The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Why are Students Behaving Badly?

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

Research by Brock University has found that disruptive behaviours in students has increased in Ontario classrooms since the return of in-person learning following the pandemic. The Agenda invites one of the researchers behind this study and a long-time Ontario educator to discuss what is causing rampant student incivility. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Exciting, isn't it? Visit tvo.org slash Giving Tuesday to make your donation today and discover your 2-Point TVO. Disruptive behavior in school is not a new phenomenon, but researchers at Brock University have found an increase in incivility since students returned to in-person learning following the pandemic. Joining us now to discuss why the kids aren't all right, we welcome Natalie Spatifora, postdoctoral fellow and adjunct professor in the Department of Child and Youth Studies at Brock University, and Lynn Frank, who's an educator and certified

life coach. And just before we get started here, in the interest of full disclosure, we always like to say TVO is an agency of the Ontario Ministry of Education. We've been part of the province's delivery of distance learning since it was created back in 1970. Today, TVO offers online secondary school courses through the Independent Learning Centre and has been asked by the province to develop online courses for use by secondary schools across the province. And we always put that out there in the interest of full disclosure before we start discussions like these.

Welcome. Good to have you two here. Thank you. Let's share some of the numbers. we start discussions like these. Welcome. Good to have you two here. Thank you. Happy to be here. Let's share some of the numbers. Natalie, this is your study, you and your team at Brock comparing survey results from the year 2019 and 2022 to examine whether disruptive behaviors have increased ever since students aged 9 to 14 returned to in-person learning post pandemic. And here's what they have discovered.

Let's go back to 2019 here. 6% of teachers reported daily incidents of incivility. 6%, not a big number. 32% of teachers rated incivility as moderately or very serious. 62% of teachers, quite a good number, rated incivility as slightly or not at all serious. But now let's go to the middle of the pandemic.

Now, 2022, 42% of teachers reported daily incidents of incivility. That's seven times higher than the first number. 68% of teachers rated incivility as moderately or very serious. That's twice as high as pre-pandemic. And only 17% of teachers rated incivility as moderately or very serious. That's twice as high as pre-pandemic. And only 17% of teachers rated incivility as slightly or not at all serious. In other words, two-thirds lower.

The numbers that should be going up are going down. The numbers that should be going down are going up. Natalie, what's going on here? Good question. So the nice thing about the teacher study piece of the two study paper that we put out was that we asked the teachers open-ended questions as well, where they got to kind of explain some of these numbers to us. And they overwhelmingly talked about themes of lower self-regulation, higher individualism,

and just really like not knowing how to be in school. So those years of online learning, they got to do a lot of things at home that you don't do in a regular classroom. They can get up and leave whenever they want. Nobody cared. They can talk out loud. They're on mute on Zoom. It doesn't matter the same way that it does when they went back to the classroom

in the 2021, 2022 school year. So that's what we heard from the teachers. Did you expect these findings? A little bit, yes. We were kind of, so coming back from the pandemic, the school shutdown piece of it anyways, we were interested, all this stuff is coming out on academics and social skills. And we've been studying custom and civility at the Volk lab at Brock University for a

really long time. So we were like, what about incivility specifically? So we kind of thought, you know, with a lack of practice, maybe we'd be higher. In the one study with the adolescents, we got to look at the quantitative, that it was significantly higher statistically, boring for everybody else, but the teachers, we got that nice qualitative piece being like, can you tell us why?

And so they really supplemented each other, and we think we got a nice little story there. Nice little story. It's not so nice, this little story. It makes sense. Does this jive with your experiences in the classroom? It really does. I'd like to say it is in the research

that it has gone up since the pandemic. But I want to just say we were leaning into that incivility piece pre-COVID. I've been an educator now for 23 years. And in the last 18 months have traveled across Ontario and worked with hundreds of educators specifically around wellness and incivility in the classroom comes into that as I'm sure the research shows.

It's important to know that if we're not getting, there's a parenting gap. There's three pieces and a parenting gap I just want to put out there because they really do lay the foundation for what a student is coming into the classroom with, the expectations. I mean, we all want a civil community. And so when students are not showing up with those fundamentals, like wait your turn, look at someone in the eye, raise your hand,

just this kindness. The basics. The basics. And if that's not coming into the classroom, then the teachers are starting from scratch and that just delays everything. Incivility is actually such a civil sounding word, but this is really not incivility

we're talking in some cases here, right? Lynn, this is acting like a jackass out of controlling class, fair to say? I love that you use that word. Not me. You know what? Natalie said it when she said lack of self-regulation. They are really, and it is due to not being socialized,

I think. Students are having a hard time with emotional regulation. And unfortunately, and I know you're doing a show on this tomorrow with budget cuts, but when educators don't have the supports they need in the classroom to deal with not only the learning gap, but mental and emotional needs of students, there's more room for that incivility. And without the self-regulation, rooms are being trashed. Educators are, and I'm talking about our DCEs our educational students they are in the designated educators early year

educators okay and they're with our kindergarten our junior kindergarten and kindergarten teachers and you know those primary grades I'm glad you're gonna look at that later it really is where a lot of the violence is happening this shows up in four and five and six-year-olds? It really does, regularly. Natalie, what prompted you to want to study this area in the first place? So we've been studying classroom instability for a long time.

