Learner discipline: An Australian perspective
Australian schools by and large are safe schools. Nonetheless discipline problems do exist – including bullying behaviour. For this kind of problem schools should have management policies in place. As traditional behaviour-management practices – including corporal punishment – are largely prohibited in Australian schools, contemporary practices centre on management through supportive school programmes, including appropriate curricula and school-support structures. This article supports the belief that measures such as the exclusion of misbehaving learners should be treated with caution. Measures such as this might not reflect accepted international principles and practices and should only be exercised in the most extreme circumstances. The article also supports the view that it is part of the school’s role to ensure that all learners are aware of the reality that while they have rights, they also have corresponding responsibilities. This awareness is more likely to be achieved in a supportive school culture where each learner is recognised as having unique qualities that can mature and grow in an appropriate learning environment.
A Construction of Bullying in a Primary School in an Underprivileged Community: An Ecological Case Study
This article is based on a master's dissertation completed through the University of Pretoria. Conversations around behavioural problems in three primary schools in Mamelodi, an underprivileged community in South Africa, explored contextually relevant ideas, in the form of discourse, focusing on the experience of bullying from the perspective of the participants (children identified by the school as engaging in bullying behaviour, school staff, and the children's families). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the principals (school gatekeepers), and with other participants identified by each other during the interview process. Two figures prominent in the media on the topic at the time of this study were also included to provide discourses on bullying from wider society. An ecological approach within a post-modern social constructionist theoretical framework was used. In this article one ecological case study from one of the three schools was used to explore the aims. Discourse analysis was used in the construction of the various discourses emerging from the conversations. The participants' ideas around bullying are described, focusing on the discourse themes of “community and bullying”, “profile of teachers in the community”, “bad child, good child”, “undefined problems” and “family discord”. The aim of this article is to provide an ecological description of bullying, through discourse, in the context of this case study by exploring the participants' ideas on and experience of bullying in a primary school situated in the township of Mamelodi. Implications for intervention are considered.
The Relationship of Scores on the Educators Survey, a Modified Version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory, to Three Teaching-Related Variables for a Sample of 132 Beginning Teachers
For a sample of 133 beginning teachers, the relationship of three teaching-related variables identified as (a) the extent to which the teacher perceived teacher-training courses prepared him or her for the first years of teaching, (b) the level of workload experienced during the first three years of teaching, and (c) if an individual were to begin his or her career again, would he or she select teaching as the first career choice to three measures of burnout (Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization, and Personal Accomplishment). Correlation data were obtained and a series of multiple regression analyses were conducted in which the three teaching-related variables served as predictors. Findings indicated that, for a subsample of female beginning teachers, two of the three variables (perceived adequacy of training and choosing teaching as a career) served as moderately valid predictors of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization measures.