Learning to Behave

Curriculum and Whole School Management Approaches to Discipline

Eileen Baglin Jones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317856368
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Offering up-to-date research on school discipline and bullying, this study emphasizes the management of school discipline through school policies and the responsibility of problems by all members of staff. It gives examples of curriculum initiatives that address pupils with discipline problems.

Part One: Support and Management of Pupil Behaviour

Chapter 1
Ways of Improving Discipline in Secondary Schools and Classrooms

Pamela Munn

Introduction

Discipline in schools has long been a concern to teachers, parents, politicians and education authorities. Over a hundred years ago, when government grants to schools were based on a payments by results system, part of the payment was earmarked for classroom organisation and discipline. Teachers got 1/6d per child if classroom organization and discipline were excellent; 1/- if they were good; and the possibility of nothing at all if they were less than good. At the present time teachers are no longer offered extrinsic rewards for good discipline but concern about it is still very much in evidence. There have been two major committees of enquiry: the Pack Committee (1977) reported on truancy and discipline in Scottish schools and the more recent Elton Committee (1989) investigated the nature and extent of discipline problems facing teachers in England and Wales. Furthermore, there are many books offering advice to teachers about classroom discipline, suggesting that new teachers shouldn't 'smile until Christmas', and identifying a range of approaches which experienced teachers have found effective. The continuing popularity of these text suggest beginning teachers, at any rate, are in search of recipes which will ensure effective discipline in their classrooms. As every experienced teacher knows, such recipes do not exist. Instead, each school and teacher adopt a range of strategies which seem appropriate to their own particular circumstances and which are more or less effective. Schools operate in particular contexts with their own histories and what works in one school or classroom will not necessarily work in another. Indeed, what works with one teacher may not work with another, teaching the same class.

There is broad agreement among writers on discipline that what counts as effective discipline is heavily dependent on the context in which a teacher is operating. The age and stage of the pupils, the time of day, the time of year, the content of the lesson and many other factors can all influence what counts as effective discipline. For example, what counts as effective discipline for a teacher working with a group of first year pupils would be rather different from the discipline standard expected of sixth years. Similarly, what counts as effective discipline first thing on a Monday morning, might be different from last thing on a Friday afternoon. So, the same teacher can have different standards of discipline; teachers in the same school can have different standards; the teachers in different schools can have different standards. Schools differ too, in the kinds of rules they highlight and in the ways they encourage good discipline. Recent research on school effectiveness has suggested that schools are social institutions whose nature and climate have important influences on the behaviour, attitudes and attainments of pupils.

Where does this leave us in our search for effective discipline? First of all it highlights the futility of the quest for a universal answer to discipline problems. Secondly, however, an understanding of how schools operate their discipline policy and why they do so in particular ways can sensitize us to important influences on their practice. Being alert to these influences is the key starting point for schools wanting to improve their discipline. Only by understanding why their current practice is the way it is, can schools begin to plan real and lasting improvements.

This chapter is intended to help schools review their own policy and practice by describing what a small number of secondary schools in a research study did. In describing these schools' practice – practice seen as effective by the teachers and pupils in them – it is not the intention that others should mimic their behaviour. We know that what works in one school will not necessarily work in another. Rather, by pin-pointing reasons for their practice, the chapter offers starting points for schools to examine what they necessarily have to take for granted in the hurly-burly of school life.

The Research

The research took place in four comprehensive schools in different parts of Scotland. It involved interviewing teachers about school discipline policy and practice, asking pupils to write about discipline, analysing school documents and collecting field notes. The study of whole school discipline was complemented by a study of classroom discipline. This involved the intensive study of 16 teachers, getting them to describe what they did to get the class to work well. While the focus of the classroom work was wide, the whole school aspects were structured by asking about the following:

• school rules, sanctions and rewards
• whether common standards were applied by staff
• the role of pastoral care.

The intensive work in four schools enabled us to explore what their discipline policy and practice were and to understand the influences on that practice. We report these influences as starting points for debate and discussion in schools interested in reviewing their discipline. They are not necessarily transferable and the schools are not representative of all schools in the United Kingdom. So what were the key influences on school policy and practice?

