk honestly and openly.’ Of course, professionalism will always demand a degree of restraint. Of course there will always be feelings and opinions best expressed in private. That’s not a problem. What is a problem, though, is that so many people not only never have time to answer their own questions, but find that their own questions – questions arising from their own experience – are simply dismissed as irrelevant.

The system is out of balance because the space between politics and the person is under threat. On the one hand, policy and regulation penetrate our working lives in ways that we wouldn’t have dreamt of in 1985. There is less and less room for us to address our own questions, because we are too busy trying to keep up with the policy-makers’ answers. If there’s no space for a balanced conversation between the policy makers and those on the ground, we are depriving ourselves as a society of a very important resource. We are missing out on an opportunity to temper, enliven and inform public policy by mining a rich seam of experience. If that’s the case, we should not be surprised if people feel alienated from politics, or if education or the health service stubbornly refuse to shift in response to yet another round of structural change.

Email: [email protected]

Gerda Hanko Gerda Hanko’s model for solving problems in tackling behaviour through staff dialogue is outlined in her book Increasing Competence through Collaborative Problem-Solving: Using Insight into Social and Emotional Factors in Children’s Learning, published by David Fulton.

In this book, Hanko describes a collaborative approach to problem-solving that involves a whole-school strategy aimed at meeting the needs of children deemed to be more difficult to teach because social and emotional factors contribute to their failure to thrive as learners. She argues that working collaboratively has many benefits and prevents a fundamentally ineffective prescriptive approach that tells teachers what they should be doing.

‘Ultimately,’ Hanko argues, ‘collaborative problem-solving creates conditions favourable to finding workable solutions, and produces a climate of commitment and mutual respect in which the teachers themselves, as individuals and as a genuinely collaborative team, implement their conclusions, and observe and consider what needs to evolve.’

We’re reviewing our resources this fall (September-December 2024). We will do our best to minimize disruption, but you might notice changes over the next few months as we correct errors & delete redundant resources. 

Critical Reflection

A Critical Reflection (also called a reflective essay) is a process of identifying, questioning, and assessing our deeply-held assumptions – about our knowledge, the way we perceive events and issues, our beliefs, feelings, and actions. When you reflect critically, you use course material (lectures, readings, discussions, etc.) to examine our biases, compare theories with current actions, search for causes and triggers, and identify problems at their core.   Critical reflection is   not   a reading assignment, a summary of an activity, or an emotional outlet.   Rather,   the goal is   to change your thinking about a subject, and thus change your behaviour.

Tip: Critical reflections are common in coursework across all disciplines, but they can take very different forms. Your instructor may ask you to develop a formal essay, produce weekly blog entries, or provide short paragraph answers to a set of questions. Read the assignment guidelines before you begin.

How to Critically Reflect

Writing a critical reflection happens in two phases.

• Analyze:   In the first phase, analyze the issue and your role by asking critical questions. Use free writing as a way to develop good ideas. Don’t worry about organized paragraphs or good grammar at this stage.
• Articulate:   In the second phase, use your analysis to develop a clear argument about what you learned. Organize your ideas so they are clear for your reader.

First phase: Analyze

A popular method for analyzing is the three stage model: What? So What? Now what?

In the  What?  stage, describe the issue, including your role, observations, and reactions. The   what?   stage helps you make initial observations about what you feel and think. At this point, there’s no need to look at your course notes or readings.

Use the questions below to guide your writing during this stage.

• What happened?
• What did you do?
• What did you expect?
• What was different?
• What was your reaction?
• What did you learn?

In the second  So What?   stage, try to understand on a deeper level why the issue is significant or relevant. Use information from your first stage, your course materials (readings, lectures, discussions) -- as well as previous experience and knowledge to help you think through the issue from a variety of perspectives.

Tip:  Since you’ll be using more course resources in this step, review your readings and course notes before you begin writing.

Below are three perspectives you can consider:

• Academic perspective: How did the experience enhance your understanding of a concept/theory/skill? Did the experience confirm your understanding or challenge it? Did you identify strengths or gaps in your knowledge?
• Personal perspective:   Why does the experience matter? What are the consequences? Were your previous expectations/assumptions confirmed or refuted? What surprised you and why?
• Systems perspective:   What were the sources of power and who benefited/who was harmed? What changes would you suggest? How does this experience help you understand the organization or system?

