Abstract
Approaches to students with social, emotional, and behavioural difficulties (SEBD) are frequently the subject individual interventions in schools that range from disciplinarian to medical model in flavour. The presumption is that challenging behaviour is foremost a pathology. It is rare for schools and educators to lean towards an ecological lens on SEBD, and even when these are considered ineffective, pedagogy is rarely considered with conviction as a cause for behavioural challenges. This chapter examines how the design of instruction and assessment is in fact a tool that is capable of addressing SEBD by creating meaningful engagement of the students in question within the classroom. Universal design for learning (UDL) in particular provides teachers with simple, user-friendly principles to consider how to rethink engagement for the full spectrum of diverse learners.
TopExamining Challenging Classroom Behaviour In Terms Of Lack Of Opportunities For Classroom Engagement
In order to present and assess the relevance of UDL in addressing challenging behaviour in the classroom and in changing the way we interpret learner engagement, it is necessary to first examine how, historically, students with disrupting behaviour have been treated, and which theoretical lenses have had predominance.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Multiple Means of Engagement: This is one of the three UDL principles. It has the advantage of being, immediately and intuitively, grasped with ease by educators. It, on the other hand, also creates a risk that teachers may underestimate the scope and width of the reflection required around design. This UDL principle requires teachers to take a rich and deep look at their classroom practices and to examine to what extent their construction of what constitutes engagement might be too teacher-centric, too narrow and too restrictive. Applying this UDL principle will involve stepping out of that outlook and adding flexibility in how we conceive learner engagement.
Universal Design for Learning: UDL is a framework which supports the inclusion of diverse learners by prioritizing the injection of optimal flexibility in three dimensions of learning: student input, output, and affective engagement. This has led to the creation of three design principles within the UDL lens; these are commonly referred to as multiple means of representation, multiple means of action and expression, and multiple means of engagement.
Culturally Responsive Pedagogy: This is discussed by an emerging body of literature which approaches the need to address diverse cultural perspectives in the classroom, not from the rather hazy angle of multiculturalism, but with inclusive design in mind. The aim is to design classroom activities and assessment through hands-on processes that avoid ethnocentric decisions and choices in daily classroom practices.
Social Emotional Learning: This concept is becoming increasingly present in the literature on challenging behaviour in schools. It stresses the role of school as a locus for the development of well-being. The inconvenience of this lens for the purposes of this chapter is that it tends to dissociate emotional and affective well-being, from cognitive and academic objectives. This chapter instead asserts that emotional well-being and the affective nature of belonging in fact are directly connected to the inclusive design of instruction and assessment itself.
Challenging Classroom Behaviour: This is a notion which the literature acknowledges has an inherent degree of subjectivity. What is categorized by some teachers as challenging behaviour may not be perceived as such by others. Consensus in the literature focuses not on the nature of the behaviour, as most acknowledge occasional challenging behaviour is normal in the case of all youth, but on the frequency and intensity of that behaviour.
Social, Emotional, and Behavioural Difficulties: This a categorization which emerged originally in the UK, within legislative provisions for inclusion in schools, but has spread internationally in the scholarship on challenging behaviour. It has the advantage of not categorizing students on the basis of diagnosis, and instead positions these youth in ecological terms in relation to the tense relationship they entertain with school as an institution.