Living Contradiction

A teacher's examination of tension and disruption in schools,in classrooms and in self

Sean Warren

• Publisher: Crown House Publishing
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781785831775
• eBook ISBN: 9781785832642
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Co-authored by Sean Warren and Stephen Bigger, Living Contradiction: A Teacher's Examination of Tension and Disruption in Schools, in Classrooms and in Self charts Warren's journey as an experienced and successful teacher who lost himself in his rigid commitment to upholding standards, and documents his research to find a better way. Values are in vogue in education: they are stated in school policies across the land. They are a list of what the school wants people to think about them and their educational aims that they are caring, effective, and ethical in rooting pedagogy and all educational processes in positive relationships between teachers and pupils. Amidst the reality of classroom life, however, the very best of intentions can be compromised as the insidious influences of power, pressure, and responsibility come to bear. In this candid account, presented in the form of a dual narrative, Warren describes how he adopted a persona infused with control and intolerance as his authoritarian approach to suppressing conflict in the secondary school classroom became increasingly incongruent with his personal values and aspirations as an educator. Then, through undertaking his action research project and engaging in a process of reconceptualisation under co-author Bigger's mentorship, Warren began to explore how he could redefine his classroom leadership and authenticate his teaching practice without compromising standards or authority. Living Contradiction investigates the efficacy of Warren's modified approach and tells the story of how he overcame the incessant demands of tension and disruption by becoming 'confident in uncertainty'. Grappling with both the philosophical and the pragmatic, the authors offer two distinct perspectives in their commentary on Warren's journey supporting their interspersed critical reflections with thought-provoking insights into the methodology and outcomes of Warren's research project. The book is split into five parts and is punctuated throughout with expert surveying of a wide range of related research that challenges the status quo on the effectiveness of punishment and authoritarianism as approaches to behaviour management. Furthermore, in exploring how schooling should be as much about developing motivated citizens as encouraging qualifications, Living Contradiction goes in search of answers to the question that all educationalists must ask: 'What do we want our education system to do for our children?' Suitable for teachers, NQTs, and policy makers, Living Contradiction is a resonatory self-examination of teacher identity and a significant contribution to the debate about how schools and classrooms are run.

Part I

Power Over

Chapter 3

Subscribing to Authoritarianism

Sean

It was late September/early October 2014. I was visiting a primary school, waiting to speak to the class teacher of the lad I was working with. It was breaktime, and the double glazing dulled the noise and energy emitting from the playground. The teaching assistant was busy preparing for the activity which awaited the Year 6 class when they returned after the sound of the bell. We casually engaged in conversation about education in general, then something quite specific.

The teaching assistant repeated a statistic to me just hours after I had first heard it in the morning media. She stated with some conviction that “the equivalent of 38 days of teaching was lost per year” due to low level disruption. The statistic emanated from Ofsted’s Below the Radar report (2014: 5). The report had stimulated my interest for it emerged some months after I had finally submitted my research, and weeks before I was due to defend my thesis through the viva voce. I wondered if the examiners would catch wind of it and ask for my opinion, hence I analysed it with some intent to position my study in relation to it. In summary, the publication could have been written as a template for my unexamined perspectives prior to study; but now, six years on, it represented a skeleton to me, a narrative with some substance but devoid of flesh, critical insight, or depth. I was naturally interested to read what was reported, for the notion of low level disruptions encapsulated much of my work and research over the last few decades, but equally I was as intrigued by what was left unsaid. It was this facet which came to enable me not only to probe beyond observable behaviour, techniques, and functional systems to appreciate something of the complexity, but also to expose the inadequacy of simplistic, reductionist, quick-fix ‘solutions’. I admit, on the face of it, not an easy position to defend when you find something that ‘works’ in the face of pupil resistance and challenge – whether it be the crutch of a ‘consequences’ system, arbitrarily administering detentions, or even looking mean and scary. Believe me, I know – I was that man!

If the teaching assistant had ventured past the headlines to read the full report, her opinion would have been further reinforced. Reflecting on our discussion, the publication’s selective anecdotes from staff and parents resembled her portrayal of classroom life and mirrored her daily frustrations of trying to get the pupils to concentrate on work.