In the third   Now what?   stage, explore how the experience will shape your future thinking and behaviour.

Use the following questions to guide your thinking and writing:

• What are you going to do as a result of your experiences?
• What will you do differently?
• How will you apply what you learned?

Second phase: Articulate

After completing the analysis stage, you probably have a lot of writing, but it is not yet organized into a coherent story. You need to build an organized and clear argument about what you learned and how you changed. To do so,   develop a thesis statement , make an   outline ,   write , and   revise.

Develop a thesis statement

Develop a clear argument to help your reader understand what you learned. This argument should pull together different themes from your analysis into a main idea. You can see an example of a thesis statement in the sample reflection essay at the end of this resource.

Tip: For more help on developing thesis statements, see our   Thesis statements  resource

Make an outline

Once you have a clear thesis statement for your essay, build an outline. Below is a straightforward method to organize your essay.

• Background/Context of reflection
• Thesis statement
• Introduce theme A
• Writer's past position/thinking
• Moment of learning/change
• Writer's current/new position
• Introduce theme B
• Introduce theme C
• Summarize learning
• Discuss significance of learning for self and others
• Discuss future actions/behaviour

Write and revise

Time to get writing! Work from your outline and give yourself enough time for a first draft and revisions.

Even though you are writing about your personal experience and learning, your audience may still be an academic one. Consult the assignment guidelines or ask your instructor to find out whether your writing should be formal or informal.

Sample Critical Reflection

Below are sample annotated paragraphs from one student’s critical reflection for a course on society and privilege.

Introduction

Background/context of reflection : I became aware of privileged positions in society only in recent years. I was lucky enough, privileged enough, to be ignorant of such phenomena, but for some, privilege is a daily lesson of how they do not fit into mainstream culture. In the past, I defined oppression as only that which is obvious and intentional. I never realized the part I played. However, during a class field study to investigate privileged positions in everyday environments, I learned otherwise.   Thesis:   Without meaning to, I caused harm by participating in a system where I gained from others’ subtle oppression. In one of these spaces, the local mall, everything from advertisements to food to products, to the locations of doorways, bathrooms and other public necessities, made clear my privilege as a white, heterosexual male.

Body paragraph

Topic sentence : Peggy McIntosh describes privilege as an invisible knapsack of tools and advantages. This description crystalized for me when I shopped for a greeting card at the stationary store. There, as a white, heterosexual male, I felt comfortable and empowered to roam about the store as I pleased. I freely asked the clerk about a mother’s day card.   Writer’s past position:   Previously, I never considered that a store did anything but sell products. However, when I asked the sales clerk for same sex greeting cards, she paused for a few seconds and gave me a look that made me feel instantly uncomfortable. Some customers stopped to look at me. I felt a heat move over my face. I felt, for a moment, wrong for being in that store.  I quickly clarified that I was only doing a report for school, implying that I was not in fact homosexual.   Writer’s current position:   The clerk’s demeanor changed. I was free to check, she said.  It was the only time during the field study that I had felt the need to explain what I was doing to anyone. I could get out of the situation with a simple clarification. But what if I really was a member of the homosexual community? The looks and the silence taught me that I should be feared.  I realized that, along with its products, the store was selling an image of normal. But my “normality” was another person’s “abnormality.”  After I walked out of the store I felt guilty for having denied being homosexual.

Summary of learning:   At the mall I realized how much we indirectly shame nonprivileged groups, even in seemingly welcoming spaces. That shame is supported every time I or any other privileged individual fails to question our advantage. And it leads to a different kind of shame carried by privileged individuals, too.   Value for self and others:   All of this, as Brown (2003) documents, is exacerbated by silence. Thus, the next step for me is to not only question privilege internally, but to publicly question covert bias and oppression. If I do, I may very well be shamed for speaking out. But my actions might just encourage other people to speak up as well.

Sample paragraphs adapted from James C. Olsen's Teaching Portfolio from Georgetown University .

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Behaviour management: using reflective language.

One of the biggest challenges facing primary school staff can be dealing with children’s behaviour in a way that has a positive impact on them, is not detrimental to their self-esteem, and enables them to make realistic changes.

