Dr Kerry Hempenstall, Senior Industry Fellow, School of Education, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.
First published Oct 29/10/2012, updated 30/4/2018
My blogs can be viewed online or downloaded as a Word file or PDF at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/olxpifutwcgvg8j/AABU8YNr4ZxiXPXzvHrrirR8a?dl=0
New addition - April 2025
This is a new set of research papers added to the original set that is still available below this section.
The reason for the new set is to consider whether the Literacy and Behaviour issues have changed over time. The new section holds only papers between 2020 to 2025.
Associations between Teacher-Rated Behavioral Problems and Reading Difficulties? (2021)
“Associations between reading difficulties and problem behaviours in the classroom have been discussed controversially since the 1970s. The present paper investigates the influence of reading performance on teacher ratings of behavioural problems while taking into account behavioural autocorrelations and teacher halo effects.
Teachers rated reading (in the middle of the school year) and behaviour (at the beginning and end of the school year) for a sample of 171 first-grade students. In addition, the students' reading performance was objectively assessed via a standardised test at the end of first grade.
The results showed that the effect of reading problems on classroom behaviour is heavily affected by autocorrelational and halo effects. After controlling for the interaction between teachers' ratings of reading and behaviour, objectively measured reading performance had only a marginal direct effect on behaviour (as rated by teachers).
Therefore, we argue that findings from the literature on the co-morbidity of behaviour and reading may be affected by similar (halo) effects, causing the effect of reading difficulties on classroom behaviour to be overestimated. Co-morbidities reported in the study should be closely examined with respect to their 'methodological composition' in the future.”
Elies et al (2021). Elies, A., Schabmann, A. and Schmidt, B. M. “Associations between Teacher-Rated Behavioral Problems and Reading Difficulties? Interactions over Time and Halo Effects”. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs 21 (4), pp. 368–380. https://eric.ed.gov/?q=reading+and+behaviour&id=EJ1315992
“The relationship between literacy and behaviour problems is a much-debated area. Which could be the cause and which is the effect? And how is confidence affected?
Literacy is fundamental to life. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to gain meaning from our world. This is why it is essential to continue fighting for great literacy, and reading, skills in our children.
Let’s look at some research that suggests a connection between literacy and behaviour (and how it impacts on student confidence).
“Research has demonstrated a strong positive correlation between behaviour problems and low academic achievement (Gest & Gest, 2005; Landrum, Tankersley, & Kauffman, 2003). Payne, Marks, and Bogan (2007) report “that behavioural and academic problems are reciprocal in nature.”
Simply put, behaviour problems can interfere with classroom engagement and, consequently, students can fail to master skills because of this lack of academic engagement. Classrooms with high performing students will be a place where there are low levels of behaviour issues.
Kids don’t generally come to school hating to be there (well mostly!). If students experience more failure than success, they often learn to hate school. This is a critical concern.
Another study by Mash and Wolfe (2013) showed that “younger children having difficulty in reading comprehension and literacy end up showing problematic behaviours in their future years.”
The connection becomes obvious when you visualise a child who is having difficulty in reading, comprehension or spelling becomes frustrated, unhappy and starts to act out.
Prevention
Disliking literacy/reading, combined with low self-belief, often triggers the ‘fight or flight’ response. The negative effect of poor reading skills only increases over time as older students become more aware of their performance compared with their peers.
Early literacy intervention is the best option. Yet sometimes awareness is the most beneficial too. If the focus is just on the behavioural patterns, then attitudes toward literacy can be overlooked.
Parents and educators who want to support the literacy achievements of young people should focus on connecting kids with engaging and relevant reading material. We need to help our young, poor readers to prevent them from becoming vulnerable to academic, behavioural and emotional issues.”
Grambower, T. (2021). Literacy for Boys Reading problems, poor behaviour & confidence – an interesting connection. © 2021 Literacy for Boys.https://www.literacyforboys.com.au/reading-problems-poor-behaviour-confidence/
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Australia doesn’t need a Behaviour Curriculum (2024)
“Australia doesn’t need a ‘Behaviour Curriculum’. We need to implement Social and Emotional Learning now
By Melissa Close and Linda Graham
Last month, the Senate Education and Employment References Committee released an interim report on the Senate Inquiry into increasing disruption in Australian school classrooms – and it looks like we will get the final report today. It used an unsubstantiated decline in Australia’s rank in the OECD’s disciplinary climate index to claim Australian classrooms as among the most disorderly around the world and raised concerns about teacher safety, job satisfaction, and retention, and the impact of classroom disruption on students’ academic learning. Meanwhile, rigorous research has demonstrated no decline in three of four measures of learning.
The interim report’s recommendation for a ‘Behaviour Curriculum’ is similarly flawed. Student behaviour is complex, shaped by a myriad of social, economic, political, and environmental factors. Consistency in the school-wide use of evidence-based classroom management techniques, such as the use of clear routines and coherent reward/consequence systems, provide effective parameters for expected behaviours but they are not enough on their own. There is also significant danger in a simplistic “tips and tricks” approach that implies that all problem behaviours are misbehaviours that can be corrected by teachers who have mastered basic techniques to which they have (allegedly) never been introduced.
It is seductive to imagine that all challenging behaviours can be magically fixed by teachers learning how to “run a room”, but this ignores the reality with which today’s classroom teachers must grapple. Many of the most troubling behaviours for teachers are not deliberate actions of indolent children who could otherwise comply with the help of stricter discipline. Rather, they reflect differences in cognitive processing, underlying stress responses, and/or the outcome of emotional overwhelm by students who have experienced childhood complex trauma or who have a disability.
There is a disturbing current of ableism running through the report and through the submissions of various advocates for the behaviour curriculum. Look, for example, at the definition of disruptive behaviour used in the interim report. The parallels between these five criteria and the diagnostic criteria for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are obvious to anyone with any knowledge or experience of ADHD but, as that is clearly not the case for some, we have placed both in a table to highlight the overlap.
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Senate Interim Report Definition of Disruptive Behaviour (p. 3) |
Diagnostic Criteria for ADHD |
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1. talking unnecessarily and calling out without permission |
Often talks excessively.Often blurts out an answer before a question has been completed. |
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2. being slow to start work or follow instructions |
Often avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort. Often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks. |
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3. showing a lack of respect for each other and staff |
Often does not listen when spoken to directly.Often interrupts or intrudes on others.Often leaves seat in situations when remaining seated is expected. |
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4. not bringing the right equipment |
Often loses things necessary for tasks or activities. |
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5. using mobile devices inappropriately |
Is often easily distracted by extraneous stimuli. |
In fact, all five are consistent with ADHD, a neurodevelopmental disorder which is underrecognised and poorly understood/supported in Australian schools. Education providers are obligated to provide reasonable adjustments to ensure that students with a disability, including those with ADHD, can access and participate in education on the same basis as students without disability. Yet these students are commonly do not receive adjustments and are commonly (but mistakenly) perceived as wilfully non-compliant. Not surprisingly, they are overrepresented in school suspension, exclusion, and early school leaving.
While we acknowledge that challenging behaviours exist in classrooms and that these can be better managed (and that these students can and should be better supported), the real solution extends beyond a reductive curriculum focusing only on ‘behaviour’. What Australia needs is a holistic, forward-thinking approach that prioritises the whole child; one that addresses not just the symptoms but the root causes of disruptive behaviour.
Thankfully this need is being recognised elsewhere in government, judging by various recommendations to implement Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS). MTSS is a comprehensive and integrated service delivery framework that systematises the provision of evidence-based prevention and intervention support across all developmental domains (academic, behavioural, and social-emotional) in three tiers (universal, targeted, intensive) that increase in specialisation and intensity.
Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is a key component of MTSS, which recognises that there is more to education and child development and wellbeing than academics and behaviour, and that all three are inextricably linked. SEL involves teaching children to understand and manage their emotions, set goals, show empathy, establish healthy relationships, and make responsible decisions. SEL is both preventative and educative, proactively laying the groundwork for children to gain a deeper understanding of themselves and others, while cultivating the essential skills necessary for positive life outcomes.
(Close, 2023).
SEL is operationalised through evidence-based programs, integration into core academic instruction, and student-centred learning environments. Implementing SEL through a multi-tiered, systematic approach ensures it reaches all students and is integrated into various aspects of their lives, including the classroom, school, family, and community. The aim is to provide students with the skills they need to actively engage and succeed, rather than merely setting up a framework of rules and routines designed to contain and constrain with consequences when some students inevitably transgress.
