On this cold wet autumn day in Switzerland I am feeling the loss of summer. My mood is negative and my lack of enthusiasm to go out for a run, has got me thinking about behaviour triggers.
Is this weather the trigger for my negative feelings today? ... Absolutely!
The social, emotional and behavioural impact of triggers is extremely interesting to me. What situations, issues, people... combine to set off a reaction? And, why can this lead to challenging behaviours in our students?
My concern with challenging behaviour is the extent to which it impacts the learning of my students. Some of them end-up having learning support where their academic needs are addressed but not the underlying behaviour that is manifesting its self as a learning difficulty. I want to highlight that a behavioural difficulty is not necessarily an academic difficulty but can deny access to learning through exclusion from the group, creating a situation where students are not emotional prepared to learn. It is therefore essential for us as educators to understand that these challenging behaviours are the response to Triggers. If we can identify some of the triggers that impact our students then we could help eliminate some of the behaviours which our students exhibit.
Great... if only we could achieve that goal!
Well, at least we could make an effort to try and pinpoint potential causes which would enable us to help our students to improve their success through facilitating their access to learning which at present is impacted by their challenging behaviour.
Collecting information on challenging behaviours can result in a list of possible responses (challenging behaviours) such as,
Reluctance to conform/defiance
Inability to take risk/fussiness
Physical contact (kicking, biting)
Anger issues (shouting, screaming)
This list is not highlighting every response but it is here to give you some idea of what we are referring to. According to the Victoria State Government (Australia) the challenging behaviours are said to have many 'Potential Influences' or 'triggers'.
If we are to be effective in changing the outcomes for our students who exhibit challenging behaviour we must be able to identify possible triggers and find strategies to avoid these triggers in the future. Creating an environment that is trigger free is impossible but we can take steps to ensure that obvious triggers are removed. It is crucial that we as educators understand that challenging behaviour is more often a response to a combination of triggers and not just single factors.
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