For many staff working in primary schools today their desire to support and encourage learning is disrupted by children who do not conform to the expectations of engaged participation in daily school life.

We may know of children who have refused to follow instruction, appear to be deliberately disruptive and challenge staff. We may also know of children who are withdrawn, overly eager to please and unable to build and sustain relationships. In some schools there may only be a few children causing concern, in others there may be many.

Reflective language

Reflective language uses simple tentative statements that articulate what you observe, what may be going on for a child and how they may be feeling. For example, “I can see you looking out of the window, I wonder if you are not sure what to do next, perhaps it would help if I explained it again.”

Using reflective language which considers and explores the possible reasons behind the behaviour is a useful tool for any member of school staff. It focuses on increasing understanding of why a child may be doing something, rather than just looking at the behaviour the child is displaying.

Reflective language is a subtle way of providing positive messages to children. It conveys to the child that you are seeing them, trying to understand them and acknowledging any feelings they may be experiencing. It enables adults to tentatively explore the child’s experience without making judgements or assumptions about it.

Using reflective language clearly communicates to a child: “I see you, I hear you, I am trying to understand you,” and thus enables them to feel seen, heard, valued and understood. For some children this can be a relatively new experience and may result in increased self-worth and self-esteem.

By using this with children, adults are providing a positive message to them: “You are worth thinking about and trying to understand, I am trying to help you to work out how you feel and support you with understanding and managing your feelings.”

It can be beneficial to use reflective language rather than always reprimanding children or telling them what to do, because it acknowledges and validates the child’s feelings and experiences.

When to use it

The use of reflective language can be easily integrated into the school day. For example, if a child is struggling or finding a task difficult, it can help to reflect: “It can be difficult when we get things wrong” or “It can feel frustrating when we are trying to do something and we can’t work out how to do it.”

This enables the child to feel noticed and understood, along with helping them to identify how frustration feels. Over time this enables the child to link the feelings with the word and to make that connection themselves. This may result in them being able to use the word themselves when they next have that feeling. Children who are able to understand and express their feelings are able to achieve success at school and reach their potential more easily.

When a child is unable to put their feelings into words, they can be at a disadvantage in terms of fully accessing the curriculum and engaging in all aspects of school life. Affirmative responses

When a child feels an adult is trying to help and understand them, they may start to feel more positive about themselves, therefore enabling them to make changes to their behaviour. The use of reflective language within schools encourages a sense of safety and security rather than fear and anxiety.

If a child is able to have their feelings accepted, acknowledged and validated without judgement or reprimand by an adult, they learn that all feelings are acceptable and this can impact on their behaviour in a positive way.

When a child’s behaviour is explored in a gentle and reassuring way by using reflective language, it provides them with an opportunity to begin to acknowledge their own mistakes and gradually learn to start taking responsibility for their actions. These are small but essential steps towards learning about choices and consequences and ultimately making positive changes to their behaviour.

Enabling children to ask for help

When children have learnt self-sufficiency at a young age they may try to manage on their own as they have learned “it’s not okay to ask for help or if you do no-one responds”. A reflection, such as “you may need some help from an adult with this, and I can help you if you would like me to”, provides the message that sometimes children need help from an adult and it is acceptable to ask for it.

It enables the child to have the choice and decide whether they need help, rather than the adult controlling the situation and deciding for them. This can help to reduce any feelings of anxiety and fear that the child may be having.

It is also useful if children see school staff asking for help, as this can be very liberating – for example, “I’m going to ask Mr. Bell to help me with the display because everyone needs help from other people sometimes”.

Acknowledging your own feelings

School staff can be positive role models for children when dealing with and expressing their own feelings during the school day as this provides children with concrete experiences of this. This is particularly important for children who may not have this demonstrated to them outside of school, for example, a child who sees their dad punch the wall when they are angry, rather than voicing it.

School staff can use opportunities during the school day to admit and acknowledge their own mistakes, for example: “Even grown-ups get things wrong sometimes.”

There are many opportunities during the school day where staff can acknowledge their own feelings where appropriate, for example: “I felt cross when the photocopier was broken.” Staff can also identify and acknowledge difficult times during the school day, such as: “It’s raining again and that can be frustrating when we were looking forward to doing PE outside.”

