SITUACIÓN DE DORIS:

5.2.1.1P

a) Integrated b) targeted INTEGRATED

Two students described experiences of an integrated approach to their issue that was led by the pastoral care team; they were both very positive about the intervention and outcomes. Research on effective multi-agency working focuses largely on the agencies involved and as such is beyond the scope of this study.

For Laura the integrated approach involved her teachers and social care. A member of the pastoral care team who was also a member of the school’s senior management team was the key worker. Initially the intervention involved just one member of the pastoral care team. Laura went on to describe the involvement of social care, in particular a Family Support Worker, who was involved in supporting Laura’s mother to manage her family independently and who also helped Laura to negotiate any extra needs that she had in school. Finally Laura described the involvement of a therapist to support her in dealing with her depression. The pastoral care team were also able to facilitate therapeutic sessions within school, so Laura missed minimal lesson time.

Laura described the professionals’ facilitative attitude, coming alongside and enabling her to tell her story at her own pace rather than placing themselves as the expert. I interpret Laura’s description of such experiences as involving person-centred skills (Mearns, Thorne, & McLeod, 2013; Rogers, 1951, 1995) . Furthermore, not only did the professionals keep her conversations confidential but Laura was aware of the confidentiality (93-104) indicating this had been made explicit. Laura describes this as helping her to feel safe and I suggest she also felt more in control, an important factor in enabling honest disclosure (Culley & Bond, 2004).

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Jason described how he devised a behaviour intervention with his head of year, which they both agreed would assist with his concentration in lessons. His head of year then facilitated an integrated approach by involving all the staff who taught Jason.

From the perspective of SDT, both Laura’s description of facilitative person centred skills, and Jason’s description of joint collaboration, highlights the positive impact of teachers’ support of students’ competence and autonomy through their (related) interactions. In Laura’s case their support of autonomy competence and relatedness extended to her mother. Furthermore, there is the suggestion from these interviews that supporting Jason and Laura’s competence, relatedness and autonomy in these social and behavioural issues also positively impacted self-regulatory learning for them (see section 5.3.3.2).

because at the end of the day like it's work, we like, we don't really like work, you'll not like work roughly at this age, well you won't really any age, but like it's just thinking you've got to do it so just go for it [Jason 288]

No, I know I got like Us and stuff like that because like I weren't here to do like revision, I was only here to do the exam and I weren't here to do the work either so, but I'm not going to just blame it on that, I'm I am really being in school to do it, so, and I wish I would have done revised more and asked school what I had to do to get what I needed [Laura 343]

These positive effects of the integrated response from pastoral care supports Epstein’s (1990) view that when the areas of influence on a student are addressed together, the greatest gains are seen.

TARGETED

From Nicki and Jess’s description of pastoral care I would suggest that the Pastoral Care Team acted in a targeted and informed way. This ensured that students accessed appropriate support at times of risk. Nicki reported input from pastoral care as she transitioned to the school earlier that year. Pratt & George (2006) highlight that the key success factor in transition is whether a child makes a friend within the first month of attending the new school. Thus the school’s targeted input for Nicki was well placed and Nicki valued the input she had received (95-99). Similarly Jess had been given a maths mentor for year 11

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and was appreciative that her support had been targeted at her greatest area of need (262).

5.2.1.2T

P

R

Students reported that if teachers held a positive attitude towards them, it improved their learning, motivation and behaviour. Conversely, teachers’ negative judgments about pupils became barriers to learning, lowering students’ motivation and engagement, increasing frustration and, in the long term, the student’s sense of self-efficacy. My interpretation of student voiced perceptions is that negative judgments made by teachers that were not checked out for accuracy with the student, resulted in inaccurate or only partially accurate assumptions being made, (for examples see page 81 - 84 of chapter 4). As a consequence the learning needs of the student were not addressed and frustrations in both students and teachers resulted, producing negative spirals in both learning and/or behaviour.

A teacher’s ability to understand how a student learnt was also highly valued. When teachers showed empathy and worked alongside students to assist them with their learning struggles, students reported this improved their study and achievement. Conversely, students reported frustrations with teachers and disengagement from lessons when teachers repeated the explanations that students had not understood. It appears to me that some teachers expected that all students would be similar in their learning and did not respond to individual differences in learning, or differentiate work accordingly. This led to students’ belief that teachers viewed them as deficient rather than recognising their teaching method was ineffective.

These findings relate to theoretical perspectives of extended attachment (Bowlby, 1988; Pianta, et al., 1997) and to two of the person-centred teacher student variables, unconditional positive regard and empathy (Rogers & Freiberg, 1994) and concurs with research that suggests a positive correlation between person-centred teacher variables and positive achievement and attitude outcomes. (Cornelius-White, 2007; Roorda, et al., 2011). From an SDT viewpoint it can be explained with regard to how well the student teacher relationship supports a student’s sense of competence relatedness and

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autonomy. When teachers support a student’s sense of competence by providing alternative explanations to help them understand, according to SDT this will have improved their competence and as a consequence their motivation. Furthermore when teachers supported competence by coming alongside and helping students to complete a task for themselves, they also supported a student’s sense of autonomy and relatedness, for example:

She like sometimes gives you hints like saying you've done that wrong do the opposite [Nicki 244]

According to SDT this assists the development of intrinsic motivation which in turn improves the quality of academic performance (Deci, et al., 1991) .

The strategy which was also identified in this theme; students minimising relationships with teachers to avoid effort will be discussed later in section 5.2.2.3 as it also relates to the theme of learning challenge.

5.2.1.3I

P

These findings suggest that, for most students, the effects of peer relationships could be positive, negative or both. This concurs with evidence from other researchers showing that the peers can increase or decrease student motivation depending on the attitudes and values of the peers with whom students spend most time (Berndt, et al., 1990). However, it also highlighted a divergence with research as these students’ friendships did not always fit neatly into positive or negative categories as students’ reported peers who could sometimes help and sometimes hinder them in academic achievement.

For the two students who did not report being influenced by others I wonder if their reported independence and detachment from peers is a product of low classroom peer acceptance as outlined in the literature review and a factor in Bradley’s reported disengagement from school (Buhs, et al., 2006). However, it is not sufficiently covered in their interviews to be anything other than a tentative interpretation. Indeed an equally possible interpretation of Nicki’s behaviour is that she shows high levels of self-regulation and as a consequence is likely to improve her academic performance (Kuhnle, Hofer, & Kilian, 2011).

Finally one student reported incidents of bullying affecting her at school. It is beyond the scope of this study to cover this experience in any depth. However,

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the brief description that Laura gave of effects of the bullying she experienced concurs with research. Amongst a spectrum of effects on victims it concludes that: the academic achievement of victims suffers as their anxiety leads to reduced school attendance (McNamara & McNamara, 1997); victims often have attention difficulties (Kumpulainen, Räsänen, & Puura, 2001); victims experience periods of depression (Olweus, 1993). In Laura’s case it is, however, impossible to isolate the effects of school bullying from the other traumatic experiences she had out of school and it is also possible that the effects were cumulative.

5.2.2I

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