Discipline in Schools

Psychological Perspectives on the Elton Report

Kevin Wheldall, Kevin Wheldall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351794244
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Classroom Management

What can schools and teachers do to promote discipline in the classroom? How do discipline and learning interact?

The Elton Committee was set up in 1989 to consider 'what action can be taken to secure the orderly atmosphere necessary in schools for effective teaching and learning to take place'. In this collection of papers, originally published in 1992, ten leading figures in the psychology of education reflect on some of the issues raised by the Elton Report and provide a series of psychological models for tackling problems of discipline, disorder and disruption in schools. Areas covered include whole-school approaches to discipline, the connection between learning difficulties and discipline problems, the effectiveness of positive behavioural methods of classroom management, the possible uses of techniques derived from family therapy in classroom discipline situations and the 'good relationship' between teacher and student as an agent of change. Though the perspectives of the contributors are very different, the emphasis throughout is on establishing a way forward for schools that will be valid and workable both in institutional terms and for the individual teacher in the classroom.

1 Discipline in Schools: the Report of the Committee of Enquiry chaired by Lord Elton

Roy Bennett

During the time that Lord Elton’s Committee was at work, newspapers regularly referred to our task in terms of violence in schools. This is understandable when one remembers that our committee was established in the aftermath of some very serious violent incidents which had aroused justifiable concern in the teachers’ professional associations and among parents. This tendency to focus exclusively on the question of violence led, in some quarters, to false expectations about the kind of report we would produce. It is, therefore, important to emphasise that we were given the much wider task of considering ‘what action can be taken … to secure the orderly atmosphere necessary in schools for effective teaching and learning to take place’ (DES, 1989, p.54).

In seeking possible answers to that question, between March 1988 and January 1989 we held regular meetings, read a mass of written evidence submitted by organisations and individuals, looked at research evidence already published, interviewed expert witnesses, visited a wide range of schools and other institutions in this country and paid study visits to the USA, Norway and the Netherlands. In arriving at our conclusions in a relatively short period of time we were fortunate in two respects: we had the guidance of very experienced and well-informed assessors from both the DES and HMI and we had the services of an efficient and unstinting secretariat. That we quickly established a consensus which allowed us to produce a unanimous report owed much to the fact that all members of the committee had substantial experience of working with children and young people in schools or elsewhere.

We were frequently asked whether discipline in schools is deteriorating. Our inability to provide an authoritative answer to that question clearly came as a great disappointment to some journalists and some teachers, but there simply does not exist the kind of historical database which would enable comparisons to be drawn with any confidence. Although there is a widespread perception, among teachers and the general public, that indiscipline is increasing, there is no way of telling how that perception may have been affected by inaccurate rose-tinted assumptions about schools in the past, or by widespread publicity, raised expectations and the stress of unremitting institutional change to which teachers have been subjected in recent years. Certainly no historian would be able to identify a period when the behaviour of pupils did not give their teachers cause for anxiety. Teachers have always had to battle against inattention, idleness, irresponsibility, vandalism, bullying, fighting, defiance, truancy, impertinence and personal assault. In one very important sense our inability to decide whether these aspects of pupils’ behaviour in schools were deteriorating does not really matter very much. The fact that many people think that things are getting worse is an important consideration in its own right. That belief will colour the way the education service is viewed, and it will affect the way in which incidents are interpreted. It will influence public and political attitudes to individual schools and teachers, it will affect the way in which teachers approach their work and it will tend to erode the morale of the teaching profession.

Naturally, those who believe that indiscipline is on the increase were eager to search our report for evidence which would indict certain groups as being to blame for this state of affairs. Our Report does not seek to apportion blame, partly because the range of influences to which individual pupils are subjected is both extensive and infinitely varied, and partly because the most appropriate people to take action to cope with the problems will not necessarily be those who have helped to create those problems in the first place. Certainly those journalists who assumed that we were placing the blame on teachers, because many of our recommendations are addressed to schools, were jumping to a false conclusion. It should be seen more as an indication of our faith in the teachers’ professional expertise and resourcefulness, our admiration of the good practice which already exists in so many schools, and our conviction that, whatever policy initiatives are proposed, it will inevitably be the individual teacher’s confidence, skill and good sense which will be tested in every instance of indiscipline.

