A rapid review of what is known about the effectiveness of strategies to address challenging and disruptive behaviours in students in a classroom setting

The COVID-19 pandemic, and measures put in place to try to control it, impacted the psychosocial wellbeing of children and adolescents. Teachers reported an increasing trend of challenging and disruptive behaviours among school children. This rapid review evaluates the effectiveness of interventions to address challenging and disruptive behaviours within schools and further education colleges. Early searches conducted in May 2022 identified no relevant studies during the pandemic. This rapid review therefore sought research publications in the five years before the pandemic and during the pandemic, i.e., from 2015 to 2022. Three primary outcomes were the focus of detailed consideration: sexual harassment, attendance/truancy, and school exclusion/suspension.14 studies were identified of school-based interventions: 10 randomised controlled trials and 4 non-randomised controlled trials. Based on the findings of recent controlled studies there is no strong evidence to suggest that multi-component school-wide interventions or training/support for students will lead to improvements in sexual harassment (in the longer term at least), attendance or exclusion/suspension outcomes in schools.Training and educational interventions to reduce sexual harassment may be effective in the short term in some settings, but it is unclear as to ‘what might work for whom’ in the short term, and whether benefits can persist in the longer term.There is moderate evidence to suggest that neither school-wide nor training/educational interventions affect school attendance, but 5/7 studies were conducted in primary schools. Evidence for older age groups is lacking.More evidence is needed in relation to school exclusion/suspensions, but limited evidence suggests that high fidelity to a school-wide approach may have positive effects on frequency and duration of school suspensions. Further analysis is needed.Confidence in the findings on attendance/truancy is moderate, whilst confidence in the findings on sexual harassment and school exclusions/suspensions is low.