Preventing Classroom Disruption (RLE Edu O)

Policy, Practice and Evaluation in Urban Schools

David Coulby, Tim Harper

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136452987
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

There has always been considerable debate about the best solutions to deal with disruptive behaviour in schools. On the one hand is the strategy of segregating disruptive pupils while on the other is a commitment to keeping such pupils in the ordinary school.

This book advocates the latter philosophy and examines the best ways of coping with the problem. These concern both teacher skills and school organisational flexibility. In addition, the authors propose the provision of a support team whereby local authorities can help schools, teachers and children with problems of disruption without setting up 'sin-bins'. Change is thus shown to be possible at three levels – teachers, headteachers and local authorities. Detailed illustrative case material is presented throughout the book.

Chapter 1

THE CONCEPT OF CLASSROOM DISRUPTION

1.1 Ploughman’s Lunch.

In the 1970’s the education system in England and Wales created a new category of pupil, “the disruptive child”. It was rather like the creation of the ploughman’s lunch made famous in the film of that name. What now seems like a traditional and appetizingly earthy part of our gastronomic culture, stretching back into the mists of medieval folklore, was actually a concept put together by an advertising agency less than fifteen years ago. Similarly, the word disruptive is now applied by educators to pupils as if it signified a well-known type of child. The category now has the authority of the familiar, of the educationally accepted. It is this acceptance that we wish to challenge. At the outset it might be best to assert boldly that there is no such thing as a disruptive pupil. Certain pupils behave disruptively in some lessons, with some teachers, in some environments at certain times of the day or week. Some pupils behave disruptively in corridors, playgrounds and staircases. Do any pupils behave disruptively with all teachers? in all lessons? in all contexts? And if they did, would disruptive any longer be the best way of describing them? Disruptive is a word better applied to forms of behaviour or to situations than to pupils. Most labels simplify life for the person doing the categorising. For the person who is categorised, however, they may have pernicious and long-term consequences.

There is more here than semantics. If we perceive a situation to be disruptive, then this is a temporary state of affairs, and one which involves several participants. If we perceive behaviour to be disruptive, then this is something which can change into other more appropriate behaviours. But if we perceive a pupil to be disruptive, this is somehow something to do with his/her personality or nature. This means that we are more likely to regard it as permanent and difficult to change. We will probably then see any incident in which a “disruptive pupil” is involved as caused by him/her rather than as a clash between various participants within a specific context. In other words, now that the category of disruptive exists, it is easy for particular pupils to be stigmatised, but it is actually more difficult to conceptualise ways of developing change in behaviour, or of diminishing the frequency of disruptive incidents. Why should anyone waste time trying to develop plans for change and improvement when it is clear that it is the child who is disruptive? The existence of the category “disruptive pupil” both in the provision of a local education authority and in the mental set of educators, may then actually serve to inhibit methods of cutting down disruption in mainstream primary and secondary schools.

It is possible to ask how “the disruptive pupil” was created. This question may be answered in two ways: by reference to the way in which the category of disruptive pupils came into existence in the education system of England and Wales; or by reference to the way in which specific children acquire the label whilst in mainstream primary and secondary schools. These two aspects of the question will each be considered in some detail.

1.2 The Creation of the Category.

Children have always indulged in disruptive behaviour in schools. We say this blandly in order not to give the impression that there is no such thing as disruptive behaviour, or that particular children do not have a predilection for it. Nor do we wish to assert that bullying, racism, rudeness, theft and vandalism are really quite acceptable. They are no more acceptable in a school than in any other institution. Indeed, many writers, following Durkheim, have seen the socialisation of children into generally accepted patterns of behaviour to be one of the main tasks of the school. Particularly in infant schools, the encouragement of co-operation, good working habits, friendliness and mutual tolerance and respect are significant aspects of the work of the teacher. This is sometimes regarded as a rather sinister form of social control. It is necessary at this stage, then, to make a working distinction between socialisation and social control. Socialisation of young children takes place in the family and the school. It serves to allow young people to accommodate to society. This need not mean that they accept unquestioningly all its values, practices and institutions. Rather, they should learn to work co-operatively, tolerantly and with determination to change and develop those elements which they consider to be incommensurate with human needs. Preventing bullying and exploitation in schools, for instance, and persuading children that this is an unpleasant type of activity may be seen as a valid form of socialisation. However, what may be excused as socialisation in many schools, is perhaps more correctly seen as systematic social control. Unquestioning obedience, uniformity of appearance, regimentation, and unflinching patience are examples of social control exerted over pupils in many schools. We discuss some of the consequences of, and alternatives to, rigid social control in this and succeeding chapters.

