The Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) has expanded its support for schools seeking resources for classroom management, publishing two new guides to assist teachers in responding to students' persistent and escalated behaviour.
Creating and sustaining a positive classroom, where all students can focus on learning, is a complex task.
AERO's new practice guides, 'Persistent disengaged and disruptive behaviour: Creating calm, focused classrooms' and 'Escalated behaviour: Creating calm, focused classrooms', are the latest in a series of resources, funded by the Australian Government, designed to foster engaged learning environments.
The new practice guides highlight the importance of being proactive when engaging students, in line with AERO's previously published classroom management resources.
AERO CEO Dr Jenny Donovan said effective classroom management combined with high-quality instruction was key to students' engagement and learning.
“All students deserve to learn in safe and supportive classrooms, where expectations are clearly defined, understood and supported,” Dr Donovan said.
“Effective classroom management is a foundation for students' engagement in learning, and there is strong evidence pointing to the benefits of taking proactive steps to support students' emotional and behavioural regulation and reduce the potential for disengagement or disruption.
“These guides will help educators to employ proactive, preventative and responsive approaches that sustain calm classrooms and enable all students to focus on learning.”
According to the materials, effective proactive and preventative approaches include:
- building teacher-student relationships through respectful interactions and engaging with families to support student learning
- developing and maintaining high expectations for all students, making reasonable adjustments as needed, and supporting students to achieve them
- being intentional about developing a positive classroom culture by teaching, practising, and reinforcing expected behaviours, routines, and rules.
Advice is also provided on how schools and teachers can support their own wellbeing while also supporting their students.
“Managing classroom behaviour is one of the more challenging tasks facing many teachers, so it's essential that they have both the tools and the support they need to respond with confidence,” Dr Donovan said.
“It's also worth remembering that developing a positive classroom culture takes time and persistence, but in the end, both teachers and students will benefit.”
The practice guides 'Persistent disengaged and disruptive behaviour: Creating calm, focused classrooms' and 'Escalated behaviour: Creating calm, focused classrooms', along with supporting material, are available on AERO's website:
- Persistent disengaged and disruptive behaviour: Creating calm, focused classrooms
- Escalated behaviour: Creating calm, focused classrooms
For AERO media enquiries, please contact:
Rebecca Urban
M: 0411 790 304
E: media@edresearch.edu.au
About us
AERO is Australia’s independent education evidence body, established in 2021 and funded by Commonwealth, state, and territory governments.
Our vision is to achieve excellence and equity in education outcomes for all children and young people through effective use of evidence. AERO’s role is to generate high-quality evidence, make it accessible and encourage adoption and effective implementation of evidence into practice and policy.