It’s the educational equivalent of the chicken or the egg. Children need to behave in order to access high quality learning. If learning is not of the highest quality, students will not behave. It is a predicament present across the world of education and one that has strong supporters either side.
Before going any further I do firmly believe that your behaviour as a teacher in the classroom does have an impact on engagement in learning and in some scenarios traits which many teachers will exhibit at times can have an impact on the work rate on a class. Being extremely negative, overeating or mass punishments and have implications for the relationship between the teacher and their class. In this guise, I agree that teachers and their delivery have affected the behaviour of a group.
However, when Ofsted have in the past stated that “dull” lessons are fuelling bad behaviour in the classroom making explicit a link between what is being taught and the behaviour of the students meaning that the teacher is squarely to blame and students behaviour is merely a result of poor practice.
The idea that poor behaviour is the result of poor teaching gives teachers culpability for events over which they have very little control or influence. It shifts the focus away from having high expectations of students to expecting nothing from them but be entertained by a performer. It provides an all too simplistic view of why students might be misbehaving, ignoring the many additional factors which could be causing less than desirable behaviour in the classroom.
The argument, which blames teaching and learning for behaviour issues so acutely, creates a blame culture where students and senior teachers are on the same side against the teachers at the front of the classroom. Where students feel that they do not need to engage with learning which they find ‘boring’ or are simply just not interested in and those in charge of our schools believe they need to make all teaching a series of performances designed to entertain without necessarily being educational.
Teachers at all levels should be on the same side, making their expectations clear and promoting engagement in learning through rewarding good work. Life outside of school will not be tailored to engage these young people throughout their careers, some will have jobs they find boring. We are in danger of setting these students up to fail and this paradigm must shifted back to focussing on high expectations on students and support for all teaching staff.