Disruptive behaviour has been perceived and treated differently by teachers at different stages of educational history. In the late nineteenth century, after the introduction of universal compulsory schooling, it was likely to be seen as morally reprehensible, bad, even evil. Corporal punishment was a method frequently employed to attempt to control such behaviour and punish the sinners. In the twentieth century, medical and psychodynamic explanations became more socially acceptable, indeed, fashionable. Children behaved inappropriately because there was something wrong with them; either they were “mentally defective”, or they were sick in some way. Maladjustment, as a category, developed out of this paradigm. Children who did not conform were perceived as maladjusted, because their home life was stressful, they had not received sufficient maternal affection at an early age, they were acting out oedipal anxieties, or whatever. Treatment was to separate them from their less deviant peers, and to educate them together in an ethos of “stern love”. This philosophy can still be found in some schools for maladjusted pupils in England and Wales today. However, there has been a trend to refer to these schools fewer children remarkable for their interesting middle-class problems, and many more of those whose violent, unruly behaviour is more popularly associated with working class and black groups (Bowman, I., 1981). This has meant that the philosophy of these schools has been increasingly difficult to put into practice.

As the category of maladjusted was increasingly stretched to allow the incorporation of boisterous working-class youth within the segregated educational provision, a new growth area was being established. These same children were also being referred to ESN (M) schools in large numbers. These referrals were more likely to be on the basis of perceived behaviour than of their academic performance (Tomlinson, S., 1981). Between 1950 and 1977, according to the DES, the number of children in ESN (M) schools in England and Wales rose from 15,173 to 55,698. Over the same period the number in schools for the maladjusted exploded from 467 to 10,452.

Towards the end of this period a new explanation of disruptive behaviour, based on social learning theory, began to emerge. Children were seen as having learnt patterns of behaviour according to the contingent reinforcements of their specific social contexts. Some of the segregated special schools began to develop methods of education and treatment based on these theories. This involved positive reinforcement and rewards for appropriate behaviour, sometimes organised around token economies. At the same time the term disruptive came to be used, sometimes alongside and sometimes in place of previous labels such as maladjusted or disturbed. Despite the rapidly rising numbers of places available in special schools, there was pressure to segregate even more children, and to exclude them quickly without the lengthy embarrassment of special education procedures. Tutorial centres, guidance units, support units, sanctuaries, alternative classes, opportunity groups, and a host of other euphemistically named provisions sprang up both on and off the sites of mainstream schools. What had happened to the schools of England and Wales since the 1944 Education Act that had necessitated the exclusion of so many children first into special school provision and then, additionally, into the various units?

One noticeable change which had taken place in many local education authorities was the progress towards comprehensive schooling. There is no obvious reason why this move towards greater educational equality should lead to disruptive behaviour in classrooms. Yet Hargreaves has pointed to some of the difficulties that beset the implementation of the policy which, significantly, was seen as providing “grammar schools for all” (Hargreaves, D., 1982). The skills and flexibilities of secondary modern schools and their teachers tended to be undervalued and neglected in the new (often amalgamated) comprehensive schools. In the attempt to stamp the grammar school ethos and the grammar school curriculum on all children, it is possible that the potentialities for friction and boredom were increased. This is not to imply that children from secondary modern schools were less “intelligent” than those from grammar schools, or less capable of performing well at a rigorous curriculum. Rather, there was a mismatch between the needs and interests of the children and the expectations of those teachers who came to control the new institutions. Institutions which practise streaming and which value elitist knowledge and examination success may alienate those pupils whom they label as less successful.

In some authorities comprehensivisation was followed by the introduction of restrictions on the use of corporal punishment. Some teachers and heads assumed that this would leave them with no coercive threat with which to enforce discipline. As the ILEA, for instance, moved towards completely banning corporal punishment, there was pressure from many people, especially in secondary schools, for some alternative to be provided. The planning and implementation of ILEA’s vast disruptive units programme may well have been a response to this (Reece, M., 1983). The unpalatable fact seems to be that some teachers, when deprived of the right to beat their pupils, determined that the only way to deal with them was to exclude them from the mainstream school. Local education authorities seem to have been surprisingly willing to collaborate in this process.

