Expected Impact and Contribution of the Project 1 Expected Impact on Children

In a broader sense, WMQPEP expects children to develop the ability to work together, to become more self-confident, to have raised self-esteem and to have improved communication skills. Several project workers pointed out these aspects as follows:

‘There are three main areas which impact on children: the first is to enable children to work well with others in their class or year group. This is related to their self-esteem and affirmation skills and hopefully undermines the hierarchical structures in many classrooms. The second is to encourage the children to relate their experiences as valuable to them and to others. Some development of emotional literacy is included here. And the third is to give children the skills to listen well and to expect to be listened to.’

‘We expect children to increase confidence in themselves, self-esteem, the ability to affirm others, being kind to each other and noticing positive things in each other. We hope that children develop the skills in direct communication rather than indirect communication, so they could more clearly ask what they need. And hopefully, they improve co-operation - the ability to work harmoniously with other people, sometimes to take the lead but also sometimes to let other people take the lead, and to share responsibility.’

WMQPEP also expects children to take more responsibility for their behaviour, as mentioned by one project worker:

‘I expect children to be more responsible individually for their behaviour and to be insightful about what it is helpful to do in the classroom.’

Moreover, children are expected to learn about the nature of conflict and conflict management, as described by another project worker:

‘An increase in their understanding of conflict and how they deal with conflict with better and more ideas. Therefore, they get happier and get on better together. Another thing is that conflict can be managed more creatively.’

7.2.2 Contribution of the Project to the Development of Children

One project worker described how the project can contribute to the development of children: ‘It’s for children to fulfil their potential through a child-centred approach. I would like to see more power in the hands of the children. I would like to see them empowered with more confidence to ask some questions.’

WMQPEP believes that the project contributes to an increase in children’s self-esteem and confidence by encouraging interaction and affirming each other:

‘To raise self-esteem, to be able to affirm other people, to get to know other people in the class because they often don’t know other people as they always hang about with the same people…because you never deal with them. So it’s good to mix them to get to know other people better.’

‘It builds self-esteem and encourages children to join in. It encourages children to relate to their experiences outside the school or the classroom. It also encourages a ‘can do’ philosophy. It demonstrates that learning can be fun.’

‘In positive ways, they can feel better about themselves and about other people, realising the talents they have within the group, and think that they have choices, how they can make good choices and they can change things.’

Many project workers thought that the project helps children to improve their behaviour and attitudes:

‘…children are less often in trouble as they are aware of the effect their behaviour has on others so they can modify their behaviour and don’t copy other people’s poor behaviour.’

‘I think that it raises their potential personal responsibility like responsibility for their own actions, and they become more self-controlled, when they feel more accepted by the class. Another impact can be opposite when they become more open and are able to share their ideas in a class or in a group, and they also become more assertive rather than aggressive.’ In particular, the project seems to work on children with challenging behaviour, and on quieter, more reserved children, as mentioned by several project workers:

‘It seems that the project has a positive impact on children with behavioural difficulties. They become more able to join in the group while they can take some time off to calm themselves down during the project. They are beginning to think before they do something to upset other people.’

‘I think that often it’s the ones who don’t speak or feel excluded will absolutely shine in this work because their views and experiences are valued as anybody else’s. At my last school, the teacher said it’s absolutely brilliant that for one period of 10 weeks all the children including the ones with learning difficulties were actually in a classroom at the same time because she had children who were taken out for special lessons on a daily basis. So they never did operate fully as a class or very rarely, but in Peacemakers they did.’ ‘…..with children who have started off really shy and not wanting to take part, and towards the end of the 10 weeks… they’re putting their hands up to speak, and they just seem to be so much more confident… 10 weeks is a short period of time really but you can actually see a difference.’

One project worker explained the improvement in children’s behaviour regarding stages of social development, which is promoted by the project:

‘Generally, it improves their socialisation. Children who are quiet become more confident, and children who are dominating and uncontrolled become more controlled and more socialised. Considering different development stages of the children, for example, younger children rely more on adults and older children take more responsibility for themselves. Generally, whatever stage the children are, it can help the process of their development.’ Another project worker also mentioned children’s social development, where they become more self-reliant and mature when they are given more responsibility:

‘Children don’t always need teachers or dinner ladies to sort out things, and they can resolve issues by themselves. Adults don’t have to be controlling or sorting everything out because children can sort out by themselves. As they are given more responsibility, they get mature as well. They do tend to grow up and get more self-reliant rather than turning to teachers all the time to get adults to sort things out.’

