Behaviour, classroom management and student ‘control’: enacting policy in the English secondary school

Abstract

This paper draws on an ESRC‐funded study of policy enactments in English secondary schools (RES‐062‐23‐1484) based on case‐study work in four similar ‘ordinary’ schools. The study has two main objectives; to develop a theory of policy enactment and to explore empirically the differences in the enactment of policy in similar contexts. Taking these objectives as drivers for analysis, this paper explores the way that managing behaviour is translated and enacted in institutional policy and practice. This paper argues that behaviour, classroom management and student ‘control’ continue to be significant aspects of education policy and practice in schools. It examines what is involved in policy enactment from a policy sociology perspective. Some examples of ‘doing’ discipline policy work are then considered. The paper argues that policy, even when it is centrally mandated, is translated, adjusted and worked on differently by diverse sets of policy actors. Thus, variability and distinctiveness characterise policy enactments at the different levels of practice within and between individual, but similar, schools.

Keywords:

• policy enactment
• behaviour for learning
• discipline

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank colleagues at the ‘International Sociology of Education Conference 2009 – A celebration of the sociology of education: the contribution of Len Barton’ for feedback on an earlier version of this paper. We would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their critical support and insightful comments.

Notes

1. This special collection of papers celebrates Len Barton’s contribution to the sociology of education. While his substantive focus has been with social justice and inclusion, notably in the field of disability studies, his work has always been underpinned by a sociology of education and a sociology for education. Barton and Meighan’s (1978) introduction in Sociological interpretations of schooling and classrooms made a passionate call for ‘meaningful links between macro and micro approaches’ as well as a ‘demand for the emergence of theory at both the formal and substantive levels of analysis’ in the sociology of education (5). This paper has attempted to take these ‘calls’ and ‘demands’ seriously in relation to a current piece of policy sociology research.

2. These points were raised by John Coldron in an email discussion in response to our earlier paper at BERA 2009 (Ball et al. 2009).