7 Causes of Challenging Behaviour at School

In every school in the country, there are always instances of inappropriate or challenging behaviours exhibited by children of all ages. For policymakers, school staff, and parents alike, it’s essential that efforts need to be made to understand these challenging behaviours at school, which means finding their root causes. 

Challenging behaviours can have a variety of reasons for manifesting themselves in children, with physical, social, familial, and emotional factors all known to play a role in these behaviours being adopted by students. Not to mention psychological factors, including learning difficulties such as autism and disorders like ADHD. 

It’s without question that finding the root causes of these challenging behaviours in children is critical to ensure they’re making the most of their educational experience and are not negatively impacting fellow students. If all aforementioned parties play their role in doing this, an inclusive and supportive school system will flourish. 

That’s why we’ve outlined the topic of challenging behaviours and have explored seven of the common causes of challenging behaviours at school. We’ve also delved into different behaviour management strategies that can be adopted to deal with challenging behaviour, which is equally important to contribute to a positive learning environment for all school students.

What Are Challenging Behaviours?

Challenging behaviour in schools refers to students acting or behaving in a way that disrupts other students in their learning environment.

Examples of challenging behaviour might include walking around the classroom mid-lesson, talking to fellow peers, or checking a phone or electronic device. Some of these behaviours might not cause any physical harm to students and teachers, but in some cases they may, like hitting or being verbally abusive. 

The latter of these challenging behaviours are often the most noticeable and disruptive, and can be a cause of significant concern. They also often need further action to be taken with higher educational bodies or professionals within your school, and perhaps even to get parents involved, to sanction the behaviour accordingly . 

Challenging behaviours as a whole can take several forms, and can range from being highly disruptive to only slightly disruptive. But regardless, these behaviours need to be dealt with promptly and accordingly to ensure they don’t continue to disrupt other students during their educational experience.

Types of Challenging Behaviour

There are several types of challenging behaviour in schools that can be exhibited by children. It’s important to keep in mind that not all children will exhibit the same behaviours, or each behaviour in the same way. This is why it’s the responsibility of school staff to be aware of the different types of challenging behaviours and how they might manifest themselves. 

We’ve delved into some common examples of challenging behaviours in children that could be displayed at school:

• Shouting across a classroom
• Talking out of turn
• Struggling to follow instructions
• Bullying other students
• Being aggressive or abusive, either verbally or physically, to teachers or students
• Having tantrums
• Making threats
• Lying to teachers
• Lacking empathy
• Having difficulty concentrating
• Not being able to pay attention
• Involved in anti-social behaviour
• Not abiding by school rules and codes of conduct
• Being irritable 
• Being socially withdrawn

When witnessing challenging behaviour at school, it’s important that teachers think carefully about how to respond to this in the moment. You don’t want the children to turn the blame on you for the way they’re acting, call your authority and decision making into question in front of other students, or cause their disruptive behaviour to escalate further, which could lead to more serious situations. 

What Are Some of the Causes of Challenging Behaviour?

Now that you have more of an understanding of challenging behaviour in schools, it’s time to learn more about what its causes can be. Some potential causes of challenging behaviour include:

Change

Any change in a student’s life can cause them to display challenging behaviours. This might include if they’ve moved schools or even if someone they know at school or at an extracurricular activity has passed away. 

A Lack of Routine

Routine is critically important to a child’s development, and also to their ability to not display challenging behaviours. Not having a regular routine either at home or at school, or if a routine has been disturbed, can lead to children to act out. For example, if a child’s bedtime has changed or mealtimes have moved. 

Behavioural Issues and Psychological Disorders

It may be that a child has a diagnosed - or undiagnosed - behavioural problem or psychological disorder that causes them to have behavioural difficulties. This might include autism, ADHD, or OCD. 

It’s critical that schools and teachers are acknowledging when students have these disorders or problems and cater to their specific needs where necessary.

Health and a Lack of Basic Care

Similar to behavioural and psychological problems, it may be that children have challenging behaviour because they have an underlying health condition. This may cause them to be uncomfortable or suffer from pain during classes, which might then lead them to act out. These might be known health conditions, but also might be undiagnosed. 

Familial Situation and Home Environment

If something has happened in a child’s home life, such as parents having gone through a divorce or a family member has passed away, this can equally lead to challenging behaviour in children. Any change to the home environment, like frequent shouting and arguments, can spark the same behaviours. 

Learned Behaviour

Children learn their behaviour from those around them, most notably their close friends, family members, and even neighbours if they spend a lot of time with them. 

As such, if they’re seeing others react adversely in situations, or exhibit behaviours that could be deemed as challenging - like shouting, being physically aggressive, or destructive - it’s likely that they will mimic this behaviour and bring it into the school environment. 

Boredom

Children need a lot of mental stimulation as they develop, and not having much to keep them occupied or interest them can lead to behavioural difficulties. That’s why boredom in a school setting can lead to challenging behaviour. 

It may just be that a student doesn’t understand a topic they’re learning, which is why they’re acting out. This is something teachers should be able to identify also. 

Why Is Addressing Challenging Behaviour Important? 

By not responding to challenging behaviours, this could only escalate the disruption that they are causing to other students. It’s of critical importance that school staff, or parents, identify the root cause of the challenging behaviour, as if this is not addressed, children may feel that they’re not getting the recognition and help that they need. 

At the end of the day, for children, acting out is normally a cry for help, and by not addressing the underlying issues causing challenging behaviour, you’re not trying to support the child in question to solve their problems.

For example, it may be that a child is struggling with their family life at home, as their parents are going through a divorce and they’re grieving the loss of a grandparent. Or, it may be that the child has an undiagnosed mental disorder, such as ADHD or OCD. Only when educators make the effort to understand the causes of challenging behaviour can steps be taken to reduce it. 

Additionally, not acting in response to challenging behaviour at school as a learning provider can undermine you. So, by taking action swiftly and in an appropriate way, it’s unlikely that children will continue to act in a disruptive or challenging way, as it’s clear that they will be sanctioned accordingly, which no child really wants. 

What Are Strategies to Deal With Challenging Behaviours?

Now that you’ve understood the causes of challenging behaviours, it’s essential to know how to deal with them in a school setting. We’ve delved into five key ways for dealing with challenging behaviour at school below:

Communicate Clearly and Calmly

When addressing challenging behaviour, be sure to do so calmly and clearly, speaking in an understandable way to the offender. Try not to lose your temper, or shout, but instead think about how you can maintain control and not further escalate the situation. 

After all, you want to ensure that you’re displaying the ideal behaviour that you want your students to model, so by being calm you’re reinforcing that that’s the correct way to interact with others. 

Recognise Positive Behaviour, and Encourage It

When your students make exceptional progress and act in an exemplary way, be sure to recognise their achievements and behaviour. While it might be easy to sanction challenging behaviour in children, it’s also easy to overlook when they are behaving in the way you’d expect them to.

So, make it clear that you acknowledge this behaviour and reward children accordingly. This will positively reinforce this good behaviour, and will hopefully mean children are more likely to act this way in the future. 

Understand Your Students 

If you aim to understand how to respond to challenging behaviour, and what its causes are, you need to first understand that every child will be different. 

Each child will have different home lives, different personalities, and different needs. So, it’s up to you as a teacher to build genuine relationships with them so that you can understand who they are so that if they exhibit challenging behaviours you may know why.

Deal With Incidents Privately and Sanction Accordingly

When you do have an incident of a child with poor behaviour, try to take the child in question away from other students and deal with the situation privately. Talk it out with them and allow them to continue their disruptive behaviour, but away from others that it could impact. This keeps disruptions to a minimum, and should reduce the likelihood of the behaviour escalating, particularly if they can see they’re not getting a reaction out of it. 

If necessary, be sure to sanction students accordingly for their behaviour if it's severe enough, and if they’re becoming a serial offender. But, don’t make the mistake of continually sanctioning a student without understanding what the cause of their challenging behaviour might be, as by addressing the root cause you can reduce the likelihood of it happening again. 

FAQs

What Is The Most Effective Way Of Reducing Behaviours That Challenge?

It is believed that positive behaviour support (PBS) is one of the most effective and empowering ways to help students with behavioural difficulties. In short, it can help children focus on their school work and actions towards others in a way that helps them meet their needs and acknowledges their feelings. 

When Dealing With Challenging Behaviour What Approach Should We Take? 

There’s no one way to deal with challenging behaviour, so the approach you take in each situation for different students might vary. What you should do is find out what the child’s triggers of challenging behaviour might be. For example, are they bored? Are they being bullied? Or is another student annoying them? Find out what is causing them to act the way they are and therefore identify how you can address this and help them. 

What Does ADHD Look Like In School?

The typical signs of ADHD in a school environment include not being able to focus on tasks or work, difficulty listening to instructions, and not being able to pay attention - either for short or longer periods of time. Children might also struggle to keep still and fidget, as well as put in minimal effort to their homework or assignments. 

Summary

Challenging behaviour in children can have a significant impact on school environments and child educational performance. As such, it’s critical that educators are knowledgeable of the causes of challenging behaviour and how to appropriately address these behaviours for the benefit of all students. 

If you’d like to learn more about Positive Behaviour Support and how it can help to address challenging behaviour, you can undertake our course to Understand the Importance of Primary Behaviour Support. With this, you can develop in-depth plans to improve the behaviour of children you work with.