Troublesome Behaviour in the Classroom

Meeting Individual Needs

Mick McManus, Mick Mcmanus

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9780415113601
• eBook ISBN: 9781134829040
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The fully updated second edition of Troublesome Behaviour in the Classroom is the most comprehensive and practical guide available on the subject of behaviour management in schools. Distinguished by Mick McManus' lively and witty writing style, it is packed with practical ideas, activities, insights and solutions which will be invaluable to all teacher training students and classroom teachers.

Chapter 1
Concerns, causes and remedies

For playing truant he was caned. He tried to kick me, in fact he did kick me, and his mother then came to school and abused me in a most frightful manner.

(School Log of 1884, quoted in Porter, 1990).

HAVE TIMES CHANGED?

The police believe themselves powerless before a rising tide of mischief and violence—particularly a recent serious increase in ruffianism among city youth. This sort of statement is made every day and commands wide assent, but it is a quotation from a complaint voiced in 1898. In the 1890s a government enquiry was launched into the rising crime rate among young people; a century later, similar concerns resulted in the Elton Report (DES, 1989), which was the most comprehensive study of school discipline ever conducted in Britain. The report contains 138 recommendations addressed to every conceivable audience. Employers, parents, the Broadcasting Standards Council as well as teachers and even pupils are all the subject of advice as to how they can contribute to reducing bad behaviour in schools. Elton, unlike some of the experts we will consider in this book, promised no miracles: ‘Reducing bad behaviour is a realistic aim. Eliminating it completely is not’ (paragraph 2/29:65). The committee received extensive evidence, consulted research and commissioned some of its own, and came to the conclusion that ‘any quest for simple or complete remedies would be futile’. Its own summary covers eight pages and the theme of the report is clear: discipline in schools is the responsibility of everyone and not only a matter for teachers. Nevertheless, it concludes that much indiscipline can be diminished by making teachers better at classroom management.

As the Elton committee discovered, the literature offers a bewildering collection of definitions, estimates of prevalence, claims about trends, historical evidence and speculations upon causes and cures. The popular view that disorder in schools, like disorder in society, is a recent phenomenon is easily contradicted by reference to historical sources. Curtis (1963) records some of the frequent disturbances at the ancient universities, whose students were in many respects the equivalent of present-day secondary pupils. For example, at Cambridge in 1261 there was a fight between scholars from the north and south; unlike twentieth-century two-nations disputes, this one led to plunder and burning. At Oxford, on St Scholastica’s Day in 1354, a pub-fight ended with many dead and wounded; a similar riot broke out in Cambridge in 1381. School rules are a clue to what behaviour might be expected from thirteenth-century pupils: at Westminster, boys were forbidden to play tricks on townsmen and not allowed to carry bows, sticks or stones. The fifteenth-century Cambridge graduation ritual for a Master of Grammar, who sought a licence to teach, placed discipline on an equal footing with learning. After the candidate had ‘argyude as shall please the Proctor’ he was provided with a ‘Rodde’ and a ‘shrewde’, that is, mischievous, boy whom he then ‘bete openlye in the Scolys’. In this way, says Curtis, ‘the newly fledged master approved his ability to teach in a grammar-school’ (1963:65). Most sixteenth- and seventeenth-century pictures of school-masters, says Curtis, depict the master with a birch or rod. A number of serious disturbances followed the abolition of certain ‘papist’ holidays after 1565. In 1587, pupils used armed force to occupy Edinburgh High School, as had happened earlier in Aberdeen. In 1595, magistrates were called to regain control of the same school and a town councillor was shot dead in the process. Raikes was impelled to found his Sunday schools partly by the ‘wild and mischievous behaviour’ of children on their day of rest. Evidently some of it continued, for Raikes had discipline problems: in one incident, a badger was let loose in the schoolroom. The horrors of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century public schools have been described by Gathorne-Hardy (1977): for example, in an 1818 riot at Eton, pupils smashed the desk of their headmaster, Dr Keates.

