Political discourse and ‘bad behaviour’ in schools: trends ... · Web viewDiscursive patterns such as grammatical shifts and changes in word usage are initially identified through

Dept. of Educational Research Yo DunnLancaster University.

Political discourse and ‘bad behaviour’ in schools: trends under New Labour

Yo Dunn

[email protected]

Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Institute of Education, University of London, 5-8 September 2007

Dept. of Educational Research Yo DunnLancaster University

Introduction

School discipline is a locus of social injustice in the education system. Nevertheless the social justice implications of this confluence of power relations between state and child remain largely invisible in political discourse. Previous research has suggested that resistance by children and parents to the hegemonic power relations of the education system is construed by dominant discourses of ‘bad behaviour’ in ways which reinforce those power relations (Parsons, 1999; Munn & Lloyd, 2005; Parsons, 2005). This paper attempts to describe mechanisms through which perpetuation of the dominant discourses has occurred. It has been argued that the individualisation of social problems and the omission of reference to structural causes of inequality are characteristic of neo-liberal discourse generally (Gounari, 2006). This paper sets out to examine whether this is the case within political discourses around ‘bad behaviour’ in schools. In doing so it argues that trends in these discourses emanating from central government are increasingly limiting the spaces available for counter-hegemonic discourses.

I begin with a brief outline of the research project. The paper is then divided into the two main themes which are emerging from the research: ‘Us vs. Them’ and ‘What is there to talk about?’. Within each section I discuss wider political discourses which form the context in which political discourses around ‘bad behaviour’ in schools have developed over the last decade. I then set out findings from the research which shed light on the impact of these broader discourses on educational policy discourse.

The Research Project

The findings presented in this paper are drawn from research which investigates how political discourses surrounding ‘bad behaviour’ in schools, related education policies and the social practices in which they are embedded, have evolved in the ten years between 1997 and 2006. While I focus in the analysis presented here on deconstructing a deterministic, rational choice perspective on ‘bad behaviour’, I also reject a strong social constructionist position. Instead I consider these issues from a critical realist perspective (Bhaskar, 1989; Sayer, 2000, 2005) which, while not reducing social practice to discourse, nevertheless views discourse as central to understanding social practice. Along with other critical discourse analysts, I recognise discourse as a socially important part of social practice, the analysis of which has the potential to provide both explanation and transformation (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999, p.28). In seeing discourse as the site of struggle, this perspective largely accords with Foucault (1984, p.110) on the particular point that

"discourse is not simply that which translates struggles or systems of domination, but is the thing for which and by which there is struggle, discourse is the power which is to be seized."

Thus, in my view, analysis of the discourses of the powerful has the potential not only to explain the current social order but also to serve as a transformative tool by challenging the hegemony of those discourses. This is particularly the case where, as in the current

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instance, more conventional avenues to dissent are being curtailed by the discourses themselves.

The research project analyses three cross-genre corpora of government documents, divided by term of government. Thus the corpora span May 1997-June 2001, June 2001-May 2005 and May 2005-December 2006. Each corpus comprises relevant DfES press releases, speeches by Tony Blair on education-related topics and White Papers which focus on compulsory schooling from each term of office. Discursive patterns such as grammatical shifts and changes in word usage are initially identified through computerized corpus analysis. Potentially interesting findings are then investigated further through qualitative Critical Discourse Analysis of selected individual texts. Close text analysis is also used to investigate trends in discourses, topoi, argumentation strategies, metaphor usage and grammatical features (Van Leeuwen, 1996; Reisigl & Wodak, 2001; Fauconnier & Turner, 2002; Fairclough, 2003; Wodak & Chilton, 2005).

Us vs. Them

Policy debates on ‘bad behaviour’ in schools over the last 10 years have taken place against a backdrop of broader political discourses. Two such discourses have had an overarching impact on conceptions of young people in society and government’s relationship with them: ‘social exclusion’ and ‘anti-social behaviour’. Despite New Labour’s apparent insistence on ‘evidence-based’ policy, the origins of both discourses lie in the political sphere rather than in academic social science.

