How can a teacher remove a disobedient pupil?

[Dubious]

• 30 October 2015
  
• From the sectionUS & Canada

This week, a South Carolina deputy was fired after throwing a student to the floor for refusing to leave a classroom. It's not unusual for police officers to work in US schools, but how does the rest of the world deal with student discipline?

According to reports, Deputy Sheriff Ben Fields was brought in to remove a pupil from class after she refused to give her teacher a phone.

Fields was onsite at Spring Valley High School in South Carolina as a school resource officer. School resource officers are police placed in a school full-time as part of a community policing practice, and assist with programmes to reduce crime, drug abuse, violence and provide a safe school environment.

In the 2013-2014 school year, 43% of US public schools had school resource officers on campus, according to figures from the National Center for Education Statistics. The figures also show that more than three in four high schools have armed security staff.

Following the investigation into the incident, Richland County Sheriff, Leon Lott, fired Fields for failing to follow "proper procedures," and said "the manoeuvre he used was not based on training, or acceptable."

However, Lott also said that the student should bear some of the blame as "the whole incident was started by this student."

Kenneth Zeichner, a Professor at the University of Washington's College of Education, specialises in student behaviour and classroom management, and says there is a protocol the teachers are encouraged to follow when students don't obey instructions - but force is not part of that.

When a student fails to co-operate with a teacher, the first step is to encourage a dialogue and get the student to leave the classroom. If this fails and the student continues to disrupt class, they are expected to bring in a more senior figure to negotiate compliance. Ideally, they would turn to a counsellor or social worker who could better engage the student.

"The goal is the safety of the students," says Zeichner.

In a worst case scenario, where the pupil continues to present an issue, the teacher may ask the rest of the class to leave.

Force should only have been implemented if weapons were involved or if there was danger to the other students, says Zeichner.

The BBC spoke to experts and correspondents around the world to find out how other countries deal with disobedient students.

The UK

Police officers in schools are less common than the US, but not unusual. Safer School Partnerships (SSPs) were introduced in 2002, and by 2009, 5,000 schools had formal arrangements with the police. This means that almost 25% of all British schools have some form of police presence on premises.

Thomas Bennett, a school behaviour expert, was appointed by the government to assist teachers in addressing "low-level disruption" in class. He says officers would never be called in to remove a disobedient student at this level.

Officers are "a very good way for students to understand the consequences of their actions and legal rights. But it's very rare they would be used in a troublesome classroom." Bennett says an officer would only be introduced if something was stolen, a fight broke out or if drugs were involved.

However, there is no one protocol in the UK for handling students that refuse to co-operate.

"Teacher management training is relatively on-the-job, and often not addressed clearly. The vast majority of teachers would ask a student to leave the room. If they're quiet, teachers are advised to continue on with the lesson, then make sure they are suspended or removed from school after. If they're persistently disruptive, you ask for someone more senior to come along. The biggest mistake is that teachers think they have to deal with the student then and there."

This senior figure does not have to be a police officer, instead it can be a principal or counsellor.

"Police officers aren't there to keep the peace, they're there to help familiarise children with the idea that they can be there to help them."

Olivia Lace-Evans

Singapore

copyrightGetty Images
It may come as no surprise to outsiders that Singapore, notorious for caning convicts, allows corporal punishment for its students - but only in extreme cases.

Caning used to be a common school punishment in previous generations, but it has become tightly regulated after concerns that it was too harsh.

A pupil is punished "in instances of serious or repeated misconduct", and only in severe cases can they can be caned, says the Education Ministry.

Regulations specifically state that only "a light cane on the palms of the hands or on the buttocks over the clothing" can be meted out - and only for boys. Girls are explicitly exempted.

The punishment also comes with counselling and follow-up guidance, and parents are usually informed first.

Educators tell the BBC that corporal punishment remains rare in schools these days, used as a last resort. Other discipline methods include suspension and detention.

Teachers generally first take the approach of counselling and reasoning with students, particularly with older ones.

"Nowadays just telling students what to do or not to do is insufficient. We have to explain the rationale, and talk about the impact on others," one head of department in a local school told the BBC.

Police intervention is rare, and only where students have threatened teachers or other pupils - even then, the police tend to issue stern warnings rather than take action, another senior teacher told the BBC.

Tessa Wong

India

Corporal punishment is banned in India today and schools are very careful in their dealings with students.

"We cannot take any strict measures. Students, especially older ones in high school, can often be cheeky and get up to all sorts of mischief, especially with teachers who are young and newly recruited," Rashmi Virmani, who teaches 13 and 14 year olds at Delhi's Banyan Tree school, told the BBC.

But there is no use being aggressive, she says. "Today a teacher can't say, 'I'm a teacher and you're a student and you have to listen to me.' Being hoity-toity won't help. Students won't listen. But if you're nice to them, they will listen."

