Series · Teachers Media
Bayley On Behaviour
A series with the behaviour consultant John Bayley, working with real classes and real teachers on the practical work of managing behaviour. Bayley's approach — combining warm relationships, firm limits, and detailed attention to what actually happens second by second in a lesson — remains one of the most watchable and useful CPD resources on classroom management.
About this series
John Bayley is a behaviour consultant whose work with the Teachers TV series (and later with the Behaviour4Learning materials) became one of the most-used behaviour CPD resources in UK schools. His approach isn't especially theoretical; its power sits in the granular attention to specific practice — how you greet pupils, where you stand, what your voice does under pressure, when you insist and when you let go.
What separates Bayley's work from more polemical behaviour writing is that he stays close to the teacher and the pupil throughout. There's no grand argument about "no-excuses" versus "restorative" cultures; there's a teacher struggling with a specific class, and a coach unpicking specific moves that might help. That practical, non-ideological stance is why the series has aged well.
The series pairs particularly well with structured department discussion. Each episode gives a shared reference point — "the moment she waited before responding", "the routine he taught in the corridor" — that colleagues can talk about specifically rather than in generalities.
Discussion prompts
- What behaviour "coaching" moment from your own career shaped how you now handle a class? What did the coach actually do?
- When you're under pressure in a classroom, what does your voice, your body, your face do — and is that what you'd choose if you could see it from outside?
- How could your department use one Bayley episode as a shared reference for the next term's teaching-and-learning work?
Try this in your school
- Watch one episode with a colleague and write down every specific move Bayley or the teacher makes. You'll find ten you could steal.
- For a week, be aware of your own voice under pressure. Lower it deliberately when you feel it rising. Notice what changes in the room.
- Ask a trusted colleague to observe one lesson and note specifically what you do at the moments when pupils challenge or ignore an instruction.