Key Influences on Whole School Discipline Policy

The research revealed five key influences on school discipline:

• the school's view of its pupils;
• what teachers saw as the main purposes of teaching,
• the role of senior management; and
• the extent to which subject departments were free to set their own discipline standards.

These influences emerged from interviews with teachers, analysis of school documents and observation of classrooms and of school life. These are areas which schools need to address if they want to improve discipline. Their influence on the research schools is described only to illustrate and to provoke discussion and debate. The small number of schools involved in the research means that they cannot be seen as representative or typical. Their practice may strike chords with your own experience or alternatively seem strange. Whatever the effect, the intention is to encourage a fresh look at your school, approaching it as a stranger, taking little for granted and using the experience of the schools reported here as a beginning of an investigation into what your school's discipline policy and practice are and why they are that way.

The school's view of its pupils

The idea that schools view their pupils in distinctively different ways may seem rather contentious. After all, schools in Britain have the same broad general aims for pupils. In the case of secondary schools these can be summed up as promoting academic achievement, preparing pupils for working life, educating the young for rational autonomy and social interdependence (Hargreaves, 1989). How can it be then, that schools view their pupils in particular and distinctive ways? The answer to this question lies in the subtle degrees of emphasis given to certain aims rather than to others. One school, for instance, saw its pupils predominantly as scholars, there to make progress through the academic curriculum and achieve success in public examinations. The pupils were there to learn and the teachers were there to teach and that was all there was to it. Let a teacher from Oldtown Grammar convey this view:

I feel the children know what to expect . . . we know from the past, they're motivated and ready to learn, they've been conditioned to learn.

Some other schools saw their pupils as lacking in social skills, believed they could do something about these skills, and saw their pupils predominantly as members of the school family. The social and emotional growth of pupils was stressed as much as their scholastic achievement. This view was neatly summed up by a teacher from St James, a Roman Catholic school, situated in an area of multiple deprivation:

The children on the whole are nice kids. They find school a bit of a haven where the rigours of home life can be left behind. They treat staff almost as members of an extended family.

The school view could be gleaned not only from teachers talking about their pupils but from their brochures and discipline policy documents. Oldtown's brochure, for instance, stressed the prizes and trophies for scholastic and sporting achievement; listed the full academic qualifications of its staff and gave considerable space to such matters as the formal curriculum, methods of assessment, and the importance of homework to 'foster the habit of study'. Whereas another school's brochure stressed the extended family nature of the enterprise, as follows:

The young people of the area are the responsibility of school, parents and community. School interest does not cease at 4.00 pm; the community interest should not cease at 9.00 am . . . It is only by working together, by appreciating each other's work and problems that we can meet the aims of the school and make ours a happy, efficient community.

So how did a school's view of its pupils influence discipline? Obvious features of school discipline are school rules, sanctions and rewards. In Oldtown, where the emphasis was on the pupil as scholar, there were a few rules; about dress – pupils were expected to be neat and tidy in appearance – courtesy and general behaviour. The school took it for granted that pupils knew how to behave and did not need rules to be spelt out to them. They copied out the rules in their books and were not encouraged to debate or discuss them. As one teacher remarked:

Yes, the [pupils] do [respect the rules]. They're never encouraged not to. There's not an atmosphere of questioning the rules.

In contrast, St James' staff believed they could not take acceptable behaviour for granted. The school rules were conveyed through the school's social education programme. These were more specific than Oldtown's and, crucially, time was taken to explain the rationale for rules in general and for specific rules. The staff believed that pupils would readily stick to the rules once they understood why they were necessary.

Schools have broadly similar sanctions available to them which can be brought into play when rules are broken. These range from verbal rebukes and perhaps isolation within the classroom for minor offences to punishment exercises or detention for more serious offences and ultimately to suspension or exclusion from school. All our research schools operated a line management system whereby offending pupils could be referred to successively more senior staff and ultimately to the headteacher. How, then, did the school's view of its pupils affect the sanctions used?

