Observations of Behavioural Management Strategies in a Childcare Setting

        

Observation 1

Within my observation a child punches another child at break leading them to get a thumb down and wouldn’t have a chance to be the start of the week. Every time a child shows a good behaviour they receive a thumb up and if they show another good behaviour they get another thumb ups, there is no limit on thumbs up, they are counted each week and the child with the most thumbs up get to star of the week, which allows them to pick a story book they like being read out every day for the week, they get to be fist of the lines and have the first choice to pick what to play with at breaks. If the child receives a thumb down they get behind with their fellows classmates.

Star of the week make children feel special and important, all the children make its completion to be star of the week. It helps display good behaviour as everyone wants to feel important although those children who receive thumbs down feel disappointed and would stop showing positive behaviour for the rest of the week as they know they wouldn’t be the star of the week

Observation 2

While observing Tc is dropped off in the morning by their parents, they are reminded that they need to behave well throughout the day to receive both their stickers from the teacher. TC parents talks to the teacher and lets them know if they had any problems in the evening and if TC is in a good mood. When TC hits another child, they are reminded that if they continue they won’t receive their morning sticker. The teacher makes sure they put the sticker together before lunch and before home time; if the child doesn’t get a sticker the teacher lets them know what behaviour stopped them receiving a sticker and talks to TC parents at the end of the day. TC before lunch and home time If the child receives both the sticker for the day they are rewarded at home by playing with the iPad for an hour, if TC receives all of the stickers for the week they are rewarded  with a new toy at home and a special sticker from the teacher. The behavioural management strategy which is used in the observation is a reward chart, within my observation TC is reminded that he needs to think about what he’s doing and stops his bad behaviour when reminded to get a reward.

The strategy teaches the child to continue their good behaviour throughout the day to receive a reward. The strategy also helps the child understand they need to show good behaviour throughout the day, a s every time they show a negative behaviour they are reminded they are about to lose their sticker. A reward chart helps the child get use to rules and teaches how to behave as in the future they won’t have to rely on a reward chart and the behaviour may become a habit. The effective of a reward chart is that it encourages the child to behave well throughout the day as they know they’ll receive a reward. A reward chart is a way of positive reinforcement as the child wants to get rewards so they would behave well.

The negative aspects of  rewards chart is that it makes other children feel jealous that a child is receiving all special stickers from the teacher, while observing I also notice that the child with the reward chart wouldn’t get the same punishments as those children without rewards chart. Tis makes children think that in order to get attention from their teacher and receive special treatment and stickers they need to start behaving badly. Another negative aspect of the reward chart, if the child is generally having a bad day they would feel even more down by not receiving a sticker and wouldn’t get a reward, this could make the child act out throughout the week as they know they wouldn’t get a toy at the end of the week.

Observation 3

Within  my observation Tc walks in the room looking for his favourite car, TC notices another C1 playing with their car, TC snatches the car, C1 starts crying, A goes and talks to TC and explains that it’s not nice snatching toys from other children. Tc waits for A to leave the room and fights over the toy from C1, the car wheels break off and C1 starts crying again. A tells TC to go and sit on the time out table in the corner. This behaviour strategy is called assertive discipline

Assertive discipline helps the child understand what’s wrong and right, while being on time out the child is asked to reflect the behaviour and talk to their practitioner afterwards explaining what they did wrong and apologise to those involved. The effectiveness of assertive discipline is that it encourages children to display good behaviour or else they have to take time out, most children prefer to play with the friends than having a time out, it also makes children aware of the consequences, before displaying a negative behaviour. Effectiveness is that it teaches children to follow rules and respect their practitioner as they are listening to them and following the rules. Although assertive discipline helps keep a child in control it also has some negative aspects as the child could feel like the practitioner doesn’t like them and would feel like they are always being picked on and would start acting out as they think they would get the blame anyway.

Using assertive behaviour on children could lead them to showing bad behaviour to get your attention, other children may also feel like you’re not paying enough attention to them as you’re always telling off the children who show bad behaviour. Assertive behaviour doesn’t work on some children as they get used to being put on time out that it doesn’t affect them anymore, they would continue doing bad behaviour and expect to be on timeout without caring. The positive aspects of assertive behaviour is that it teaches child that other people have feeling, it’s important for a practitioner to make sure the child thinks about the behaviour they just did and ask them question after being on timeout.