It is perhaps appropriate to mention briefly the wide context within which the category of disruption was created. In the early seventies popular discourse, orchestrated by the media, adopted the language of crisis. Two notable crises were “the urban crisis” and “the youth crisis”. The urban crisis was a headline formula for the run down of many of Britain’s inner cities, associated with the exodus of industry, commerce, and the prosperous section of the population. The inner cities had become areas of concentration for poverty, “social problems”, and crime. Classroom disruption in inner city schools would then be located within a specific iconography of popular conceptions. The crisis of youth concerned the moral panic about the highly visible, and occasionally violent, activities of some youth subcultures such as skinheads or punks. “The disruptive pupil” could easily be inserted into this familiar media demonology. The creation of “the disruptive pupil” arose against a background of escalating youth unemployment and urban decline, but these factors were re-interpreted through a conservative climate of concern, which perceived them as issues of undisciplined young people, seaside riots, mugging, glue-sniffing, and so on.

We are at pains to avoid giving the idea that the amount or intensity of classroom disruption actually increased during the 1970’s. It is likely that the change came in the relative tolerance of teachers who, concerned with the academic progress of the majority, were less able to deal flexibly with the distracting, counterproductive activities of a minority. However, at one point in the early 1970’s, the teacher shortage in many urban areas was so severe that schools were severely constrained in their educational activities. It may well be that during this period there was a higher level of disruptive behaviour in some schools. This could then be reformulated by some teachers, newspapers, and popular concern as yet another aspect of the crisis of city youth. Instead of more and better teachers, a pressure developed for the short, sharp shock model of custodial care and for segregated disruptive units.

The growth of disruptive units in England and Wales occurred at the initiative of local education authorities. Probably responding to similar pressures, they copied expeditious forms of provision which were seen to have developed in other areas. There was no central instruction or guidelines from the Department of Education and Science. A document from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate described and catalogued the developments, expressing neither approval nor disapproval (HMI, 1978). Their dubious legality under the 1944 Act remained unquestioned until the Rampton Report (DES, 1981, p.50). It is surprising that their legality has rarely been challenged in that they provide a method of excluding children from their mainstream classrooms, sometimes for several years, without the safeguards of a special education referral. A child can be placed full-time in a unit often simply at the request of the headteacher with or without the agreement of other teachers. The risks of arbitrariness, or even victimisation are apparently unchecked either by the scrutiny of outside professionals, the possibility of DES intervention, or by rights provided to parents and children in law.

This was the background against which the units developed, and the category of “disruptive pupils” became institutionalised. According to the DES the number of units rose from 23 in 1970 to 239 in 1977. A survey by ACE^*in 1980 indicated that there were 439 units in the two thirds of LEA’s who responded to their enquiries. In ILEA alone, there were 226 units, catering for 3,800 pupils (Booth, T., 1982, p. 28). What is surprising is that the authorities were able to proliferate these institutions during a period of severe financial stringency. Nevertheless, by the beginning of the 1980’s the pattern of separate provision had been established, and the category of “disruptive pupil” had come into institutional existence. Given that the units (and the special schools also) were being provided, it was unlikely that the teachers in mainstream schools would be so churlish as to fail to find children to exclude into them. The existence of “disruptive pupils” had become an accepted part of school life.

1.3 How Schools Can Create Disruptive Pupils.

In Chapters 4 and 5 we will be looking at the more positive aspect of this question, namely how schools can minimise the amount of classroom disruption. However, since it is our insistence that disruptive behaviour is generated by schools rather than being inflicted on them, it is necessary to examine the processes whereby this comes about. These processes may be studied under four main headings: curriculum, pedagogy, organisation, and peer group. There is obviously some overlap between these headings.

1.3.1 Curriculum. If the knowledge and curriculum of the school are seen to be the exclusive product and prerogative of an elite, then many working-class and black children are likely to perceive them as separate from, and potentially alien to, their own experience. If the culture of the child is belittled or ignored in school, whilst a white, middle-class alternative is revered and made the criteria of academic and economic success, then resentment against the epistemology of the teachers may be far from irrational. Working class children, black pupils and girls may all find themselves subjected to an inferior, or even hostile, curriculum.

