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Are Disruptive Behaviours Reduced When Levels of On-task Behaviours Increase? An Across Settings Study of a Class of 12- and 13-Year-Old Pupils—II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2009

E. McNamara  and
M. Jolly
E. McNamara
Affiliation:
Lancashire County Council, Schools Psychological Service
M. Jolly
Affiliation:
Lancashire County Council, School Support Team
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Extract

In recent years an impressive body of research has accumulated indicating that behavioural management strategies can promote the levels of on-task behaviour of classes of disruptive secondary school pupils. These successes have led to the explicit, self-evident claim that levels of off-task behaviour have concomitantly been reduced—and the implicit claim that levels of disruptive behaviour have also been reduced: for disruptive behaviour constitutes a subset of off-task behaviour. However the promotion of on-task behaviour with a corresponding reduction in off-task behaviour is a necessary but not sufficient outcome to claim that disruptive behaviour has diminished. It may be the case that innocuous off-task behaviours have been reduced but disruptive off-task behaviours remain. From a further data analysis of a previous study (McNamara and Jolly, 1990) it is claimed that when disruptive classroom behaviour is dealt with by the promotion of on-task behaviours the total amount of all types of off-task behaviours, from innocuous to grossly disruptive, is reduced. Analysis of data for individual pupils reveals that the whole class aggregated data conceal considerable inter-pupil variability for low incidence off-task behaviours.

Type
Research Article
Information
Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , October 1990 , pp. 239 - 249
Copyright
Copyright © British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies 1990

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