Focuses on: Helping students become more
responsible behaviourally
Basic Human Needs
1. Love
Children usually try to satisfy their need for love & acceptance through behaviour designed to get attention
Unfortunately, children often want more attention than teachers & parents can provide.
When their effort fail, they resort to more drastic measures which are the source of much misbehaviour
Sometimes love on a conditional basis creates misbehaviour. Love is
conditional when acceptance depends on a child's conforming to expectations.
Children need to be told constantly that they are loved not because of what they do but just for who they are.
2. Control
Humans need sufficient power to regulate their lives.
However, teachers usually deny children the opportunity to satisfy this need.
Increase in control encourages great rebellion.
It would be better to provide students a way to satisfy their need for control in legitimate ways.
Students need to have reasonable power & control over their lives but
also need to use power to properly satisfy other needs such as love.
They must achieve a balance in satisfying these potentially contradicting needs.
Love can occur when needs for control are moderated.
People usually use control to manipulate the environment or another person to satisfy their needs in a desired way.
Even if students are aware that their exercise of power often irritates or alienates others, some
children are unable to modify their need for control to avoid causing these reactions.
Some children appear addicted to power and engage in protracted tantrums to acquire and maintain
control of others.
In dealing with tantrum-prone children, it is recommended that teachers provide these children with affection
before they act out and involve them in doing some pleasurable thing they have not experienced before.
The tantrum behaviour should not be reinforced by paying attention to it.
3. Freedom
Children need control of their own lives as well as freed from control by others.
Teachers usually interpret children's efforts to obtain freedom as affronts to their authority.
They also doubt the ability of children to use freedom responsibly.
Freedom, however, is a necessary component of learning to be responsible.
One way of providing freedom is to teach decision-making skills
Teachers need to provide freedom gradually as children become more able to govern themselves.
Teachers must offer children several choices.
4. Fun
Children are driven the need for fun. Fun is as basic as any other need.
Academic part of schooling is usually devoid of fun.
Most students don't take pleasure in what they are currently learning.
Fun is very important to them. It is a gauge against which to measure different experiences of activities.
Needs Balancing
Balancing needs is an important part of choice theory.
Over emphasis of one need may make satisfying other needs more difficult.
Need to teach children to balance their needs by having them forgo some control in favour of developing friendships.
Needs for freedom and control must be balanced.
Children want freedom but unwilling to grant the same privilege to their peers. They want to be the ones
who always get to tell others what to do and yet never accept suggestions from them.
Balancing personal needs with needs of peers is one of two interactive dimensions of need
balancing. A second is the balance that must be achieved between our own competing needs.
Teacher's role: Help them satisfy
their needs legitimately & help
them learn to balance their needs.
Unfulfilled
Reality Therapy
Focuses on: Correcting misbehaviour
Why do students misbehave?
Because they failed to satisfy their
needs hence create problems
How to correct? Via interviews
Teacher's role: Help them take responsibility of their own
behaviour. Change if necessary
Steps
1. Help students identify & describe their inappropriate behaviour
State their role in the problem.
Make them describe their behaviour. Do not identify for them.
Questions must be directed to ask students to
state what they have done to cause problems.
Questions must be specifically phrased to which students are
expected to respond to teachers. Make it difficult for students
to claim that they don't know what the teacher is talking about.
2. Identify consequences
The way questions are formed is important in helping
students accept responsibility for their behaviour.
Questions should contain clues about what
responses that may be made by students.
Allow teachers to deal directly with
problem without getting sidetracked.
Student is allowed to formulate consequences themselves.
Range of possible consequences is explored so that students can
visualize the potential hazards of their misbehaviour.
3. Make value judgement
After consequences have been identified, they are asked
to decide whether they want the consequences to occur OR
whether or not they judge their behaviour to be appropriate.
4. Creating a plan
In the process of making a plan, they may resist changing behaviour
with which they have found some satisfaction in the past.
If they put up with resistance, simply ask what they have
already said about changing their behaviour.
It is necessary for students to be specific in their plans.
Teacher needs to make sure students really follow through the agreed plan.
If students are uncooperative, do not react. Move away and indicate willingness to talk when they are ready.
Students must realize that their problems cannot be resolves until
they are willing to talk & teacher can wait as long as necessary.
Students know that if they wait long enough, they can usually avoid accepting
responsibility for misbehaviour. Teachers must be willing to wait longer than students.
Students are full of excuses & deny bad behaviour by shifting blame to others.
If students try to excuse their bad behaviour, ignore the excuse and direct student to address problem.
Teachers should avoid inviting excuses by asking 'why' questions.