Ms Virmani says she has seen new teachers in tears, walking out of classrooms, unable to control students, but with experience, they learn to manage them better.

But there are times when students cross the line and they need to be disciplined, like when they "show the middle finger in class" or if they get involved in "a physical fight".

"To deal with indiscipline, we call the parents and in serious cases, we suspend a student for a few days," says Ms Virmani.

Geeta Pandey

Australia

As in all countries, Australia sometimes struggles to deal with very disruptive children within its schools. It is rare, but not unheard of, for police officers to be stationed within a school itself.

Earlier this year Walgett Community College in New South Wales became the first school in the state to announce two officers would be based at the campus after a spate of violent incidents. It came after mobile phone footage from the school showed a 13-year-old being badly beaten by fellow students.

New South Wales Police also run anger management classes for pupils. The state of Queensland also has a school-based policing programme, but bills this as a way of building better community relations rather than as a way of providing security.

In some states there is concern about a rise in the number of attacks on teachers by pupils, but generally having police officers patrolling within schools is seen as a last resort.

Jon Donnison

Japan

People may think Japanese schools are filled with well-behaved students who score high in international league tables. In part that is true. But since the 1990s there has been growing concern about rising levels of violence in Japan's schools. It reached fever pitch in 1997 when a 14-year-old student at a school in Kobe murdered two younger schoolmates, and cut off one of his victim's head.

School bullying has also become a recognised, and growing, problem. About 14% of children in Japanese schools are thought to suffer from chronic bullying. In July a 13-year-old boy at a school in northern Japan killed himself. An investigation found the boy had been repeatedly bullied, and that his teachers had done nothing about it.

What is far less reported is violence by teachers. Corporal punishment has been banned in Japanese schools since 1947. But many teachers continue to believe it is necessary, and many parents support them.

In 2012 an education ministry investigation found that teachers had physically punished more than 10,000 students in the previous year. That investigation followed the suicide death of a 17-year-old high school student in Osaka.

The boy had been captain of the school basketball team. After his death it was found the team coach had repeatedly slapped the boy in the face, in front of his team mates, on more than 30 occasions.

The proliferation of smartphones means some of the violence is now being caught on camera in Japan too. One short clip posted on the web two years ago purports to show a volleyball teacher at a school in Hamamatsu repeatedly slapping and verbally abusing a student.

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes

South Korea

Teachers in South Korea were banned from hitting pupils in 2010 after shocking video taken on phones emerged of children being savagely beaten. The Korean Federation of Teachers' Associations accepted the morality of the ban on corporal punishment but said it would cause discipline problems in class.

Despite the ban, teacher violence against children has continued. Last year, a four-year old was seen being hit after she spat out some food she didn't want to eat. In another case, a teenager was repeatedly beaten.

Teachers are allowed to punish pupils with physical exercise. Last year, papers reported the case of a boy who had to be hospitalised after being made to do 800 squats for failing to do his homework.

So how is it now? One teacher in Seoul told the BBC that he feels helpless in the face of a disruptive class. "Our hands are tied," he said.

"The only thing you can do is make them stand at the back of the class. We ask them to be quiet".

Stephen Evans


How can a teacher remove a disobedient pupil? - BBC News

 

[Dubious]

The Surprising Truth About Discipline In Schools

Nick Morrison ,
CONTRIBUTOR
I write about leadership in education and careers.

They are a staple of school discipline policies everywhere but setting detentions and making pupils miss recess are ineffective ways of punishing bad behavior, according to new research.

Instead of changing behavior, these established punishments create resentment and damage the relationship between student and teacher, the study found.

And, according to the academic behind the research, what is perhaps more surprising is that, despite it being used in many schools around the world, this approach to discipline has virtually no solid theoretical grounding at all.

Dr Ruth Payne, a lecturer at Leeds University in the U.K. and herself a former teacher, surveyed students aged 11 to 16 at a school in England to find out their attitudes to traditional punishments and rewards.

A series of questionnaires asked students how they would respond to a range of measures and what was likely to make them behave better or work harder.

Although she is still writing up her research, preliminary findings suggest it may overturn some of the beliefs that underpin school discipline policies.

One is that sanctions that require students to complete detention after class or making them miss all or part of their recess do not make them behave any better.

“Things that encroach on the kids’ time don’t seem to work,” says Dr Payne. “Missing break or getting detentions doesn’t seem to be successful.”

Telling students off in front of the rest of the class or punishing the whole class for misdemeanours committed by a few students are also ineffective and ended up creating resentment and harming the student-teacher relationship.

“Being spoken to in front of the whole class is seen as demeaning,” adds Dr Payne.