Developing students’ social-emotional competencies is already a recognised priority in Australia, as evidenced by the Personal and Social Capability strand of the General Capabilities, which includes four of the five core SEL competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and social management (akin to relationship skills). The fifth competency, responsible decision-making, is integrated within the social management domain. The Personal and Social Capability strand provides an encouraging starting point for SEL, indicating that the curriculum infrastructure already exists.
The critical issue that has so far prevented this approach from achieving its aims in Australian schools is that this aspect of the curriculum is not assessed. And, due to the emphasis on literacy and numeracy—which is assessed—this important area of child and adolescent development does not currently receive the time and attention needed for it to be effective.
The recommendations emerging from the Review to Inform a Better and Fairer Education System and the Review of the National School Reform Agreement before it, are an ideal opportunity to streamline student mental health and wellbeing support across Australia. Traditional approaches, such as defaulting to a behaviour curriculum, the concept of which has been imported from England, is not the answer.
Australia needs to adopt a more intentional approach to address challenging behaviours, transitioning from reactive methods to proactive approaches. This involves laying the groundwork to explore how SEL can be implemented within an Integrated Multi-Tiered System of Support that includes—but is not limited to—evidence-based approaches to positive behaviour intervention and support. Relying on a behaviour curriculum of the type being advocated in submissions will continue to leave students behind who struggle with social-emotional skills, particularly those exhibiting the most challenging behaviours —the very students who stand to benefit most from SEL.”
EduResearch Matters Australian Association for Research in Education
https://blog.aare.edu.au/australia-doesnt-need-a-behaviour-curriculum-we-need-to-implement-social-and-emotional-learning-now/
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The Reading Guarantee: How to give every child the best chance of success (2023)
“Poor reading performance may also make managing classroom behaviour more difficult for teachers. A 2019 Dutch study of about 600 students and 70 teachers found students with poor reading skills tended to have worse behaviour, and teachers were able to improve behaviour by providing high-quality reading instruction. …
Another study also concluded that behaviour could be improved by improving students’ reading: Morgan et al (2008). But note that another paper suggests this link may be over-estimated: Elies et al (2021). …
This model involves an integrated set of whole-school practices to improve academic results and student behaviour. See Fletcher and Vaughn (2009), National Center on Response to Intervention (2010), Hempenstall (2012), Hempenstall (2013), D. Fuchs and L. S. Fuchs (2017), Haan (2021), Sailor et al (2021) and Bruin and K. Stocker (2021). …
Today, fewer students receive catch-up support, because fewer students need it. And student behaviour has also improved – within three years there had been a 70 per cent reduction in students being sent out of class for poor behaviour. …
Within three years of the new approach being taken, student behaviour had improved: there has been a 70 per cent reduction in students being sent out of class for poor behaviour. As the principal told us: We used to have someone whose full-time job was to work out incidents on the oval and office referrals, but we don’t have that role anymore. Now our classes are calm and orderly. We still have the same kids, but there’s been a huge change in behaviour. Now the teaching’s explicit, it’s fast paced, the kids are doing something constantly. …
A lot of our students are from low socio-economic backgrounds, and culturally, linguistically, and neurodiverse backgrounds. They often present with trauma-related behaviour that makes it difficult for them to engage in the classroom.”
Hunter, J., Stobart, A., and Haywood, A. (2023). The Reading Guarantee: How to give every child the best chance of success. Grattan Institute. ISBN: 978-0-6457978-1-7
https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/The-Reading-Guarantee-Grattan-Institute-Report.pdf
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2.04 Literacy and numeracy (2025)
“Overcrowding and poor housing conditions are more prevalent among First Nations households and remote areas. Overcrowding has been associated with increased risk of emotional and behavioural problems and reduced school performance (Solari & Mare 2012). Steps should also be taken to improve health as a determinant of education, namely vision and hearing issues that hinder communication in the classroom.
Vision problems and hearing loss, especially in children, can lead to linguistic, social and learning difficulties and behavioural problems in school, which in turn can impact on educational achievements. Early detection and management of health issues should therefore be considered in any strategies aimed at improving school achievement and attendance (Darwin Otitis Guidelines Group 2010). Improving housing conditions is one key component, given both the direct influence on education outcomes and the impact on health more generally.”
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2025). 2.04 Literacy and numeracy. Tier 2 - Determinants of health
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Supporting behaviour and emotions in school (2024)
“There are conflicting theories about the best ways to support behaviour in schools. This paper captures the perspectives of UK primary school staff regarding the advantages and disadvantages of different behaviour support approaches, in addition to exploring the facilitators and barriers to adopting relational-based approaches.
Virtual semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 school staff across three mainstream primary schools. A reflexive thematic analysis identified nine themes. Participants commented on the approaches’ flexibility, familiarity, positive long-term behaviour change and emotional wellbeing and relationships. Key facilitators to adopting relational-based approaches included: whole-school training and understanding; quality and type of training; and working together and feeling supported. Key barriers included: changing perspectives; ease of implementation and familiarity; scarcity of resources; and persevering in the face of difficulties. Themes are discussed in light of psychological research and implications for educational practitioners and future research are considered.”
“This study explored primary school staff’s perspectives on different approaches to support behaviour and emotions in schools. Findings suggest a blended approach, which respects reason and rules combined with relationships and repair, may provide the necessary support and structure for CYP to thrive.
Key facilitators on the journey to developing relational-based approaches in schools included a need for shared understanding and a whole-school shift in ethos. A proposed pathway, based on the current research, with key facilitators to support the process of transforming to a relational culture is summarised in a visual representation in Figure 3. Managing and responding to challenging behaviour is likely to involve judgements and emotions, making it difficult, for some, to act compassionately (Atkins, Wilson, and Hayes 2019).
When overwhelmed or stressed with their own difficulties, some school staff may find sanctions to be a simpler solution. Nevertheless, recent developments in psychological theory and evidence-based approaches in schools make it difficult to ignore the impact of relying solely on behaviourist strategies. As one widely cited educator emphasises, ‘You can’t teach children to behave better by making them feel worse. When children feel better, they behave better’ (Leo 2007).
Jones, R., Kreppner, J., Marsh, F., & Hartwell, B. (2024). Supporting behaviour and emotions in school: an exploration into school staff perspectives on the journey from punitive approaches to relational-based approaches. Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties, 29(1–2), 82–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632752.2024.2354021
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Positive Behavioural Interventions and Supports (PBIS) (2024)
“Notwithstanding their empirically validated credentials and social justice orientations, a mono-dimensional approach to Positive Behavioural Interventions and Supports (PBIS) cannot singlehandedly meet the unique needs of minoritised children and young people who have experienced acute, cumulative, or complex traumas.
Experiences of trauma have been empirically proven to have a debilitating effect on minoritised children’s learning and socio-emotional functioning. This causal effect necessitates the development of trauma-informed multitiered models of intervention to mitigate the adverse effects of trauma and to support these students’ behaviour and learning.
The article discusses the necessity of developing trauma-informed and intersectionality-based PBIS, while providing some insights into how trauma-informed education and care should be incorporated in PBIS planning and implementation strategies at the school and community levels. These analytical insights complement earlier work on promoting an ecological/interactional approach to understanding students’ developmental trajectories and their impact on academic and social behaviours, as well as more recent equity-focused PBIS approaches to improving equity in school discipline.”
ABSTRACT
Notwithstanding their empirically validated credentials and social justice orientations, a mono-dimensional approach to Positive Behavioural Interventions and Supports (PBIS) cannot singlehandedly meet the unique needs of minoritised children and young people who have experienced acute, cumulative, or complex traumas. Experiences of trauma have been empirically proven to have a debilitating effect on minoritised children’s learning and socio-emotional functioning.
This causal effect necessitates the development of trauma-informed multitiered models of intervention to mitigate the adverse effects of trauma and to support these students’ behaviour and learning. The article discusses the necessity of developing trauma-informed and intersectionality-based PBIS, while providing some insights into how trauma-informed education and care should be incorporated in PBIS planning and implementation strategies at the school and community levels. These analytical insights complement earlier work on promoting an ecological/interactional approach to understanding students’ developmental trajectories and their impact on academic and social behaviours, as well as more recent equity-focused PBIS approaches to improving equity in school discipline.