In Oldtown pupil misbehaviour was not expected. When it did happen the main concern was that it should not distort the work ethos of the school. Exclusion from class involved pupils doing specified work in the administration block out of sight of other pupils and staff. Punishment was private and solitary and very much work oriented. In St James, a miscreant usually found him/herself engaged in some socially useful activity, such as picking up litter round the school. The supervisory teacher saw this as an opportunity to get to know the pupil and, hopefully, come to understand the reason for bad behaviour. Furthermore, the behaviour card was used differently, according to their view of the pupils. This card is carried by pupils who have misbehaved and each teacher signs the card and gives a mark and/or comment about behaviour. In St James it was used sparingly, involved contacting parents and was seen as a way of supporting pupils who were trying to reform. In Oldtown, each subject department could issue a card and it was seen as a way of establishing good work habits.

Oldtown's emphasis on its pupils as scholars meant that behaviour which challenged the work ethic was punished by reinforcing the importance of the ethic. In St James, bad behaviour was punished not so much be reinforcing the work ethic but by reinforcing the notion of the school as a community where reasons for bad behaviour were explored and support offered to do better.

It is well documented that teachers are not much given to praising and rewarding pupils. There were few rewards in evidence specifically for good behaviour and those that were, reflected the school's view of its pupils. St James had a merit league for its younger pupils. Each class was awarded points for good work and good behaviour and the class with the highest score was given a treat, such as a school trip, or a party. The reward focused on the behaviour of the class and so was congruent with the community emphasis in the school. This contrasted with prize-giving at Oldtown where the reward was for individual endeavour in academics or sport.

These brief examples of the impact of a school's view of its pupils are designed to provoke discussion. Staff and pupils in each school saw discipline as working effectively. Of course, as in all human affairs, there were benefits and costs to the particular approaches used and it is not the intention to portray one school's policy as preferable to another. Rather, the intention is to raise awareness of how any school views its pupils and the impact of such views on its rules, sanctions and rewards systems. There are many more views of pupils than the two described here.

What view of pupils does your school hold? The following activities can help you find out:

• Read the school brochure as if you were a stranger. What kinds of expectations of pupils does it convey? Are these as you intend? If not, what changes are needed?
• Look at the school rules. Are the published rules seen as really the important ones? What kind of expectations do they convey – good behaviour or bad behaviour?
• What messages are conveyed to staff, pupils and parents by the way sanctions are used by senior staff?
• Does the school have any rewards for good behaviour or is the emphasis on bad behaviour being punished?
• Find out what pupils think. Ask a group to write about school rules, rewards and punishments.
• What do you see as the benefits and costs of Oldtown and St James' views of their pupils? How do these compare with your own school's situation?

Teachers' views of the purposes of teaching

Just as schools share the same broad aims for their pupils, so teachers tend to share the same broad view of the purposes of teaching. These can be summed up as pupils learning what it is intended they should learn, and developing each pupil to his or her potential. However, teaching does not take place in a vacuum. Many different kinds of influence are brought to bear on what is taught and how it is taught and a key influence, unsurprisingly, is what teachers know about their pupils. This affects the kinds of goals which teachers see as realistic and achievable for their pupils, which in turn affects what counts as good discipline in classrooms. For example, a teacher who knows that her upper sixth class of A-level students is well motivated and able would have distinctive goals for the class concerned not only with the standard of its work but with the way the class would behave during lessons. Of course, the knowledge which teachers have about their pupils is not necessarily accurate or complete but, as we shall see when we look at classroom discipline below, it is a profound influence on teachers' actions. For the moment, we wish to suggest that the school's view of its pupils affects the broad goals which teachers see as realistic for the pupils and so sets the general framework for classroom discipline.

At Oldtown Grammar, where pupils were viewed predominantly as scholars, teachers talked about work-related goals for their pupils and the framework for classroom discipline was that pupils should be getting on with their academic work. One Oldtown teacher explained that 'Pupils are here to learn . . . that's the long and short of it really. . . . Behaviour which is irrelevant to the working pattern just should not happen'. At another school, Braidburn, where the pupil was viewed as a member of the school family, teachers talked about the need to motivate pupils to learn. The local community was...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Dedication
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• Part One: Support and Management of Pupil Behaviour
• Part Two: The Bullying Aspect of Pupil Behaviour
• Part Three: Learning Through Curriculum Initiatives
• Recommended Reading
• Index