It may be said in mitigation that these examples come from more brutal times, in which such incidents did not carry the horrifying implications that they would in the twentieth century. In the eighteenth century, Coram was moved to found his hospital to rid the streets of abandoned and dying babies, and even as late as the 1890s they were said to be a common sight (Schostak, 1986); there were twenty times as many child deaths then as there are today. However, there is evidence that past violence was not viewed lightly at the time. Concern about increasing disorder among the young led, in 1847, to the establishment of a House of Lords Select Committee to look into the operation of the criminal law with respect to children. Evidence included statistics showing a rising conviction rate among those under 21, and some witnesses blamed the ragged schools for it (Curtis, 1963:302).

The Parliamentary Act of 1484, which invited Richard III to become king, described the state of the nation as chaos with ‘murders, extortions and oppressions, namely, of poor and impotent people, so that no man was sure of his life, land, livelihood, nor his wife, daughter, nor servant, every good maiden and woman standing in dread to be ravished and defouled.’ An earlier writer had even boasted that crime was evidence of the great courage of the English: ‘There are more men hanged in one year in England for robbery and manslaughter than in seven years for such crimes in France’ (Fortescue, quoted in Gillingham, 1993). In 872 at Malmesbury school, in an early example of violence towards teachers, the pupils of the unfortunate Scotus Erigena stabbed him to death with their pens. Confusion about the facts of the case commonly happens with twentieth-century incidents, and this ninth-century outrage was disputed too: Curtis comments that the report was the subject of controversy as to its trustworthiness.

WHAT IS TROUBLESOME BEHAVIOUR?

Uncertainty about the amount of troublesome behaviour has always been a feature of the debate and is allied to the difficulty in arriving at a definition which all can agree is interpreted and applied consistently. Doyle says the key to understanding misbehaviour is to see it ‘in the context of classroom structures’. He defines it, with a struggle, as ‘any behaviour by one or more students that is perceived by the teacher to initiate a vector of action that competes with or threatens the primary vector of action at a particular moment in a classroom activity’ (Wittrock, 1986:419). In the effort to recognize the subjectivity and relativity of teacher perceptions, this definition makes anything potentially misbehaviour.

In a class which has been left to its own devices, so that the teacher can catch up with marking, a pupil who asks for some work to do would be misbehaving. Conversely, if the teacher does not notice the bored pupil cutting up his or her books, that is not misbehaviour. For, as Doyle’s definition says, anything that interferes with the teacher’s state of mind is misbehaviour. The definition of disruptive behaviour offered by Galloway et al. (1982) is similarly flawed: ‘…any behaviour which appears problematic, inappropriate and disturbing to teachers’.

Another attempt, which appears to remove the subjective element by defining disruption in terms of its effect upon (ordinary) teaching and the (normal) school, is that by Lawrence et al. (1977, 1984): ‘Behaviour which seriously interferes with the teaching process and/or seriously upsets the normal running of the school.’ As many teachers say when asked for examples of such behaviour: it depends what you mean by ‘seriously’. Distinctions between maladjustment and disruption are similarly problematic. There is a popular view that maladjustment is a pathological medical condition and disruption is rooted in moral deficiencies. Individual pathology plays a greater or lesser part in each pupil’s behaviour, but there is no line between those who are typed as maladjusted and those typed as disruptive. Similar errors were made in identifying pupils with learning difficulties prior to the abolition of categories of handicap following the Education Act 1981. For example, many came to believe that pupils could be sorted into remedial, ESN(M) and ESN(S) types, but these categories evolved from historical and administrative arrangements. They encouraged the view that problems were solved because they had been identified, and where a pupil proved unamenable in a particular placement there was a tendency to seek a fresh place rather than a fresh policy.

More than twenty years ago, Hewett and Blake (1973) wrote that ‘the most pressing need is for a reliable system of definition and classification of emotional and behavioural disorders’. We still do not have one, and they were wrong. To rely on definitions and categories to suggest remedies is to divert attention from observation of the individual and his or her circumstances. There are no easy solutions, so we have to think.

In a survey described in Chapter 2, I asked fifty teachers to indicate on a list of thirty-eight items the pupil behaviours they thought were ‘serious threats to good order’. There was total agreement on only one item: ‘Hits teacher’. Five teachers ticked every item; five queried the meaning of ‘serious’ or declined to tick any. The difficulty of definition is captured in an autobiographical anecdote by Blishen (1980): ‘There was a boy in class two who was, I had to conclude, an advanced delinquent—yet his offence was barely definable. The nearest I could come to it was to say that he turned sitting down into a comedy.’ Becker (1963) was only slightly exaggerating when he wrote, more directly than Doyle, that:… ‘deviance is not a quality of the act a person commits…the deviant is one to whom that label has successfully been applied; deviant behaviour is behaviour that people so label.’