Introduction
Positive Behavioural Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is a behaviourally based approach predicated on the Response to Intervention Model (RIM). The strategy aims to provide systemic, graduated, proactive, and social justice practices, thereby increasing academic performance, decreasing problem behaviour, and implementing interventions for students with severe problem behaviours. It also aims to reduce suspensions and enhance the quality of academic instruction and students’ self-reported quality of life while fostering nurturing and safe school-wide relations (Algozzine et al. Citation2019; Andreou et al. Citation2015; Carr et al. Citation2002; Grey et al. Citation2017; Lo et al. Citation2010; Scott Citation2001; Sugai and Horner Citation2002, Citation2006, Citation2009; Tabacaru- Dumitru et al. Citation2022; Walker et al. Citation2023; Weist et al. Citation2018).
The effectiveness of PBIS has been empirically validated by a plethora of studies, including longitudinal randomised control trials that have provided compelling evidence to suggest that school-wide PBIS can significantly reduce disruptive behaviours and improve learning and social behaviours (e.g. Bradshaw, Mitchell, and Leaf Citation2010; Farkas et al. Citation2012; Horner et al. Citation2009; Luiselli et al. Citation2005; Mitchell, Hatton, and Lewis Citation2018; Oswald, Safran, and Johanson Citation2005; Park, Lee, and Kim Citation2019; Simonsen et al. Citation2012; Sugai and Simonsen Citation2012).
Positive Behavioural Interventions and Support build upon existing programmes, strategies, and initiatives and provide a structural and procedural framework to utilise, develop, and assess optimal strategies and interventions to teach students positive behaviours, self-regulating and resiliency skills and to afford them opportunities to practise and generalise them in an equitable, empathetic, empowering, and supportive environment (Eber et al. Citation2020; Lewis et al. Citation2016; Stockall and Blackwell Citation2021).
The approach recognises that students’ needs fall along a spectrum and, as a corollary to this, strategies and interventions are progressively increasing in intensity across delivery tiers of providing universal, intensified, and personalised modes of support while monitoring fidelity of implementation (Dorado et al. Citation2016; Evers Citation2017; Horner, Sugai, and Anderson Citation 2010; McIntosh, Predy, et al. Citation2014; Ormiston, Nygaard, and Olivia Citation2020; Sørlie Citation2021; Sugai and Horner Citation2009, Citation2006). Even though there have been applications of PBIS systems to prevent internalising mental health problems and behaviours (Barrett et al. Citation2018), PBIS have not been traditionally concerned with children’s and young people’s hidden and internalised issues that can be trauma-induced (Weist et al. Citation2018). Eklund et al. (Citation2021, 2115–16) and Eiraldi et al. (Citation2019) discuss how ‘internalizing service delivery’ or mental health services can be aligned with and integrated into multitiered PBIS.
Failure to address trauma and the internalising socio-emotional problems that ensue can have devastating effects on children’s educational and life trajectories that can persist into adulthood (Tebes et al. Citation2019). Childhood trauma has been dubbed ‘America’s hidden health crisis’ (Thomas, Crosby, and Vanderhaar Citation2019, 424), a characterisation that mirrors the prevalence and steady increase of ‘the epidemic of trauma exposure’ (Overstreet and Chafouleas Citation2016, 4) and its distressing effects on children’s developmental and educational trajectories (Bilias‐Lolis et al. Citation2017). This public health epidemic has engendered and exacerbated children’s problems in learning and behaviour (Tuchinda Citation2020; Winder Citation2015).
While all children can potentially experience and be affected by trauma, minoritised children, including children under the aegis of Local Authorities (Trundle and Hutchinson Citation2021), are more likely to experience acute and cumulative forms of trauma (Alvarez, Milner, and Delale-O’Connor Citation2016; Bowen et al. Citation2019; Bowen and Murshid Citation2016; Overstreet and Chafouleas Citation2016; Thomas-Skaf and Jenney Citation2020) due to their perceived vulnerability and deviation from arbitrarily constructed notions of racial/ethnic/cultural/linguistic ‘normality’. These children are generally more likely to be (re)traumatised in schools as they are at an increased risk of experiencing racial and ethnic disproportionality in school discipline (e.g. Gion, McIntosh, and Falcon Citation2022; Gregory et al. Citation2021; McIntosh, Predy, et al. Citation2014)
To avert the debilitating effects of (recurrent) trauma on minoritised students’ behaviour and learning, the article discusses the necessity of developing trauma-informed and intersectionality-based PBIS. These cross-disciplinary analytical insights complement earlier theoretical and empirical work on promoting an ecological/interactional approach to understanding students’ developmental trajectories and their impact on academic and social behaviours (Coll and Szalacha Citation2004; Coll et al. Citation1996; Smith et al. Citation1997), as well as more recent equity-focused PBIS approaches to improving equity in school discipline (McIntosh, Girvan, et al. Citation2021).
Building upon an ecological perspective in understanding and dealing with the intertwined and reciprocally related ‘ecologies’ that shape students’ lives and behaviours, an ‘integrative model’ goes a step further and brings to the equation the interactions of social class, culture, ethnicity, and race in understanding children’s development and its impact on their learning and social behaviours. This model was proposed by Coll et al. (Citation1996), who highlighted the importance of providing ‘a more comprehensive scientific understanding of the minority child’, a caveat that needs to underpin the development and implementation of PBIS that move beyond a ‘one size fits’ approach and make salient the ‘dynamic interaction between the child and both the proximal and distal ecologies’ (p. 1892). This integrative framework and its ramifications (e.g. children’s experiences of racism, prejudice, discrimination, oppression, and segregation) should inform the understanding of the developmental trajectories of children with minoritised social identities (Coll et al. Citation1996).
This framework is aligned with Farmer et al. (Citation2022) utilisation of a dynamic developmental, ecological systems perspective to examine the emotional and behavioural difficulties of youth of colour that emanate from and rest upon an interactive and reciprocally related web of complex processes and interactions of individual and ecological factors. The ‘developmental needs’ of minoritized youth ‘cannot be met’, according to Farmer et al. (Citation2022, 75), ‘by current research and intervention frameworks’ such as ‘Multitiered Systems of Support (MTSS), Positive Behavioural Interventions and Supports, and Response to Intervention’. These frameworks ‘are neither centered on being responsive to the circumstances and needs of minoritised youth who experience a system of correlated difficulties nor responsive to the resources, strengths, and needs of the teachers, schools, and community agencies that serve them’ (p.75).
Thus, even though SWPBIS have been empirically proven to be an ‘efficient first step toward reducing disproportionality’ (McIntosh, Predy, et al. Citation2014, 13), especially with the use of its Disproportionality Data Guide (McIntosh, Ellwood, et al. Citation2018), SWPBIS ‘may require additional strategies in some settings’ (McIntosh, Predy, et al. Citation2014, 13) to achieve equity-oriented outcomes for learner diversity (Gregory et al. Citation2021; McIntosh, Predy, et al. Citation2014). These considerations highlight that a mono-dimensional approach to PBIS cannot singlehandedly meet the unique needs of culturally diverse (Knoster Citation2018) and other minoritised children and young people (Lo et al. Citation2010; Ormiston, Nygaard, and Olivia Citation2020), while bringing to the fore the necessity to enrich and diversify PBIS.
This can, inter alia, be achieved by inviting ‘the E/BD (emotional and behavioural disorders) field to create heteroglossic communities in which complementary worldviews of student behaviours and emotions coexist and nurture distinct representational practices’ (Artiles Citation2022, 157). Cross-fertilising diverse insights can illuminate ‘the roles of contexts, culture and equity’ (Artiles Citation2022, 155) in advancing our understanding of E/BD. This view is also echoed by Knoster (Citation2018, 24), who urges the proponents of ‘Positive Behavior Support to be open to collaborating with others that share similar goals but view the world through a different theoretical lens’. While recognising that ‘to some within the behavioral perspective this pushing of the boundaries and openness to other perspectives may seem a bit unsettling’, he refers explicitly to the ‘need to be open to alignment and integration with the conceptual framework of what is referred to as trauma-informed approaches’ (p. 24).
Given the above considerations, the next sections discuss the necessity to embed trauma-responsive theories and practices in PBIS while providing empirical and theoretical insights into how trauma impacts learning and behaviour. This is followed by an analysis of how trauma-informed care and education should be incorporated into PBIS’s planning and implementation strategies at school and community levels while discussing implications for developing trauma-informed (special) education policies and professional practices.
