Secondary School Teaching and Educational Psychology

David Galloway, Anne Edwards

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317870258
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica generale

A companion volume to Primary School Teaching and Educational Psychology, this book concerns itself with the day-to-day business of teaching in a secondary school. Throughout the book four themes reoccur: that teachers can best understand the development of children by observing their learning and their relationships within school; that assessment and evaluation are integral to effective teaching; that effective teaching and learning depend on both teacher and child being able to monitor own progress and to find solutions to problems that occur; and finally that there must be explicit recognition of the common-ground between educational psychology and other disciplines such as sociology, philosophy and the history of education.

Chapter 1
Getting started: understanding children's needs

Introduction

It is difficult to talk for long about teaching, educational psychology or any other work with children and young people without thinking about their personal, social and educational needs. Indeed, professionals working with children and teenagers exist to meet their presumed needs. Parents, too, often agonise over what would be best for one or more of their children. Yet there is no more agreement about the nature of the needs of secondary school pupils than about the needs of any other age-group. Different people emphasise the importance of different needs, depending not on any absolute psychological or educational truths but on their own background and priorities.¹ Thus one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of schools (HMI) might talk about the need for a 'broad and balanced' curriculum, a child psychiatrist about the need for teachers to provide their more vulnerable pupils with a warm, supportive relationship, and a politician, with an eye on the law and order vote, about the need for discipline.

This book is about the applications of psychology, and in particular educational psychology in secondary schools. It assumes that ideas developed by educational psychologists have some value in helping teachers to understand their pupils' needs. Yet teachers could reasonably claim to be bewildered by the range of needs they are expected to meet. They could also claim that the concept of need is itself hopelessly confused. For example, when adults say that teenagers need to belong to a youth club or similar group, do they mean that parents ought to make a special effort to encourage this, that teenagers have a right to group membership, that it is a universal psychological requirement, or all three? In this chapter we examine what we mean when talking about the needs of secondary school pupils. We shall then look at two ways of understanding adolescents' needs, and finally consider their usefulness for teachers in secondary schools.

What do we mean when talking about children's needs?

Following the 1988 Education Reform Act, the National Curriculum was introduced into schools in Britain. This summarises what the Department of Education and Science (DES) thinks pupils need to, or should, learn in the years of compulsory education. The National Curriculum represents one view of children's needs. Another 'official' view is represented in the Teachers Conditions of Service document (DES,1988a) which requires teachers to have regard to pupils' 'general progress and well-being'. Clearly, this implies that teachers' responsibilities for their pupils extend beyond the curriculum to include their welfare or pastoral needs. Professional opposition to the National Curriculum was both strong and united (Haviland, 1988). Teachers did not think a National Curriculum would help them meet their pupils' educational needs more effectively.²

This is all pretty remote, though, from the concerns of parents as their children start at secondary school. By definition, this is a time of transition. It would be odd if some parents did not remember their secondary schooling with little satisfaction or pleasure. Inevitably, such memories affect the family's preparations for the start of the new term. Similarly, some parents see transition to secondary school as the start of a new and potentially difficult stage in their relationship with their child. Yet initially most parents probably define their children's needs in terms such as (a) 'settling in' well; (b) making friends; (c) finding interesting things in the school's programme of extracurricular activities; (d) making 'good' progress in their work. The last of these is by no means the least. Performance in the public examinations in year 11, the final year of compulsory schooling, will open the door to a wide range of jobs, or close it. Being placed in the top stream or band, or in a high set will affect their child's chances.³ For many children, starting a new school is a time of increasing academic pressure.

Yet even this is pretty remote from the immediate needs both of children and of their teachers as they start secondary school. What pupils expect will be influenced by what they have heard from friends, neighbours or older brothers and sisters. At least for boys, part of the national folklore of primary-secondary transition seems to be that awful things will happen at some stage in the first two terms. Having your head put down the toilet is perhaps the most common piece of folklore. The evidence that these initiation rites still persist is thankfully scarce - there are rumours that even public schools are becoming humane - though in the 1980s there were schools in which staff regarded the 'pinning' of first-year boys as a persistent but insoluble problem. This ritual involved older boys holding down newcomers, when no teachers were around, and sticking pins into their buttocks.

