The task of the storyteller is to make a place where wisdom, who is like the shy animal, can come out and graze.
A Jewish saying
Having examined the opportunities for explicit modelling of social skills by teachers and for social competence to be important in school culture, the discussion now focuses on the third research question:
Do students identify teachers as exemplars/role models of social skills?
Chapter Ten describes and discusses students‘ views of their classroom interactions with teachers and begins to conceptualise students‘ opinions of ‗good‘ teachers. This idea is explored further in Chapter Eleven, ‗I like her—she‘s nice!‘, which reports on student responses when asked about the differences in pedagogy between primary and secondary- school teachers, and their perceptions of the differences in learning outcomes between primary and secondary schools. Chapter Twelve, ‗Could you please…‘, is the final chapter to examine teachers‘ position as role models. In this chapter, compliance as a social skill is investigated as an insight into teacher–student relationships.
‘Whole-child’ Education
International, national and state policies and guidelines, and school-mission statements set out holistic goals for students, including personal-development and social-development objectives. For example, the recent Council of Australian Governments‘ (2009) strategy document, Investing in the early years, sets out as a principle ‗a focus on the whole child, across cognitive, learning, physical, social, emotional and cultural dimensions and
learning throughout life‘ (p. 4). Indeed, the United Nations (1948, Article 26) Universal
Declaration of Human Rights states that education ‗shall be directed to the full
development of the human personality and to the full strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms‘ (United Nations, 1948).
The preamble to Australia‘s Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young
Australians (MCEETYA, 2008) states that ‗schools play a vital role in promoting the
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wellbeing of young Australians, and in ensuring the nation‘s ongoing economic prosperity and social cohesion‘ (MCEETYA, 2008, p. 4).
While acknowledging that literacy and numeracy remain the ‗cornerstone of schooling for young Australians‘ (MCEETYA, 2008, p. 5), the Melbourne Declaration then states that ‗schooling should also support the development of skills in areas such as social
interaction [and] as well as knowledge and skills, a school‘s legacy to young people should include national values of democracy, equity and justice, and personal values and attributes such as honesty, resilience and respect for others‘ (MCEETYA, 2008, p. 5). Despite the all-encompassing goals of education, assessment in mainstream secondary education concentrates on the academic domain, focusing on curriculum-content
knowledge and competencies. Educators and researchers who value students‘ wellbeing and desire students to gain competency in the social curriculum have concerns about this narrow lens of focus in education. As Fattore et al. (2007) remark:
Standard measures on educational achievement, for instance, tell us little about children‘s own perceptions about the quality of their education or the processes by which they learn. Children are seen as objects of determinants, both internal and external, rather than as engaged social actors with varying levels of control over their environments. The assumption is that children‘s social engagement is irrelevant, or that they lack agency. (p. 9)
Another goal of Australian education policy, one tied to political and economic goals, is student retention to the end of senior secondary education. This policy is ‗designed to provide a clear incentive for young people to remain in education and training rather than enter a labour market for which they are ill-equipped or unprepared‘ (Kemp, 1999, no page). Despite this initiative, many young people still leave school before completing secondary school. For some young people, work and financial gain is more attractive, but for many students, school simply does not meet their needs or situation. More
disconcerting is the notion that many students are disconnected from the school
community during or by the middle years of schooling as described by Pendergast (2005, p. 5).
Unfortunately, as a consequence of the emphasis placed on students‘ reading,
mathematics and science scores, student wellbeing and acquisition of social competence are often relegated to a lower educational priority. This priority of academic achievement could explain the current poor state of wellbeing and emotional health of the Australian students surveyed by Bernard et al. (2007). These authors report that two-in-ten students
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feel hopeless and depressed for a week and stop their regular activities, four-in-ten students have difficulty calming down (resilience) and two-thirds of students are not doing as well in their school work as they could (Bernard et al., 2007, p. 5). Social competence is a key attribute in young people that fosters wellbeing and interpersonal relationships (Prior et al., 2000), and promoting this competence needs to be a priority in schools.
Teacher–student Relationships
According to the LSAY, conducted by the NCVER (2010), the most important factors contributing to student connectedness with school are teacher–student relations and participation in school-based activities such as sport, music, debating and drama. A longitudinal study by Mouton (1991) found that students who were at high risk of school failure, because of negative life factors, but who were successful in school, credited their success to their relationships with teachers and other school staff, and peers. According to Mouton and Hawkins (1996) ‗many researchers identified attachment to school as
contributing to student self-esteem, motivation, effort, behaviour and academic achievement‘ (p. 297). These authors also report, as did the LSAY, that there is a link between school involvement and school attachment.
Such research attests to the importance of quality relationships in schools, and pedagogies that promote children‘s sense of belonging and connectedness. Teachers, and more
specifically, their classroom practices are central to creating such a sense. Noddings (2003, p. 249) suggests that good teachers are aware of the profound lifetime effects that their teaching practice can have on the students that they teach. Students‘ perceptions of the level of teacher support and mutual respect were identified by Ryan and Patrick (2001) as being directly related to positive changes in the students‘ motivation and engagement.
Schools are incredibly important centres for social interaction; for some children and young people, school is the only formal institution they attend. Research literature emphasises that what is important in schools is what is happening in the classrooms. In a synthesis of over 500,000 studies of the sources of variance on student achievement, Hattie (2003) attests to the pivotal influence and importance of the teacher within the educational system. By suggesting that the teacher in the classroom can make the greatest
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difference, Hattie (2003) reports that ‗we need to ensure that this greatest influence [the teacher] is optimised to have powerful and sensationally positive effects on the learner‘ (p. 3).
This research has investigated the nature of the relationships between students and teachers. The theme of this dissertation is embodied in the view of Fenstermacher (2001) who suggests that ‗the manner of a teacher takes on particular importance, insofar as it serves as a model for the students‘ (p. 649). In seeking to discover whether students ‗see‘ the teacher modelling social skills and therefore, learn from teacher classroom practices, I asked the students interviewed whether they thought they could be taught by robots. This question reflected an earlier question to the students about the importance of what they are taught as opposed to how they are taught. This constitutes the critical thinking behind Hansen‘s (2001) ‗manner and method‘ conjunction or the intellectual (academic) and
social dichotomy in the goals of education. The students in this study were asked if they
could distinguish these elements in their ‗curriculum‘:
Interviewer: Now here’s the important question—one of my important questions because they’re all important: is it what you learn or how you learn that’s important?
Male: How you learn.
Female: How you learn, because I’m not a very—I have to be hands-on. I can only learn if I’m hands-on stuff, so I can’t really learn off the board. Say if a teacher’s trying to teach me off the board, I’ll just go, I don’t get it. I don’t understand it on the board. (HC11)
Interviewer: What’s the difference?
Female: Because what you learn is—like you’re learning Italian or maths—but how you learn is how you want to learn, how you can get it; because if you don’t get maths, then you do it your way; so, that’s how you get it, how you do it.
(HC13)
The students interviewed appeared to distinguish between curriculum content and its delivery style and method by their teachers (pedagogy). The students also made mention of having different learning styles, although this was not always accommodated by their
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teachers in lessons. Reflecting on the concept of learning, Noddings (2003) suggests that a meaningful approach would be to study what the best teachers do to personalise
learning: ‗what form or level of learning is called for this topic, for this student, in this situation?‘ (p. 244).
Interviewer: So do you think how you learn is being acknowledged by your teachers?
Female 1: No.
Interviewer: Your learning style? Female 2: No, not really. (HC11)
Students were also able to expand their ideas on why they would not like to be taught by robots.
Interviewer: Could you be taught by robots? Female 1: What do you mean?
Interviewer: Do you want the human element in a teacher … Female 2: Yeah, I reckon you do.
Interviewer: … or do you think you could just be—if it’s all about knowledge, you could just sit on your laptop all day, couldn’t you and learn?
Female 2: If there was a robot going around, it wouldn’t be as good as having a human actually coming up to you and teaching you.
Interviewer: So what’s the human touch that you want? Female 1: Interaction.