So back, my former mentor, Zappito Morini, studied it. And so as a master's student, I was introduced to it. My whole doctoral dissertation with Dr. Tony Volk was focused on it. So like you said, it was in a pandemic, all of a sudden it came to our attention. We've been studying it for a while. This study came in light of the pandemic,

but that's kind of what we've been looking at. And I think what we're really interested in, more broadly than that, is that this really low-level antisocial behavior. So in my lab, Dr. Volk studies bullying, people study mental health, people study these higher-level antisocial behaviors, but then, and we talk a lot about those, but what about these low-level ones studies bullying, people study mental health, people study these higher level antisocial behaviors.

And we talk a lot about those, but what about these low level ones that kind of individually might not be that big a deal? Some of them put together, they often are. So really interested in what makes these low level behaviors different and obviously disrupt the learning environment. What else is happening?

What other behavior can it predict? So that's kind of broadly what we've been looking at. Lynn, how much of this is pandemic induced? How much of this is people have forgotten how to parent? How much of this is the kid is just a demon seed? You know what? There are three major factors. And I would say the parenting gap is one of them.

And I don't want to harp on that. It's a piece of the puzzle, part of the problem. There's also a breakdown in partnership within the educational ecosystem. So... Partnership between whom and whom? All right, here we go. There is a breakdown between teacher and administrator, administrator and board,

and then the ministry is the one who is delegating and unfortunately not communicating, in my opinion, effectively with what's happening in the room. It looks good on paper. It looks good on paper. And so a board's hands are almost tied. That's where their funding is coming from. And so the mandates and the initiatives from the ministry are given to the board.

And the board has to accept those. They often have a, a board will have a multi-year plan, and they will intertwine the ministry expectations with the board goals. That gets put down to the administrator, and then the administrator pushes that to the teacher. And it's just, it, it, it, the expectations are high, and the support is low.

And so, unfortunately, everyone is feeling exhausted and depleted and unable to help and work collectively. Natalie, can I get you to weigh in on that? How much is bored induced? How much is pandemic induced? Bad parenting? Bad kids? What do you think?

I think it's a few things. I think first, exactly what Lum was saying. We hear from teachers all the time, like in previous studies when we've surveyed teachers they say things like like we understand it's easy to say like we should reduce incivility as an academic but like there's practical limitations to this right any teacher will say well if I stopped the class every time there was like an incident or somebody talked while I was talking I would never get through a lesson we have quotes from

teachers telling us that right but then left unchecked all this low-level behavior they say it escalates and we know it's predictive of bullying behavior, we know it can be associated with having fewer friends, we know that from the adolescent literature, so it's like how do we intervene without, you know, focusing on, we need to focus on academics. There's a lot on teachers to do as well, so we do acknowledge that.

Yeah, it would be nice if teachers and administrators and boards could come together as a collective and in unison share with the ministry what's really needed. What's preventing that from happening? I think people are, so a teacher hesitates with the administrator, the administrator hesitates with the board, and everyone is a little bit worried about the parents. Except, you know who, Steve? Who?

The kids. The kids are worried about nobody. And that's part of the problem. So there is that parenting gap. There is the breakdown in partnership. And the third piece is budgeting. And those three combined have led us to where we are today. Well, here's a statement from Jill Dunlop, who you may know as the Minister of Education.

And we asked the ministry for a statement on what they think of all this, and here is what the minister had to say. Sheldon, you want to bring this up, please? And I will read along for those listening on podcast. The pandemic had a significant impact on students across Ontario and around the world. That is why we invested in historic funding year over year to get students back to basics on reading, writing,

and math while removing distractions in school. Since 2018, our government increased student mental health supports by over 595% and invested $47.5 million in support of school safety to fight the negative impacts of mobile devices, social media, and vaping. I'm happy to say, the minister says, that we've heard a tremendous amount of positive feedback from teachers, students, and parents on how they are seeing a return to uninterrupted learning ever since these tools and measures were put in place. And here's where we need a reality check now.

