Teacher-Pupil Conflict in Secondary Schools (1987)

Kate Cronk

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351215008
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Education
• Thema: Education General

Published in 1987, the central question with which this book is concerned is what can, and should, teachers do about teacher-pupil conflict in schools? Few teachers in secondary education would need to have this sort of conflict described as even if that have been fortunate enough to avoid it themselves they will know of it from staffroom discussion and from the media. In can be seen in disorderly classrooms where pupils 'mess about' and 'have a laugh', and in the bleak expression on the face of their teacher. Equally it can be detected in those classrooms where the teacher is in firm control, but where pupils gaze listlessly out of the window, or only minimally comply with work demands. It is characterized by sudden blazing temper on both sides, and also by long periods of weariness, boredom and disengagement. It is not that conflict which might arise from temporary private troubles, from having a bad day or going through a bad patch, for it is there week in week out, and involves significant numbers.

Such conflict has been of interest to both psychologists and sociologists of education and important contributions have been offered by both of these disciplines. Sociologists have mapped out the differing cultural values and norms which appear to promote it. They have identified the social constraints present within the environment in which it is produced, constraints which emanate from the socio-economic organization of society and from the maintenance of an institutional framework, and which affect the micro-dynamics of teacher-pupil interaction. Psychologists have described the effects on behaviour of genetic factors, environmental conditions and cognitive states. Important though such insights are, however, they can only speak indirectly to teacher practice. This book provides an educational approach to the subject discussing topics including theoretical considerations, teacher-pupil discussion and relationships between classroom behaviour and the curriculum. It will appeal to those involved with schools and education, as well as psychologists, educational sociologists and researchers.

1 Introduction

The central question with which this book is concerned is what can, and should, teachers do about teacher-pupil conflict in schools? It is about that conflict that few teachers, in secondary education at least, would need to have described. For even if they have been fortunate enough to avoid it themselves they will know of it from staffroom discussion and from the media. It can be seen in disorderly classrooms where pupils ‘mess about’ and ‘have a laff’, and in the bleak expression on their teacher’s face. Equally, it can be detected in those classrooms where the teacher is in firm control, but where pupils gaze listlessly out of the window, or only minimally comply with work demands. It is characterized by sudden blazing temper on both sides, and also by long periods of weariness, boredom and disengagement. It is not that conflict which might arise from temporary private troubles, from having a bad day or going through a bad patch, for it is there week in week out and involves significant numbers.

Such conflict has been of interest to both psychologists and sociologists of education and important contributions have been offered by both these disciplines. Sociologists have mapped out the differing cultural values and norms which appear to promote it. They have identified the social constraints present within the environment in which it is produced, constraints which emanate from the socio-economic organization of society and from the maintenance of an institutional framework, and which affect the micro-dynamics of teacher-pupil interaction. Psychologists have described the effects on behaviour of genetic factors, environmental conditions and cognitive states.

Important though such insights are, however, they can only speak indirectly to teacher practice. There are a number of reasons for this. The difficulty is not merely that between, and even within, disciplines there seem to be unresolved contradictions, though this certainly creates problems for a teacher who is seeking guidance.¹ It is, also, that the type of remedies which are suggested by sociological and psychological research are often beyond a teacher’s power. They either require substantial reform of the social system or the institution, or the deployment of complex psychological techniques which are not within a typical teacher’s repertoire of skills. In addition they can require the existence of financial resources which are simply not available. They do not, in short, provide the sort of solution which any teacher could put into operation immediately in any classroom.

Most importantly, however, sociology and psychology do not provide professional solutions because they can not address the central educational question which faces teachers who are in conflict with pupils, this question is not merely ‘What can I do?’ but, ‘What ought I to do?’ Clearly this latter question is a moral one, demanding a consideration of the rights of persons and the purpose of education. Equally clearly, however, any solution which did not take social and psychological realities into account would not be persuasive. What is required is a solution which, while based on a view of persons which is compatible with a moral educational stance, does not violate the insights of other disciplines.

Finding such a solution is not easy but it is too important a task to avoid. For the danger of relying solely on sociological and psychological theories is that persons, the object of education, can disappear from view as entities in their own right. They can appear either as mindless stimulus-response machines, as bundles of needs and drives, as ghostly realizations of cognitive states, or as epiphenomena of their genetic blueprint. Alternatively, as Lacey suggests, they can appear as ‘… an exegesis of some sociological force working itself out in a corner of the social world.’² More sophisticatedly, perhaps, they often appear as the mechanical interaction of a selection, or all, of these factors, recognizable as a machine which can be modified by manipulating one of its parts. It comes to seem as if persons, as persons, can be improved by, for example, feeding in a few more IQ points, or increasing the octane of their cultural norms.