Labels and classifications spring from theories, often held implicitly, and it is true that they may tell us as much about the labeller as about the labelled. This does not mean that labels, categories and definitions are purely arbitrary: the distinctions, especially if they stick, must have something to do with that which is being observed. As Pring (1976) says, words like ‘cats’ and ‘dogs’ tell something about the classifier, but they also tell us something about the nature of cats and dogs. Defining and measuring the seriousness of misbehaviour is not a matter of applying such a simple distinction: it is more like trying to decide which dogs are light grey and which are not. No objective definition which would reduce the measurement of disruption to a simple counting process is possible. This definitional obscurity, unsatisfactory as it may be, is an important clue to one of the ways in which the problem of troublesome behaviour might be tackled.

There are at least two parties to any disruptive incident. Both contribute to its being defined as serious or not, or indeed to whether it becomes defined as a disruptive incident at all.

IS TROUBLESOME BEHAVIOUR A SPECIAL NEED?

Under the terms of current legislation, children have special needs if they have learning difficulties or disabilities which prevent or hinder them from making use of ordinary educational facilities—unless special provision is made for them. The emphasis is not on the disability itself but on the child and his or her needs. It is possible for two children to share a disability, and to the same degree, but not to have the same need of special provision. For example, a child with a physical or sensory disability might be able to join in all the activities of a school through personal motivation, the welcoming attitude of other pupils, and the positive work of teachers to ensure full access to the school’s provision; another child might have to face ignorance or unhelpfulness in a poorly adapted building.

Is it helpful to regard pupils who behave badly as having disabilities which hinder their access to the curriculum? As their behaviour usually impedes the progress of other children, perhaps there is a case for arguing that behavioural problems are not special needs in the same way that disabilities of sight, hearing, mind or mobility are. Unlike disabilities, where normally only the owner is hindered, behavioural problems create difficulties in learning for those children who have to share the same facilities and teachers. Arguments of this sort underpin the case for separation and separate provision for such pupils. To clarify the matter, we will look briefly at what might seem to be straightforward disabilities: visual impairment and blindness.

Very few people we think of as blind can see nothing at all. One of the official definitions of blindness is the inability to see at three metres what ordinary people can see at sixty metres; another is the inability to distinguish the fingers of one’s own hand when it is held at arm’s length. The majority of blind people have some residual vision of a restricted, blurred or shadowy kind. Tests of the degree of blindness control access to state assistance and benefits but do not completely inform us of a blind person’s capabilities. They do not determine how mobile or competent a person is; they do not even tell us whether or not a person can read. Personal determination, help from other people, and access to appropriate technology are important influences on what can be achieved—even for people with extremely limited vision or none at all. This explains the many strange events that are usually treated with levity in newspaper reports: for example, a blind bank robber who escaped into the arms of the police, or a blind driver who claimed to be guided by his dog (which barked once for a green light and twice for a red). Both people probably had enough residual vision, and strength of will, to make them confident that they could cope.

The special needs of blind pupils will vary, and so will the provision necessary to meet those needs. The factors to be taken into account include the attitudes of those with whom they will be educated, the provision the school makes, and their own personal qualities and motivation. Let us suppose that all blind pupils attended ordinary schools and always had done. Some would have been welcomed and helped; others might have been rejected or isolated. Some would have settled down quietly and acquiesced whatever their experiences; others might have become distressed or aggressive. How would these varied responses affect the learning of those other pupils in the class? It is easy to specify the effect of open distress or aggression, but even where there is silent, passive acquiescence learning is affected. Pupils learn more than just the formal curriculum: in the hypothetical example here, they might learn that abandoning the afflicted in this way is an ordinary and acceptable policy. They might grow up to regard the blind in much the same way that slave-owners regarded slaves, as just another component of production—human resources and not human beings.

