School disaffection - explanation, prevention and response (U03135)

? Credit Points : 20 ? SCQF Level : 10 ? Acronym : EDU-4-SDEPR

This course will enable students to reflect on and critically analyse school discipline on a theoretical level. It introduces students to major approaches to theories of school disaffection, and their application to substantive areas of research and to practice. The course aims to enable students to develop their own accounts of how disruption and disaffection develops in and out of school, and to explore appropriate responses. The course will first will examine and compare approaches to theorising disaffection that respectively emphasise individual agency and structural factors. Associated tensions between punitive and more 'welfare' responses will be examined, along with recent trends in the medicalisation of 'naughtiness'. The policy context will be explored, in particular the implications of the Additional Support for Learning Act 2004 for disaffected pupils will be analysed.

In the latter half of the course it will turn to the way in which substantive areas of research, such as gender and deviance, multi-agency working, and pupil voice can be used to inform practice. A particular emphasis will be placed on whole-school responses to pupil disaffection.

Entry Requirements

none

Subject Areas

Home subject area

Education, (The Moray House School of Education, Schedule C)

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : 4th year

? Delivery Period : Semester 1 (Blocks 1-2)

? Contact Teaching Time : 3 hour(s) per week for 9 weeks

First Class Information

Date	Start	End	Room	Area	Additional Information
27/09/2007	13:00	16:00	Room 5.15, Charteris Land	Central

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

- identify and critically assess major themes in the theorisation of school disaffection;

-analyse the role of the organisation of the school and curriculum in the construction of problem behaviour;

- formulate a position on the relationship between structure and agency and its implications for attributions of responsibility for, and responses to, school disaffection;

- analyse the ways substantive fields of research inform conceptions of school disaffection, and how specific conceptions of disaffection may shape empirical research;

-critically reflect on the ways in which substantive fields of research inform whole-school responses to pupil disaffection.

Assessment Information

The students will be required to submit a 4000 word essay in which they first explore and critically analyse their own perspectives on explanations of pupil disaffection, focusing in particular on the attribution of responsibility, in the context both of relevant theory and of their own experiences in school either as a pupil or student teacher. They will go on to select one area from ‘gender and deviance’, ‘multi-agency working’ and ‘pupil voice’, and will be required to demonstrate understanding of the relevant theory and a critical appreciation of related research evidence, and use these to develop a proposal for a whole-school policy for preventing and responding to pupil disaffection focusing on their selected area.