Long’s Conflict Cycle:
At the intersection of basic needs (Maslow)
and Effective Schools Research
Tier III PBIS professional development for Special Educators, Paraprofessionals,
and Related Service Providers
Dr. Chris James Anderson
Southwest Minnesota State University
School of Education
Introductions
• Are you or have you been a Special Educator, Paraprofessional,
and Related Service Provider?
• Did you feel as though you were effectively trained BEFORE
needing to handle chronic, intense problematic student
behaviors?
• Teachers: Do (did) you work with paraprofessionals and related
service providers?
• In your opinion, was there a need for further professional
development for paraprofessionals or related service
providers to handle chronic intense problematic student
behaviors?
What is a Paraprofessional?
Paraprofessionals are appropriately trained personnel who
may be used to assist in the provision of special education and
related services to children with disabilities (IDEA, 2004).
IDEA 2004 does not specifically define what paraprofessionals
do.
Paraprofessional Prerequisites
• NCLB (2001) outlined requirements that instructional
paraprofessionals must meet.
• Instructional paraprofessionals must possess specific skills and
knowledge in reading, writing, mathematics and instruction to be
considered qualified to assist in instruction.
• Minimum Prerequisites (NCLB)
• Complete at least two years of college
• Study at an institution of higher education
• Meet a rigorous standard of quality.
• That can be demonstrated through a formal state or local
academic assessment
Professional Development:
The Conflict Cycle and Escalating Student Behavior
Session Outcomes
• To learn the concepts of the conflict cycle (Long,
1996)
• Refect upon how to apply these concepts to all
students
• including those with chronic and intense
problematic behaviors
CONFLICT CYCLE (Nicholas J. Long, 1998)
STUDENT’S SELF-CONCEPT
IRRATIONAL BELIEFS
The Sequence of the Conflict Cycle
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Self-Concept as a Setting Event
A Stressful Event Occurs
The Event Activates Irrational Beliefs
Negative Thoughts Trigger Feelings
Negative Feelings Drive Inappropriate Behavior
Behavior Incite Staff
Staff Pick Up Student’s Negative Feelings and
Frequently Mirror Student Behavior
8. Staff Behavior Increases Student Stress and
Escalates Cycle
9. Student’s Self-Fulfilling Prophesy is Reinforced
1. Student's Self-Concept as a Setting Event
•
Self-concept develops from feedback
• Received from significant adults and peers in life
• regarding the kind of person he is
• Learns a specific way of thinking
• Makes certain self-assumptions
• Develops certain self-beliefs
• These can be positive or negative
• “I can’t do anything right” vs. “I’m good at things”
• “I have to be in control of everything to survive” vs.
“I can let things happen”
• “I’m unlucky” vs. “I’m lucky”
Student's Self-Concept
• Develops a personal set of beliefs about people
• What they are going to or how they will react toward him
• “Teachers care about me” vs. “Teachers don’t care.”
• “Teachers want to help me” vs. “Teachers want to punish me.”
• Beliefs of self and others merge
• By elementary age
• become a major motivational force in the child’s life
• Results in a characteristic way of perceiving, feeling, thinking, and behaving
• in all current and future situations
• Can form foundation of his self-concept or character
• Become a setting event for dealing with situations
Irrational Beliefs and Problem Behavior
• Theory based on cognitive behavior principles
• Problems result from faulty thinking
• about events rather than the events themselves.
• At the core of faulty thinking are
• Rigid and absolute beliefs
• musts, have to, and oughts
• Their derivatives
• awful thoughts
• Beliefs are considered “irrational”
• Anti-empirical, illogical, and self-defeating
Examples of Irrational Beliefs and Problem Behavior
• Irrational Beliefs or Cognitive Distortions
• “I must be good at everything”
• “Everybody ought to like me.”
• Not getting 100 on that math test is the worse thing in the world.”
• If they become a characteristic way of perceiving the world
• leads to mental health problems
• behavior disorders
Irrational Beliefs and Troubled Children
• Abused, neglected and rejected children
• Seek to explain why it has occurred
• Children who have experienced failure in school
• Seek to explain why that has occurred
• These searches don’t take place in reality
• but rather in their belief system
• Distinction between rational vs. irrational beliefs is vague
• because troubled children have been abused, rejected,
neglected at some point in their past
• because low achieving children have failed to achieve in
school at some point in their past
How are irrational beliefs formed?
• One answer is overgeneralization.
• My parents have rejected me: FACT
• I can’t count on them to take care of me: FACT
• Therefore I can’t count on adults in the future to either
accept me or take care of me: IRRATIONAL
Why do troubled children maintain their irrational beliefs?
