Behavior Is Not a Knowledge or Skill Issue Like Math or Basketball
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses why treating misbehavior as a knowledge gap — as if students just need to be 'taught' how to behave — misunderstands the nature of behavioral choices.
Key Takeaways
- Behavior isn't like academics - Students who misbehave typically know the rules; the issue is choice and consequences, not lack of knowledge
- The 'teach behavior' framework is flawed - Treating every behavioral issue as an instructional problem removes accountability
- Consequences teach differently than lessons - Some learning happens through experiencing natural and logical consequences, not classroom instruction
Transcript
behavior is not really teachable knowledge and skills.
I got this comment that says, when a child struggles in reading, do you just say they just need to read better, or do you look at the why and intentionally intervene in that area?
And I think students who struggle with behavior, whether it's violence or serious classroom disruption, they do need some sort of intervention.
but I do reject the framing of it as an instructional need.
They don't just need to be taught because they already know.
If we think of it as teachers, if we think of it as a lesson and objectives that need to be met, then we're gonna go down the wrong path and we're not gonna get to solutions that actually make a difference because Students already know how to act.
They know what they're supposed to do and they're not doing it.
It's kind of like if you were teaching a math unit and you did a pre-assessment and the students aced it.
They knew how to do every single thing in the unit and then you gave them the post-assessment and they just didn't fill it out.
They just didn't answer it or they answered every question wrong.
Behavior is kind of like that when students are put in a situation where they know what to do and they just don't do it, we can't really say it's an instructional need in the sense that they just need to be taught what to do or it's not like, you know, a basketball skill where they need to make free throws and they can't make them so they need to practice.
No, they can, you know, and even students who behave terribly can behave.
It's not that they are incapable of behaving.
It's that they are not behaving.
And not doing something is different from not being able to do something or not knowing how to do it or not knowing what to do.
Those are all very different.
And I just think we have to be careful about how we frame things like this because when we frame them as instructional problems, we blame the wrong people.
We blame teachers for not teaching the appropriate behavior.
And certainly there's room for teaching Tier 1 expected behaviors.
I think PBIS is a good thing.
I think school-wide expectations, any kind of SEL curriculum can be helpful for Tier 1 behaviors.
But after we've taught the expected behaviors, after students know what to do, students not doing it is a completely different type of problem.
It's an entirely different challenge.
It's not a challenge of knowledge and skills.
So I'm not exactly sure how to think of behavior.
I'm not exactly sure what it is.
I think it's kind of difficult to classify.
And I would love your thoughts as to what behavior is.
But I don't think it's knowledge.
I don't think it's skill.
Because every student who misbehaves knows how to behave.
They know what they're supposed to do.
And they can do it some of the time.
They do do it a lot of the time.
It's just not consistent.
So I feel like that's a different challenge.
Let me know what you think about that.