Against the Tide: Enacting Respectful Student Behavior Polices in “Get Tough” Times

• In Event: Reshaping Educational Practice for Improvement: How Schools Mediate and Enact Government Reforms

Abstract

Objectives
This paper reports research that investigated the development and enactment of student behaviour policy in schools. More specifically, the study addressed the following research questions:

• How do schools interpret, reconcile and make decisions about what student behaviour research, legislation and advice to consider when developing local student behaviour policies?
• What micropolitical skills and understandings do they employ to do this work?

Theoretical framework
Schools are under increased pressure to ‘control’ student behaviour to ensure ‘good order’. This pressure is mounting in many countries, as there is a growing sense of social and moral panic about students’ behaviour in schools (Ball, Maguire, & Braun, 2012). The media reflect society’s unease by consistently reporting widespread public and political concern over allegedly negative and deteriorating student behaviour in our schools.

An alternative perspective to this ‘law and order’ view of managing student behaviour draws on more liberal approaches that respect students’ human dignity, treat students fairly rather than equally, and guide the development of pro-social skills that promote educational rather than managerial discourses related to behaviour (Slee, 1995).

Methods & Data Sources
In-depth case studies were conducted to investigate policy development and enactment work related to student behaviour in five schools in South Australia. This involved collecting four kinds of data (based on Ball, Braun, & Maguire, 2009, p. 2):

1. contextual information;
2. policy texts;
3. observations; and
4. semi-structured and focus-group interviews with school leaders, teachers, and other staff.

Results
Data analysis showed that there were some common themes across the case studies about how schools enacted student behaviour policies. The themes were:

• Rejection of deficit views of students: Leaders adopted discursive practices that continually rejected deficit beliefs about students.
• Guiding principles focused on educational discourse: Leaders adopted principles that acted as key organising ideas and guided policy work.
• Commitment to enacting respectful student behaviour policies: Leaders used and promoted micropolitical strategies that kept respectful behaviour practices at the fore.

Scholarly significance
This study contributes to a greater understanding of how schools develop and enact student behaviour policies that do not aim to control students but rather aim to treat students with dignity and enable them to develop as individuals with a sense of agency within a community of learners. Moreover, it identifies schools as having a strong sense of local agency when leaders act not only as narrators, but also as entrepreneurs, enlisting enthusiasts to support a cohesive approach.

Authors

• Anna M. Sullivan, University of South Australia

• Bruce Raymond Johnson, University of South Australia