Reframing

Reframing involves using all the facts in a situation to select out a particular set of facts to provide a different overall meaning than some initial or conventional meaning given to the situation. For example, in one first-grade classroom, a boy suddenly jumped up from a class meeting and started to dance. The conventional meaning would be that the boy was being disruptive or was trying to gain attention in inappropriate ways, or some other negative meaning. In this particular situation, the teacher, Marion Reynolds, chose to frame the boy’s behavior differently as she turned to his classmates and in a matter-of-fact voice said, “James likes to dance.”

Reframing is, then, a method to change meanings. It is one of the most powerful methods for managing seeming intractable problems—those problems that never seem to go away no matter what. It is also useful for preventing problems and for making it possible for students and teachers to function at their best. For all these reasons, reframing may be one of the most important methods available to educators for preventing and managing what at first appear to be problem behaviors and what at first appear to be challenging, troubling students.

Meanings can change from positive to negative, but the main function of reframing is to change from negative ways of evaluating students’ behavior to positive ways—because finding positive meaning in a student’s behavior can lead to all kinds of good results, including more positive teacher–student relationships, greater motivation to cooperate and achieve, and greater understanding and respect among students. The dancing boy in the example listened to his teacher and then sat down to rejoin the discussion. As a result, his classmates gained a positive perspective on the boy that they would not have had had he been reprimanded. Based on his past behavior, had he been reprimanded, he would likely have continued to dance and misbehave, and his classmates would likely have continued to see him as the class clown or worse.

Positive reframing can also serve as a platform on which to teach alternative behaviors. Consider the following example reported by teacher Kristin Willand about her student Dennis. Instances of reframing are in boldface: