This Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) is intended to be used by the wider educational community, practitioners, and administrators. There is no restriction on the audience for this content, however, as the underpinning behavioural theory and considerations for practise should be transparent to all stakeholders in Education.

This resource is intended to be completed at the users’ leisure as a self-paced and open-access product. Some participants may be very process-oriented and immediately understand and incorporate the ideas presented. In contrast, others may prefer to take their time gingerly and deliberately accessing all content and making measured responses.

NOTE: There is no assessment or requirement that you complete this course to gain access to any resources, other material, remuneration or consultation.

Similarly, there is no reward or incentive for participation in this project other than contributing to our greater understanding of behaviour change and professional development.

As a Behaviour Support Coach managing students with extreme and challenging behaviours across schools in the Mid North and Yorke Peninsula areas of South Australia, I am approached for guidance by various teachers and leaders in multiple contexts.

In my work, I constantly encounter the most challenging students on the behaviour spectrum and, as a result, see teachers and leaders at their most vulnerable. Teachers and leaders are always telling me that they are out of ideas and that the stress of the situation is causing mental and physical anguish. 

This MOOC is a response to that anguish.

Unsurprisingly, approximately one-third of all new teachers will consider leaving the profession within the first three years of teaching.

Furthermore, a 2013 report by the Australian Primary Principals’ Association (APPA) found that 24% of teachers felt it was likely they would leave teaching within the first five years of entering the profession. Overwhelmingly, teachers cite managing challenging behaviour as the most significant cause of their distress and ultimately a reason for leaving the profession.

As a response to the ongoing stressors that teachers and leaders face in managing challenging behaviours, the South Australian Department for Education (SA-DfE) has begun to implement its strategic plan for a ‘world-class’ education system by 2028, informed by recommendations from the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability, inclusive of the Disability Standards for Education and the Disability Discrimination Act. These documents acknowledge the need for a robust capacity-building and improvement-planning cycle for educators that reflect the needs of students. The need for more rigorous understanding and engagement from teachers around behaviour management strategies and interventions is imperative to implementing and effectiveness of this plan proposed by the SA-DfE.

To achieve the SA-DfE’s goal of a world-class education system by 2028, we must consider how best to get this information into the hands of teachers, leaders and administrators.

Behaviourist theories of behaviour change underpin this MOOC. You may be familiar with the works of B F Skinner or Pavlov, both classical behaviourists. If you do recall these theorists, you already have a fair understanding of the components we will discuss. This MOOC is designed to update and deepen your pre-existing knowledge of the factors that impact behaviour and the methods that we, as educators, can use to influence these factors to bring about sustained behaviour change in our students.

The academic viewpoints and theories underpinning this course are vast, synthesised from applied behaviour theories and pedagogical practice. This MOOC’s content draws from seminal literature and resources by B J Fogg, Ross Greene, Jessica Hannigan, and Linda Hauser, in addition to a plethora of supplementary researchers and practitioners. This MOOC aims to synthesise and present complex behaviourist paradigms in a digestible and actionable manner to support staff and leaders by distilling the works of these theorists into relatable content that can be actioned within the educational context. As a unit of work, this MOOC aims to clarify and make amenable to educators three main ideas imperative to effective contemporary behaviour change:

1. The Fogg Behaviour Model – a universal model of behaviour change which underpins this entire MOOC and many contemporary behaviour interventions. The Fogg model examines how any behaviour is a combination of motivation, ability and prompt, and how the adjustment of these variables (through interventions) causes an increase or decrease in the likelihood of the desired behaviour occurring.

2. The Collaborative and Proactive Solutions (CPS) model; – the ‘what’ of behaviour change that underpins this MOOC; it is the process through which we can affect behaviour. CPS posits that students – and people in general – are intrinsically motivated and that it is often a deficit in ability or prompt that prevents students from engaging in the desired behaviour. A student is then likely to reactively engage in a maladaptive behaviour as it is more accessible, more energy efficient or less mentally complex. This method focuses on increasing students’ ability to engage in desired behaviours through discussion and mutual adaptation of expectations.

3. Positive Behaviour Interventions and Supports (PBIS) – can be a vague term, often used interchangeably with other aspects of the PBIS or the Multi-Tier Systems of Support (MTSS) method. In this MOOC, I discuss the PBIS cycle of behaviour change and the six steps to effective behaviour change as models of ‘how’ to change behaviour. These models set out the steps required to effect change in individuals and cohorts based on explicit expected behaviours. These models also explain how to implement the CPS model or any other model for change assigned by your institution.

This outline of the theoretical underpinnings of this MOOC is by no means exhaustive, nor is the content of the MOOC limited only to the topics above. I encourage you to explore other theorists and models and delve deeper into the ones presented here for a more comprehensive understanding of behaviour change models.

As with best practice teaching in the classroom, it is also pertinent to have learning outcomes and success criteria for the professional development we undertake. For this MOOC, the learning outcomes are as follows:

1. To consider the ethical and moral implications of behaviour change;

2. To be exposed to new models of behaviour change;

3. To consider the application of behaviour change models in the participant’s context;

4. To apply behaviour change models to teacher practice.

While I would like to reiterate that there is no assessment for this MOOC, it is self-paced, and there is no requirement to engage with the feedback process, there are indicators of success that will inform both the impact of the MOOC and further development.

What success looks like for this MOOC:

1. Participants will consider the ethical and moral implications of behaviour change in their practice

2. Participants will be able to explain the MAP model of behaviour change and how it can be manipulated to increase or decrease instances of behaviours

3. Participants will engage with the CPS process, completing an Assessment of Lagging Skills and Unsolved Problems (ALSUP)

4. Participants will be able to apply the fundamental process of the PBIS to plan for explicit behaviour change

5. Participants will engage in authentic feedback

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This MOOC will first be available to specific sites and directorates within South Australia for feedback and review. Participants will be expected to provide feedback on the mode, content, and function of this product for the purpose of altering the MOOC to suit the needs of the target audience better. Additionally, this MOOC will be made available to Student Support Services for a similar feedback and review process.

Feedback will be deidentified and collected via Google Forms. Data collected will be held for no longer than eight weeks.

Participants will be asked to review the following:

1. Text – readability, comprehension, accuracy, and relevance

2. Video – clarity and usefulness

3. Content – relevance and potential in practice

4. Feedback – process and relevance

Similarly, after the initial induction phase, participants will be asked to provide this feedback for future alterations based on the needs of a larger and more diverse cohort.

After the initial testing and review phase, during which alterations will be made in direct response to the collected feedback, this product will be made available more widely to educators via an online portal. Feedback will then be collected not on the product but on the professional development platform itself.

Participants in the finalised product will be asked to reflect on the MOOC and its practical impact on delivering behaviour content.

Feedback will be collected at the end of each module and on completion of the MOOC, collecting data on:

1. Prior and post understanding

2. Prior and post ability

3. Prior and post tools

4. MOOC engagement

5. Perceived effectiveness of the MOOC in comparison to alternatives

6. Prior and post emotional state

This data will be collected and assessed to determine whether the MOOC can be considered an effective tool for implementing behaviour theory for educators.