Okay, this is the minister's view. You two are on the front lines. Okay, Lynn, start us off here. Have you seen a return to uninterrupted learning since these new tools were put in place? I have recently worked, actually, with high school teachers, and the cell phone ban has

made a difference. Positively? Positively. Okay. Okay, so I give kudos to that effort. Having said that, even parents have communicated with the school administrator, can you keep the phone? And it goes back to that parenting gap.

They're asking the school to hold onto the phone because they're unable to hold that expectation at home. And so it becomes blurry on who is to maintain this initiative or not, because schools are not going to, you know, hoard student cell phones. But more importantly, what I want to say, and it's what I encourage all your viewers to go to, is buildbetterschools.ca.

And on that site, there is a tool where you could put in your child's school with a post-it code. And it will tell you how much funding this school year, 2024 to 2025, has been cut. So every child is- Can I just understand this? Yes.

Cut or rate of increase declining? Because there's a difference. Yes, okay, so the student this year, students this year on an individual basis are not receiving $1,561.91 compared to previous years in funding. That's per student. And at first you're like, well, 1500, okay,

it's not great, but it's not bad. But if you multiply that by the number of students, so the school I taught at last year, 400 students, that's over $600,000 less in that school budget. Those are our educational assistants, those are textbooks, which a decade ago wasn't a problem, but teachers are actually lacking physical resources, not only support from others.

And I encourage your viewers to go do that. And it doesn't matter if you have a child in the system or not, these are our future leaders. Say the website again. It is buildingbetterschools.ca. OK. Natalie, any question in your mind that cell phones in the classroom, vaping in schools,

contribute to incivility? I mean, cell phones for sure. That's the example we use over and over again. We all do that outside the classroom right now. If I pulled up my cell phone and started looking at it, you'd probably, what would you think, right? Like, that's common. I think that's in our broader society.

The one thing when it comes to a lot of these uncivil behaviors, and especially in adolescence, is we always try to think about with anti-social behavior is like why are they doing it? Like what and we've kind of tried to get at that with the incivility is so when we look at incivility specifically what differentiates it is that there's this ambiguous intent to cause harm often that's what differentiates from like other behaviors bigger higher level behaviors in the classroom. So if I pack up my books early and rush to the door, am I doing it because I want to hurt my teacher's feelings?

Probably not. Probably the adolescents doing it because they want to get the good soccer ball and meet their friend and whatever. So it's just this me, me, me. They kind of forget what it might be doing to the group. Same thing with the phone example. So going back to the phone, if I pulled out my phone right now, you'd be like, what is

she doing? But if I said, oh, there's a family emergency, something suddenly, this intent is different to you. So that's all. It makes it more difficult. But I think that is what implicates our broader society, because we do it all the time, right? We want civil things. But yeah, the cell phone piece, I think, is huge in the classroom and in our world.

Yeah, yeah. It's an addiction that I think adults and children. Let me circle back to something you were saying about violence earlier. And that is, you know, at some level, we all think we're experts in education because we all went to school at some point. Oh, yeah.

And the fact of the matter is, when we all went to school, well, I'm a little older than you two, but when I went to school, there was plenty of violence in the schools. We had fights at recess. And frankly, you two, but when I went to school, there was plenty of violence in the schools. We had fights at recess, and frankly, back then, teachers were allowed to whip students, right? There was corporal punishment in school.

So when you tell me today there is violence in schools, I say, no kidding, there has been forever. Is it different today? It's different today. How so? It's different today in that even though a conflict amongst peers is normal, right, they are figuring out their own relationships.

And so conflict is a part of that. Because students are lacking the ability to communicate and to self-regulate, especially in the primary grades, they get physical. And it is out of aggression not being able to communicate or to share. But what are we talking? Throwing punches? Kicking, biting, punching, throwing chairs, tossing tables, desks. And you know what, Steve, these are not isolated incidences. This is happening in classrooms daily.

Weapons? I am an elementary school teacher, so I haven't come across that. However, in working with high school students, a knife that has come up a couple times in some schools across the province. But other than that, we're not there yet. But Steve, if what happens in the States is a precursor, and I tend to believe sometimes, unfortunately, our education system is moving that way. Let us look at the warning signs so that we can be proactive, so that we could come together

as a collective. Someone says to me, well, I don't have a kid in the system anymore. I went there and it was fine. And I say to them, we need education to have a growing economy. We need an education because it grants us opportunity for innovation. And that makes us competitors in the global market.