Why is it important?

The use of reflective language has a positive impact on both children’s emotional wellbeing and their behaviour. Some children may find it difficult to express their feelings and may have learnt that it is not safe to do so. Their anxieties may manifest in their behaviour, for example a child who is unable to sit still or is always fiddling with something.

It can help if their feelings and behaviour can be identified and acknowledged in a gentle and supportive way, rather than reprimanding them for not being able to express or manage their feelings, for example: “I can see that it’s really difficult for you to sit still and relax until you know what we are going to do.” This kind of reflection may enable children to manage their anxieties more easily.

Using reflective language can be a powerful tool to change children’s behaviour and set them on the path to improved mental health and wellbeing. The use of reflective language enables school staff to become more aware of what, why and how children communicate through their behaviour along with increasing their awareness of how they respond to this.

This may result in improved staff confidence and self -esteem along with a better understanding of themselves which may then affect how they respond to children. When adults are open to making small changes in the way they view and respond to children’s behaviour, this can have a positive impact on children, enabling them to feel more accepted and understood.

• Cath Hunter is a play therapist, trainer, therapeutic consultant and author who has worked in schools since 2004. She is the author of Making a Difference: A practical guide for the emotionally focused school practitioner, which introduces reflective language and other strategies to respond to behaviour and meet emotional wellbeing needs. The early bird offer of £13 is available until June 30. For details, visit www.therapeuticfamilyinterventions.co.uk

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Reflection of behaviour management within the classroom.

Behaviour management is one of the most important factors, but can also be the toughest within an educational setting. There are many reasons that behaviour needs to be managed; to create a classroom setting where learning can flourish and the children need to feel successful, to allow the children to feel safe, to have and gain respect, and to teach the children about socially appropriate and acceptable behaviour. However, it is important for teachers to consider the style they approach certain situations in order to gain the correct behaviour management. For example, (Hook and Vass, no date, p.9) state that effective teachers approach behaviour with a very positive attitude. It is important that you emphasise more on positive statements rather than negative, the use of praise and rewards, and to highlight on their success rather than highlighting when they make mistakes. If a child is talking and not paying attention, some teachers may approach this situation by saying “can you stop talking and pay attention please?” However, a more positive outlook to this situation can be “I need you to choose to face the front and listen to me. Thanks” This is focusing more on what they should be doing, rather than what they are doing wrong.

Leading up to my MA1 Professional Practice placement, I felt that behaviour management was going to be the most intimidating factor for me. Because of this, I read up on a lot of behaviour management books and texts on how to deal with certain situations involving behaviour in the classroom. I felt that this helped me prepare myself for my placement, and gave me a bigger wealth of knowledge. However, during my placement, I had to deal with a wide variety of behaviour management, and could not believe how well and confidently I dealt with it. Moving on to my MA3 Professional Practice placement, I feel this will now be one of my stronger areas.

Hook, P and Vass, A. (no date) Behaviour Management Pocketbook, United Kingdom: Teachers’ Pocketbooks.

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Classroom Behaviour: A Practical Guide to Effective Teaching, Behaviour Management, and Colleague Support

Journal of Educational Administration

ISSN : 0957-8234

Article publication date: 1 February 2004

Richmond, C. (2004), "Classroom Behaviour: A Practical Guide to Effective Teaching, Behaviour Management, and Colleague Support", Journal of Educational Administration , Vol. 42 No. 1, pp. 112-114. https://doi.org/10.1108/09578230410517503

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2004, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

This text contributes to the huge behaviour management literature base by summarising and building upon many of the themes that have been introduced in earlier works by Rogers. He has synthesised behaviour management practice into seven chapters each exploring a set of key issues. Chapter one illustrates the recursive nature of the relationship between teachers and students. The author has a superb grasp of the lived moment, the spaces between what is said to whom and what happens next in the classroom. While each of the scenarios is necessarily described in fairly linear ways, (he said or did this, she responded in such a way and then that happened) it is so cleverly done that the author evokes memories that lend each vignette living credibility.