The necessity for embedding trauma-responsive theories and practices in PBIS
Even though youth-serving systems have increasingly placed a sharper focus on childhood trauma and its debilitating impact on some students’ well-being and mental health (Hanson and Lang Citation2016), ‘the vast majority of public schools operate on the traditional assumption that student functioning is not impaired by trauma’ (Tuchinda Citation2020, 77). Trauma and its research-based links with problems in learning and behaviour have been largely ignored by schools (Tuchinda Citation2020; Von Dohlen et al. Citation2019) and teacher preparation and professional development programmes (Hunter et al. Citation2021). Even in cases where schools prioritise professional training on trauma, there is no empirical evidence of the subsequent impact of this training. In this context, training is provided on an ad hoc basis, and there are no processes for implementing trauma-informed strategies and interventions nor an impact evaluation strategy to determine the effectiveness of these initiatives (Eber et al. Citation2020; Maynard et al. Citation2019). It needs noting, however, that the Attachment Research Community (ARC) provides some strong and emerging evidence documenting the effectiveness of professional training on trauma, such as the North Yorkshire Attachment/Trauma Aware Schools project aimed at enabling staff to understand early developmental trauma and develop their trauma-responsive practice (AASP Citation2021).
The health-related crisis linked to the COVID-19 pandemic has reportedly exacerbated the debilitating effects of trauma on children’s mental and behavioural health, emotional stability, and wellbeing (Stockall and Blackwell Citation2021). This is particularly the case for students from ethnic minorities and impoverished socio-economic backgrounds, as well as for minoritised students whose challenges and adversities have worsened due to the pandemic (Milner et al. Citation2022). Schools, therefore, are expected to place a more pronounced emphasis on creating safe and nurturing school communities to counteract the adverse effects of the health-related crisis while fostering the optimal conditions to mitigate these effects. To this end, the focus of PBIS on understanding and dealing with students’ behaviour responses should be supplemented with a parallel focus on understanding and dealing with students’ emotional responses that trigger their behavioural responses. Trauma-induced behavioural responses – frequently driven by toxic stress responses to acute or prolonged and cumulative exposure to trauma – are challenging, risky, and problematic and correlated to a host of physical, emotional, and mental health problems that need to be attended to and addressed in effective ways (Evers Citation2017).
Conventional PBIS that are not trauma-sensitive can be ineffective for traumatised children, who might need to experience more secure, safe, responsive, empowering, trusting, transparent, and collaborative relations to overcome the pervasive effects of experiencing direct or precarious trauma. As suggested by Tuchinda (Citation2020, 830):… .Even some positive behavioral intervention services, can be ineffective and can even backfire with children who have experienced trauma. Children with traumatic stress are motivated by relationships, not attempts to control their behavior. Behavioral control or modification methods can backfire because they can be perceived as coercive and threatening by children who have been maltreated.
These methods may inadvertently contribute to the (re)traumatisation of these children whose experiences and behavioural responses have been adversely affected by inimical socio-economic conditions, structural inequalities, and human rights violation (Bowen et al. Citation2019; Sweeney et al. Citation2018; Williamson and Qureshi Citation2015). Traumatic life circumstances are a common denominator for students with ‘emotional/behavioral disorders’ (Hunter et al. Citation2021, 48), who are less likely to be responsive to PBIS’s focus on teaching positive behaviours and providing opportunities to practise them. According to Farmer et al. (Citation2022, 74), evidence-based programmes (EBPs) aimed at minimising emotional and behavioural difficulties, such as positive behavioural interventions and supports (PBIS) and multitiered systems of support (MTSS), ‘appear to support systemic oppression’ as they fail to respond to the needs of minoritised students. As suggested by McIntosh, Predy, et al. (Citation2014, 13):
Those [students] who are not from the dominant culture may be more likely to exhibit behaviour that is perceived as respectful (or neutral) by them and their families but is viewed as problem behaviour by other students and adults in the school. The resulting discontinuity in which behaviours of students who are economically and socially disadvantaged or culturally diverse are systematically labelled as norm-violating can lead to disproportionality that institutionalizes explicit bias as well as stereotypic associations that support implicit bias.
Consequently, minoritised students are more likely to receive higher levels of disciplinary action that deteriorates their behaviour in the long run (Bilias‐Lolis et al. Citation2017). This is due to the absence of an explicit focus on promoting an equity-focused PBIS approach empirically shown to reduce racism and racial disparities in school discipline (Ispa-Landa Citation2018; McIntosh, Girvan, et al. Citation2021; Vincent and Tobin Citation2011). These children are not only more likely to have experienced ‘invisible traumas’ (Bowen and Murshid Citation2016; Merrick et al. Citation2018; Sweeney et al. Citation2018) but are also more likely to experience a process of ‘re-traumatisation’ (Carlson et al. Citation2016; Szeli Citation2019; Thomas-Skaf and Jenney Citation2020; Williamson and Qureshi Citation2015) by being disproportionately subjected to exclusionary or harsh disciplinary practices ‘that harm their social and emotional development, school attachment, and sense of justice’ (Ispa-Landa Citation2018, 284).
Trauma and its impact on learning and social behaviours
Trauma is an integral dimension of intersectional oppression experienced by minoritised students, whose developmental and life trajectories have been jeopardised by health disparities, human rights violations, bigotry, social inequalities, structural racism, disablism, and extreme poverty amongst others. The intersections among these have triggered, compounded, and worsened students’ problems in learning and behaviour (Subica and Link Citation2022; Sweeney et al. Citation2018; Williamson and Qureshi Citation2015).
Trauma-informed practice has hitherto been traditionally linked to clinical practices such as trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapy aimed at dealing with PTSD or other disruptions to a person’s functioning and wellbeing (e.g. depression, anxiety, relationship impairment) that result from trauma exposure. These clinical interventions, albeit useful, ‘do not emphasize risk prevention, health promotion, and policy development in response to trauma exposure’ and hence, they have minimal impact on mitigating and preventing trauma ‘within and across populations’ (Tebes et al. Citation2019, 4). Drawing insights from the emerging field of population health science in addressing, alleviating, and preventing the debilitating effects of trauma at a larger scale, education can play an equally important role in supporting individuals who have been impacted by trauma, or will potentially be impacted in the future (Tebes et al. Citation2019). This view is supported by emerging research evidence documenting how the ‘neural impacts’ of complex trauma that affect traumatised children’s brain functioning and emotional regulation can be mitigated and even reversed by trauma-sensitive practices that precipitate ‘neural repair’; a process that is a testament to the imperative of embedding a trauma-informed perspective in school processes and professional practice to prevent and mitigate trauma (Donovan et al. Citation2019; Tuchinda Citation2020).
A trauma-responsive approach presupposes an informed understanding and acknowledgement of the role of trauma and its varied configurations and manifestations in learning and behaviour. A wealth of studies document how trauma can adversely affect children’s cognitive, linguistic, socio-emotional, and physical development. Traumatic exposure can undermine brain functioning and neurological development and cause long-term health problems such as obesity and depressive disorders, amongst others (Delaney-Black et al. Citation2002; Pechtel and Pizzagalli Citation2011; Williamson and Qureshi Citation2015). Εarly trauma exposure has also been proven to be the root cause of problem behaviours and relationships as well as other impairments that can undermine individuals’ functioning and wellbeing.
For example, it is empirically documented that acute, cumulative, or complex trauma can impair children’s executive functioning skills, attention, memory, speech and language, language and auditory processing, ability to read, understand and manage emotions, ability to process verbal information and engage in mathematical and problem-solving activities. Brain dysfunction due to trauma has been linked to increased levels of anxiety, impulsivity, and fear, as well as impaired self-regulation, decision-making, and ability to process environmental stimuli (Levenson Citation2017; Pechtel and Pizzagalli Citation2011). At the same time, research on trauma documents ‘a chain of cascading risk’ that is the outcome of original traumatic experiences that can precipitate debilitating genetic, cellular, brain, and behavioural changes. These changes adversely affect a person’s cognitive and socio-emotional functioning and enhance a person’s vulnerability to experiencing secondary traumas (Tebes et al. Citation2019, 3).
Silencing the deleterious effects of trauma on a child’s functioning can lead to a range of (mis)diagnoses including Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Conduct Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, and Reactive Attachment Disorder. However, these diagnostic labels ‘may not accurately or completely capture the full extent of the impact of trauma on one’s development and thus may lead to ineffective treatments’ (Ormiston, Nygaard, and Olivia Citation2020, 320), while the labelling process and its ramifications can cause (re)traumatisation (Sezli Citation2019; Thomas-Skaf and Jenney Citation2020; Williamson and Qureshi Citation2015).