Not surprisingly, transfer to secondary school is a time of anxiety. How much anxiety is felt depends partly on the child, partly on their parents' attitudes and partly on preparation for transfer in the last term or two at primary school. There is evidence from the ORACLE study that primary children feel cynical about 'set piece' visits from secondary school staff. They are equally cynical about formal tours of the secondary school. On the other hand, the opportunity to spend a day attending lessons in the secondary school before they actually transfer does seem to be reassuring (Galton and Willcocks, 1983). Indeed, in the first few days, reassurance and finding their way around may be children's most pressing needs.

Above all, they will consciously be adapting to a new and complex set of expectations: the expectations of teachers, of other children in their year group and of older pupils. Sometimes these expectations conflict. Teachers expect you to wear the school uniform in the officially approved way, but second-year pupils laugh at you for the tidy way you tie your tie. To avoid being laughed at, you learn not to do up the top button of your shirt and to pull the tie into a tightly tangled knot, preferably hanging at half mast.

Teachers, too, are adapting to a new and complex set of expectations. The new pupils are likely to come from several different primary schools. In many schools there will be a mixed ability group, ranging from the exceptionally able to children with a range of learning difficulties. The teacher has to find out what each child can do, who can be relied on to take messages, who 'needs watching' and so on. They identify children's needs informally, through discussion with each other and by developing their own categorisation systems. These are no different in nature from the informal categorisations used in any social relationships. In the same way, people classify their neighbours by their hobby, by occupation, by political inclination and by the behaviour of their children ('the ones with the rowdy teenagers') or by whether they are interesting to talk to.

Unfortunately, this informal categorising is often unreliable and can lead teachers to underestimate children's ability, particularly in their first year at secondary school. There is evidence that many children make little progress in their first year, often spending their time going over ground they covered in their primary school (Delamont and Galton, 1986). As newcomers in their new school they lack the confidence to protest and their acquiescence in, for them, undemanding tasks may be taken as evidence that they are working to an appropriate level.

Nor should we forget the systematic if informal assessments that take place in every classroom at the start of the year. From the outset, teachers are formulating and testing theories about the class as a whole and about individuals in the class. They may not do this consciously, but teaching cannot take place without assessment, and assessment takes place at several different levels (see Chapter 8). At the most basic level teachers are noting behaviour that helps or hinders the smooth running of the class, and identifying possible ways to encourage or discourage it. At the same time, children are formulating and testing theories about each of their teachers: will Mr Jones 'flip' if we carry on talking when he told us to be quiet in the same way that Miss Owen did? What happens if we only do one page of homework instead of the two pages we were told to do?

Quickly, and often without conscious effort, children adapt their behaviour in the the light of their experience. Following a class from lesson to lesson reveals how effectively they 'learn' to behave in different ways with different teachers (see Rabinowitz, 1981). More important, what they learn from their teachers' reactions starts to influence what they feel about the school. For some, school becomes a place where they feel valued, where they know that their efforts will be recognised and where they do interesting things in the classroom and in extra-curricular activities. For others school becomes a place where they are made to feel stupid, both by teachers and by other pupils. For teachers the position is more complex. Their sense of security will be affected by a variety of factors, varying from the nature of their contract, the quality of support from the head, and the amount of resources available. It is also affected by their own success in classroom organisation and management. This is partly a question of organising the available resources in a way that arouses the children's interest and partly of organising the children themselves so that they benefit from the learning experiences provided. Failure on either count will be evident in the children's behaviour, as they feel increasingly unsettled, restless and unsure of themselves. Teachers depend for their job satisfaction and their self-esteem on seeing children making progress within the classroom environment they have created. It follows that there is a close relationship between teachers' definition of their pupils' needs and the needs of teachers themselves.

Needs, wants and rights

As well as the informal assessment involved in any social interaction, teachers also use more formal procedures to define children's needs. While the introduction of the National Curriculum may replace some of the standardised reading and maths tests whose sales keep research foundations and publishers solvent, some LEAs are introducing mass testing in order to adjust the funding provided to each school in the light of the proportion of pupils who have special educational needs. Clearly, intelligence and educational attainment tests are assessment techniques as well as aids to identifying and understanding children's needs. The point is that logically we cannot talk about children's needs not being met without having first made an assessment that they lack something important to their development. Similarly, in claiming that we are meeting a child's needs we claim that we are providing the things we consider important to his or her development.