Female 2: Taking notice, that if you don’t understand something, they can actually go over it again with you. (HC11)
As mentioned earlier, the work of Bernard et al. (2007) into the mental health and
wellbeing of Australian students, found two-thirds of the students they surveyed were not doing as well in their school work as they could. With this statistic in mind, and with the
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aim to improve student wellbeing, it appears crucial that teachers interact with students in class and are not robots who simply spout forth information. Teacher–student
relationships in classrooms require feedback about whether students understand the work presented, as well as how they are coping with the work and indeed the classroom
environment. As Hoban (2010) states:
Teachers get feedback all the time in various ways, such as how students answer questions in class, what they write in their books, their motivation to learn and answers in tests. But this feedback is generally about what is being taught in terms of whether or not students understand the content of their instruction. Rarely is feedback about how the students are learning. (p. 143)
In analysing the need for feedback, the Victorian schools‘ Student Attitudes to School
Survey (in which students are asked to fill in a questionnaire about their feelings and
sense of belonging to their school) (DEECD, 2009b) should be considered. This survey is a questionnaire and students are rarely interviewed personally. This survey is given to all students around Victoria regardless of their level of English-language comprehension. Students in the interviews disclosed to me that they did not complete the survey honestly. It is the method of data collection, rather than the intent, that I question because
thoughtful and honest student feedback, via direct conversations, needs to be prioritised, as students are the major priority in educational communities, and all efforts in schools should be made to improve their learning outcomes, in all curriculum domains.
Te Riele (2006a) has commented that the most important school-based risk factor of disadvantaging youth educational outcomes is profoundly negative teacher–student relationships. Te Riele (2006b) comments on students marginalised by their educational experiences as not having ‗their needs met by schools, in terms of relationships with teachers or peers, teaching style, curriculum, or school culture and structure‘ (p. 141). Hattie (2003) maintains that the most important variable affecting students‘ experiences and outcomes at school is the teacher. Research carried out by Martin et al. (2007) demonstrates that teacher–student relationships, together with parent–child relationships are significantly associated with school achievement, motivation and general self-esteem, with teacher effects being stronger in the academic domain. Ryan and Patrick (2001) found that students‘ perceptions of teacher support and mutual respect were related to positive changes in their motivation and engagement. The relationships that teachers create with students are important and can have profound and lasting effects on the students. Barber (2002) claims that ‗few studies have analysed the bonds between the secondary teacher and his/her students‘ (p. 383). As Main and Bryer (2007) note, ‗there is
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little published evidence of either training or research on relationships in middle schools in Australia‘ (p. 100). The notion of teacher–student relationships and the classroom and school climates that they create will be explored in Chapters Ten and Eleven of this thesis. Teaching is a caring profession. As Williams (1998) emotively states:
Surely, nurturing children as they progress through their fragile formative years, teaching them the wisdom they need to get through life, and helping them to grow, be healthy, and happy adults must be one of the most important tasks any of us could face? (p. 39)
Discussing teaching as a moral practice, Pring (2001) examines teaching as a narrative with two levels: the ‗impersonal‘ and the ‗personal‘. In the impersonal narrative, subject matter is discussed and learnt as examined, criticised and developed ideas, but as Pring (2001) states:
[There is the] ‗personal‘ level at which young people try to make sense of the world and the relationships around them and at which they find, or do not find, valuable forms of life to which they can give allegiance. This personal narrative is where young people seek to understand who and what they are, partly, of course, in relation to other young people and to the wider society. (p. 110)
In thinking about the dimensions and quality of the teacher–student relationship, it is critical to listen to the perceptions of the student, which is the objective of this research. The students I interviewed agreed with the research findings of Noddings (2003) that ‗it matters to students whether or not they like and are liked by their teachers‘ (p. 244). This is clear in the comment of one student:
Female 1: It’s obvious because if they like you, they’re more likely to talk to you, like, if they see you wandering around or anything. But teachers that don’t like you, you can usually tell, they never talk to you and they’re always angry with you and mean. (WH8)
Female 2: You know, I hate teachers because I had detention, right, and I could hear the teachers talking about year seven picking on little kids, and I could hear them talking about how stupid they are, how they don’t have friends and stuff.
(WH8)