Challenging Dominant Views on Student Behaviour at School

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-viii

   PDF

2. Introduction: Why It Is Important to Answer Back

   • Anna Sullivan

   Pages 1-14

3. Daring to Disagree About School ‘Discipline’: An Australian Case Study of a Media-Led Backlash

   • Bruce Johnson

   Pages 15-26

4. Understanding and Challenging Dominant Discourses About Student Behaviour at School

   • Bruce Johnson, Anna Sullivan

   Pages 27-43

5. Promoting Pedagogies of Engagement in Secondary Schools: Possibilities for Pedagogical Reform

   • Robert Hattam, Anna Sullivan

   Pages 45-61

6. Goodbye Mr Chips, Hello Dr Phil?

   • Roger Slee

   Pages 63-76

7. Rethinking Mis/Behaviour in Schools: From ‘Youth as a Problem’ to the ‘Relational School’

   • Barry Down

   Pages 77-95

8. Reframing ‘Behaviour’ in Schools: The Role of Recognition in Improving Student Wellbeing

   • Anne Graham, Julia Truscott, Mary Ann Powell, Donnah Anderson

   Pages 97-113

9. ‘Schoolwork’ and ‘Teachers’: Disaffected Boys Talk About Their Problems with School

   • Linda J. Graham

   Pages 115-131

10. Beyond the ‘Habits’ of ‘Punishing, Criticising and Nagging’: Fostering Respectful and Socially Just Student Relations Using Critical Pedagogies

    • Amanda Keddie

    Pages 133-144

11. Overcoming the ‘Hidden Injuries’ of Students from Refugee Backgrounds: The Importance of Caring Teacher–Student Relationships

    • Melanie Baak

    Pages 145-161

12. Against the Tide: Enacting Respectful Student Behaviour Polices in ‘Zero Tolerance’ Times

    • Bruce Johnson, Anna Sullivan

    Pages 163-180

13. ‘Answering Back’: Some Concluding Thoughts

    • Bruce Johnson, Anna Sullivan

    Pages 181-189

14. Back Matter

    Pages 191-196

    PDF

This is a deliberately provocative book. It critiques current student behaviour management practices, seeks to explain the flawed assumptions that justify those practices, and proposes how things could be better for children in our schools if different practices were adopted. It is one of the few books to offer alternative ways of addressing the issues associated with student behaviour at school, and exposes the field to serious and sustained critique from both a research perspective and a children’s rights ideological stance.


The authors address the following questions:

• What ideas dominate current thinking on student behaviour at school?
  
• What are the policy drivers for current practices?
  
• What is wrong with common behaviour approaches?
  
• What key ideologies justify these approaches?
  
• How can we present ethical alternatives to current approaches?
  
• How can a human rights perspective contribute to the development of alternative approaches?
  

In exploring these questions and some ethical alternatives to the status quo, the authors suggest practical ways to ‘answer back’ to calls for more authoritarian responses to student behaviour within our schools.



In doing so, the authors advocate for reforms on behalf of children, and in their interests.

• Alternative approaches to behaviour management
• Authoritarian discourses to behaviour
• Behaviour management
• Classroom management
• Classroom pedagogy
• Human rights perspective
• Managerial behaviour discourses
• Migrant students
• Neoconservative approaches to behaviour
• Pro-social skills
• Refugee students
• Relational schooling
• Rights of children
• School discipline
• Student behaviour
• Student behaviour polices
• Student engagement
• Student wellbeing
• Traditionalist approaches to behaviour
• Working in classrooms

• University of South Australia, School of Education, Australia

  Anna Sullivan

• University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia

  Bruce Johnson

• University of South Australia, Adelaide, Magill, Australia

  Bill Lucas

Dr Anna Sullivan is a Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of South Australia. Her current research interests include critical policy studies, micropolitics, teachers’ work, classroom management and school discipline.


Dr Bruce Johnson is an Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of South Australia. His research interests include human resilience, curriculum theory and development, school reform, classroom management, and sexuality education. 


Bill Lucas is a Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of South Australia. His research interests include pedagogy, social justice, leadership, school reform and the management of learning environments.

Policies and ethics