So very seductive and convincing. I have acknowledged my own susceptibility in the past to uncritically accept headlines and embrace fads. My reading of the literature provided the term ‘discourse’ to remind me, or rather alert me, to probe beneath the surface. Ball (2013: loc. 334) provides a working definition: “discourse is the conditions under which certain statements are considered to be truth”. Regulative discourse relates to a school’s values and beliefs – for example, in relation to discipline and how ‘misbehaviour’ is understood and dealt with. Within schools, Bernstein (2000) suggests two types of pedagogic discourse: regulative and instructional. Below the Radar advanced concerns, if not fear, around both – one was impacting negatively on the other and schools needed to sort it.

The ‘equivalent to 38 days of teaching lost’ statement certainly caught my attention. Now, hopefully a little more discerning, I noticed that the summative figure was calculated from a baseline figure which states, “pupils are potentially losing up to an hour of learning each day in English schools” (Ofsted 2014: 4; emphasis added). Very convenient to scale up and transform it into an eye-catching headline. Yet, generalising a small sample to potentially apply to all English schools,1 the calculation resonated with literature I had found which had been used previously to provide supporting ‘evidence’ for Lee Canter’s Assertive Discipline. I mention this because I recall purchasing the video set, adding its prescribed techniques to my armoury, and accepting its philosophical assertion that the adult is unequivocally in charge as affirmation for my existing approach.

“Can Assertive Discipline improve learning?” asked Canter back in 1988, as a prelude to citing proponent McCormack’s (1989) study of off-task behaviour during reading instruction. The resounding affirmative answer is presented through a statistic which equates to a headline figure of ‘five hours of teaching time saved per month’. The unequivocal conclusion is derived from a creative calculation: “Classrooms using Assertive Discipline had 5 per cent more on-task time than classrooms not using the program” (Canter 1988: 79–80). “That’s 15 minutes per day, 75 minutes per week, 5 hours per month more time teachers have to teach and all students have to learn” (Canter 1988: 73). The summative figure omits any consideration of complex variables inherent in classrooms and assumes the attained statistic to be an indisputable constant with widespread application.

Initially, it was the official endorsement of this ‘no nonsense’ model by the Labour government in the white paper Excellence in Schools (DfEE 1997) which ensured its prominence in my literature review. A multi-million pound US franchise, Assertive Discipline has since been criticised in the United States and subsequently in the UK. Rigoni and Walford (1998) express concern that there was no indication that the government had engaged in an extensive debate, particularly in light of criticisms of the method over the preceding decade. The power of a statistic in a headline seems to negate subsequent questions about reliability and validity. As I illustrate in due course, the requirement to keep abreast of the literature confirmed that the subsequent coalition and Conservative governments were also well versed in using selected reports to substantiate their ideology and policies. Interestingly, this type of calculation was also applied to the copying down of objectives. Debra Kidd (2014) estimates somewhere in the region of 32.5 hours a year is consumed by this practice. It was not reported so widely.

With playtime still in full swing, my teaching assistant companion continued to state categorically that ‘behaviour is getting worse’. I sympathised with the view, and in the not too distant past would probably have engaged in the swapping of war stories to substantiate the assertion. As it was, my review of the literature had informed me that back in 1989 the Elton Report had stated that the government could provide no definitive answer to the question of whether discipline in schools was getting worse. Likewise, in 2011, the House of Commons Education Committee were unable to offer “any evidence-based or objective judgment on either the state of behaviour in schools today or whether there has been an improvement over time” (HCEC 2011: 3). I quietly recalled Hayden (2011) making reference to disturbances at Winchester Public School as far back as 1818 in order to illustrate that students’ misbehaviour is far from a new phenomenon.

In conversation, as now in print, I will refrain from contradicting, minimising, or undermining the debilitating effect of disruptive behaviour on those charged with curbing it. For all its limitations, I consider the concerns raised in Below the Radar to be valid. As I illustrate in later chapters, in my own experience, one class, one clique, or even one child can have a disproportionately negative effect on one’s sense of competence, let alone class learning. Thus, it seems apt that the Ofsted report should offer the lay reader direction and guidance on what might be done. And, indeed it does, citing the concepts of high expectations and consistency as pillars to the systematic approaches enshrined in school behaviour policies; naturally, the inappropriate wearing of uniform is presented as symptomatic of standards. The section entitled ‘where schools are getting it right’ identifies establishing “a positive climate for learning” on one hand (Ofsted 2014: 6), and staff implementing the behaviour policy “rigorously” on the other (ibid.: 24). Consulting a dictionary, I was interested to note that the adjective for rigorous is characterised by “rigidly severe or harsh, as people, rules, or discipline”, and triggers synonyms such as strict, tough, hard, inflexible, draconian, uncompromising, demanding, and, of course, authoritarian when applied to a belief or system. I am sure the meaning here is more to do with being thorough, careful, and diligent, though I believe it is worth considering the subtlety of connotations.

