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Embracing the power of texting: Eliminating playground noncompliance and aggression

Kay Petchell and Ted Glynn
Abstract: 

These days, everyone has a mobile phone, even if they might not have a landline. Vardon School recognised the potential for texting to be an effective way to give parents regular feedback on their children’s behaviour in the school playground. By using texts as part of a carefully planned strategy for partnering with parents, Vardon School was able to dramatically improve student behaviour.

Journal issue: 

Embracing the power of texting:

Eliminating playground noncompliance and aggression

KAY PETCHELL and TED GLYNN

KEY POINTS

•&&&&Texting on mobile phones can be used to communicate effectively within home-school partnerships.

•&&&&The school in this study used daily texts to radically reduce the negative behaviours that were reported on.

•&&&&The process works when teachers and parents agree to work together collaboratively.

•&&&&To be most effective, teachers need to give feedback to parents when their child behaves well as well as when they behave badly.

These days, everyone has a mobile phone, even if they might not have a landline. Vardon School recognised the potential for texting to be an effective way to give parents regular feedback on their children’s behaviour in the school playground. By using texts as part of a carefully planned strategy for partnering with parents, Vardon School was able to dramatically improve student behaviour.

Introduction

Few would argue that the level of children’s participation and engagement at school is largely dependent on the establishment of successful home and school partnerships. In a chapter entitled “School, home and community working together”, Wearmouth, Glynn and Berryman (2005) demonstrate the importance and power of home and school partnerships for improving students’ learning and behaviour. Berryman and Glynn (2004) provide a clear example of a collaborative home and school partnership that gave an effective alternative to suspension for a student who had engaged in seriously inappropriate behaviour.

However, effective collaborative home and school partnerships depend in turn on regular and effective communication of relevant information. It is difficult for parents or caregivers to be held responsible by teachers for the behaviour of their children at school when they have little specific information and little power to change that behaviour. Few would argue that new electronic technologies have the power to change the way we communicate with each other. Texting via mobile phone offers one interesting means of teachers providing parents with specific and continuing information about their children’s behaviour at school.

Several concerned teachers at one large Waikato primary school, recognising that their community was increasingly unavailable via conventional telephone landlines, resolved to explore texting as a means of communicating daily with the caregivers of those students who were presenting with challenging behaviours (particularly noncompliance and physical aggression) which jeopardise long-term engagement and success at school for themselves and others.

Teachers thought that the use of daily texting to replace the former home-school notebook system offered one crucial component of a “wrap-around” approach to improving playground behaviour. While daily texting fulfils the same purpose as a home-school notebook, teachers thought that the practice of texting might overcome the problem of the notebook not getting home, or not being returned to school. It also does not have to be completed in that very busy last five minutes of the day before the bell goes!

While many parents of children at this decile 4 school did not have landlines, almost all had mobile phones. Discussion with parents revealed that many did not have sufficient funds on their phone to access voice messages left by the school, but they were able to receive texts free of charge.

Approach

Contacting parents

The project began when all teachers were asked by the principal to communicate via phone or text with the parents or caregivers of all the school’s 320 students in the first three weeks of Term 1. Teachers introduced themselves and stated that they were the child’s teacher, that they were looking forward to having the child in their class and that they hoped the parent would feel free to pop into the class one day to meet them and to see some of the child’s work. This was prior to and in addition to the “meet the teacher” evening traditionally held in Term 1. These steps ensured that the first interaction between home and school was a positive one involving a personal approach.

As Term 1 progressed, and as it became clear that particular children’s names were cropping up repeatedly for noncompliance, physical or verbal aggression at school, the deputy principal made contact with the families, expressing concern and inviting the parents to come in to school to talk about the situation. She explained that she would like to find out more about their child as a person and to form a collaborative plan of action. She made it clear at this meeting that the school held the child’s interests paramount, and the school personnel wanted to work with the parents. Parents were invited to suggest a time it was most convenient to meet.

