The impact of adult behaviour

The only behaviour that you have absolute control over is your own. The behaviour of teachers directly impacts on the behaviour of their learners.

Think about how adult behaviour can impact and influence student behaviour.


The impact of adult behaviour

Create a document. Make three columns and label them:

  1. Most positive effect
  2. Least impact
  3. Most negative effect

Fill up your columns with examples of the impact that adult behaviour has on student behaviour. List the behaviour that your own teachers displayed when you were a student. If you can’t remember specific incidents from your school days, ask friends, family and colleagues to share their experiences of being a learner with you.

NB: If you are a more experienced teacher, you might like to think about students you have taught and how your behaviour towards them affected their performance. Use the same column headings but direct your thoughts to your own teaching not how you were taught yourself.

To help you to do this, consider:

  • What traits did my worst teachers have?
  • What traits did my best teachers have?
  • How did teachers interact with me? What did they sound like? What was their body language like?
  • How did these teachers make me feel?

Paul has started you off with some memories of his own teachers …

Step 1.7 table

This exercise is a tool to help you complete later tasks more confidently - we’re not looking for you to share it. You will be asked to share some things in later steps and we will provide supporting information on how to do this nearer the time.


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This article is from the free online course:

Managing Behaviour for Learning

National STEM Learning Centre