Challenging behaviours exhibited by children can be a reaction to a re-enactment and reminder of trauma, and yet children affected by trauma are being subjected to punitive responses and pathologised. These children are subsequently more likely to be placed in disability categories such as Emotional Disability and receive special education services in schools (Miller and Santos Citation2020; Ormiston, Nygaard, and Olivia Citation2020). These services are informed by an ‘individual focused discourse of trauma’ (Ki Citation2021, 5) that pathologises children affected by trauma while silencing how trauma is disproportionately experienced by minoritised children whose life trajectories have been plagued by structural inequities (e.g. racism) and inadequate material resources (Bowen and Murshid Citation2016; Bowen et al. Citation2019). Special education cannot ‘be seen as a site for justice’ (Milner et al. Citation2022, 159), unless the causal effects of trauma on learning and social behaviours constitute ‘a part of the way special education is perceived’ (Winder Citation2015, 634) by creating trauma-informed special education services for children who have experienced acute and cumulative forms of trauma (Miller and Santos Citation2020).
Moving beyond dominant individualised and event-based understandings of trauma (Petrone and Stanton Citation2021; Visser Citation2015), due attention should also be given to cultural and historical traumas. The latter are, inter alia, inexorably related to colonial structures of power that conceal, legitimise, and perpetuate social inequalities, racism, human rights violations, extreme poverty, malnutrition, violence, substandard childcare, and other ‘cultural’ traumas that adversely affect learning and behaviour (Tuchinda Citation2020; Winder Citation2015) and create a vicious cycle of polytraumatisation and disablement (Halton et al. Citation2017; McInerney and McKlindon Citation2014). According to Underwood, Ineese-Nash, and Haché (Citation2019, 22): ‘Colonialism continues to create social conditions of poverty, environmental risk, and trauma that also are causes of childhood disability.’
Exercising ‘politicised care’ (McKinney de Royston et al. Citation2017) entails recognising ‘the intersection of inequality and trauma’ (Avery et al. Citation2021, 2), and how trauma can be ‘wilfully inflicted’ upon students ‘through everyday encounters that reproduce racist, sexist and colonialist practice’ (Zembylas Citation2022, 9). Breaking the vicious cycle of (poly)traumatisation experienced by some students necessitates understanding students’ past and current experiences of trauma and their cumulative effects on learning and behaviour (Conners Edge et al. Citation2022, Halton et al. Citation2017; McInerney and McKlindon Citation2014).
Trauma-informed and intersectionality-based PBIS and implications for education policies and practices
Integrating trauma-informed care in schools in a structured, methodical, and data-driven approach such as PBIS (Nylén et al. Citation2021) is an imperative intervention to identify and reduce trauma-induced behaviours and their antecedents while concurrently developing multi-tiered systems of support that are trauma-responsive (Von Dohlen et al. Citation2019). Developing a joined-up system of support that includes a wide range of behavioural and mental health interventions, along with trauma-informed interventions, can more effectively identify and support students with internalised socio-emotional problems that are not overtly presented and easily identified. Emotional reactions are inexorably linked to children’s mental health status; hence, the added urgency for schools to have mental health professionals, for example, working alongside teachers and other professionals to support students whose traumatic experiences are manifested in internalised problems that are insufficiently identified and dealt with in the context of PBIS (Weist et al. Citation2018).
Overstreet and Chafouleas (Citation2016) advocated the integration of trauma-informed initiatives with existing multi-tiered support frameworks such as PBIS to avoid creating tensions in implementation. Recent research evidence documents the benefits of incorporating a trauma-informed perspective in school policies and teacher training to supplement existing SEL (social and emotional learning) policies and practices that are endemic in PBIS (Hunter et al. Citation2021). Similarly, Eber et al. (Citation2020) bring together PBIS and mental health and trauma-informed initiatives and integrate them into a single system – namely, the Interconnected System Framework (ISF).
The availability of professional development modules focused on trauma-informed pedagogical strategies can complement schools’ existing PBIS frameworks while ensuring that there is school-based support and monitoring of their implementation (Donovan et al. Citation2019; Stipp Citation2019). Universal screening and assessment procedures targeting each individual child to identify traumatised children or those who are at risk of being impacted by trauma are instrumental in preventing and ameliorating the impact of trauma on students’ learning and behaviour (Ormiston, Nygaard, and Olivia Citation2020; Tebes et al. Citation2019). These processes and trauma identification checklists (Winder Citation2015), are crucial in assessing trauma’s impact on students’ learning and behaviour and monitoring students’ progress to identify deteriorating social and academic behaviours (Tebes et al. Citation2019).
School-based support can be strengthened further by utilising the data-driven dimensions of PBSI as a proactive means of identifying young children who are at risk of or already experiencing trauma-induced emotional responses and behaviours that undermine their socio-emotional and academic development (Tebes et al. Citation2019). Disaggregated data based on rates of exclusion and suspension (Donovan et al. Citation2019), as well as truancy or tardiness, can be used in the context of ‘trauma-informed attendance’ policies, the aim being to explore why some students fail to attend school consistently and punctually. It is suggested that students who experience trauma find the prospect of being separated from their parents upsetting as they are wary of their safety and the safety of their parents (Stockall and Blackwell Citation2021).
As far as classroom-based trauma-informed practice is concerned, it is essential to develop trauma-informed individualised plans and specialist interventions (e.g. speech and language therapy) to address children’s trauma-induced impaired social executive functioning and self-regulation (Tuchinda Citation2020; Winder Citation2015) as well as nurturing their self-efficacy and mindfulness to mitigate the adverse effects of traumatic events (Stockall and Blackwell Citation2021). Mindful activities such as ‘body-breath awareness exercises’ and mindful walking can have a positive impact on students’’ cognitive control and reflective processes and mitigate some of the criticisms levelled against SWPIS’ focus on ‘behavioral control or modification methods’ (Tuchinda Citation2020) without paying due attention to students’ internalised behaviours, emotions, and attention. In this respect, applied behaviour analysis practices to understand how students react to external stimuli can be supplemented with activities and interventions to enable students to achieve ‘improved self-efficacy and control over how we emotionally react to stimuli within our environment’ (Stockall and Blackwell Citation2021, 5).
Another critical dimension of nurturing students’ self-management skills and resilience relates to how teachers and school leaders interact with students while empowering them to articulate their perspective and share their feelings, as well as providing compensatory mechanisms to support traumatised students who ‘have fewer resources with which to cope with trauma’s negative effects’ (Bowen and Murshid Citation2016, 228). Literature on trauma highlights how safe and positive environments and social relations can enhance traumatised children’s ‘resiliency’ and ‘healthy brain functioning’ to ‘adapt’ and ‘recover’ after experiencing trauma (Conners Edge et al. Citation2022; Eber et al. Citation2020). Schools can become safe havens for children to experience nurturing, empathetic, inclusive and ‘healing’ school communities.
Central to the integration of trauma-responsive care in multi-tiered systems of support is also the recognition of how trauma is embroiled in power asymmetries and social inequities that need to be addressed at the individual, school, and community levels. As suggested by McKenzie-Mohr, Coates, and McLeod (Citation2012, 139),
Trauma-informed interventions are required not only at the individual and organisational levels, which seek to reduce further traumatisation and support recovery in individuals’ lives, but also through community and policy responses that redress inequalities in power and decision-making.
As we have already discussed, a trauma-informed approach to education policy and practice is aligned with and underpinned by an ecological/interactionist and integrative model across micro-, meso‐, and exo‐levels of support to provide ‘coordinated care’ including ‘trauma-informed services’ that recognise the complexity of students’ trauma experiences that are shaped against and reciprocally related with the experiences of their teachers and communities, as well as their diverse social identities. This framework is more lucidly captured through an intersectional lens that can advance an intersectoral and culturally responsive approach to mitigating trauma. PBSI should, thus, expand to include intersectionality-based care services (Bowen et al. Citation2019; Liasidou Citation2013, Citation2016, Citation2022; Williamson and Qureshi Citation2015) to address the traumatising effects of the multiple forms of systemic inequalities, discrimination, marginalisation, and oppression experienced by students who are at risk or exhibit challenging behaviours.