Weak Social Exclusion

Drawn from European Social Democratic discourse, ‘Social exclusion’ originated as means of describing the effects of poverty beyond a simplistic focus on economic disparity whilst not disconnected from traditional notions of poverty. New Labour’s version of ‘social exclusion’, however, has diverged substantially from this original usage and has been widely seen as a particularly weak version of this original concept. Levitas (1998) has described three distinct and conflicting discourses of social exclusion embedded in New Labour’s use of the term. Firstly, a redistributionist (RED) discourse concerned with a traditional leftist view of structural inequality and disadvantage. Secondly, a social integrationist (SID) discourse concerned with equal access to employment via ‘equality of opportunity’. Thirdly, a moral underclass (MUD) discourse influenced by the US right wing and concerned with the moral delinquencies of the excluded. The core distinction between these discourses is their perspective on what the excluded are seen as lacking. She succinctly summarises:

“To oversimplify, in RED they have no money, in SID they have no work, in MUD they have no morals.” (Levitas, 1998, p. 27)

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Levitas writes early in Tony Blair’s first term as Prime Minister. She concludes, in my view quite accurately, that whilst faint traces of RED remained in isolated pockets, New Labour’s predominant conception of social exclusion had already moved significantly away from RED towards an inconsistent combination of SID and MUD.

More recently, and building directly on Levitas’ analysis, Davies (2005) has argued that a weak social exclusion discourse ultimately exacerbates inequality by creating policies similar to membership of a social club in which the poor are required to pay a high price for entry, in personal responsibility and risk taking, whilst the rich are exempt from the obligations of membership.

The key phrase here is personal responsibility. In a RED view of social exclusion, the (collective) poor are excluded through their lack of financial means. This deeply ingrained collectivisation can be illustrated by traditional RED policies such as unionisation and public ownership. However in SID the (individual) person is excluded through his/her lack of work and solutions are very much focussed on the individual (Individual Learning Accounts, Work-focussed interviews, Connexions). Similarly in MUD versions of social exclusion the (individual) person is excluded through their own behaviour and solutions are once again focussed on the individual (Sure Start, ASBOs, Intensive supervision and surveillance programmes for young offenders).

Anti-Social Behaviour

This focus on the individual leads readily to distinctions between individuals – the included and the excluded: us and them. This juxtaposition is readily apparent in the second key political discourse relating to young people which I intend to discuss: ‘anti-social behaviour’. Somewhat intertwined with social exclusion discourse, ‘anti-social behaviour’ could arguably be seen as a specific instance of MUD. However the origins of the ‘anti-social behaviour’ discourse are sufficiently distinct to warrant discussion in their own right.

Squires and Stephen (2005) describe the emergence of ‘anti-social behaviour’ in New Labour discourse as a largely political response to public perceptions of crime and almost completely disconnected from any ‘evidence base’. One of the central electoral difficulties which required a solution during the Labour Party’s reincarnation as New Labour had been the perceived invulnerability of the opposing Conservative party on issues of law and order. Tony Blair’s stated focus became “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”, a slogan which appeared initially compatible with New Labour’s ‘social exclusion’ discourse and even possibly a RED version of that discourse.In government however the constant pressure to produce policies with specific appeal to middle England has led to a considerable emphasis on the former statement, with the latter serving only to justify MUD-inspired policies aimed at regulating ‘socially excluded’ families. Writing from a criminological perspective, Pitts (2000) argues that despite rhetoric to the contrary New Labour’s youth justice policy has continually reverted to a focus on ‘discipline’ when faced with electoral anxiety. This interpretation

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finds support from broader based analyses of New Labour’s political strategy (Lister, 2001; Cook, 2006). In her recent analysis of the intersection of criminal justice and social justice in contemporary social policy in the UK, Cook (2006) has argued that groups seen as undermining middle England’s social order and interests (such as young people) have been repositioned as ‘other’ in political discourse. The effect of this positioning on social policy she argues is that

"middle England constructions of 'others' imply policy responses which seek to individualise (not socialise) problems, and to deter, discipline, regulate and control problem and 'other' groups." (p.169)

The discourse of ‘anti-social behaviour’ can be seen as typically illustrative of these constructions.

