| What do your pupils think about behaviour in school? |
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Research taster Behaviour audits may help schools to identify unhelpful patterns in pupils’ behaviour that need to be addressed.  How do pupils view acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in school and can you use what they think to construct more appropriate behaviour policies?
Your evidence
Could you and your colleagues find out about pupils’ views of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour through group or whole class discussions? A useful start might be to suggest to the pupils that they make a list of all the sorts of behaviour which are considered acceptable or “good” for learning contexts and all the sorts of behaviour which are not acceptable or “bad” in such situations. You might want to encourage them to discuss age differences and gender differences. In their experience do people have different expectations for younger or older pupils, boys or girls? How do they view this? Is it ‘fair’? Do they think that different teachers have different expectations? How do they understand ‘being strict’? Are there different expectations in the home and in the school? Is it easy or hard to remember to behave in one way in school and another in the home? Do they think there are different expectations for children and adult behaviour?
Moving forward
What is the most useful way of making your evidence about pupils’ views available to other colleagues? Could you present the pupils’ views in the form of charts, snippets of audio-tape, video film or written notes for whole staff consideration and discussion? How do pupils’ perspectives compare with those of your colleagues? Do your pupils’ views help you identify new ways of tackling particularly intractable challenges?
Find out more
 Hallam, S., Castle, F., Rogers, L., et al (2005) Research and Evaluation of the Behaviour Improvement Programme Research Report RR 702, London: DfESA TLRP Research Brief on pupil voice is accessible at: http://www.tlrp.org/pub/documents/no5_ruddock.pdf A GTC Research of the Month summary on pupil voice is accessible at: http://www.gtce.org.uk/policyandresearch/research/ROMtopics/pupilvoice/ |
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