For example, the curricula of schools in England and Wales still contain many important elements of overt and covert racism. An example of the former is the reading scheme Pirates, where the villains are the black pirates. This scheme is a favourite for use with “remedial” children, who stand a chance of being black themselves, or of being “disruptive”, or both. If a child is expected to learn to read through books which reinforce negative stereotypes about his/her colour, then she/he may perceive the whole process of education as an attempt to demean and degrade. Covert racism is evident in the way in which literature and science are seen as exclusively the product of one continent. The achievements of black people in the world, as well as in the UK, are still too little stressed in urban multi-cultural schools.

Gender stereotypes are also encouraged at an early age by reading material such as the Ladybird scheme. At secondary school it is still too often the norm that boys do craft, design and technology, and computer studies, whilst girls do domestic science and office practice. However, girls also learn from an early age in both the school and the family that an important component of femininity is passivity. Girls then cannot express any resentment generated by the sexist curriculum without undermining their notions of their own sexuality. That these controlling notions are themselves partly the product of the sexist curriculum constitutes something of a double-bind. The curriculum is part of the controlling ideology of patriarchy, which tends to preclude on the part of girls the direct expression of anger and resentment. Disruptive behaviour is more common among boys than among girls by a factor of three (see Chapter 3).

Forms of disruptive behaviour may seem remote from the nature of the school curriculum: bullying younger children does not seem like a considered response to being subjected to middle-class knowledge. There does not seem to be a direct connection between disruptive activity and epistemological revolt. Nevertheless, the often boring, irrelevant and patronising nature of the school curriculum plays its part in the process of disillusionment with school. To ignore this disillusionment and always to seek the cause of disruptive behaviour in the psychopathology of individual pupils is to inhibit the necessary improvement in the curriculum currently offered to all children.

1.3.2 Pedagogy. The way in which teachers present lessons can facilitate or discourage classroom disruption. In Chapter 4 we consider this matter in some detail, so let us merely introduce the subject here by an extreme and doubtless atypical example. The extreme case again allows the percepttion to be made that classroom disruption is not an irrational form of activity indulged in by “disturbed” pupils, but an active and meaningful response to the classroom context and its interpersonal relations. Take the teacher who arrives late for a lesson, hands back a pile of unmarked books, and embarks on a lesson which, to the pupils, seems to lack both preparation and interest. The pupils may well lose confidence in the teacher, but further their commitment to the enterprise of schooling will be that bit weakened. At first this may lead only to behaviours which are incompatible with the aims of the teacher, such as private conversations, horseplay, or comic reading. But cynical and anti-authority behaviours and attitudes will also be developed, which may subsequently spread to other lessons, or to the corridors and playground. The example here may be extreme, but a similar case could be made for other teacher behaviours, such as using sarcasm, overlooking bullying, personal rudeness or physical punishment.

The intention here is not to attack teachers, but to assert that they play a part in the generation of disruptive incidents. Disruptive incidents cannot be spuriously explained as the result of having “disruptive pupils” in a classroom: they occur in social contexts, and as a consequence of preceding events in which teachers have participated. What we are saying here may be seen to be less critical if formulated into the more authoritarian language of the staffroom, where it is accepted that some teachers have better class control than others.

1.3.3 School Organisation. Many school rules, such as those concerned with dress, appearance and superficial conduct such as chewing gum, seem designed to provide a multitude of opportunities for defiance and confrontation. It might perhaps be argued that if pupils are persistently getting into trouble for not wearing a tie, they will not risk any more serious challenges to authority. But an endless succession of petty disputes between teachers and pupils over superficial issues is hardly likely to encourage a positive climate of educational work. (School rules are discussed in more detail in Chapter 5.)

This leads to the further organisational issue of consistency between school staff (and here it is necessary to include playground and ancillary helpers) with regard to endorsing and enforcing the rules. The behaviour of some...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. The Concept of Classroom Disruption
• 2. A Model of Work of a Schools Support Team
• 3. Evaluation of the Work of the Support Unit: Methods, Outcomes and Processes
• 4. Classroom Practice
• 5. School Organisation
• 6. The Role and Function of Support Services in a Local Education Authority
• 7. The Challenge of Disruptive Behaviour
• References
• Appendix
• Index