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RETHINKING BEHAVIOUR: THE TWO MISSING PIECES
Implementation science, the psychology of mattering – and why behaviour is so hard to get right
A free 15-minute read for teachers and school leaders, by Tara Elie & James Mannion
"Why does behaviour feel so hard to shift?"
Few issues shape school life as powerfully as behaviour. It influences classroom culture, learning time, pupil safety, staff workload and morale, parental relationships, mental health and wellbeing, and the day-to-day experience of school life.
In recent years, many schools have tightened behaviour systems in response to these pressures. In some cases, this has brought visible order and calm. In others, progress has proved fragile, inconsistent, or hard to sustain.
This short guide explores why.
Rather than offering another behaviour set or set of scripts, it looks beneath the surface to examine two factors that are often overlooked – but which are central to whether behaviour change holds in practice.
What this guide is really about
At heart, this guide is about why good intentions so often fail to translate into consistent, routine practice – and what helps close that gap.
It brings together two powerful but rarely connected bodies of thinking:
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The psychology of mattering – how pupils and staff experience being noticed, valued and able to contribute meaningfully, and why this shapes behaviour, boundaries and repair
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Implementation and improvement science – how change becomes embedded in routine practice over time, rather than remaining a policy, a launch, or a leadership aspiration
Taken together, these lenses offer a different way of understanding behaviour – one that helps explain why some approaches look effective on paper but struggle under pressure, and why apparent calm can sometimes mask deeper fragility.
Who this guide is for
This guide is for:
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System leaders with responsibility for behaviour across schools or trusts who want more than quick fixes
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Headteachers and senior leaders responsible for designing or implementing behaviour systems​
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Middle leaders, pastoral leads and SEND / ALN colleagues involved in implementation
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Teachers and support staff looking for a more grounded, humane and workable way to improve behaviour in schools
The ideas are relevant across phases and contexts – including primary, secondary, special schools and alternative provision.
In this short guide, you’ll explore:
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Why behaviour improvement often stalls at the point of implementation
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What ‘mattering’ really means – and how it shapes boundaries, compliance and repair
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How behaviour systems can become technically strong but psychologically brittle
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Why consistency depends on routines, habits and shared understanding, not just clarity
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How implementation approaches such as slice teams, flexible consistency and pre-mortems support behaviour change that lasts
Want to go further?
If the ideas in this guide resonate, we offer a range of bespoke training and support options designed to help schools move from insight to a culture of care, consistency and belonging.
As a rough guide, we three levels of support, depending on your context and aims:
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REFRAME (1 day): Build clarity, alignment and a clear direction
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REBUILD (2 days): Translate ideas into consistent, everyday practice
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EMBED & SUSTAIN (3 days): Secure lasting change across the school
Each option is designed to move from insight to implementation, with increasing depth, structure and support over time, and includes a 3-year, all-staff license for the Making Change Stick implementation system.
See here to download a costed guide: bit.ly/reboot-behaviour.
And if you'd like to schedule a free 20-minute consultation call, you can do so here: calendly.com/rethinkingjames/chat-with-tara-james.
We’d love to hear from you!
About the authors
Tara Elie is an educator, psychologist, coach and senior lecturer in secondary education at the University of East London. Her research focuses on teacher wellbeing and the relational conditions that enable staff and students to thrive.
Over the last 12 years, Tara has trained many thousands of teachers in over 500 schools across the UK and internationally on behaviour, culture change and wellbeing. She has coached hundreds of senior leaders in schools and colleges to build relational cultures with significant, measurable impact.
Drawing on her research into 'Black Teachers’ Mattering', Tara helps leadership teams embed cultures of mattering, belonging and relational trust - strengthening staff experience, improving retention, and creating the conditions for whole-school transformation.
Dr James Mannion is a teacher trainer, author and government advisor who specialises in learner effectiveness, oracy, and implementation and improvement science.
James is the author of Fear is the Mind Killer (2020) and Making Change Stick: A Practical Guide to Implementing School Improvement (2025) and leads Rethinking Education, an organisation dedicated to helping schools embed evidence-informed practices in complex, real-world environments.
He works with schools, multi-academy trusts and government agencies in the UK and internationally, supporting leaders to design, implement and sustain meaningful, lasting improvements. James is an Associate at Oracy Cambridge, the Chair of the Education Policy Alliance, and the co-host of the Rethinking Education podcast, which has had over 600,000 downloads to date.
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