Proactive strategies for efficient discipline policy

Abstract

The teachers and other professionals have the responsibility to attain two extremely important objectives for their students: the task of teaching (the transfer of knowledge, skills and attitudes) and the task of nurturing the development of student personality. In the school and remedial/therapeutic settings, teachers and professionals specialized in working with children and adolescents have to face different types of disruptive behaviour (externalized - acting out - or internalized - withdrawing), of broad range of intensity and severity. In actual context of integrated education, of focusing on educational offer for students with disabilities (including children with emotional and behavioural disorders), the challenge is to efficiently approach the educational and disciplinary problems. Disciplinary problems challenge schools and teachers to broad their set of strategies of behavioural management and conflict resolution and to design programs for student emotional and social skills development. These objectives require an ordered, safe and prone to learning environment, so educational and remedial/therapeutic settings have developed their own discipline policy. In many cases, these handbooks of school discipline policy detail consequence sequences designed to "teach" these students that they have violated a school rule, and that their "choice" of behaviours will not be tolerated. In most cases, implementing reactive and punished-based measures proved to be effective only in the recrudescence in frequency and severity of antisocial behaviours but failed in solving the causes of these behaviours. The measure of efficiency of educational and remedial/therapeutic interventions should be based and sustained by scientific theory and empirical data. Empirical data suggest that pro-active (positive and preventive) measures are far more efficient in solving discipline problems, and, more important, in teaching life-lasting prosocial abilities and conflict management and solving problems skills. Positive psychology and positive education offer a valuable frame and principles that enable the educational organizations and specialized staff members with the necessary tools to attain these valuable goals. In this paper, we stress the importance of developing a positive behavioural support (PBIS) at institutional level and the importance of continuing professionalization of professionals working with children and adolescents by developing interventional skills, at all level: primary, secondary and tertiary intervention. The LSCI Method will be presented as an illustrative model. Reducing the aggressiveness and developing a positive behavior represent in the authors' opinion, the most important way to prevent delinquent behavior.