Collaborating on a plan

Within Term 1, 14 parents were invited to such a meeting. At these meetings, after introductions and an offer of refreshments, it was restated that the purpose of the meeting was to find out more about the child and to formulate a plan to help improve the situation for all parties. The parent was then invited to talk about the child—their place in the family, their past history, their likes and dislikes, what they like doing in their spare time and what motivates them. The deputy principal asked parents what they had tried in the way of behaviour management at home and what had or hadn’t worked. At these meetings it became clear that many of the parents could not suggest any positive strategies which might improve their child’s behaviour at home or at school. However, the principal and deputy principal were able to lead the discussion onto some more positive strategies. Within that collaborative discussion, two categories of behaviour were identified as needing improvement— noncompliance and physical aggression.

The deputy principal then asked whether the parent had text capability and whether they would find texting a good way of communicating. If this was the case, then either the class teacher or the deputy principal offered to text the parent every day and let them know how the day had gone for their child. If it was a good day, the parent was invited to celebrate with the child, tell them how pleased and proud they were that they had done what they were told, and reward them in an appropriate way, maybe by playing a game of kicks with them, going on a bike ride or playing a board game. If it had been a bad day, the parent was invited to say something like how disappointed they were that the child had not been able to do what they were told. The parents were invited to apply a consequence that mattered to the child—for example, going to bed half an hour earlier, limiting access to computer games, missing a favourite TV programme or not being allowed to go and play with a friend after school that day.

It was emphasised that parents were invited to address both sides of the equation—to celebrate and reward compliant and nonaggressive behaviour as well as to implement consequences for noncompliant or aggressive behaviour. Dealing with only one side of the equation was not enough. Parents were reminded that this would be a trial of the texting programme and that both parties would make contact after two weeks to see how things were going and whether things needed any tweaking. Parents were invited to contact the school prior to the two weeks if they wished, or if they felt things were not going well.

Twelve of the 14 parents decided they would like to participate in trialling the procedure. The school purchased a mobile phone specifically for this purpose. It was not considered acceptable for staff to be expected to give their personal mobile phone number to members of the school community.

The text messages

From the school’s point of view, once this collaborative contract was agreed upon, an accurate and focused text which dealt with both sides of the behaviour equation had to be sent every day. Failure to do this might have resulted in parents receiving only negative messages and the teachers becoming perceived as “telltales”. Both the parent and the child needed to hear about the good days as well as the not-so-good days. Parents may not have continued to work in partnership if the school reported only on the bad days.

The text was made specific to the target behaviour for each child: for example, “A good day, Jason followed teacher instructions all day” or “The day started badly with Jason ignoring the reliever, but once I spoke to him he made a great improvement and did most of what he was told—we were happy with that” or “A bad day today, Jason had a lot of trouble doing what he was told.” The text was worded in such a way that if the child or another family member read it, it would not be damaging to the child’s mana. Often the child would see the text— sometimes before the adult!

The school reported only on the target behaviour as agreed with the parent. If Jason did what he was told all day, but also swore in the playground, the text reported that he did what he was told all day (and the school dealt with the swearing incident as they would for any other child).

Any improvement in behaviour was specifically acknowledged. If Jason previously had been refusing to do what he was told on average 15 times a day, but now refused on only three occasions in one day, the text did not report it as a bad day, but noted the considerable progress Jason had made.

Results

Once the plan was in action, a text message was sent every day, until the target behaviour had been eliminated. While in most cases there was an immediate decrease in the target behaviour, total elimination occurred after between two and nine months (with an average of around four months). Following each child’s successful elimination of noncompliance and physical aggression in the playground, a collaborative decision was made to stop the texting.

Table 1 shows the gender and ages of the 12 children whose parents or caregivers participated in this home-school partnership, and summarises the incidence of noncompliant and aggressive behaviour before and after the texting programme, together with a comment from the deputy principal.

Examination of the specific school records reveals a general pattern where there was a marked immediate reduction in noncompliance and aggressive behaviour in all participating children. This was generally followed by an unsettled period when children displayed a number of instances of their previous misbehaviour. However, this behaviour did not revert to its previous high levels (as shown in the pre-texting column in Table 1). The initial period of improved behaviour allowed the school to give immediate initial positive feedback to parents, which built the trust levels needed to maintain and strengthen the partnership to ensure its continuing effectiveness during the ensuing unsettled period.

Once children realised that their behaviour was factually and unemotionally reported each day, and that parents were learning to follow through with the agreed responses to both sides of the equation, the child’s behaviour once again improved.

Discussion

The success of this collaborative school and home texting programme in reducing and eliminating noncompliant and aggressive behaviour in the playground is attributed to four positive beliefs firmly espoused by management and staff:

•&&&&Almost universally, pre- and early-teen children want to please their parents.

