ABSTRACT
The cognitive-behavioral approaches are a purposeful attempt to preserve the demonstrated positive effects of behavioral therapy within a less doctrinaire context and to incorporate the cognitive activities of the student into the efforts to produce therapeutic change. Cognitive approaches aim to teach students effective ways of dealing with problems independently. Cognitivists believe that people are self-directive and not merely passive recipients of external incentives. They are active and intentional agents in shaping their experiences. Discipline has both a managerial function of creating order so that learning can occur and an educational function of promoting student self-discipline in the form of internalised compliance. The quality of the relationships between teachers and students and among peers affects the way students view the academic and behavioural tasks that they are being asked to complete and determines which resources are available to support their performances. Students’ internal attributions about the causes of their failures will typically refer either to inability or lack of effort.