This view of persons, as the product of factors beyond their control, is profoundly antithetical to the concept of education. That concept rests on the belief that persons can transcend physiological drives, psychological set and cultural milieux through the acquisition of knowledge, which enables them to pursue goals which are their own. Knowledge is not regarded as a stimulus which produces a mechanical response, no matter how complex the mechanism. The concept of education assumes that, however constrained teachers and pupils might be due to social, psychological and physical factors, what they do with their knowledge is in some real sense ‘up to them’. It assumes, therefore, a core of the person which is distinct from, not the product of, its environment; a core which, because it is distinct, can be turned against the environment, resisting it and transforming it deliberately. Without these assumptions the concept of education is indistinguishable from the concepts of indoctrination or training. Without these assumptions teachers as well as pupils are caught in the iron laws of cause and effect and decision making is merely the production of the inevitable.

The theoretical focus of this research will be upon this essential core of human nature, which, it will be argued, transcends cultures, personalities and physiological differences. It will be described as the power which creates personalities and cultures, and whose presence makes diversity coherent. Significantly for this research, it will be suggested that it is this essential core of persons which demands rights for itself, and moves into conflict with others when those rights are transgressed. Thus, in making persons the central concept of this research the perspective is not only educational, but is focused on the specific problem of teacher-pupil conflict.

The view of human nature which will be taken is not a new one. It underlies much of the work of sociology and psychology. Neverthless the Social Sciences have tended to take it as given, rather than to spell out its characteristics and consider fully its implications for personal interaction. It is best identified in the literature with Mead’s unpredictable and invisible ‘I’, with Piaget’s ‘centre of activity’ and Sartre’s ‘no-thing of existence .³ For such theorists its presence was indisputable as the source of thought, structure and action. It is within the Existentialist Movement that it has perhaps been most consistently highlighted. The thought of writers such as Sartre and Nietzsche, however, does not form part of the orthodoxy of education, and it is only through the work of Rogers and Maslow that existentialism gains a foothold in teacher consciousness.⁴ Rogers’ view is, indeed, very similar to the one which will be taken in this book. His belief is that persons can be trusted, not only to know what is in their own best interests, but also to be concerned with the interests of others. This belief was derived initially from his work as a therapist, which led him to conclude that where a client seemed bent upon hurting himself and those around him, the problem lay in a failure to accept himself as someone of value. In Rogers’ experience the solution was to provide an accepting relationship, within which the client could learn to know and trust and accept himself, which in turn led him to trust and accept others.

Rogers has applied this theory to Education. In Freedom to Learn for The 80s (1983) he appeals to teachers to recognize pupil-persons as trustworthy and to work with them in an egalitarian person-to-person relationship, rather than in a teacher-pupil relationship founded upon the exercise of formal power. If they did this, he argues, pupils would not use their freedom to threaten teachers, but would work with them in a relationship which would liberate the personal power of all involved. In recognizing the other as person, rather than as teacher or pupil, the fundamental moral attitudes of altruism, responsibility and forgiveness would be invoked. Socially derived conflict would disappear in the face of fundamental human unity.

My own experience of teaching intransigent pupils led me to a similar view. It appeared to me that many of the battles fought in schools were phoney — but none the less acrimonious for that. Beneath the specific cause of a specific argument, it was possible to catch sight of a fundamental agreement, and the hurt which teachers and pupils regularly inflicted upon each other appeared to derive from a colossal and complex misunderstanding. This misunderstanding seemed to consist of a failure to acknowledge the other as a person, and was fuelled by an apparently deliberate policy by those involved to hide their personhood within a role, whether within the role of teacher, or intransigent pupil. I, therefore, like Rogers, came to believe that the only way out of this impasse would be for teachers to take the initiative, and deliberately expose themselves as persons, encouraging their pupils to do the same. In this way I believed that the social differences which divided teachers and pupils would be exposed as externally derived constraints which should not be allowed to contaminate personal relationships. In the cessation of conflict which would follow. I believed that teachers and pupils could then work together powerfully to make the most of their opportunities. Like Rogers, I believed this, because I believed in the intrinsic morality and trustworthiness of pupil-persons.

The research reported in the following chapters was initiated to explore the validity and practical applicability of these beliefs. Their theoretical and professional implications are so complex, however, that is is useful to clear away three potential misunderstandings which might arise to obscure the more important issues. Firstly, in suggesting that teachers should interact with intransigent pupils on a person-to-person basis, so that their common humanity might be revealed, no suggestion will be made that the teacher should naively join the opposition and, so to speak, ‘go native’. The view that is taken here is that teachers, as teachers, have something to offer to pupil-persons. They know things by virtue of their age and education which are of value. If this is not so, no amount of identification with the language, dress and values of the counter-school subculture would gain them credibility as teachers, or as persons. With nothing to offer the teacher-role would be empty. With nothing to offer in return for a substantial salary, their personal morality would be suspect. Alternatively, with something to offer, the mere trappings of a common humanity (the behaviour and the fashions of youth-culture) would be irrelevant, and a teacher who artificially adopted these would be treated with suspicion or even despised. The person-to-person relationship requires the exposure of the real person, not the presentation of an image intended to please.⁵

