This paper focus on teachers’ beliefs about, and strategies towards students who display challenging behaviour in the classroom, how the beliefs and strategies changes over the course of a four-year professional development project, and finally how they impede or support inclusion. Students with challenging behaviour seem to be more vulnerable to exclusion and marginalisation, as teachers tend to hold more negative attitudes toward their inclusion than the inclusion of students with other types of needs (De Boer, Pijl & Minnaert, 2011; Wilmann & Seeliger, 2017). Student (mis)behaviour is also recognised as a major contribution to teacher stress (Harmsen et al., 2018; Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2017). This study is part of a larger study exploring professional development using Lesson Study. In Lesson Study, teachers collectively plan and conduct lessons, then observe and reflect on student learning. This can be described as a research process intended to produce teacher learning to improve future instruction (Stigler & Hiebert, 2016). Challenging behaviour turned out to be a recurring theme in the reflections of teachers participating in the study, sparking the idea for the focus in this paper.

Teacher beliefs about student behaviour and its causes influence how the teacher responds. In this paper, challenging behaviour is used to broadly indicate any kind of behaviour teachers experience as disturbing or impeding teaching and learning in the classroom. Beliefs regarding the causes of student behaviour can be sorted into two categories: individual and contextual understanding. In an individual understanding, student differences and difficulties are presumed to be caused by innate dispositions, while in a contextual understanding, difficulties are understood as caused by situational demands, such as the ways schools are organised and the approaches to teaching that are provided (Messiou & Ainscow, 2015; Skidmore, 1999).

Teacher beliefs are described as a system that acts as a filter for interpreting experiences, framing problems, and guiding practice (Levin, 2015), and strong connections are found between the beliefs teachers' have and their classroom practice (Borko & Putnam, 1996; Hutner & Markman, 2016; Pajares, 1992). With respect to inclusion, some beliefs can be considered more productive than others. Vedder-Weiss, Ehrenfeld, Ram-Menashe and Pollak (2018) use the concept problem framing and explain that frames are productive if they not only create opportunities for teachers to rethink their practices, but also position them as having the power, authority, and responsibility needed to cope with the challenge. Teachers' beliefs are considered relatively stable and difficult to change (Hutner & Markman, 2016; Kagan, 1992). Part of the reason for this is, according to Pajares (1992), that beliefs shape how we understand and interpret new experiences and therefore tend to be self-reinforcing. Beliefs seem to be influenced more by experiences and observations, and one path of developing teacher beliefs can be through systematic professional development.

Based on the assumption that teachers’ beliefs regarding student behaviour both filter experience and guide practice, this paper explores which beliefs about student behaviour emerged in conversations, how these beliefs changed during the four years of the project, and what consequences the changing beliefs had for the strategies teachers used for dealing with challenging behaviour. Findings are discussed in light of how teachers’ beliefs and strategies can impede or support inclusion.

Research questions are:

-What behaviour do the teachers describe as challenging?

-What beliefs about student behaviour are evident?

-What strategies for dealing with student disruptive behaviour do the teachers suggest?

The three questions are examined at the beginning and end of the project period, then compared.

The study is qualitative and longitudinal, following an elementary school in their use of Lesson Study over the course of four years. At the core of the method is the research lesson, where a teacher team collaborates to formulate goals for student learning and long-term development and plans a lesson in detail. The team then conducts the lesson with one team member teaching and the others observing to gather evidence of student learning and development. Afterwards, the team meets to reflect on and discuss the evidence gathered during the lesson. In the last stage of the Lesson Study cycle, all teams meet to share and discuss their learning, providing opportunities for collective learning and development of the school culture (Lewis, 2002). The participating school conducted nine such Lesson Study-cycles during the four years. The study’s data consists of audio recordings of meetings where teacher teams planned research lessons, four teams from the first two Lesson Study cycles and four from the last two. Qualitative content analysis (Mayring, 2014; Schreier, 2014) was performed on the data. From the raw data, sequences where teachers talked about students were first sorted out as units of analysis and then transcribed verbatim. The initial step in the analysis was to code all utterances concerning student behaviour according to what behaviour they concerned, and what beliefs they represented. Part of this process was to find what Mayring (2014) calls anchor samples: typical utterances that can illustrate the character of the category. Content analysis gives opportunity for quantification, and frequencies in the different categories were counted in a summative analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). The next step in the analysis was to conduct a similar process with utterances concerning ideas for strategies: they were marked, coded, anchor samples were identified, and quantification was applied. The transcriptions from the beginning and end of the project were first coded separately, following the same procedure, then compared. As a third step, the coding schemes then served as a starting point for further data exploration (Schreier, 2014). Inspired by concept coding (Saldana, 2016), the transcribed sections were coded again in a search for patterns. The intention was to conceptualise more abstract and general codes that could describe traits and development in the teachers’ beliefs about student behaviour, as well as their ideas for strategies.

Preliminary findings suggest that teachers generally described the same kinds of behaviours as challenging both early in the study, and at its conclusion: students disturbing, lacking motivation, perseverance, and ability to concentrate, and being anxious. Beliefs about students’ behavioural needs, however, seems to have changed; utterances at the projects beginning mainly referred to needs as innate and stable traits, while they in the final phase more often referred to contextual factors. The number of ideas for adaptations increased. They also changed character, from external control of student behaviours to a variety of adaptions aimed at making it easier for students to control themselves. These generally took the form of adjusting the regular lesson. The findings can be understood as confirming the close connection between beliefs and what teachers see as alternative actions: If behaviour “just happens” because of students’ innate traits, the reasonable response is to exert external control. If behaviour is a result of conditions in the classroom, then the teachers can change these conditions. By broadening beliefs regarding student behaviour, perceived possibilities for teachers’ actions also seems to be broadened. The findings regarding beliefs and strategies will be discussed as to how they impede or support inclusion, and suggestions will be made regarding what factors in Lesson Study that might have contributed to the changes.

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