giving support and incitement.
- Violating behavioural rules in trips and activities out of school. * According to the behaviour severity there is a
possibility for suspension from school for up to ten days.
* Transferring the student to an alternative school (according to transfer procedures), or by permanently suspending the offending student from the school.
* In the events occurring during trips the principal can return the involved students from the trip, in addition to the disciplinary and educational treatment.
* In cases in which there is danger to the students' safety, the principal will consider conditioning participation in a tour/trip in the future on the
accompaniment by an adult or preventing participation in such future activity.
2.10 Intervention and Prevention Programmes with Regard to
Unacceptable Behaviour
Israel has not yet conducted a comprehensive study on the extent of use of various intervention programmes for unacceptable behaviour in schools. In the United States, about 78% of principals have reported that their schools operate programmes against unacceptable behaviour (Benvenisti, Astor and Marchi, 2003).
The operation of any intervention programme depends on the level of the unacceptable behaviour, understanding the workings of the school and knowing the environment. Every school must identify its special needs, its limitations, its strengths and resources, so that the school community can discuss which programme is best suited to its needs and ultimately choose the most appropriate programme. In addition, this approach assumes that the construction and implementation of the programmes is
a long one, cyclical and constantly changing so that it can confront new circumstances and new needs that are occasionally detected (Benvenisti, Astor and Marchi, 2003).
The completion of all summary statements allows the team to begin developing interventions for each problem behaviour. To do so, it is essential that all members of the team are encouraged to contribute by giving ideas or/and recommendations. The fact of allowing parents, community members, and school staff to participate will support the incorporation of culturally appropriate strategies (Kea, Cartledge and Bowman, 2002). Indeed, using culturally appropriate strategies will support the plan, along with maintaining the students` and family's` beliefs and values (Algozzine, Daunic and Smith, 2010(
.
According to (Algozzine, Daunic, and Smith, 2010) all interventions to solve behavioural problem must focus on answering the question, Why? For example: why were students fighting during recess? The use of such behaviour can be related to students’ lack of positive social skills to gain the attention of teacher or peers or to avoid difficult situations. Students can have many reasons for obtaining and escaping; interventions must gradually work toward desirable social skills while considering the preferred function for the behaviour.
Kauffman (2006) suggests that self-questioning and reflection, required for the good management of classroom behaviour, should begin as soon as teachers detect inappropriate behaviour of a student or a group. Often, the first impressions about a problem can be ambiguous. The experience in classrooms with students lead to the belief that even outstanding teachers sometimes make rapid conclusions about the origin of a problem instead of taking more time for a deeper analytical approach in order to identify it. Consequently, a teacher can lose a lot of time and effort dealing with an unnecessary concern while neglecting a more significant problem. In reality, without reasonable control over students` classroom behaviour, teachers will reduce the chance of being effective.
In addition, prevention is an integral part of the effective treatment of the phenomenon of unacceptable behaviour when there are two simultaneous goals: reducing current unacceptable behaviour and the education for future non-violence (Management Circular, 2000).
The responsibility to deal with unacceptable behaviour is placed on the shoulders of many entities, where the cooperation between them contributes to the dealing with unacceptable behaviour. These factors are the principal, school staff, Israeli society, and students. In addition, there is the support system that includes counsellors, psychologists, assistants and various professionals upon whom is the responsibility to support the planning and operation of all activities at the school designed to deal with unacceptable behaviour. This system has a responsibility not only in dealing with students individually, but also in planning prevention and intervention activities for the entire school community (Benvenisti, Casabri and Astor, 2006).
Research on coping with unacceptable behaviour in the school system, conducted by Benvenisti, Astor and Marchi (2003) recommended to schools intervention programmes and approaches related to unacceptable behaviour, based on monitoring and surveillance over a period of time and on the following beliefs:
1. Schools must demonstrate a vision of the initiative and a 'can-do' attitude about the problem of unacceptable behaviour in their school. An educational vision is defined by many theoreticians as the leadership process of the head of the system who seeks to shape an improved future for his organisation. In many schools in the country and the world there exists a declared educational vision which is generally expressed on a placard that hangs in the office of the principal, and sometimes even on the logo of the institution, which lists the goals of the school (Bar-Lev, 2007).
The principal and the staff must bring the school to a state of regular conduct, and allow themselves the planning and logistics to formulate a vision for the school.
Even before the passage of the resolution adopting the vision for the school one must check how much coherence there is between the actual outline of the proposed vision and existing institutional procedures, in order to prevent situations of duplication of support from different procedures.
After verifying the vision, it must be ensured that the teachers will be integrated in the process as much as possible, so that every system which is to be influenced by the vision will notice the change, and it will diminish any objections or total disregarding (Barnett and McCormick, 2003).
2. Efforts to adapt a particular school programme should come 'from below', in other words, it requires the involvement of all who belong to the school community (students, educational staff, parents, and if possible also the wider community).