The notion of sanctions and rewards represent the advocated approach. The language used is consequences and misdemeanours which are logged on behaviour systems to record evidence of schools’ intolerance of ‘bad behaviour’. These then form part of the skeleton I referred to – a functional framework. As I will qualify below, I recognise it well. If Ofsted or the Department for Education needed a champion to implement these strategies, I could have been that bloke. On the school’s behalf, I implemented a consequential sanction system; I isolated the most disruptive students – I even worked with them one to one on intervention approaches; I volunteered to be involved in every detention; I trained the staff; I demanded consistency; I patrolled the corridors; and I had the undiluted support of the head teacher.

This unique role as lead teacher for behaviour, extending over four years, brought to the surface a lifetime of subliminal messages which had come to shape my professional identity. The reflexive enquiry afforded by action research enabled me to articulate what I had become as I donned the persona of an authority figure on a daily basis over many years. My study shines a discerning light on the detrimental impact on the psyche of the adult charged with quelling disruption and with being consistent in adhering to a behaviour policy. My brief conversation with my teaching assistant companion reminded me of a bygone propensity to uncritically soak up ideological and political memes. Aligned with formative influences, instilled way before I had even thought of becoming a teacher, I had somehow absorbed a discourse of crime and punishment to frame my conception of children: if you are ‘bad’, expect to be punished. By the turn of the millennium I was a reputable teacher with an established way of being in the classroom. I was apparently successful and effective. The perfect candidate, it seemed, for a role beyond the confines of my own classroom.

An Authoritarian School

In 2003 an exciting job opportunity came my way. At that point in my career I’d had experience of working periodically in places such as Papua New Guinea, Romania, and the United States, and I’d had a stint of working as a supply teacher for six months after graduating. I was now settled into my fourth school in the UK. Seven years previously, I had changed from PE to RE and had attained my second degree in the process. As I approached the interview I was confident. I was already known to the panel at the local education authority, for I was an advanced skills teacher as well as an established head of department. The post which had caught my attention required the successful candidate to deliver and disseminate the government’s national strategy for behaviour and attendance to the county’s secondary and special schools. In truth, had I been asked, I would have struggled to qualify my approach on a philosophical or theoretical level. Instead, I convinced them that I was a worthy candidate because my references and my pragmatic answers affirmed that whatever it was I did ‘worked’.

I had progressively come to utilise a combination of authoritarian tips, techniques, strategies, tricks of the trade, and habits to complement personality, status, and reputation to ensure order. I had constructed my own personal theory which was shaped by experience. Young (1992) calls this approach “technical eclecticism”, where one has a tendency to utilise one organising theory and borrow supplementary methods from other theories. Despite acknowledging the merits of Bill Rogers’ (2002) positive behaviour leadership model, which advocates shared rights and responsibilities for both students and staff, my practice was dominated by adherence to behaviourist theories, including Canter’s much vaunted Assertive Discipline. The literature informed me that the endorsement of ‘implicit’ or ‘tacit’ theories ensures that much teacher action becomes the product of custom, habit, coercion, and ideology, which acts to unconsciously constrain performance. In the hectic nature of the school day, these f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise for Living Contradiction
• Title Page
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Prologue: Sean
• Preface: Stephen
• Introduction: The Background to the Book
• Part I: Power Over
• Part II: Methodological Considerations
• Part III: Degrees of Resistance: Low Level Disruptions
• Part IV: Power With
• Part V: Working with Colleagues
• Epilogue
• Appendix A: FIRO Theory
• Appendix B: Temple Index of Functional Fluency (TIFF) Descriptors
• Appendix C: Professional Development
• References
• Copyright
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