The teacher-Child interaction Project

Since 1969, there has been a slow, but steady, increase in the number of studies which have attempted to apply behavioural methods within the British school setting. The variety of papers reported in this volume attest to the wide level of current interest. Many reviewers of American experience (e.g. Sherman and Bushell, 1975;O'Leary and O'Leary, 1972) show that both academic and classroom behaviours have been investigated, and there is a general agreement that the aim of behavioural intervention is not necessarily to make children “be still, be quiet and be good” (Winnett and Winkler, 1972). Rather, the aim is to help the classroom teacher to use the ongoing teacher-child interaction in a deliberate, positive way so as to foster the optimum level of personal development and academic attainment in her pupils. This paper draws on our experiences of the past four years of training groups of teachers in behavioural management, and concentrates on some of the important issues involved in ensuring that behavioural intervention of the highest quality can be offered to teachers in schools.