• Critical to the lives of children relying on them
• Pathology is a form of adjustment
• brings order and stability
• Makes life manageable and predictable
• they know in advance what is going to happen
• Self-fulfilling prophecy
• Protects from feelings of helplessness
How do troubled children maintain their irrational beliefs?
• Project their IB on others
• engaging in chronic and absurd power struggles
• validate the student’s IB
• Results in a self-fulfilling prophecy
• Some teachers didn’t care me
• therefore no teacher will ever care
• now your behavior proves that you don’t care
2. A Stressful Event Occurs
• Stress defined:
• an incident threatening a student’s well being
• state of comfort and/or
• triggers a student’s irrational beliefs
• 10% of life brings actual stressful situations
• 90% is variable
• by the way stress is handled or perceived
• Stress is not usually from an event
• but rather what we think about the event
Four Types of Stress
1. Developmental:
• Results from life cycle issues
• separation, learning, achievement, belonging,
independence, physical development, etc.
2. Psychological:
• Results from conscious or inadvertent depreciation,
ridicule, or being made fun of, etc.
3. Reality:
• Results from things that shouldn’t but do go wrong
4. Physical:
• Results from deprivation of basic biological and physical
issues
• nutrition, sleep deprivation, over-stimulation, physical
injuries, etc.
3. The Event Activates Irrational Beliefs
• Stressor activates irrational belief system
• Example:
• Student is asked to make a correction
• IB that teachers always pick on me is activated
4. Negative Thoughts Trigger Feelings
• “We feel the way we think”
• Dave Burns
• Feelings are vital to life but…
• are not always an accurate assessment
• anger, shame, frustration get activated
• by negative thoughts
Three Ways Feelings are Managed
1. Act the feelings out
• A clear relationship between feelings and behavior
• If you have an itch you scratch it
• Angry – hit, scratch, yell
• Depressed – withdraw, detach
• Scared – run, hide, cry
Three Ways to Manage Feelings
2. Defend and deny the feeling
• Can’t acknowledge feelings are legitimate, reasonable
and part of life
• Some feelings make you feel vulnerable and weak
• Defense Mechanisms may reduce level of anxiety, BUT
• deny the real problem,
• use up energy and create a new problem
• hat had nothing to do with the original problem
Three Ways to Manage Feelings
3. Accepting the Feeling
• Healthy to feel things
• but not to act on them in certain ways
• Difference between having feelings and being had by
your feelings
• Latter flood you and control your behavior
• When behavior is dominated by emotions
• behavior and actions become irrational
5. Negative Feelings Drive Inappropriate Student Behavior
Behavior Can be Studied Three Ways
1. Automatic Reflex
2. Learned/Socialized Habit
3. Personal Choice
Four Categories
1. Difficulty with Staff
2. Difficulty with Peers
3. Difficulty with Learning
4. Difficulty with Rules
Problem Behavior
• What are we saying?
• The student responds
• to his or her feelings
• by acting out the behavior
• in maladaptive ways
6. Student Behavior Incites Staff and Activates Their Feelings
A Child in Stress
• creates in others his feelings
• if staff is not trained and do what comes naturally
• They will mirror that child’s behavior
• Independent of their usual personality
• functions like a producer of a play
• Casting staff into roles
• hostile adult, detached adult, etc
• understands every action has an equal and similar reaction
7. Staff Pick Up Student’s Negative Feelings and Frequently
Mirror Student Behavior
• Produces a Double Struggle Psychological State
• When in conflict with someone
• energy goes into controlling your own counter feelings
• While trying to de-escalate student’s behavior
• to be more rational and reasonable
• As staff’s impulses become stronger
• Focus on whether to give in
• end up mirroring the student’s behavior or
• are they going be able to control impulses
• De-escalate the student’s behavior
Reasons Why Adults Become Counter-aggressive
(Long, 1995)
1. As a reaction to being caught in the student’s conflict cycle.
2. As a reaction to the violation of our personal and
professional values and beliefs.
3. As a reaction to being in a bad mood.
4. As a reaction to not meeting professional expectations.
5. As a reaction to feelings of rejection and helplessness.
6. As a reaction to prejudging a problem student in a crisis.
7. As a reaction to exposing our unfinished psychological
business.
Programmed to Act Counter-aggressive?
