Behavior Is Not a Skill in Schools
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses why student behavior is usually a matter of choice and accountability, not a skill deficit to be taught.
Key Takeaways
- Behavior Isn't Like Academic Skill - Dr. Baeder argues that behavior is not taught the same way as content or performance skills like music or sports.
- Agency Matters - Treating every misbehavior as a missing skill can deny students responsibility for choices they are fully capable of making.
- Consequences Teach Behavior - In most school situations, students already know how to behave and respond when adults hold them accountable.
- Don't Confuse Explanation With Solution - Explaining routines like punctuality is not the same as solving chronic tardiness or noncompliance.
- Special Education Is Different - Dr. Baeder notes that some students with IEPs may need explicit behavioral support, but that is not true in most cases.
Full Transcript
Behavior is not a skill, and that matters for how we handle it in schools. Nathan Maynard has a new book out called The Science of Discipline. It's kind of an unfortunate title, and he's got an excerpt over at the Cult of Pedagogy, Jennifer Gonzalez's excellent website.
And I think he gets just about everything wrong about behavior. I think he has some good ideas, but they're too much from the perspective of, like, an individual therapist working with a kid, and not enough from the perspective of the school, from the perspective of educators.
And as educators, we have a tendency to see everything as teachable.
When all you have is a hammer, Everything looks like a nail. But behavior is not a skill in the way that we normally think about skills. And it's not teachable in the way that content is teachable, right? A skill, like making a free throw or playing the cello, is teachable in a way that behavior is not. Behavior has to be experienced. Behavior has to be learned, and I use that term in quotes, through consequences.
See... The thing that we get wrong when we take the approach that Nathan Maynard takes in his new book is we see everything as just needing an explanation. Like, oh, this kid is acting up in class, this kid is not doing their work, because they need to learn a skill. Do they?
Do they really? What is the skill of doing your work? What is the skill of not misbehaving? See, the thing about behavior is everybody has the skills. Kids have the skills to behave. They might not perform those skills every time because motivation is a big deal.
Feeling like it matters. Effort matters and is under the control of the individual. And I think what we lose sight of when we treat behavior as a skill is we lose sight of student agency, right? students have free will. Students have the power to choose for themselves how to act.
And when we rob them of that power by framing everything as if it's, oh, you couldn't behave because you don't have the skill, you know, when we take that agency away from them, I'm convinced that we're doing them a terrible disservice and we're failing to solve the problem, right?
If you treat something like a skill that a student doesn't have Rather than, you know, something they can do, but are just choosing not to, you're gonna end up with the wrong solution. So, some of the things that are recommended in this article are just kind of wacky.
Like, if a kid is tardy to class, well, teach them the skill of being on time and setting a timer. Like, they don't need you to do that. They need a consequence for not getting to class on time. And an amazing thing happens when we stop treating something as a skill
and start just holding kids accountable.
They magically demonstrate the skill. Wow! Who would have thought that they had the skill all along? I think with almost all behaviors that we're talking about in a school setting, and granted, okay, special education, sure, there are IEPs, there are things that need to be taught in a more deliberate way for some kids,
but most of the time when we're talking about behavior, it is not a skill issue. It is a choice, and we need to treat it like a choice. Let me know what you think.