It is, of course, the violent manifestations of indiscipline which hit the headlines and our committee deplored, as much as anyone, the fact that behaviour of this kind occurs in school from time to time. Even one case of violence is one too many. We were, however, impressed by the weight of research evidence indicating that most teachers were more ‘concerned about the cumulative effects of disruption to their lessons caused by relatively trivial but persistent misbehaviour’ (DES, 1989, p.11) (see Chapter 6). The survey of teachers’ opinions which we commissioned from Sheffield University confirmed us in that view. Deliberate violence directed at teachers is relatively rare considering the total numbers of teachers and pupils in our schools: constant disruption, noise, idleness and minor skirmishing appear to be dispiriting, energy-sapping and stressful features of the daily lives of most teachers. It seems reasonable to assume that a significant number of the major violent incidents probably arise from the escalation of minor examples of indiscipline which, at the outset, might well be indistinguishable from dozens of similar exchanges between pupils and teachers in the course of a school day.

One of the most striking features of our evidence is the sheer variety of causes of, and cures for, bad behaviour in schools which was suggested to us… . It is clear that most of the individuals and organisations submitting evidence consider that bad behaviour in schools is a complex problem which does not lend itself to simple solutions… . Any quest for a single dramatic remedy, such as a major piece of new legislation, would be futile.

(DES, 1989, p.64)

Indeed, to suggest that there could be some magic wand, or some easy answer guaranteed A1 at Lloyds, would be to undervalue the interpersonal skills needed by teachers and to practise a cruel deception on young people seeking to enter our very demanding profession. ‘Reducing bad behaviour is a realistic aim. Eliminating it completely is not’ (DES, 1989, p.65).

During our visits to schools we occasionally encountered individual teachers, and even entire school staffs, who were suffering from low morale. They were pessimistic because they saw themselves as ill-supported and poorly rewarded professionals condemned to battle against the indiscipline generated by such adverse tides in society as the decline in respect for authority, the rejection of moral standards, the break-up of families, unemployment, selfish materialism and the emphasis on violence for entertainment in the media. Obviously, there is no way in which schools can be insulated against the influences that are at work in society generally and, in some areas, schools face more than a fair share of such problems.

Even in the most deprived areas, however, we also found individual teachers and entire school staffs who spoke with genuine enthusiasm and optimism. They recognised the problems but their morale was high because of good leadership and because they felt that, by determination, resourcefulness and flexibility, they were evolving effective strategies for motivating and controlling their pupils. They also felt confident that they would be adequately supported in times of crisis. Such schools were often achieving far more than one might have anticipated judging by the localities in which they were situated.

From visits to these schools we came to share the optimism of their teachers and we became convinced that individual teachers and individual school staffs can make a considerable difference to the behaviour of pupils and to their educational attainments. This view is also supported by some recent academic research. Where teachers approach their work with this optimistic assumption, morale tends to improve but there is nothing more dispiriting than the feeling that one is being swept along helplessly, like so much flotsam, on uncontrollable tidal currents generated in an uncaring society.

In writing our Report we tried to make recommendations which would help to create conditions in which fewer teachers would take a pessimistic view of their daily work and more would find grounds for optimism. We have tried to be positive and there is little that is particularly striking or novel. Indeed, our Report has sometimes been described as ‘just common-sense’, which I regard as high praise!

Many of our recommendations are based on the good practice which we came to admire in those schools which had created an orderly and caring ethos. We believe that those conditions could and should be more widely established in our schools.

I do not propose to attempt to present here a summary of our Report. All schools have, I understand, received copies and I hope you will find time to read it. But perhaps I could direct your attention to certain key features of the Report.

The quality of the individual teacher is so important that we have quite a lot to say about how they should be selected. How can we help young people decide their own suitability for teaching? How should training institutions select students? How should schools select new teachers, supply teachers, ancillary staff, senior teachers, headteachers? How should staff be allocated to the different roles within a school? In the rare cases where this arises, how should staff be selected for dismissal?

On this question of selection I have two comments to make. The first is in response to those people who suggest that we should only permit students to qualify if they can be guaranteed as capable of teaching effectively in the most difficult schools. You simply could not find 400,000 people of that kind and the education system contains such a variety of schools that we have to accept that people may be perfectly effective as teachers in some parts of the system, even though they might founder in other parts. This emphasises, of course, the selection process in individual schools where it ought to be easier to assess the likelihood of applicants being able to teach effectively in the precise conditions that are to be found there, and which are well known to those making the appointment.

My second comment on selection is that, as the Report points out to the Secretary of State, ‘able young people are unlikely to leave school wanting to be teachers if they see the job as having low status and being unrewarding’ (DES, 1989, p.86). Morale, pay and conditions of service all affect recruitment to the profession, and the whole idea of carefully selecting the most suitable staff will be unrealistic if there are insufficient applicants to provide a choice. In some places and in some shortage subjects, that problems already exists.