• Under conflict most people mirror behavior
• If the child is angry, we get angry
• If the adolescent withdraws, we withdraw
• We become righteous, refusing to back down
• Results in power struggle
• logic and understanding no longer plays a part
• Staff doesn’t usually initiate the conflict
• they usually fuel it and keep it going
• then blame the student
• rather than owning their own part
How do you know that you are fueling or escalating the conflict?
The use of “You” statements
• “You better stop!”
• “Can’t you do anything right?”
• “You apologize immediately!”
• “Don’t you dare use that language!”
• You better start acting your age!”
8. Staff Behavior Increases Student Stress and Escalates Cycle
• If/when staff are not trained
• C A B becomes another escalating stressor
• begins the cycle all over again
• If/when unmediated
• subsequent cycles become more intense and
potentially dangerous
9. Student’s Self-Fulfilling Prophesy is Reinforced
• Adults responding in counter-aggressive, hostile, withdrawn
or rejecting ways
• Reinforces and strengthens the student’s self-fulfilling
prophesy( SFP)
• The stage is set for the next interaction
• For troubled students, the SFP validates the beliefs and
programming
• That adults will to behave in hostile ways
The Aggressive Student
• Self-messages reinforce IB:
• “If I don’t meet my needs, no one will.”
• “All adults are hostile and will reject and punish me.”
• Conditioned response/IB forces him to systematically fulfill
SFP
• Seeks to have staff overreact
• behave in hostile ways
• Therefore student doesn’t change
The Abused Student
• Self-messages reinforce IB:
• “I deserve to be abandoned and rejected.”
• “If the adults get to know me they will learn what a
terrible person I am then they will reject me.”
• SFP reinforces closeness means rejection
• The student withdraws from closeness
• The untrained adult mirrors withdrawal
• Therefore student doesn’t have to change
A Prescription for Success
• You’ll always counter feelings,
• but you can’t act on them
• or do what is comfortable
• The challenge is to turn conflict cycle into a coping cycle
Four Concepts and Skills
• Understand the dynamics of the conflict cycle
• Acknowledge the existence of your counter-aggressive
feelings
• Own them and say yes to their existence
• BUT no to counter-productive reactions
• Act like a thermostat rather than a thermometer
• Use your feelings to access what the student might be
feeling and decode y behavior
• Avoid the power struggle
• Eliminate You messages
• Use I messages to calm or de-escalate
• Focus on what the student needs not on your feelings
Reflect, share, respond…
Reflect upon this session's professional development:
• What would be the impact upon the classroom climate if the Special
Educator, Paraprofessional, and Related Service Provider contributed
to the Conflict Cycle (Long, 1996)?
• Identify and share an experience whereby a student's irrational
belief system was either understood or misunderstood by the Special
Educator, Paraprofessional, and Related Service Provider.
• As a result of the Special Educators, Paraprofessionals, and Related
Service Provider’s perception, describe whether this increased or
mitigated the student's progression through the Conflict Cycle.
Summary
• Special Educators, Paraprofessionals, and Related Service Providers
work directly with students, especially students with special needs.
• Special Educators, Paraprofessionals, and Related Service Providers
need to understand Special Education processes and laws
• Special Educators, Paraprofessionals, and Related Service Providers
must have a working knowledge of instructional, planning, and
collaborative strategies
• Special Educators, Paraprofessionals, and Related Service Providers
need specialized training including positive behavior interventions
and health procedures
References
Amos, B. (2008) EXPLORING COMMUNICATION BETWEEN PARAPROFESSIONAL AND TEACHER. Paper prepared
for The Department of Special Education and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas. Ann
Arbor, MI. Retrieved from: http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.caldwell.edu:2048/docview/89256628
Bendada, A. (2006) Paraprofessional Competencies and Professional Development Options. Paper prepared
for Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. Madison, WI. Retrieved from:
http://cal.dpi.wi.gov/files/cal/pdf/paraprofessional.pdf
Hipsky, S. (2007). The Paraprofessional Perspective. Online Submission
Martin, L. (2009) No Paraprofessional Left Behind (NPLB): The Changing Role of Paraprofessionals in an
Inclusion Classroom. Paper prepared for Northcentral University. Ann Arbor, MI. Retrieved from:
http://gradworks.umi.com/3351836.pdf
Paraeducators and IDEA 2004: Recognizing and Defining the Role of Paraeducators. Retrieved from
http://www.nea.org/home/29335.htm.
(2007, January) Q and A: Questions and Answers On Highly Qualified Teachers Serving Children with Disabilities.
Retrieved from http://idea.ed.gov/explore/view/p/%2Croot%2Cdynamic%2CQaCorner%2C2%2C