Managing Behavior or Promoting Engagement?

Classroom behavior management has consistently been recognized as a central issue ofimportance in staff well-being, student success, and school culture. For decades, theoriesand models on how best to “manage” the behavior of students for a productive classroomhave showed an increasing trend away from teacher-controlled reactive approaches tomisbehavior toward more student-centered strategies to prevent misbehavior. Focusingon managing student behavior, either reactively or proactively, is coming at the problemfrom the wrong direction. The student behaviors that most affect teaching and learning inour classrooms are low-level disruptive, or “disengaged,” behaviors. These disengagedbehaviors are best understood as indications of a student’s weakened affective orcognitive engagement with school. Schools wishing to have less disengaged behaviorsneed to refocus their lens on these behaviors, from how to “manage” them to how tostrengthen targeted areas of engagement. This has direct implications for reformingclassroom practices as well as school polices on behavior management