ABSTRACT
The design and delivery of training, particularly in the in-service context, will need to attend to both the evidence on which Elton draws and to the experiences and frameworks which serving teachers bring to bear on the issue. The Elton Committee also recommended that 'group management skills' should be a priority area for training for serving teachers. Most teachers claim expertise in managing classroom behaviour and a great many people who are not teachers are not reticent in prescribing how it should be done. It is an issue on which almost anyone will offer an opinion and advice. Teachers have a whole range of explanations and prescriptions for troublesome behaviour in schools – as do many outside the profession. By introducing changes to their patterns of interaction with children, teachers often find that children's behaviour also changes.
