Reactive Aggressors

Introduction

This section describes how teachers can learn to solve conflicts between proactive aggressors and other students by seeing the instant, intermediate and long-term intervention strategies that can be used to counteract the effects of proactive-aggressive behaviour. In addition, teachers will learn ways to encourage students to help each other, engender an atmosphere of consideration toward others, and resolve violent incidents in schools.

 

Sze’s case

Student A fainted during recess, and student B hurried to find the teacher to report the incident. On the way, B bumped into Sze accidentally, causing the drink Sze was holding to fall to the ground. Sze was very angry; she chased B and threw a pencil case at her.

Characteristics of reactive aggressors
Cognition
Misinterpretation the external cues Hostile attributional bias Cognitive distortion and defensiveness Poor problem-solving skills
Emotion
Impulsive Feels angry and loses temper easily Feels depressed/anxious easily Poor emotional control
Behaviour
Tends to use aggression as a mean to solve social conflicts Displays aggressive behaviour with the intention of retaliation Displays defensive response under provocation
Social network
Excluded by peers Unpopular in peer groups Poor social skills Mistrusts others

 

Negative example

• This reactive aggressor became agitated easily and had difficulty expressing herself. However, the teacher did not have the patience to guide the student to a full understanding of the negative incident, and instead kept asking questions. This tactic did not help to calm the student, and led to her mistrusting the teacher.

 

Instant intervention

Because reactive aggressors’ impulsive behaviour may hurt themselves or other students, teachers should take the following actions.

• Lead students away from the scene.
• Use techniques to calm down students, such as breathing exercises, to quell their vigorous and impulsive emotions.
• Assist students to stay away from overstimulating environments and experiences.

 

Intermediate intervention

• Understand the reasons behind their agitated emotion and anger, the causes of their impulsive responses and their feelings.
• Assist the students to find out the sources of their impulsivity. Understand the purposes behind their behaviour.
• Let the students know that teachers care about them.
• Let the students take responsibility for aggressive behaviour, and let them know that it is not the only way to solve problems.
• Guide the students through the sequence of the incident, highlighting the many objective social cues that they missed.

 

Long-term intervention

• Let the students know that it is important to explore different possibilities and detect various social cues before taking actions. Teachers could help students to express themselves and find out the cues they missed prior to and during the incidents, by asking them to draw pictures.
• Give suitable punishments to students to assist them to accept responsibility for the incident, enhance their life experience, establish healthy interpersonal relationships with others and reduce their reactive aggression.
• Because reactive aggressors cannot immediately learn emotional management and multi-perspective thinking skills, teachers should continue encouraging reactive aggressors to reflect on the required changes to their behaviour, and positively reinforce these efforts.

 

Educating other students

• Help other students to comprehend the causes of the impulsivity of reactive aggressors, and reduce other students’ hostility toward reactive-aggressive students.
• Encourage students to help each other, and promote an anti-bullying culture in class.
• Arrange group discussions about anger management skills.