An intersectionality-based approach captures the ‘ghosts of trauma’ (Yoon Citation2019, 421) embodied in and emanating from the nexus of trauma, power, and identity and advances a holistic approach to supplementing concerns about mobilising an educational reform agenda with broader issues about reducing poverty, bigotry, social exclusion, discrimination, colonialism, and other ‘social injuries’ which are inexorably linked to ‘oppression and discrimination’ (Bowen et al. Citation2019, 38). These considerations align with community-based approaches to (mental) health promotion to recognise the negative impact of traumatogenic social dynamics that give rise to ‘conditions within which social inequities, human rights violations and power imbalances contribute to traumatisation” (Liasidou Citation2022, 9). Food insecurity, for example, can trigger, exaggerate, and compound children’s traumatic experiences – hence, the necessity for schools to take the lead in informing parents and coordinating ‘free and reduced-price meal programs and the way these meals are distributed’ (Stockall and Blackwell Citation2021, 2–3) not only during emergencies but on a continuous and sustained basis.
The availability of school-based and allied support facilities should be communicated to parents and students to understand the nature of social support they can access while understanding and appreciating the role of teachers and peers in providing help and support (Stockall and Blackwell Citation2021). Donovan et al. (Citation2019, 35) emphasise the effectiveness of a trauma-informed approach in encouraging ‘students, their families, staff and wider community representatives to come forward and share their trauma histories’. These synergistic narrations of trauma and its various configurations and manifestations (e.g. cultural and historical trauma) can enable schools to work collaboratively with related agencies, health and social services ‘including child welfare professionals, justice system professionals, healthcare providers, policymakers, school personnel … , and even families’ to provide a ‘wrap-around approach’ to prevent and mitigate the adverse effects of trauma (Ormoston, Nygaard, and Olivia Citation2020, 326). The involvement of other professionals, such as clinical psychologists, social workers, and mental health nurses, is crucially important in implementing community-based and family-focused interventions and supports by organising, among other things, visits to traumatised children’s homes and providing support and counselling to parents to deal with their children’s trauma-induced needs and challenging behaviours (Tuchinda Citation2020; Winder Citation2015).
The integration of trauma-responsive interventions into existing multi-tiered support systems at the district and school levels must be coordinated and monitored by a district/community-level and school-based inter-agency team. This team decides the timing of these interventions and how trauma-informed practices are implemented in parallel with existing tiers of school-based support. Cross-system teams in schools review data and support schools to implement appropriate interventions while monitoring the progress and fidelity of their implementation (Sørlie Citation2021). These processes can be supplemented with the development of valid measures of trauma-informed practice (Tebes et al. Citation2019), as well as district – community leadership teams that can oversee, fund, coordinate, and monitor the fidelity of the implementation of intersectoral state-, community-, and school-based networks of support (Weist et al. Citation2018).
Conclusions
Trauma is inexorably linked to behavioural problems, impaired relationships, and difficulties in learning; an empirically validated link that has long spurred increasing interest in exploring how trauma sabotages children’s educational and life trajectories. Trauma and its varied configurations and manifestations can coexist in a child’s life and can have mutually reinforcing and enduring effects on children’s social, emotional, and cognitive functioning.
Empirical links between trauma and impaired functioning highlight the imperative to embed a trauma-informed perspective in multi-tiered frameworks of support such as PBIS. Despite the effectiveness of the latter in preventing and mitigating challenging behaviours and problems in learning, traumatised groups of students, especially those exhibiting internalising problem behaviours, are less likely to benefit from these interventions, which might also have adverse effects on these children.
Schools are complex and busy organisations, and attempts to introduce multiple and, in some cases, seemingly competitive initiatives and policy agendas can be counterproductive. Disciplinary monologue manifested in separate research agendas aimed at exploring the benefits of PBIS and trauma-informed practice has done little justice to the urgent need to concurrently implement both agendas, thereby creating multi-tiered systems of support and intervention that are trauma-informed and can foster nurturing, safe, supporting, and empowering learning communities for all.
Even though, in terms of theory and research, it is unambiguously stated that trauma-informed practice should be firmly embedded in education policy and practice, many structural, procedural, financial, and ideological challenges need to be addressed to incorporate trauma-responsive practice in schools, as part of broader education reform efforts to create more socially just and equitable schools. Despite acknowledging the importance of building upon the existing features of PBIS to facilitate the implementation of trauma-responsive practice, only a tiny fraction of schools utilise universal screening procedures to identify students’ specific needs and to act in preventive and effective ways (Ormiston, Nygaard, and Olivia Citation2020); this is an indicative example of the how evidence-based practice has not been widely and consistently embraced by educational systems. Therefore, providing trauma-informed services and practices is reported to be sporadic due to financial constraints, insufficient and/or competing school policies, and a lack of – or inadequate – school staff training, amongst others. As a result, the debilitating effects of trauma on children’s socio-emotional and cognitive functioning continue to proliferate (Miller and Santos Citation2020; Ormiston, Nygaard, and Olivia Citation2020) and create a pretext to expand special education services and zero-tolerance policies further (Cassidy and Jackson Citation2005) that silence the role of trauma in creating and exacerbating children’s difficulties in learning and behaviour.
Liasidou, A. (2024). (Internalising) challenging behaviours and trauma-informed Positive Behavioural Interventions and Supports (PBIS). Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties, 29(3–4), 138–151. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632752.2024.2426433
These Literacy and Behaviour materials are relatively more detailed than they were in the past!
This next segment is the original, broader document and includes earlier periods.
The relationship between literacy and behaviour problems is a vexed area, as it is difficult to discern which might be cause and which effect.
In a follow-up article, I address the research on literacy and mental health problems in general.
Some quotes from the research:
"Behaviour problems among children with learning disorders are about 3 times than the norm by 8 years of age" ( p.295).
Mash, E.J., & Wolfe, D.A. (2002). Abnormal child psychology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Thomson Learning.
"These results provide evidence for the role of mastery of reading achievement in aggressive behavior, particularly in boys, and in depression, particularly in girls. The preventive trials provide evidence of the direction of effects, and the reversibility of the aggressive behavior and depressive symptoms in some children by raising the level of reading achievement. ... The results also add improving reading as a key element, at least, in preventing not only the consequences of poor achievement such as depressive symptoms and possible disorder, but also reducing aggressive behavior and its consequences in delinquency, drug abuse, and school drop out."
Kellam, S.G. (1999). Developmental epidemiologically-based prevention research: From efficacy to effectiveness. National Institute of Mental Health Fifth Annual National Conference on Prevention Research. Retrieved from http://www.oslc.org/spr/ecpn/nckellam.html.
“ … young urban children as young as second and third grade with reading difficulties exhibited elevated rates of problem behaviors, as compared to the nationally representative norm samples of the measures. In this study, a disproportionate percentage of the young urban sample already displayed clinically significant levels of anxiety (50%), social problems (40%), and oppositional behaviors (30%) in the classroom. These results thus support previous studies conducted mainly with older children showing that anxiety, social problems, and conduct problems were closely associated with literacy difficulties (Casey et al., 1992; Conners, 1997; Willcutt & Pennington, 2000). These finding are also consistent with research showing that kindergarten academic variables have been shown to predict problem behavior at the end of elementary school (McIntosh, Chard, Boland, & Horner, 2006), with an increasing relationship over years of schooling (see Algozzine, Wang, & Violette, 2011 for contradictory evidence). The significance of these findings for teachers is highlighted by arguments that “dual deficits of learning and behavior problems may make it difficult for practitioners to provide effective instruction” (Sutherland, Lewis-Palmer, Stichter, & Morgan, 2008, p. 223).” (p. 199-200)
Pierce, M.E., Wechsler-Zimring, A., Noam, G., Wolf, M., & Tami Katzir, T. (2013). Behavioral problems and reading difficulties among language minority and monolingual urban elementary school students. Reading Psychology, 34(2), 182-205.
“Research has demonstrated a strong positive correlation between behavior problems and low academic achievement (Gest & Gest, 2005; Landrum, Tankersley, & Kauffman, 2003). Above and beyond being correlated, Payne, Marks, and Bogan (2007) report that behavioral and academic problems are reciprocal in nature. In other words, behavior problems may cause a disruption in academic engagement and, as a result, students may fail to master skills because of this lack of academic engagement. The opposite is also true—a classroom where there are high levels of academic achievement will be a classroom with low levels of behavior difficulties. This point is critical. Students do not generally come to school hating to be there. If students experience more failure than success, they frequently learn to hate school. As Scott, Nelson, and Liaupsin (2001) note, “academics become aversive” (p. 313). Therefore, the more students find the classroom aversive, the more likely they will be to exhibit unwanted behaviors (Payne et al., 2007; Scott et al., 2001; Wehby, Lane, & Falk, 2003). Student success or failure are in large part determined by how well teachers provide effective instruction to their students.” (p. 242)
Martella, R.C., & Marchand-Martella, N.E. (2015). Improving classroom behavior through effective instruction: An illustrative program example using SRA FLEX Literacy. Education and Treatment of Children, 38(2), 241–272.