Moreover, the project helps children develop their life skills and language for dealing with difficult situations, as described by several project workers:

‘Giving children different strategies for handling conflicts and also language for handling difficult situations. I don’t think sometimes children know what to say, so we get them to learn language as well, like “Stop it. I don’t like that”.

‘It provides access to life skills such as communication, co-operation, problem-solving, anger management and mediation.’

7.2.3 Summary and Discussion: Expected Impact and Contribution of the Project WMQPEP thinks that its project can empower children and fulfil their potential. WMQPEP expects children to develop interpersonal skills, such as getting on with each other better, increasing the ability to work with others, finding the positives in themselves and others, and improving communication skills. WMQPEP believes that through interaction children become more aware of relationships with others, and become more conscious of and responsible for their actions and behaviour as well as their effects, by making appropriate choices. WMQPEP also thinks that affirmative attitudes contribute to raising children’s self-esteem and confidence as well as improving self-control, when children feel more accepted by the class and feel more positive about themselves and about others. It seems that the project has these positive effects particularly on children with challenging behaviour and with quieter, more reserved natures. Overall, WMQPEP intends to contribute to children’s social development. These aspects of WMQPEP’s contribution to children’s development accord with the benefits of using Circle Time methods ‘as a means of promoting self-esteem, self-discipline

and responsibility towards others’ (Mosley, 1996: 6). Considering the Circle Time as a social process, Mosley (1996: 71) regards symbolic interactionist theory (e.g. Mead) and its view on ‘the self as a social entity formed by appraisal from others’ as useful in discussing ‘the power of Circle Time to enhance self-esteem.’ Mosley (1996) understands Mead’s idea thus: ‘The behaviour of the individual can only be understood in terms of a social dynamic and therefore the individual act can only be comprehended as part of a whole,’ and applies this idea to Circle Time as follows:

Circle-Time strategies are designed to help individuals understand their behaviour and the response of other people towards it. They offer a model of helping that acknowledges that as the behaviour of an individual child is embedded in the social interactions of her class group, it needs to be the class group that works with her to help her become aware of the range of other responses she could choose from. (Mosley, 1996: 72)

Mosley (1996: 72) recognises Mead’s significant contribution as ‘the assertion that the self cannot be reorganised or reconstituted into a more positive one without altering the social relations of the self to others.’ This idea underpins the benefit of the Circle Time method, emphasising learning within the group (i.e. the ‘generalised other’ as expressed by Mead), which is constrained by ‘ground rules based on respect, valuing and reflecting back to participants a positive reflection of their selves’ (ibid: 72). Considering that there are two general stages of the full development of the self, Mead (1934/1967: 158) argues that it can be achieved, first through the assimilation of particular attitudes of individuals, and secondly, by generalising and assimilating the attitudes of the social group as a whole to which the self belongs. Thus, the attitudes of the social group are included in the structure of the self through the individual’s direct experience. In particular, through interaction with society in the different roles one takes in that society, the individual develops his or her personality by adopting the attitudes of the members of the society (Mead, 1934/1967: 162-3). Mead’s idea concerning the development of the self within social relationships supports WMQPEP’s

perception of its educational contribution to improving children’s interpersonal skills and raising self-control and self-esteem, as a result of their experience of interacting with others. WMQPEP also realises that the impact of the project could be compromised if there is a conflict between the different behavioural policies of schools and the project. WMQPEP hopes that empowerment of children would gradually undermine and change the hierarchical structures in the classroom. This WMQPEP’s viewpoint can be supported by some perspectives on the possibility of bringing positive changes into schools and society through educational initiatives. For example, Bruner (1999: 19) states that, from the viewpoint of constructivism, education can help young people to learn ways of making sense of and constructing reality, and to contribute to the process of changing the existing society when it is necessary. For McLaren (2003: 70), from the viewpoint of critical theory, schools are not only places of indoctrination or socialisation, but also places of ‘empowerment and self-transformation.’ WMQPEP’s viewpoint is also supported by Mead’s (1934/1967) idea of the interplay between the development of individuals’ self-awareness and the progress of society through social interactions. Mead (1934/1967: 309-10) perceives that social reconstruction and the self reconstruction of individuals are the two sides of the single process of human social progress, which involves self-consciousness of individuals both in ‘the effecting of such progressive social changes’ and also in the development of the individuals themselves or of their personalities in accordance with social reconstruction.

What WMQPEP stated in this section regarding the expected impact of the project on children will be compared with what the researcher observed in the project later in the thesis.