Rules in Everyday School Life: Teacher Strategies Undermine Pupil Participation

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the strategies which teachers use in their everyday interactions with pupils to work with and uphold school and classroom rules and to what extent their rule-work strategies give pupils opportunities to have a say and participate in rule-making. The study is based on fieldwork in two Swedish primary schools. According to the findings, the teachers use four main rule-work strategies: (a) assertion, (b) explanation, (c) negotiation, and (d) preparation. The findings show that it is usually the adults in school who make decisions about school rules and that pupils are seldom given any opportunities to create, modify or abolish formal rules through open negotiations. Furthermore, when school democracy meetings take place, they tend to be illusory, reducing negotiation to a matter of figuring out the "right" answer and confirming to proposals from authorities.

‘The teacher almost made me cry’ Narrative analysis of teachers' reactive classroom management strategies as reported by students diagnosed with ADHD

“…Thus, as important as it is to pay attention to how individual disruptive behaviour affects the classroom community (see, e.g., Cothran, Kulinna, & Garrahy, 2009), it is also important with regard to how the community affects the individual. This is one premise of promising class-wide positive-behaviour support interventions (see, e.g., Närhi et al, 2014) and of creating democratic school culture (see Lewis & Burman, 2008;Thornberg, 2009). Thus, instead of facilitating peers to discipline or otherwise to fortify the exclusionary ideal-deviant dichotomy in the classroom (Hempel-Jorgensen, 2009), it becomes essential to facilitate the sensation of affinity, of belonging and of wanting to be a part of the whole.…”

“…Lewis and Burman (2008) point out that, although teachers are willing to promote the student voice in CRM, their use of rewards instead of more inclusive techniques, such as discussion and negotiation, fundamentally subdue that voice. Similarly, Thornberg (2009) remarks on teacher practices that sub-due student voice. He concludes his fieldwork in two Swedish primary schools by stating that students are seldom given a voice in creating, modifying or abolishing formal rules by teachers and their inclusion alongside teachers in school democracy is rather illusory, tending to have them merely confirm teacher proposals than actually influence in creating school/classroom culture.…”

‘They don't have as good a life as us': a didactic study of the content of human rights education with eleven-year-old pupils in two Swedish classrooms

“…Educational research on HRE is extensive and has been carried out from different perspectives. Some studies adopt an ethnographic approach (Thornberg, 2009;Giamminuti & See, 2017), while others are more oriented towards analysing the curriculum (Philips, 2016;Robinson, 2017;Parker, 2018). The majority of studies focus on questions about how children are (or should be) respected, listened to and taken seriously (I'Anson & Allan, 2006;Theobald, Danby & Ailwood, 2011) and there is a wide and rich literature on student participation and citizenship (Alderson, 2016;Emerson & Lloyd, 2017;Osler & Starkey, 2018).…”

Mänskliga rättigheter som innehåll i undervisningen.

“…När det gäller forskning om utbildning av barn och unga i rättigheter finns det forskning med etnografiska ansatser (Thornberg, 2009;Giamminuti & See, 2017), läroplansanalyser (Philips, 2016, Robinson, 2017Parker, 2018) och studier inriktade på elevdeltagande och medborgarskap (Alderson, 2016;Emerson & Lloyd, 2017;Osler & Starkey, 2018). Det finns även forskning om hur barn respekteras genom att lyssnas på eller genom att tas på allvar, vilket är en särskilt framträdande forskningsinriktning (I' Anson & Allan, 2006;Theobald, Ailwood & Danby, 2011).…”