“The current study utilized hierarchical linear modeling to better understand the role of teacher perceptions in the language and pre-literacy and mathematics skill development of ethnically diverse, low-income preschoolers. We found support for the hypothesis that teachers both under- and overestimate the academic abilities of their preschoolers compared with objective assessments of skills, using widely accepted tools in the field. Several child characteristics were predictive of these discrepancies, including child age, inattentive behavior, and social skills. Child gender and race/ethnicity were not associated with differential teacher perceptions of pre-academic skill, and behavior problems were associated with teacher overestimation of skills, rather than teacher underestimation as predicted. Strong support was also found for the importance of ecological covariates, or teacher and classroom variables, in predicting teacher ratings of preschoolers’ skills. … We also found that preschoolers who were severely underestimated by their teachers had considerably weaker relationships between their fall and spring academic skills compared with their peers, suggesting perhaps that their academic growth was dampened by their teachers’ misperceptions.” (p.816)
Baker, C. N., Tichovolsky, M., Kupersmidt, J. B., Voegler - Lee, M. E., & Arnold, D. H. (2015). Teacher (mis)perceptions of preschoolers’ academic skills: Predictors and associations with longitudinal outcomes. Journal of Educational Psychology, 107(3), 805-820.
"Poor literacy achievement in the first and third grades predicted relatively high aggressive behavior in the third and fifth grades,
respectively. ... Behavior problems were more strongly associated with reading achievement than with mathematics achievement in a sample of children in early elementary school (Adams, Snowling, Hennessy, & Kind, 1999). ... Poor readers who were also identified as having behavioral problems in childhood were much more likely to drop out of school and to have unstable work patterns, low job skills, and delinquent behavior in adulthood than children with either behavior problems or poor reading skills in childhood (Maughan, Gray, & Rutter, 1985).
Academic skills could, however, also affect children's behavior. Children who have difficulty learning to read, for example, may become frustrated or unhappy in school and express their frustration and unhappiness by acting aggressively toward the teacher or classmates. This proposal is based on the basic notion that frustration (defined as the state that emerges when circumstances interfere with a goal response) leads to aggression (Dollard, Doob, Miller, Mowrer, & Sears, 1939). Berkowitz (1968) expanded the theory beyond simple frustration to posit that aggression can be the consequence of any unpleasant emotions and feelings, such as anxiety, anger, annoyance, or pain. This negative affect can trigger either "fight or flight." The theory has been tested in a variety of social psychological studies. Buss (1963), for example, had college students experience one of three types of frustration (failure to win money, failure to earn a better grade, or failure on a task). All three groups showed more subsequent aggression than a control group that was not frustrated. In another study, Berkowitz (1978) found that subjects who were frustrated by not being able to keep up with a confederate in a stationary bicycle competition (when the confederate's pedaling suddenly picked up speed) were more likely to punish their partners in a subsequent learning task than nonfrustrated subjects.
The negative effect of poor reading skills on children's behavior is likely to increase over the elementary grades for several reasons. Research on social comparison indicates that as children get older, they become more aware of their performance compared with peers and assess their relative skills more accurately (see Eccles, Midgley, & Adler, 1984, and Stipek & Mac Iver, 1989, for reviews; Wigfield et al., 1997). As a consequence, poor skills should become more humiliating and a greater cause of anxiety and other negative emotions. Previous studies suggest that social comparison, particularly for the purposes of self-assessment of academic achievement, is well developed by the third grade (Frey & Ruble, 1985; Pomerantz, Ruble, Frey, & Greulich, 1995). Accordingly, we predicted that the association between literacy skills and aggression would be higher in the third and fifth grades than in the earlier grades.
Studies have likewise found that poor academic skills predicted later aggression. For example, in a study of Australian children, Jorm, Share, Matthews, and Maclean (1986) found no differences in children's antisocial behavior in kindergarten as a function of reading skills, but the children with reading difficulties were significantly more antisocial than the normal readers by the end of grade 1 and in grade 2. Williams and McGee (1994) similarly found that boys with reading disabilities at age 9 were more likely to develop conduct disorder at age 15. McGee et al. (1986) found that children who were having considerable difficulty learning to read at the beginning of school already showed behavior problems; behavior problems increased from ages 5 to 9 at a much faster pace for children who had serious reading difficulties than for other children. In a longitudinal study of African American boys, IQ measured at age 7 (which was presumably associated with academic achievement) was a stronger predictor of conduct disorder at age 17 than was either aggression or parent psychopathology at age 7 (Schonfeld, Shaffer, O'Connor, & Portnoy, 1988)."
Miles, S.B., & Stipek, D. (2006). Contemporaneous and longitudinal associations between social behavior and literacy achievement in a sample of low-income elementary school children. Child Development, 77(1), 103-117.
“In a study of students from the Connecticut Longitudinal Study, Shaywitz et al found a research-identified incidence of reading disability of 8.7% of boys and 6.9% of girls. However, a teacher-identified incidence of the same population identified 13.6% of boys and only 3.2% of girls. The authors suggested that greater reports of behavioral difficulties among boys in the classroom may have lead to this bias.”
Shaywitz, S.E., Shaywitz, B.A., Fletcher, J.M., & Escobar, M.D. (1990). Prevalence of reading disability in boys and girls. Journal of the American Medical Association, 264, 998-1002.
“Many children suffer adverse social and emotional outcomes, are at risk of mental health problems, and have a higher likelihood of delinquency and becoming part of the prison population (Brown, 1997; Jensen, Lindgren, Meurling, Ingvar & Levander, 1999)”.
Brown, P. (1997). Co-existence of behavioural problems and literacy problems in young male schoolchildren: some issues for consideration. The Weaver: A Forum for New Ideas in Education, (1), Retrieved 23/8/2005 from http://www.latrobe.edu.au/www/graded/PBed1.html
"There is a robust association between reading achievement and antisocial behavior. This association was investigated using the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study, a nationally representative 1994–1995 birth cohort of 5- and 7-year-olds. For boys the best explanation was a reciprocal causation model: poor reading led to antisocial behavior, and vice versa."
Trzesniewski, K.H., Moffitt, T.E., Caspi, A., Taylor, A., & Maughan, B. (2006). Revisiting the association between reading achievement and antisocial behavior: New evidence of an environmental explanation from a twin study. Child Development, 77(1), 72-88.
“Educators and researchers have long acknowledged that reading disability status increases a child’s risk for academic, emotional, and behavioral struggles (Heiervang, Stevenson, Lund, & Hugdahl, 2001; Horn & Packard, 1985; Kavale, 1988). Learning to read is directly linked to the young child’s self-concept and mental well-being (Toppelberg, Munir, & Nieto-Casta˜non, 2006). Reading difficulties have been linked to externalizing behaviors, including classroom discipline problems, bullying, and aggression, as well as internalizing behaviors, including depression and anxiety (Catalano et al., 2003; Kellam, Mayer, Rebok, & Hawkins, 1998; Miller & Shinn, 2005). In severe cases, a child may perceive reading failure as a personal threat with harmful consequences (Herman & Ostrander, 2007). … language minority status does not appear to render young poor readers in urban elementary schools more vulnerable to academic, behavioral, or emotional problems beyond the vulnerability associated with being poor readers in urban schools.” (p.183-4, 197)
Pierce, M.E., Wechsler-Zimring, A., Noam, G., Wolf, M., & Tami Katzir, T. (2013). Behavioral problems and reading difficulties among language minority and monolingual urban elementary school students. Reading Psychology, 34(2), 182-205.
“The retention rate of 1st-grade students decreased by 47% after RTI was implemented. Data suggest student behavior, oral reading rates, and other individual school variables (as identified by principals) as possible factors contributing to the retention of students”
Murray, C.S., Woodruff, A.L., & Vaughn, S. (2010). First-grade student retention within a 3-tier reading framework. Reading & Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties, 26(1), 26-50.
So what is the answer? Is behaviour the chicken or the egg? Which should be addressed - academic growth or behaviour? It appears at this stage that the evidence points to the relationship as reciprocal - one condition leads to an elevated risk of the other occurring.