•&&&&Almost all parents want their children to do well in school.

•&&&&Many parents do not know what to do when their child is not behaving well at school, but if listened to and supported they will be open to suggestions.

•&&&&If the school is the site where the child’s behaviour is causing difficulty, then the school, rather than simply blaming parents and communitites for the problem, needs to find a way of engaging and collaborating with them. This is more likely to happen if the parents feel comfortable and are not threatened by the mode of communication the school has put in place.

As well as espousing these four beliefs, teachers at this school developed intervention strategies that incorporated their beliefs. They considered that it would be presumptuous and intrusive to start sending daily texts to parents without first meeting with them face to face to negotiate agreement on particular strategies. Hence, the initial meeting between teachers and the parents of each child is understood as an essential prerequisite to establishing this type of collaborative intervention.

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As the professional side of this home and school partnership, teachers have the responsibility for ensuring that both sides of the behavioural equation (providing positive consequences for children’s appropriate behaviour, as well as consequences for inappropriate behaviour) are adequately addressed. It would have been easy to leave out reinforcement of positive behaviours, but teachers were aware that rewarding a good day was likely to improve the chances of another good day more than punishing a bad day. Further, increased parental attention for improved behaviour at home was thought likely to improve the adult/child relationship, perhaps benefiting both home and school.

As professionals in the partnership, teachers also have the responsibility to ensure that any punitive consequences parents might implement within this partnership remain within the boundaries of the law and are implemented in an appropriate and measured way according to accepted principles of behaviour management, such as contingency and frequency vs. intensity (Glynn & Berryman, 2005). Parents in this partnership often believed it was the severity (intensity) of consequences that made them effective, rather than their contingency and frequency. Where relevant, these issues were discussed at the individual meetings with parents.

The effectiveness of this intervention, relying as it did on regular and consistent texting between school and home, is best appreciated as one component of a range of other important inputs from school, home and community. In combination, all of these components together led to the elimination of noncompliant and aggressive playground behaviours in these 12 children. However, for children experiencing severe behaviour disorder, such as those accessing the Severe Behaviour Initiative through Group Special Education, this intervention on its own may not be sufficient to bring about substantial and long-term behaviour change. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of the immediate and continuing texting of specific information about children’s behaviour is well worth exploring as a component of more substantive interventions for such students.

Conclusion

As electronic technologies evolve and are accessed increasingly by the general population it is important for schools to consider the way we communicate with parents and caregivers and how we expect them to communicate with us. If we believe it is to our benefit as teachers to have parents in partnership with us, we are going to have to communicate with them on terms which are familiar, accessible and acceptable to them. Finding an effective way to eliminate noncompliance and disruptive playground behaviour has been an exciting journey for this school. It has been very satisfying to have been instrumental in positively engaging young people at school who were at risk of becoming lost from the education system.

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the support and leadership of Richard Clarke and Marcus Freke, and the support of the staff of Vardon School.

References

Berryman, M., & Glynn, T. (2004). Culturally responsive school and community partnerships to avoid suspension. In J. Wearmouth, T. Glynn, & R. Richmond (Eds.), Addressing pupils’ behaviour at district, school and individual levels (pp. 30–41). London: David Fulton Publishers in association with The Open University and the University of Waikato.

Glynn, T., & Berryman, M. (2005). Understanding and responding to students’ behaviour difficulties. In D. Fraser, R. Moltzen, & K. Ryba (Eds.), Learners with special needs in Aotearoa New Zealand. Palmerston North: Dunmore Press.

Wearmouth, J., Glynn, T., & Berryman, M. (2005). Perspectives on student behaviour in schools: Exploring theory and developing practice. New York: RoutledgeFalmer.

KAY PETCHELL is currently Deputy Principal of Marian School in Hamilton. Kay holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Special Needs Resource Teaching and a Master of Education degree from the University of Waikato.

Email: kpetchell@marian.school.nz

TED GLYNN is Foundation Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Waikato and a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. Ted researches and teaches in Māori and bicultural education, applied behaviour analysis and special education, and is a member of the Specialist Education Service Poutama Pounamu Education Research Whānau in Tauranga.

Email: glynn@waikato.ac.nz