Three conclusions can be drawn. First, in what might have seemed a simple matter (someone is either blind or not) we find that the individual’s personal qualities are but one of the groups of factors affecting the outcome: other people’s knowledge, understanding and efforts are crucial. Second, individual disabilities affect the learning of others, and what is learned depends partly upon the beliefs and actions of those who do not have those disabilities. Only for a very small minority would provision in ordinary schools be ineffective and disruptive. Third, in deciding what is efficient learning and what is appropriate provision it is not enough to focus on one narrow aspect of school life. The whole social, emotional and moral context must be considered: education is an ethical not a technical activity.

These conclusions support the status of behavioural difficulties as individual needs and the rightness of trying to accommodate such pupils in ordinary schools. This book aims to provide the knowledge and understanding to help teachers improve pupils’ behaviour, and to encourage the determination to succeed and the conviction that helping those afflicted in this way is the moral responsibility of members of the teaching profession.

HOW MUCH MISBEHAVIOUR IS THERE?

Until the Elton report’s research (DES, 1989) statistics on troublesome behaviour were conflicting and unreliable. The Pack Report (HMSO, 1977) on truancy and disruption in Scotland concluded as much. When figures are gathered they are disputed: if too low for the critic’s liking, they are said to indicate teachers’ unwillingness to risk censure in an atmosphere of hostility towards a beleaguered profession; or they may be dismissed as coming from a tainted source—headteachers covering up the shortcomings of their schools. If too high, then they are said to be the exaggeration of interested parties seeking additional compensation and resources. Hargreaves et al. (1975) recorded only one act of violence to staff during their research, as did Lawrence et al. (1977) during their work in a secondary school. In their four-year study discussed in Galloway et al. (1982), twelve of 266 suspensions were for violence to a teacher. A survey by the DES in 1975 (DES, 1980) found the level of violent acts to be 7.68 per 10,000 pupils, and the level of acts of rowdyism to be 3.81 per 10,000 pupils. With a school population of around eight million it is easy to see how a low rate of disruption could generate a daily supply of horrifying anecdotes. Reviewing research, Johnstone and Munn (1987) conclude that possibly one-quarter of teachers are worried by disruption but very few are seriously worried. Surveys by teachers’ unions invariably produce more dramatic results, but it is difficult to know how to allow for sampling distortions: perhaps replies come only from those who are worried. The NAHT claim (reported in The Times, 17.6.88) that there are ninety-five assaults on teachers every day, if taken at face value, would indicate that the number had tripled since the DES survey in 1975.

The research conducted on behalf of the Elton Committee showed that serious trouble was rare in schools, but many teachers were under considerable pressure caused by the frequency of less serious indiscipline and its relentlessness. Primary and secondary teachers reported that the most common types of misbehaviour they had to deal with were such things as talking out of turn, idleness, distracting others and general unruliness. Surprisingly, actual violence to other pupils and staff was more frequent among primary than secondary pupils, but nowhere could it be said to be widespread—with no more than 2 per cent of teachers reporting physical aggression to themselves in the week prior to the survey. Physical aggression, it should be noted, did not mean assault. The researchers’ interviews with teachers indicated that many did not consider themselves assaulted even when they had been pushed or hit by pupils. Some of the reasons for this apparently easy-going attitude, and its significance for the development of teachers’ expertise with difficult pupils, will be explored in Chapter 4.

The term ‘assault’ is emotive, a legalistic category carrying the implication of serious harm; it distorts reality when applied to such things as pushing past a teacher to escape punishment, or being kicked on the shin by an infant in a tantrum. Lawrence et al. (1984) sought information from Europe on disruptive behaviour and uncovered a patchy but broadly similar mix of concerns and uncertainties as exists in Britain. The problems giving most general concern were bullying, vandalism, refusal to obey teacher, bad language and difficult classes (but not difficult schools). The type of offences that most often appear in the press—alcoholism and violence to teachers—w...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Concerns, causes and remedies
• Chapter 2: Exclusion from school
• Chapter 3: Teacher qualities and classroom management skills
• Chapter 4: Pupil perspectives, motives and strategies
• Chapter 5: Controlling stress and confrontations
• Chapter 6: Individuals in context
• Chapter 7: Putting learning into practice
• Further reading
• References