Poor behaviour doesn’t always lead to poor academics

Friday, 6 May 2011 01:53 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

ScienceDaily - Despite popular belief, a new study published in the latest issue of the Journal of Positive Behaviour Interventions finds that students who have poor behaviour in the classroom do not always have poor grades.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina — Charlotte (Bob Algozzine, Chuang Wang and Amy Violette) followed 350 students in seven at-risk schools over a 5-year period. They assessed both teacher perceptions of student behaviour and academic achievement, as well as actual performance. They found that teachers were more likely to report that well-behaved students did better academically and expected more of them — even when some of these students were struggling with school-work. At the same time, students who acted out in school were seen as having more academic difficulties, even though this was not always the case.

“Children are not well served when teachers believe that teaching behaviour requires different skills than teaching academics,” said lead author Algozzine. “Or that teaching academics will magically improve behaviour.”

The researchers concluded that it is important not to focus solely on improving academic or behaviour problems in at-risk students, but to emphasise teaching both behaviour and academic skills for these children.

“The take-away message in our work is that children have to be carefully taught academics and behaviour if we want to see evidence of these accomplishments in school,” said Algozzine.