Deviating from the Data: A Response to Bleakley and Bleakley

Positive behaviour for learning (PBL) was introduced to the state education sector in Queensland in the early 2000s in an effort to move schools away from use of punitive disciplinary practices towards a positive and supportive approach to student behaviour. Although around half of state schools in Queensland have received training to implement PBL, as yet no studies into the outcomes of PBL implementation in that state have been conducted. In the October, 2019 edition of Interchange an article by Paul and Cindy-lou Bleakley claimed to demonstrate a link between the widespread adoption of PBL and increasing rates of suspensions in Queensland state schools. In our article, we refute this claim and respond to several errors and misconceptions in the paper by Bleakley and Bleakley. First, we counter the claim that PBL takes a punitive approach to student behaviour and point out the ways in which PBL has been misconstrued. Next, we discuss flaws in the methodology used to assert a causal relationship between increasing rates of suspension and the introduction of PBL. To conclude, we reject the assertion that PBL replaced restorative justice as the preferred model of behaviour support in Queensland and argue that a restorative justice approach is not incompatible with implementation of PBL