Secondly, it is important to emphasize that this research is not advocating a ‘child-centred’ approach to education. Indeed it will be suggested that the concept ‘child’ is a sociological, or psychological, or physiological construct which has little to do with either persons or morality. This proposition is contentious and will be argued more fully in Chapter 2. For the moment, however, it is important to demonstrate the difference between person-centredness and some of the cruder versions of child-centredness. The point can be illustrated by the practice of the teachers studied by Sharp and Green.⁶ Those teachers, in rhetoric at least, claimed that because the pupil knew her own needs best, child-centred education was merely a matter of providing opportunities from which the pupil could ‘choose’. In this way the child would learn to read when she was ‘ready’, and if she wasn’t ready she could play away her psychological and social hang-ups in the Wendy House. All that the teacher demanded was that the child should be ‘busy’. Beneath this rhetoric, however, Sharp and Green identified teachers who in fact believed that certain forms of ‘busyness’ — notably an interest in reading — were more valuable than others. They, therefore, sponsored pupils who either by chance, or inclination, showed an interest in this activity, and in so doing created a stratified classroom. Sharp and Green’s analysis has, of course, been criticized, but for the present purpose that does not matter. The point of the illustration is that the teachers hid, or at least obscured, their real person from the pupil’s view. The pupils had to guess at their teachers’ beliefs and at the problem which large classes and a shortage of time afforded. Moreover they had to guess in a situation where their teachers’ actions belied their words. By denying their pupils direct access to their beliefs, these teachers were, in effect, denying pupil personhood. They did not entrust themselves to pupils, thus remaining in a teacher-expert to child-client and not in a person-to-person relationship.

Thirdly, it is important to understand that the suggested approach to pupil-teacher conflict does not contain a naive hope that if persons are nice to each other’ all their problems will disappear. Teachers would still be faced with a shortage of resources, and would still be constrained by the expectations and demands of powerful others. Society would still contain injustices and inequalities; and pupils would still be under pressure from a competitive system and from the problems of poverty and broken homes. They would still be seduced by the greater excitement of life outside the school. These socio-economic and social-psychological factors would not be removed. Even at an inter-personal level there would be no guarantee that pupils and teachers would come to agree with each other’s point of view, merely because they recognized it as the view of another moral person. At the heart of all human relationships is a moral dilemma — the appropriate balance between the rights of one individual and those of another. Thus morality is not conceived here as a body of right’ answers, but as a constant search for the ‘best’ answers in a continuously changing present. In this view it neither requires, nor expects, agreement about what ‘should’ be done.

Thus a person-centred approach to education and classroom conflict promises neither victory for one side over the other, nor friendship, nor even consensus. It might result in any one or more of these states, but they are not inevitable. What it does promise, if Rogers is correct, is an elevation into consciousness of the problems of classroom reality, including those problems which derive from outside the classroom, so that the persons involved can freely and openly discuss them. They may still disagree with each other about the best solution, but they would recognize that their alternative solutions were sincerely and morally held, however mistakenly. Inter-personal conflict would be replaced by tolerance and bargains. Classrooms would become places where persons stopped fighting each other and discussed ideas, where they cooperated in an attempt to find ways in which their contradictory evaluations and insights could be made to cohere. Teachers and pupils would in effect be engaged in a research programme in which they put all their disparate evidence and views in front of each other and, together, attempted to see what it meant and how they should proceed.

This process is arguably profoundly revolutionary. Rogers describes the surprise he experienced when he was first challenged about the politically radical nature of his method.⁷ Since then he has developed this theme. Certainly, a person-centred approach as outlined above, has much in common with the approach advocated by some Neo-Marxists. Willis (1977) argues that teachers should help intransigent pupils to consciously explore their ‘penetrations’ into the contradictions of society and schooling.⁸ As long as such insights remain unconscious, he argues, ‘the lads’ can only express them through action. Because the lads trust their intuitional penetrations, they come to oppose the dominant ideology which they equate with teachers and school. They, therefore, reject mental labour which they regard as the weapon of their teacher oppressors. As a consequence they celebrate manual labour, recognizing the oppression of this latter in capitalist forms of production, only when it is too late.

Furthermore, Willis argues, the failure of ‘the lads’ to explore their insights consciously, leads them to assume that oppression is natural. They presume that it is in the nature of teachers and bosses to oppress, and fail to recognize that it is the system which is to blame, a system which constrains the behaviour of both the dominant and the dominated. Thus:

Instead of a centred world of oppression from a specific and determinate social organization of thought, production and interset...

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Orginal Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Theoretical Considerations
• 3 3Y and Their Teachers: A Case Study of Classroom Conflict
• 4 Experimental Design
• 5 Lessons One to Four
• 6 The Effect of Teacher-Pupil Discussion on General Classroom Behaviour
• 7 The Relationship between Classroom Behaviour and the Curriculum
• 8 Conclusions
• Appendix: The Concept of Intelligence
• Bibliography
• Index