“The findings from this study highlight the need for early intervention that targets not only the reading challenges but also the social, emotional, and behavioral challenges that affect many of these children. Because urban students’ low academic skills are associated with problem behavior, improving students’ academic skill levels might reduce the aversive impact of school and thus the likelihood of problem behaviors at school. This perspective could lead practitioners to consider current academic intervention as a form of future behavior prevention (McIntosh et al., 2006. The reverse is also true; early positive behavior support might protect against future academic problems. In summary, reading and behavior experts must combine their expertise to form an integrated, three-tier model to reach students at risk for reading and behavior problems. Future research should identify the most effective practices for building these skills with these populations, and determine whether these practices are sufficient to maintain healthy academic self-concept and to preserve the behavioral health of LM students.” (p. 200)
Pierce, M.E., Wechsler-Zimring, A., Noam, G., Wolf, M., & Tami Katzir, T. (2013). Behavioral problems and reading difficulties among language minority and monolingual urban elementary school students. Reading Psychology, 34(2), 182-205.
“Some UK studies have examined the extent to which behavioural difficulties coexist with reading disability, but most, like the Isle of Wight study, were conducted some time ago (e.g. McGee, Williams, Share, Anderson, & Silva, 1986). Two more recent US studies have emphasized the phenomena of co-occurrence. Morgan, Farkas, Tufis, and Sperling (2008) found that US children with reading problems at age 7 years were more likely to display poor task engagement, poor self-control, externalizing and internalizing behaviour problems 2 years later. More recently, Dahle and colleagues (2010) examined behavioural problems in children with severe dyslexia. They found more behavioural problems in the group with severe dyslexia than in controls, in all areas measured. In addition, parents reported more children with dyslexia tobe anxious and depressed and have social problems and attention problems than teachers did. … Our unadjusted analysis suggests that there are elevated levels of behavioural difficulties in children with specific word reading difficulties. These findings encompassed a broad spectrum of behaviour captured by the SDQ. Clearly, children with SWRD had more difficulties with peer relationships, more emotional and conduct problems, displayed less prosocial behaviour and were rated as more hyperactive and inattentive. Our findings showing co-occurrence of behavioural and specific word reading difficulties correspond not only with older UK studies such as the Isle of Wight cohort, but also with recent US studies (Morgan et al., 2008; Dahle, Knivsberg, & Andreassen, 2011).” (p.125)
Russell, G., Ryder, D., Norwich, B., & Ford, T. (2015). Behavioural difficulties that co-occur with specific word reading difficulties: A UK population- based cohort study. Dyslexia, 21, 123–141.
“Students who are participating in well-structured activities that engage their interests, who are highly motivated to learn, and who are working on tasks that are challenging yet within their capabilities rarely pose any serious management problems” (p. 329). Therefore, the goal for educators is to help students become successful in the classroom both academically and behaviourally” (p.242-3)
Martella, R.C., & Marchand-Martella, N.E. (2015). Improving classroom behavior through effective instruction: An illustrative program example using SRA FLEX Literacy. Education and Treatment of Children 38(2), 241–272.
"Hospitals are complaining that their clinics are being filled with kids who are being referred for things like Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)," said Dr Rowe, who was last week appointed by the federal Education Minister to run the inquiry. "But once the pediatricians sort out the children's literacy problems, the behaviour problems disappear. What is essentially an education issue has become a health issue.”
Milburn, C. (2004, Dec 6). Children in crisis: The real diagnosis. The Age, P.1
“In a recent investigation, we implemented an intervention to improve the persuasive writing skills of students with significant learning and behavioral disorders using a Self Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) strategy (Harris, Graham, Mason, & Friedlander, 2008). This intervention was successful, in that students greatly improved their persuasive writing skills. However, a very extensive amount of instruction was necessary, dramatically different from students in the general education curriculum. That is, the general education curriculum in that state allowed three–five days for instruction of persuasive writing—in our case, students required 55 days of instruction to master these same skills. The amount of needed instructional time in this instance might fairly raise the issue of how much time can be appropriately allocated to specific learning skills, and whether decisions must be made regarding which skills or content may be reduced in order to allow for the extra time necessary to teach content considered more important” (p. 27).
Scruggs, T.E., & Mastropieri, M.A. (2015). What makes special education special? In B. Bateman, J.W. Lloyd, W., & M. Tankersley (Eds.). Enduring issues in special education: Personal perspectives (pp. 22-36). New York: Routledge.
"If you were an aggressive, disruptive 1st. grader and you were in a poorly managed classroom, the risk of being aggressive later on was 59 times that of average kids. In well managed classrooms, the same child's risk was only three times that of the average children.”
Kellam, S.G. (1999). The influence of the first-grade classroom on the development of aggressive behavior. Research Bulletin No. 25: Phi Delta Kappa Center for Evaluation, Development, and Research December. Retrieved from http://www.pdkintl.org/edres/resbul25.htm
"Taken together, these results provide evidence for the role of mastery of reading achievement in aggressive behavior, particularly in boys, and in depression, particularly in girls. The preventive trials provide evidence of the direction of effects, and the reversibility of the aggressive behavior and depressive symptoms in some children by raising the level of reading achievement.”
Kellam, S.G. (1999). Developmental epidemiologically-based prevention research: From efficacy to effectiveness. National Institute of Mental Health Fifth Annual National Conference on Prevention Research. Retrieved from http://www.oslc.org/spr/ecpn/nckellam.html
“A growing body of evidence supports the relationship between the implementation of high quality behavior management and increased student engagement and prosocial behaviors (Oliver et al., 2011), while the relationship between behavior management and academic achievement is unclear (Algozzine et al., 2012; Benner et al., 2012). In this study, we examined differences in the effectiveness of small group reading intervention for students receiving that intervention from very good, good to fair, and poor behavior managers. Prior research suggests that the effectiveness of early literacy interventions may be moderated by student problem behaviors (Nelson et al., 2003); therefore implementation of high quality behavior management in targeted early literacy interventions could increase the overall effectiveness of the intervention. The results provide some support for this assumption and initial empirical support that high quality behavior management can improve the effectiveness of targeted early literacy intervention.” (p.534)
Gage, N. A., MacSuga-Gage, A. S., Prykanowski, D. A., Coyne, M., & Scott, T. M. (2016). Investigating the collateral effects of behavior management on early literacy skills. Education and Treatment of Children, 38(4), 523-540.
What might be the cause(s) of the co-occurrence of reading and behavioural difficulties? There may be genetic implications, for example. Additionally, general oral language difficulties may precede and exacerbate reading problems.
“Concomitant language and behavioral deficits in children and youth have been well documented in the research literature (Benner et al. 2002; Hollo et al. 2014; Yew and O’Kearney 2013). In spite of these known relations, the majority of children with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) are likely to have unidentified language deficits, as the immediate need for behavioral intervention may eclipse focus on diagnosis and intervention targeting language deficit; that is, problem behavior is often a more immediate concern relative to the impact it can have on classroom and school environments. Researchers have estimated that 68 to 97 % of students with emotional disturbance (ED) experience clinical language deficits (Camarata et al. 1988; Nelson et al. 2005), and a recent meta-analysis estimated that 81 % of students with EBD had language deficits that were unidentified (Hollo et al. 2014), highlighting that language deficits in these children went untreated, and these children likely only received services for their behavioral problems.” (p.62)
Chow, J.C., & Wehby, J.H. (2018). Associations between language and problem behavior: A systematic review and correlational meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 30(1), 61–82. DOI 10.1007/s10648-016-9385-z
“There have been several theories as to why developmental delays and specific word reading and other disorders co-occur. First, genetic pleiotropic effects have been implicated. One genetic anomaly may lead to atypical neurological development, in turn manifesting as multiple behavioural difficulties (Reiersen et al., 2008). Similarly, genetic predisposition combined with an early environmental insult or common environmental exposure may affect many developmental outcomes (Finlay & Miller, 1993; Porterfield, 1994; Richardson, 2006). There have also been models at later stages of childhood where one psychological impairment serves as a ‘gateway’ spawning another difficulty (Frith & Happé, 1998). So for example, if a child has a communication deficit, this might lead to social difficulties, or inattention/hyperactivity may lead to reading difficulties. Other theorists have suggested one underlying psychological deficit, such as slow naming/processing speed, may underlie a range of behavioural and cognitive difficulties, including reading difficulties commonly described as dyslexia (Bental & Tirosh, 2007).” (p.125, 135, 136)
Russell, G., Ryder, D., Norwich, B., & Ford, T. (2015). Behavioural difficulties that co-occur with specific word reading difficulties: A UK population- based cohort study. Dyslexia, 21, 123–141.