3. It is essential to bring about the empowerment of students and teachers to deal with the problem.
4. Democracy must be ingrained at the heart of a good plan to deal with unacceptable behaviour.
5. All the processes of developing, enhancing and evaluating programmes should be based on the systematic collection of data.
Any programme to reduce unacceptable behaviour and deal with it, must include reference to the multi-dimensional system of direct and indirect victims of unacceptable behaviour.
Accordingly, Benvenisti, Casabri and Astor (2006) point number of recommendation: 1. It is essential to create an atmosphere and tools that allow
victims to report attacks that befall them. We must ensure that the reporting by victims will not bring the blaming of the victim and the causing of additional injury. Complaints of violence and unacceptable behaviour should be addressed seriously and responsibly. It should also be recommended that reporting must be accessible and discreet, to factors external to the school such as an 'open phone line' or a website.
2. We must deal with the physical and emotional harm of the victims. The information should be given to a member of the educational staff in charge of receiving complaints about violence and unacceptable behaviour. In any case it is
3. In all cases of injury, evaluate the need for intervention of educational treatment aimed at fostering the victim's ability to cope effectively with stress and the threat of future violent injuries.
4. It is necessary to ensure the prevention of further harm. Among other things it is necessary to ensure that the perpetrator cannot repeat the violation, to prevent 'revenge' from the offender, and to prevent injury arising specifically from efforts to prevent further injury. Among other things, it is not necessary to keep the victim from school to protect him from the offender.
5. Whenever possible it is important to involve the victim in the process of 'restorative justice' designed to repair the damage, and promote the ability of the victim and the offender to continue to be members of the same community, without further injuries.
6. In all cases of an act of unacceptable behaviour, especially severe violence, we must examine whether there are students who were indirectly affected and act accordingly.
7. When planning actions intended for victims one has to be aware that many of the victims themselves have harmed others. Therefore, we must deal with both victims of the students who harmed others (Benvenisti, Casbari and Astor, 2006).
According to Even (2005) there are three main characteristics shared by effective educational programmes to reduce unacceptable behaviour:
1. Setting standardised limits: Each school should have an agreed-upon code of conduct which includes a small number of rules formulated clearly and accompanied by examples. The students must recognise the rules and know that violating them carries a price.
2. Teaching social skills: The school should give students social skills relevant to the prevention of unacceptable behaviour, and students need to practise them.
Accordingly, Algozzine, Daunic and Smith (2010) cited:
Moreover, research in the field of early childhood development brought to light that social development and the ability to be engaged is essential for school readiness. In fact, children with problem behaviour could be at risk of both social exclusion and academic failure. In the light of the above, just as we teach children to read, swim, and count, we must teach them how to acquire and maintain friendships, identify feelings within themselves and others, control anger and impulses, listen, and problem- solve(Algozzine, Daunic and Smith, 2010: 28).
3. Broad educational partnership: schools must collaborate with other community factors in the community to manage the problem of the unacceptable behaviour.
According to Benvenisti, Astor and Marchi (2003) the characteristics of successful programmes are:
1. They raise the awareness and responsibility of students, teachers and parents to the types of unacceptable behaviour in their schools (such as sexual harassment, fights, use of weapons).
2. They create clear guidelines and rules of conduct for all schools. 3. They are directed at all the different social systems in the school,
and make it clear to the school community how they must act before, during, and after acts of unacceptable behaviour.
4. They are intended to achieve the involvement of school staff, students and parents in the programme.
5. They frequently fit into the normal flow and daily tasks of the school.
6. They make use of the teaching staff, administrative staff and parents to plan, implement and sustain the programme.
7. They increase the monitoring and supervision in areas that are outside the classrooms.
Others, such as Ronen and Rosenbaum (2010) suggest some principles for the success of the intervention programme to reduce aggression among adolescents:
Intervention should be given early in life to at-risk children, namely, to children in the early grades who are highly aggressive (Connor et al., 2006; Tremblay and Nagin, 2005).
The intervention should concentrate on helping youngsters apply self- control skills to control their aggression and their anger (Bierman, 2007) by gaining emotional and cognitive self-control skills.
The intervention programme should be delivered in small groups that can foster pro-social friendship skills (Bierman, 2007; Eppel, 2007). In order to enhance the general utilisation of new skills in the
appropriate settings, the intervention should be conducted within the school system and by the teachers. In fact Wilson et al., (2003) reported that programmes delivered by teachers were more effective than those delivered by research staff.
The intervention programme must be appealing to teachers and students in order to be adopted as part of a regular school with highly effective programmes.
Kauffman et al., (2006) claim that, nowadays, teachers have at their disposal a wide variety of suggestions for behaviour management, including 'packaged' techniques. Teachers are advised to use a reflective, self-questioning approach that motivates the creative use of basic principles. Otherwise, before using elaborate sophisticated management strategies, teachers should try using the simplest and most professionally defensible procedures. These include using instructions, showing and describing examples, and providing choices to students. Indeed, when used correctly, these simple approaches are often sufficient to solve behaviour problems.