Counter narratives in ‘naughty’ students' accounts: challenges for the discourse of behaviour management

Abstract

The paper is based on a research project that sought to understand schools' behaviour management strategies from the perspective of students who had the most experience of them. It focuses on the contrasting ways in which teacher and student subjectivities are framed and positioned within the discourse. It considers how student accounts were constructed within the framework of the project by engaging with Butler's ideas of how one gives an account of oneself in response to another's call. Also heeding Foucault's call to pay attention to the conditions of truth-telling, the paper looks at how student accounts can be read and put to use. Pupil accounts reveal other selves that encourage a re-thinking of the prior recognition of pupils as (primarily) ‘naughty’ pupils and pose the question of whether they exhibit an aesthetics of the self that maintains a critical relation to existing norms. By destabilising recognition, they expose the limits of the dominant discourse of behaviour management and encourage a deconstructive stance of ‘persistent critique’ towards it. Along the way, the paper also touches upon the methodological dilemmas in researching behaviour management.

Keywords:

• discourse
• subjectivation
• ‘naughty’ pupils
• behaviour management
• accounting for oneself
• counter narratives

Notes

1. (A) Routine intervention: This would contain everyday, classroom-level intervention that falls within the school's behaviour plan. May involve informal liaison with parent/s, or teaching assistant's involvement, or following a pastoral support programme, or action in line with individual educational plan. (B) Co-ordinated intervention: May involve more serious (unpredictable or ‘explosive’) situations and require co-ordinated action. For example, action involving Special Education Needs Coordinator (SENCO), Head of House, or devising alternative curriculum for pupil, action in line with the ‘nurture programme’, formal letters to parents, internal exclusions, etc. (C) Advised by external agencies: Situations that call for specialist advice from outside the school. Exclusions/suspensions requiring sanction/input of local authority, or involving consultations with medical authorities (to eliminate or diagnose autism, dyslexia, ADHD, etc.), serious situations calling for police involvement, etc. (D) Intervention on sites beyond school: Intervention here relates to extreme and chronic situations and is predominantly carried out beyond the school premises, including the involvement of Pupil Referral Units, the police, child protection agencies, social services, mental health specialists, etc.