Another topic to which we frequently turn in our Report is staff training. There is a school of thought which believes that maintaining discipline in the classroom depends primarily on the personal charisma of the teacher and on the teacher’s astuteness in learning from the trials and errors of hard-won experience. There is, of course, more than a grain of truth in that view. It would be splendid if the education service could be staffed entirely by natural teachers with the charisma to charm birds off the trees but I do not think that such people can be found in sufficient numbers, especially when those qualities can earn much higher salaries in other types of employment. It is important, therefore, that the sincere commitment and conscientious application of teachers at all levels should be supported by appropriate training in group management skills and interpersonal relationships. Our committee was convinced that training could make a significant contribution to reducing the incidence of indiscipline in schools.

We examined or observed a number of different training approaches which appeared to meet the needs of students and teachers who had taken part in them. Training which tackles the problem of discipline directly and explicitly is needed in initial teacher training. It is unreasonable to expect students to infer effective classroom practice from the general principles which they encounter in such course elements as philosophy, psychology or sociology. There also seems to be a need for further training of this type in the induction of newly qualified teachers, in the professional development of teachers at various levels, for the difficult role of supply teachers, with the new category of licensed teachers and in equipping headteachers and senior staff for their supportive role in relation to the discipline problems of other teachers. Training of school governors and school ancillary staff (especially dinner supervisors) is also, in our view, essential.

I hope that the teaching profession will not feel that devising a variety of training approaches and learning resources for these various categories is a task which should be left to outside experts. The profession includes a large number of very experienced, imaginative and outstandingly successful practitioners who should be encouraged to explore ways in which they could share their skills and insights with a wider audience.

We must not, however, delude ourselves into thinking that training will always provide some ready to hand, instant, guaranteed solution to every discipline problem which can be encountered in schools. All that training can do is to indicate some possible pitfalls and widen the repertoire of options from which a teacher can select a course of action when trying to prevent a problem arising or getting worse. In making their decisions teachers will still have to exercise their professional judgment, taking into account the precise combination of circumstances in each individual instance. They will also need, on occasions, a little bit of luck, and sometimes they will make a wrong decision. Our Report emphasises the importance of teachers being able to discuss mistakes and difficulties openly with colleagues in an atmosphere of mutual support, rather than agonising about them in isolation.

Our support for training should not be seen as an assumption that discipline is some kind of optional extra, as if it were some sophisticated device which can transform a class in much the same way as a car wash transforms a grubby car. Discipline, and the development of self-discipline, cannot be separated from the total educational experience to which pupils are exposed in schools. Indeed, many aspects of indiscipline arise as direct responses by pupils to the experience of being taught.

Pupils are less likely to disrupt lessons which they see as interesting, relevant and worthwhile. They are more likely to disrupt those which they see as lifeless, boring or beyond their understanding. The implications for discipline of having an inappropriate or inadequately resourced curriculum, or one which is poorly presented, are obvious (and in some quarters we have been much chided with stating the obvious) but we hope that teachers will remember that our report was intended for a wider audience, to some of whom such thoughts may come as a surprise.

It was not, of course, part of our task to attempt to write a textbook on effective teaching, especially at a time when other committees are at work devising the National Curriculum, but we did make specific comments on three issues: the value of multi-cultural education, the need for the National Curriculum to make provision for personal and social education and the crucial importance of ensuring that the content of the National Curriculum, especially in the last years of compulsory schooling, is devised with the capabilities of the less academic and potentially disruptive pupils clearly in mind. If this last requirement is not met, and if the various alternative curricula now being used with such pupils are excluded, I would expect the National Curriculum to have an adverse effect on school discipline.

Of course, school discipline is not solely an issue confined to the classroom. It permeates the whole life of a school. It is for that reason that the most important part of our Report is concerned with the development, in each school, of a whole school behaviour policy. We feel that such policies should emphasise the positive encouragement of good behaviour, provide opportunities for teaching it and arrange for desirable behaviour to be recognised and rewarded. Regrettably, but realistically, it will also be necessary to set down certain prohibitions and punishments.

If a whole-school behaviour policy is to succeed it will need to be tailor-made to the precise requirements of the individual school. That is why it can only be devised by those who have inside knowledge of the school’s life and work. It will also need to be rational and intelligible to all the people involved and the whole-school community will need to give willing support to its precepts and try to live by them. That end is not likely to be achieved if the policy is seen as something imposed from on high. The policy needs to evolve through a process of wide consultation with teachers, ancillary staff, pupils, parents and governors all feeling that their views have been heard, fairly considered and incorporated. In that way the whole-school behaviour policy ought to secure a wide measure of support.

No one can pretend that creating a consensus on discipline in this way is a simple management task for headteachers. Schools have to come to terms with so many new developments (the National Curriculum, national testing, teacher evaluation, profiling, GCSE and local financial management) that they may well think that the consultation process for arriving at whole-school behaviour policies simply cannot be fitted in. We hope, however, that they will come to recognise the contribution which a suitably devised and well-supported...