Measures that did work included verbal warnings, contact with parents and being spoken to quietly, as opposed to in front of the whole class.

Of course, the whole point of punishment is that it is meant to be unpleasant and for many teachers the finding that students dislike detention is hardly news.

But what is interesting about the research is that the answers were so consistent that it suggests the responses were not just reflecting student attitudes but did relate to how they behaved.

And Dr Payne’s research exposed flaws in the philosophical underpinning of this approach to behavior.

While discipline policies make no distinction between rewards and sanctions for hard-work and behavior, in the students’ minds there are very clear demarcations.

The study found that pupils distinguished between rewards, which were seen as to do with school work, and punishments, which were seen as to do with behavior. Punishments handed out for not doing work were perceived as being really about behavior, such as not paying attention, Dr Payne says.

“Students perceive a distinction between what they’re rewarded for and what they’re punished for, and I don’t think many teachers see that,” she adds.

And at a more fundamental level, while the use of praise is widely supported by research, she said there was little evidence on the effectiveness of different punishments in schools.

Given how much research goes into all other areas of a teacher’s job, this deficiency in what many see as a key part of their role – and certainly the one that causes most sleepless nights – is surprising.

“Behavior policies have no real theoretical basis at all,” she says. “It is based on an approach which is not found in any other area of teaching.”

Rather than being based on evidence, discipline policies rely on a behaviorist approach: that if behavior is reinforced it will continue and if it is not reinforced it will stop.

“That is great if you are training rats or pigeons but not when you are dealing with students,” says Dr Payne. “We don’t take that approach in other areas of education so I don’t know why we should have it in a behavior policy.”

Students may learn that bad behavior has consequences, but they are not learning how to behave better.

“It might make teachers feel good to put someone in detention, but children aren’t being taught to behave,” Dr Payne adds.

Dr Payne recognises that as a pilot study, its findings will need to be confirmed and extended by further research. Her work should also be a siren call for more research to understand what works and why. She is also adamant that her work does not mean schools should rip up their behavior policies and start again.

But what school leaders should do is look at why they hand out certain punishments, what message those punishments are sending to students and, more importantly, whether they really make a difference.


The Surprising Truth About Discipline In Schools

 

[RoadRunner401]

Pakistani and i believe, but i could be wrong Indian style.

 

[Thəorətic Muslim]

Easy suspend them for a few days. Respect is taught at home not in schools, if the parent thinks that they can 'wing it' by letting their child learn by watching TV then the product will be in front of them to supervise when it's told it cant go to school.

As far as the S. Carolina deputy is concerned, he did the right thing. It probably would be too long before she ends up on the street as another idiot who lacks the ability to learn a skill or trade. There is a clear policy in schools no cell phones can ring or be used to send texts while a class is being taught, if they do they're taken away by the teacher.

Its one thing if she got a text message from her family saying that her mother's surgery went well, and teachers do allow students to have conversations if it is a family emergency, but quite another if she was playing candy crush or words with friends.

 

[Dubious]

Education study finds in favour of traditional teaching styles

Report from Sutton Trust and Durham University says way that pupils learn ‘remains a mysterious subject’

The latest study on teaching methods is likely to set off further debate. Photograph: David Davies/PA
Richard Adams, Education editor
Friday 31 October 2014 07.00 GMTLast modified on Friday 31 October 201410.07 GMT

Schools need to put more effort into evaluating what makes effective teaching, and ensure that discredited practices are rooted out from classrooms, according to a new study published by the Sutton Trust and Durham University.

The study suggests that some schools and teachers continue using methods that cause little or no improvement in student progress, and instead rely on anecdotal evidence to back fashionable techniques such as “discovery learning,” where pupils are meant to uncover key ideas for themselves, or “learning styles,” which claims children can be divided into those who learn best through sight, sound or movement.

Instead, more traditional styles that reward effort, use class time efficiently and insist on clear rules to manage pupil behaviour, are more likely to succeed, according to the report – touching on a raw nerve within the British teaching profession, which has seen vigorous debates between “progressive” and “traditional” best practice.

Professor Robert Coe of Durham University, one of the authors, said assessing effective teaching was difficult, because exactly how pupils learn remains a mysterious subject.

“It is surprisingly difficult for anyone watching a teacher to judge how effectively students are learning. We all think we can do it, but the research evidence shows that we can’t. Anyone who wants to judge the quality of teaching needs to be very cautious,” Coe said.

The evidence collected by Coe also rejects the use of streaming or setting, where pupils are grouped by ability within classes or year-groups. It remains popular in many schools despite being supported by little evidence that it improves achievement. Ability groups can result in teachers “going too fast with the high-ability groups and too slow with the low,” according to the research, and so cancels the advantages of tailoring lessons to the different sets of pupils.

