Pupils’ Fear in the Classroom: Portraits From Palestine and England

ABSTRACT

This article explores the concept of fear related to the authoritarian classroom and how children express its influence on their learning. Its investigations draw on the comments of four classes of primary-age pupils, two from a school near London, England, and two from boys’ and girls’ schools in the West Bank, Palestine. It is written by one English and one Palestinian author. The authors ascertained that all four classrooms were underpinned by an authoritarian pedagogy, reflected in a dependence relationship in which the teacher is dominant and pupils are dependent. Despite the very different political contexts of the two settings for this research, the findings indicated that the persistence of a hierarchical normalizing judgment in both settings seemed to provoke fear of the teacher’s disappointment, disapproval, and/or punishments. Pupils’ fear in both settings led to them feeling lost, lacking confidence, keeping silent, and being distracted from their learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Child voice
• children’s drawings
• fear of failure
• learning

Acknowledgments

Grateful thanks are due to all the children and teachers who willingly participated in this research. We would also like to thank Prof. Clive Harber for his very helpful comments on an early draft of the article.