Observation 4

While observing I noticed that the teacher in the class would use different tone of voice to the children, if the children are sat on the carpet the teacher interacts with them and sues a calm voice, if a child has displayed a bad behaviour the teacher makes sure they shout the child name out in front of the class and uses a disappointed tone of voice, An example I’ve seen of this is when Tc was pinching another child on the carpet, the teacher changed her talking voice into a strict tone, this behaviour strategy is the tone of the voice.

The effectiveness of this behavioural management strategy is that children react different to different tone of voices, if the teacher told Tc off in a calm, cheerful, happy tone they wouldn’t have stopped doing the bad behaviour. They would have carried on thinking it’s okay and funny to pinch people. Another effectiveness is that children prefer when their teachers talk in calm and happy tone, as they think they are proud of them it also makes them feel good about themselves. Sometimes using a strict voice scare children, making them feeling frightened to come back to school although some children try their best to make sure they don’t receive that tone of voice and start displaying positive behaviour

An observation method which could be used to evaluate the effectiveness of behaviour management strategies is consultations. This helps the parent’s understand their children behaviour better. Consultations is when parents answer questions about their children, the questions asked are mainly in the children behaviour finding out how the parent deals with the behaviour and how they calm the child down. The questionnaire is a learning strategies for parents as they could reflect and evaluate whether their strategy is effective on the children and improve any implementation taking place. Likewise Teachers could also take the questionnaire to monitor the child behaviour and see if the strategies their undertaking is effective.

Also when the parents and child to have a consultation meeting with other support professionals to discuss the child’s behaviour techniques and advise what they can do to help support the child, having other support professionals helps to support the child as sometimes parents need the extra help and an input from other people help to spot the negatives and positives of the strategy. Another method which helps to evaluate whether the behaviour management strategy is effective is to have behavioural profiles which help to keep the child’s behaviour on track, this helps the parents and teachers to see if the child behaviour is worsening or improving.

Collecting data is another observation method which helps to evaluate the effectiveness of behavioural management technique. A selection of different data can help to improve the overall behaviour of the child. An example is keeping a behavioural diary or log helps with the child behaviour as it allows you to track each time the incident occurs and what triggers the child behaviour, which then allows you to reflect if the strategy is effective or not.

Using rewards chart not only help you keep track of the child’s behaviour it also lets the child keep in control of their own behaviour, as they will be able to see how many stickers they have got and would feel proud each time the sticker is put on. Reward charts show the child that if they demonstrate good behaviour they get good things. Setting goals for children and explain them what the goals are encourages them to behave well and work towards their goal. Having a set of goals for the child will also help their behaviour as they would feel some sense of achievement and proud of themselves. getting the parents involved with child rewards chart helps improve the child’s behaviour as they would aim to impress their parents, having regular meeting with the parents to discuss the child behaviour and show them the reward chart will help improve the child behaviour as the parent would praise their child making them feel even more proud of themselves.

Setting aims helps the practitioner to evaluate the effectiveness of a behavioural management strategy. Teachers should have individual learning plans as it helps track the child behaviour, if they set different aims for children they would need to think about if the child is capable of reaching the aim and how they would do it in advance, if they set an aim for the child’s behaviour they would need to think if they are cable of achieving it and what strategy they would use.

There are limitations for using these methods for example questionnaires may not work with every parents as some may not know English as they may have come from a different country  or they may not know how to read which can cause some difficulty for them to communicate with teachers and other professionals about their child behaviour. The child may act out because they may have a different set of rules they follow at home based on their culture and language barrier. An example is if a parent has hearing difficulty the child may tap them to get their attention but when in school they’ll get in trouble for tapping people. Another method that has some limitation is the reward chart, some children may feel like they are being treated unfair, as they always behave in class but don’t get a reward for their good behaviour the other children may start acting out as they will think they’ll get rewards when they start behaving again.

When observing behaviour it’s important as a practitioner that you use a holistic approach which is when you look at everything as a whole, so not focusing on one section such as physical development but to focus on all of the aspects which are social, physical, mental and spiritual development. When observing the child’s behaviour you also have to keep in mind who’s around the child so the influences and interactions involving the child.

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