{"id":342,"date":"2026-04-24T20:56:40","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T20:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.palomar.edu\/childguidance\/?post_type=chapter&p=342"},"modified":"2026-05-21T20:45:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T20:45:13","slug":"guidance-goals","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.palomar.edu\/childguidance\/chapter\/guidance-goals\/","title":{"raw":"Guidance Goals","rendered":"Guidance Goals"},"content":{"raw":"

Prevention and Facilitating Guidance Goals<\/strong><\/h2>\r\nFirst things first. The old saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure is certainly true here. Managing behavior is only necessary when behavior interferes with the needs of the group or the class or the child's own best interests. The best way to manage these kinds of behaviors is to create environments and experiences that don't elicit these kinds of behaviors in the first place.\r\n\r\nThis proactive approach aligns with what is often called positive behavior support<\/strong>, which emphasizes teaching, environment design, and relationship-building rather than reacting to misbehavior (Sugai & Horner, 2002). When teachers intentionally structure environments that meet children\u2019s developmental needs, many behavior problems simply never arise.\r\n

Agreements or Rules<\/h3>\r\nWe all live within sets of rules or agreements. We might even consider that we can have personal rules that we use just for ourselves to guide and organize our behavior. Most of the time, however, we think of rules as necessary within a community or a group. Think about how unsafe and confusing it would be if there were no rules for driving a car. Rules about which side of the road to drive on, who goes first at intersections, etc., are necessary for our safety and sanity.\r\n\r\n\"TeacherWe create these rules to serve our purposes as a group. There are often many similarities between rules for different groups that have to live or work together, but they can also be different for different groups. Children can navigate quite well between differences in rules at home, in school, and with their friends if the rules for each are consistent. In England and other British countries, the rule is to drive on the left side of the road. For those of us who travel there often, we get used to them and manage well as long as we know what those rules are.\r\n\r\nThe traditional way that rules were established in classrooms is illustrated on the right. What do you think those students are experiencing? Some may be somewhat intimidated, but I can guarantee that some of them are going to be thinking, \u201cI bet I can break all of these by Christmas time.\u201d\r\n\r\nNeedless to say, the imposition of these kinds of rules doesn\u2019t work at all. Research supports this observation: when rules are externally imposed without student involvement, children are more likely to comply only superficially and are less likely to internalize expectations (Bear, 2010).\r\n

Involve Everyone in Creating Classroom Agreements<\/h3>\r\nEverybody in a learning community is a member and has, or should have, a voice in deciding what is going to happen in that group. The use of the word \u201cagreements\u201d suggests this more strongly than using the word \u201crules.\u201d When children and students are involved in establishing these agreements, it makes life so much better for everybody. One, they are invited to look at themselves as respected members of a community, which is great on its own. But when they've actually been in a group that's created those rules, there's buy-in. There's no incentive to skip around this rule because it's their rule, not somebody else's.\r\n\r\nWhen I was doing all the national training work, there was one fifth-grade teacher who loved all the stuff that we did: active listening, mutual respect, and conflict resolution. And yet this whole idea of having the students decide what the rules were was just terrifying to him. He imagined all kinds of things, you know, \"No homework.\" \"We get to eat all day\", and on and on. But finally, one year, he was brave enough to actually try it. The next time I came to his school to visit, he was just ecstatic. He said, \" You know, we had this whole discussion, and they created rules. They came up with everything that I give them every year, plus this other one that was something I hadn't thought of, but that was really great.\u201d It\u2019s very important to involve everybody in making agreements.\r\n\r\nThis experience is strongly supported by research on democratic classrooms and student voice, which shows that when children participate in creating norms, they develop a greater sense of belonging, responsibility, and commitment to those norms (Nelsen, Lott, & Glenn, 2013). This \u201cbuy-in\u201d is not just emotional; it directly impacts behavior. Children are far more likely to follow agreements they helped create because those agreements reflect their own values and understanding.\r\n\r\nAdditionally, involving children in rule-making supports the development of autonomy, which is a key component of intrinsic motivation (Deci & Ryan, 2000). Rather than behaving appropriately to avoid punishment, children begin to act in ways that align with shared community expectations.\r\n

Positive, Clear, and as Few as Possible<\/h4>\r\nRules should be positive in the sense that they clarify what people should do rather than what they shouldn\u2019t do. Although we tend to think in terms of what not to do, as illustrated above, things should always be stated in terms of the desired behavior. Rather than \"Don't do this, don't do that.\" They should specify what people should do, what we want people to do.\r\n\r\nThis aligns with research on how young children process language and expectations. Children respond more effectively to clear, positively stated directions<\/strong> because they tell the child exactly what action to take, rather than requiring them to interpret what to avoid (Kostelnik, Soderman, Whiren, & Rupiper, 2015).\r\n\r\nTo be effective, rules need to be clearly understood by everyone. We often assume that everyone has the same understanding, but that is often not the case. Think about how many laws are created nationally and locally that have to be \u201cinterpreted\u201d by a court to define exactly what they mean. With young children, who have a smaller amount of experience to help them refine meanings, this can be even more pronounced. Clear demonstration and practice can help everyone have the same understanding of expectations, such as \u201cwalking when we\u2019re in the hallway.\u201d Modeling, role-playing, and revisiting expectations help ensure that rules are not just stated but understood and internalized (Epstein, 2009).\r\n\r\nIt is best to have everyday guidelines for behavior as simple and few as possible. My experience in creating group agreements in literally hundreds of classrooms and groups is that there is a core of agreements that always come up. They are manifestations of remarkably universal democratic values about how groups should treat each other and get along together.\r\n\r\nToo many rules overwhelm children and reduce the likelihood of consistent implementation. Broad, principle-based expectations, like those described by Miller (2016), are more effective because they are flexible and transferable across situations.\r\n
\r\n\r\nMiller, in her book Positive Child Guidance <\/em>(2016), suggests that these can be summed up by three short-term objectives:\r\n