ABSTRACT

Understanding human behaviour in Darwinian evolutionary terms, such that its adaptation facilitated the survival and reproduction of its practitioners, has resulted in contemporary reworkings of these theories in sociobiology and in a more nuanced way in evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology, in particular, gives greater recognition to environmental influences on behaviour and to human flexibility. More generally, behaviour as a conceptual entity is commonly associated with behaviourism in psychology. Control of behaviour is commonly sought through various types of psycho-social manipulation, such as threats or promises, in an effort to steer individual or group behaviour in a socio-culturally desired direction. With education and the school placed at the forefront of this 'civilising' process, the stakes are very high. As with other concepts, behaviour is a site of contest. Traditional conceptualisations of disruptive behaviour, often drawing on social learning theory and disease models, depicted such behaviour as a result of exposure to environmental models.