So if you like money, if you like your health care system, if you really want to support public education for the better of us all, please get involved. It's really we need to come together as a collective. You're sitting in a studio named after former education minister and Premier Bill Davis, and he used to say, you get education right, everything else falls into place. I love that. You get a healthier society, you get a better employed society. Yeah more just society again

But anyway, you get all of that. Mm-hmm Talk to me about this. Have we given students in your view too many rights? It's a tough question, I mean I feel like sometimes Like you were talking about when you were a kid the pendulum was way over there And now we've swung it way over there And it wasn't okay back then and now you know I think everyone's trying for the most part I would hope like you know we talked about these teachers teachers are trying really hard. I've been very careful I was saying to you I've done a lot of this caught a lot of media traction done a lot of interviews I don't think it's necessarily any one person's fault. I think you know there's the gaps you speak of I think the teachers are trying

There's a lot on them. I think there's a lot of things at play here. The school shutdowns did not help, you know. Anecdotally, people will say, well it was increasing already, kind of what you what you were saying. Apropos of that, anecdotally, I mean I must say I hear a lot of anecdotal evidence where young students know that there's a lot that schools can't do to them nowadays, right, and therefore they think they can get away with a lot more than we ever could back in the day. Now that's anecdotal. You got longitudinal evidence that proves that that's the case? We haven't asked questions like that, but we do know from talking to the adolescents that they're very aware, right?

And again, we look at this low-level antisocial behavior, so not some of the higher-level stuff. We know it happens, that's not what we've looked at. But we've asked them. They'll answer questions and say, oh yeah, I talk when the teacher's talking, and I know I shouldn't. And when other students do it, it disrupts me. They're very aware, the adolescents especially.

It's not like they do it and they don't know it's disrupting the class. They say it disrupts them. They say it harms their learning. They know that. Then they'll say, oh yeah, I text during class. I talk when the teacher's talking. So it's just this interesting kind of thing.

But we know adolescents especially is different, that there are some benefits. You know, we've done studies where the people who engage in some levels of classroom insubility actually have the most number of friends. The people who engage in the most levels of classroom insubility have the least. But there is something like a sweet spot

of like moderate levels because maybe, you know, you're texting your friends to text you're the popular kid right kind of marrying that adolescent bullying literature that says like you know popular kids bully to get status so lots of interesting things at play. In which case Lynn how do you want to empower either teachers or parents or administrators or whoever's got a piece of the action here to be able to make some headway against this? First, we have to start talking. We have to be open about it.

Teachers are very comfortable answering an anonymous survey. Make sure you are. We're okay. We're okay in the staff room. But 77% of teachers are women. And women have been conditioned, socialized, to not cause trouble, to avoid conflict. And so part of that keeps us very quiet.

And when you're looking at 77% of the workforce being women, we huddle and keep it to ourselves. And so really the first, the number one, the step is we, this, thank you, creating the opportunity to talk about it openly. I said some things that I know for a fact, my colleagues would be like, can't believe she said that. It's okay, it's okay,

because if we don't stretch that boundary, then change is not gonna, and change is uncomfortable. So knowing that other people, academics, are looking into it, supporting what we're seeing in the class, that's another step forward. And to know that we are supported will encourage us to speak more.

I know the unions are doing what they can to try and get the message out to the public. I need the public, we need the public to get involved. And so empowering teachers, administrators, members of the school board is first to allow them space to speak, to let them know that what is going on is not their fault, it's systemic. And hopefully that'll create room for conversation.

Natalie, down to my last minute here. Is this a problem we actually can solve? I don't know if we're going to solve anything, but we're going to make better steps forward, right? And it's exactly what we said at the beginning, that teaching civility. So very basic, back to basics, fostering civility, because civil kids means civil youth, and it hopefully means civil adults that we're

interacting with every day. So really going back to basics. So parents, parents do your jobs. They gotta help. Parents gotta help, right? They gotta parent. Absolutely. And it takes effort, right?

We know that. Anyone says, you know, somebody said to me the other day, my supervisor actually that, oh, I got complimented on my kids' manners at the restaurant the other day. And I thought to myself, yeah, that took a lot of work.

Like, it's not, we acknowledge that. It's really easy to do. It takes time. It's harder to say please. It's harder to do all those things, but I think we all agree it's worth it. And once we have, if in the home, school is important, you know, value your education, then kids are walking in with respect,

because what's happening now is they don't really care. And in high schools, if they hand things in late, you know what? They have an opportunity to resubmit. If they fail, they have an opportunity to resubmit. If they're fighting, there's very little accountability. And so I like when you use the pendulum. We don't want to go to corporal punishment, but we have, the pendulum has swung too far.

Let's get it back to the middle. Kids are not being held accountable for their lack of effort in the classroom, both academic and behavioral. Mr. Director, can I get a two shot? Well, okay, you wanna do a three shot or a two shot? I'm easy, either way. There's a two shot. That's Lynn Frank, Certified Life Coach,

and Natalie Spadafora from the Department of Child and Youth Studies at Brock University, and we're grateful to both of you for your contributions here on TVO tonight. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you.