Chapter two leaps into practical advice about how teachers can prevent disruptive behaviour by establishing classroom routines and clarifying expectations with students. The title of chapter three, “The language of behaviour management” reframes classroom dynamics between teachers and students in terms of their communication. Both verbal language and non‐verbal teacher language are dissected with a view to providing advice about maximising influence on student behaviour.

Chapter four, lying geographically at the very heart of this text, is a succinct essay on “fundamental understanding and skills” underlying “effective teaching”. Rogers introduces this chapter with a brief though only partially satisfying reflection about effectiveness as it relates to teaching. While effective as a concept is debunked as potentially utilitarian, there is much left unsaid about, for example, maximising student learning in the context of inclusive classrooms. Case illustrations make this chapter useful because they use curriculum‐based examples, to reinforce management‐based ideas made elsewhere in the text. Szasz's quote cited under the chapter title “A teacher should have maximal authority and minimal power” is translated by the thrust of the information to read “how a teacher can project authority in a context where he or she has little power”.

Chapter five addresses the difficult area of applying consequences for disruptive behaviour. While Rogers addresses the ambivalent nature of the concept of consequence, the content almost exclusively deals with consequences flowing from misbehaviour. Ironically an anonymous quote cited with the chapter title is “When I do good no one remembers, when I do bad no one forgets”. Advice to teachers in how to think about and strategise consequences for misbehaviour in respectful, fair and reasonable ways is, nevertheless, excellent.

Chapter six summarises work originally outlined in behaviour recovery together with additional information guiding teachers to work well with students who relentlessly challenge. It is refreshing to read a behaviour management text that avoids labelling student behaviour. Instead the subtext of this book is how teachers can manage themselves in order to influence students to learn. The final chapters focus almost entirely on this aspect, and Rogers names this intention in the title of chapter seven, “Managing anger in ourselves and others”. Finally, “When things get difficult: hard class hard times” will evoke for many teachers the remembered terrors of midnight ruminations about Year 9 in 1990, or Year 6B in 1995, or whichever, whenever but there is usually at least one class like this in a teacher's experience. Multidimensional demands on educators in the complex environments of contemporary schools provide fertile ground for conflict. Rogers handles the advice giving here with clarity and generosity. He does not, however, pull punches when he writes “teaching is not for everybody”.

This text is densely packed with management advice. While there is some attention on clarifying theoretical points, this is not one of the book's strengths. Another limitation is its lack of contextualising within broader social landscapes. The book is what Rogers says it is, “a practical guide” to strategy. The writing style is characterised by short bursts of information with liberal use of dot points. This type of writing facilitates a “dipping in” rather than a cover to cover one‐off reading style which is likely to suit busy teachers who want useful information quickly.

The stories in this text take the reader inside classrooms, onto playgrounds and into the minds of contemporary teachers and students. The one message drawing all these stories together is of the potency of personal dimensions in that perennially challenging part of teachers' work called behaviour management. Rogers introduces a personal voice from the opening paragraph carefully building his argument on a foundation stone of charming self‐deprecation. It is a seductive voice; the reader cannot help but laugh, if somewhat ruefully at times, with the human dilemmas played out in scenarios used to illustrate each strategic piece of management advice. Cleverly, Rogers teaches particular strategies by providing examples of poor (but nevertheless logically human) practice followed by examples of preferable practice. The delicious juxtaposition of case examples embeds this text with a practical edge unsurpassed in the classroom management field.

There is useful cross‐referencing within the longer case studies. For example, when Rogers describes one teacher's work with a challenging Year 8 class in order to make several points about how this teacher manages the beginning part of a lesson, he notes that a student enters the room late. Instead of repeating how best to manage lateness he uses a page reference at that point so the reader can check back to an earlier recommendation.

The phrase that succinctly captures Rogers' thesis in this book is his wish for educators to undertake their work with sanity and grace. Looking up the thesaurus for “sanity” one finds the synonyms “good sense”, “reason”, “wisdom”, and “judgement”; and similarly for “grace” the synonyms are “elegance”, “refinement”, “poise”, and “charm”. All these concepts are translated into practical advice through the behaviour management approach described in this book. I recommend it to teachers and those aspiring to teach. If set for preparation courses, this is one of the texts that will not end up on the shelves of the secondhand book shop!

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