The important issue here is that the things a teacher considers most important to a child's or teenager's development may not coincide with what the young person's parent considers most important. Different people give priority to different needs. This is partly a matter of professional affiliation. Teachers can no longer work in isolation, if indeed this was ever the case. They are accountable to their head teacher, and through the head to the school's governors and to their employers, all of whom have more or less clear expectations as to what pupils should be achieving at school. Some of these expectations are now enshrined in a National Curriculum. Inevitably they affect how teachers define pupils' needs. Other professionals, such as social workers or doctors, have different responsibilities and are accountable to other bodies. Consequently they define children's needs in different terms. Thus, a social worker might emphasise the importance of a secure family life, while a social psychologist might be concerned foremost with the individual's developing awareness of being part of a social community.

In each case the assessment of what children need is based on what the person concerned 'wants' for the child. It also implies that the person thinks that children have a right to have their needs met. Hence in talking about pupils' needs we are making a value judgement about what we think should be provided for them. Unfortunately there are two complicating factors here:

1. There is no agreement within the teaching profession, nor between teachers, other professionals or the government, on what constitutes children's and young people's rights. In passing the 1988 Education Reform Act the government implicitly stated that parents have a right to know what their children will be taught. The introduction of the National Curriculum reflected the government's assessment that schools were providing an inadequate education for an unacceptably high percentage of pupils. In claiming that educational provision was inadequate, the government was making a value judgement. Virtually all teacher associations disputed this value judgement and consequently saw no need for a National Curriculum. Teachers, parents or government committees may claim a 'scientific' basis for their concerns about children's needs, as in the Warnock Committee's claim that 20 per cent of pupils may be expected to require some form of special educational provision at some stage in their school career (DES, 1978a;, see Chapter 3). Ultimately, though, these claims come down to a value judgement on the part of the individuals or groups concerned. This is no criticism. Teaching is not value free and never can be. Moreover, as public employees, teachers are accountable to parents, governors and employers, and consequently cannot have complete autonomy in defining their pupils' needs.
2. The second problem is more complex. Teaching is a social activity, and teachers are accountable for the behaviour and progress of the class as a whole. In saying that a boy needs to learn to sit down, or that a girl needs to learn not to shout out, teachers are likely to be making a statement as much about their own need for control as about the child's need to learn an important social skill. This problem becomes even more acute in the case of children whose behaviour or educational progress gives cause for exceptional concern. The problem may lie in the resources available in the classroom, in the methods the teacher is using, or in the overall management and organisation of the classroom. The temptation, though, will be to define the problem in terms of the needs of an individual child or group of children. In other words needs are individualised: the pupil is said to have special needs as a way of avoiding recognition of the professional needs of the teacher. There are two implications. First, children's needs have to be seen in the context of the classroom and of the school. Secondly, if pupils are thought to have special needs, or even ordinary needs that are not adequately being met, this may have implications for the resources available to teachers and/or for their teaching methods.

Can we talk about 'psychological' needs?

We believe that educational psychology can help teachers to understand their own experience in school and also their pupils', even though changes in teacher training have unseated it from the central position it once held (DES, 1989a).⁴ This is quite different, however, from claiming that it is possible to identify psychological needs as opposed to personal, social or educational ones. A conventional definition of psychology is the study of behaviour. We cannot talk about personal, social or educational needs without implying that we think children or people in their environment should behave in certain ways. Even if we define psychology as the study of the mind, it is logically impossible to think of psychological needs that do not imply some form of behaviour. The behaviour may not be directly observable - for example, thinking or reflection - but it is still behaviour.

Psychologists live and work in a social world as well as observing it. Unfortunately, they sometimes make the mistake of trying to identify children's needs in isolation, away from the context in which they are living, working and playing. It does not follow, however, that needs identified in the course of an educational psychologist's one-to-one interview with a child can usefully be described as psychological needs. The reason is simply that any identified needs will have implications for the child's future behaviour and, almost certainly, for that of teachers or parents. It follows that the needs identified by psychologists, like those identified by teachers, imply an interaction between children and the people in their environment.

Two ways of thinking about children's needs

A hierarchy of needs?

Maslow (1970) argued that people have a hierarchy of needs from the basic needs for food and drink to 'self-actualisation' or the sense...