Teachers to be helped in taking on the troublemakers

THE Victorian government will fund further training for public school teachers to help them cope with disruptive students.

THE Victorian government will fund further training for public school teachers to help them cope with disruptive student behaviour, following demands for more support from schools dealing with extra challenges in the classroom.

The move comes as the first part of a $2 million plan by the Baillieu government to help teachers manage unruly behaviour and bullying, amid calls for a fresh look at the current quality of teacher training.

The government will fund 50 teachers to take a one-year University of Melbourne course focusing on difficult behaviour and strategies to deal with it.

Minister for the Teaching Profession Peter Hall said they would then become "challenging behaviour champions", working with colleagues and other schools to improve teachers' abilities.

"Effectively managing difficult students and creating safe and positive schools means teachers can spend more time teaching, and less time disciplining, which is the best result for everyone."

The Australian has reported concerns about the lack of practical training provided to teachers during their education degree, particularly in managing classrooms and misbehaving students, as part of a series of reports on problems in the nation's schools.

University of Melbourne lecturer Shiralee Poed said the course had been in big demand from independent and state schools since launching last year.

"We've got teachers dealing with a more complex classroom than what existed 20 years ago," she said. "In some schools it's that low-frequency stuff of constantly disrupting teachers, getting out of their seats and moving around classrooms and not following directions, all the way through to children who might exhibit violent behaviour that either injures themselves or others or interrupts the learning process for others."

Ms Poed said the course would ask teachers to consider why students misbehave, encouraging them to discuss troubling issues with students and give scenarios of how to deal with bad behaviour.

Teachers would be asked to reconsider their own style of teaching and think about how students reacted to it.

South Geelong Primary School teacher Amelia Lloyd will start the course next month as one of the 50 teachers whose $3760 fees will be paid by the government. She said teaching placements had provided useful real experience, but she wanted new ways to help cope with defiant children.

"With the changing demands of children and the dynamics of the classroom, we're having lots of different behaviours and personalities coming out from children," she said. "You've got quite a diverse need of strategies because the behaviours are challenging."