Instead, the best research suggests that teachers with a command of their subject, allied with high-quality instruction techniques such as effective questioning and assessment, are the most likely to impart the best learning to their pupils.

Daisy Christodoulou, a former teacher and author of Seven Myths About Education, a book that highlighted classroom orthodoxies, said: “This is a brilliant and helpful report, full of very practical advice and recommendations. I think it really moves the debate forward and has the potential to spark genuine improvements.

“It is upfront about the problem we face: we do not have as clear an idea of what good teaching is as we might think. So before we can actually discuss how to improve teaching practice, we need to clarify what good practice looks like. Otherwise we risk promoting practices that are not actually very effective.”

Michael Tidd, deputy head teacher at a Nottinghamshire primary school, said the findings should come as no surprise. “What remains to be seen is whether this report will reach the wider teaching community and have an impact in classrooms,” Tidd said.

“Until teachers, school leaders – and perhaps vitally, Ofsted inspectors – are brought up to speed with the latest developments, the impact will be limited.”

Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: “Successive governments have ignored the importance of investing in teachers, including teacher education, continuous professional development and teacher retention. Instead, policy has erred on the side of believing that changing the status of a school will somehow raise the quality of teaching within it.”


Education study finds in favour of traditional teaching styles | Education | The Guardian

 

[RoadRunner401]

Easy suspend them for a few days. Respect is taught at home not in schools, if the parent thinks that they can 'wing it' by letting their child learn by watching TV then the product will be in front of them to supervise when it's told it cant go to school.

As far as the S. Carolina deputy is concerned, he did the right thing. It probably would be too long before she ends up on the street as another idiot who lacks the ability to learn a skill or trade. There is a clear policy in schools no cell phones can ring or be used to send texts while a class is being taught, if they do they're taken away by the teacher.

Its one thing if she got a text message from her family saying that her mother's surgery went well, and teachers do allow students to have conversations if it is a family emergency, but quite another if she was playing candy crush or words with friends.

Oh, please this has law suit written all over it. The only thing she will learn from this is how to make fast buck.

 

[Dubious]

Easy

we do not have as clear an idea of what good teaching is as we might think. So before we can actually discuss how to improve teaching practice, we need to clarify what good practice looks like. Otherwise we risk promoting practices that are not actually very effective

what message those punishments are sending to students and, more importantly, whether they really make a difference.

he did the right thing

there is a protocol the teachers are encouraged to follow when students don't obey instructions - but force is not part of that.

It probably would be too long before she ends up on the street as another idiot who lacks the ability to learn a skill or trade.

Very judgmental of you

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Easy suspend them for a few days. Respect is taught at home not in schools, if the parent thinks that they can 'wing it' by letting their child learn by watching TV then the product will be in front of them to supervise when it's told it cant go to school.

As far as the S. Carolina deputy is concerned, he did the right thing. It probably would be too long before she ends up on the street as another idiot who lacks the ability to learn a skill or trade. There is a clear policy in schools no cell phones can ring or be used to send texts while a class is being taught, if they do they're taken away by the teacher.

Its one thing if she got a text message from her family saying that her mother's surgery went well, and teachers do allow students to have conversations if it is a family emergency, but quite another if she was playing candy crush or words with friends.

The big problem is we are mixing people who want to learn with idiots who feel school is just required daycare.

Boot these fools out and put them in some basic GED school.

 

[Schutz]

Police are required everywhere in society, older teenagers are generally among the most disorderly in general life so why do they expect a school, a huge congregation of teenagers to be peaceful at all times.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Police are required everywhere in society, older teenagers are generally among the most disorderly in general life so why do they expect a school, a huge congregation of teenagers to be peaceful at all times.

My school was peaceful. If people didn't comply they got kicked out. The mayor's son even got kicked out of mine. They didn't take any crap.
There wasn't any of these "resource officers" either

 

[Indus Falcon]

Police are required everywhere in society, older teenagers are generally among the most disorderly in general life so why do they expect a school, a huge congregation of teenagers to be peaceful at all times.

Because in the rest of the civilized world, you don't have police in high schools?

 

[Arya Desa]

Bring back corporal punishment. Those hormonal wastemen need some discipline.

 

[fallstuff]

There was no need for this take down. if she was refuses to leave, they could ask the other students to leave, so this student could be handled in a more acceptable way.

Common sense should dictate that never turn a situation to worse when one doesn't need to. The incident is blown way out of proportion with the cop losing his job and the school district looking straight at a civil action.

 

[I.R.A]

Pakistani and i believe, but i could be wrong Indian style.View attachment 269276

Pakistani. The mattress in this pic is the proof.

 

[Zibago]

I endured this till 5 th class

It was criminalized in Islamabad after i advanced into 6th class though