Thus political discourses around ‘bad behaviour’ in schools have developed over the past ten years against the broad backdrop of these two discourses: a weak version of ‘social exclusion’ and ‘anti-social behaviour’. Both discourses have their origins outside the field of education. Thus one strand of the research presented here considers the extent to which these discourses and related discursive trends are present and have undergone diachronic change in the specifically educational corpora under study.

Behaviour, Behaviour, Behaviour

Comparisons between the corpora of documents from each term provide direct evidence of the emergence of ‘anti-social behaviour’ discourse within political discourses on school discipline over the decade. The keyword1 ‘behaviour’ (keyness: 54.8) is more prominent in the term 3 corpus than in term 1. The prefix ‘Anti’ (keyness: 95.5) occurs much more frequently in all usages in term 2 than in term 1 and is also used more frequently in term 3 compared to term 1 (keyness: 27.5). Collocational2 analysis confirms the association of ‘anti’ and ‘social’ with ‘behaviour’, largely reflecting usage of the phrase ‘anti-social behaviour’. The lower keyness score for term 3 may reflect a slight reduction in usage from a peak during term 2. This seems to be confirmed by a proportionate measure of the usage of the term as a whole (see Figure 1) although total numbers of occurrences are relatively low in all corpora making comparisons less reliable. Nevertheless, this would seem to lend credence to a perception that the discourse

1 Keyword analysis measures statistically significant differences in word use between corpora. Keyness scores provide a measure of the extent of the difference. Higher scores indicate a greater change in usage. Analysis was carried out using Wordsmith 3.0. 2 Collocations are words which occur in proximity to each other. Using Wordsmith words within 5 words of occurrences of ‘behaviour’ were listed in frequency order. ‘Anti’ and ‘Social’ both appeared towards the top of this list.

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of ‘anti-social behaviour’ was imported into educational discourses on behaviour from criminal justice discourses during New Labour’s second term.

Number of occurrences of 'anti-social behaviour' as a proportion of total words

0.00%

0.01%

0.02%

0.03%

0.04%

0.05%

0.06%

Term 1 Term 2 Term 3

Figure 1

Moving beyond the term itself, a clue to a broader trend is provided by the way in which the DfES3 itself categorizes press releases in its database. The category ‘exclusions and truancy’ (which has existed from 1997 to the present but within which the numbers of press releases have been falling) was supplemented in 2002 by a new category ‘behaviour’ (which has included an increasing number of press releases with the greatest numbers between 2004 and 2006). This is an interesting re-labelling of inherently similar topics from a focus on the systemic response (exclusion) to the perceived cause (behaviour). This shift could be seen as a simple change in archiving practices. However, alongside other evidence, I view it as symptomatic of a shift in social practice which is inherently linked with and reflects the shifting discourses surrounding behaviour in schools.

This shift is also reflected in the language of the documents themselves. Investigation of words associated with the lemma BEHAVE4 illustrates some of these changes. In term 1 there are only 2 instances of BEHAVE collocating with ‘children’ and both refer to services for children with behavioural difficulties. In term 2 however there are 23 instances of BEHAVE collocating with ‘children’ against a background of a doubling of the number of occurrences of ‘children’5. In addition ‘behavioural’ and ‘children’ score a significant Mutual Information6 level in term 2. By term 3, usage of BEHAVE increases again and

3 As it was at the time of data collection4 A lemma is the canonical form of a word. Thus the lemma BEHAVE consists of the lexemes behave, behaviour, behaving and behavioural. 5 See next section for discussion of changes in references to young people in the corpora. 6 Mutual Information scores provide a means of measuring the strength of association between words. Words which occur close to each other frequently but which are rarely found separately will score highly.

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focuses additionally on parent’s responsibility for their children’s behaviour. Overall the number of occurrences of BEHAVE near to ‘children’ continues to rise substantially even when the rise in the usage of children is taken into account by using a proportionate measure (see Figure 2).

Number of occurrences of BEHAVE collocated with 'children' as a proportion of the number of

occurrences of 'children'

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1.00%

2.00%

3.00%

4.00%

5.00%

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Figure 2

Clearly then ‘behaviour’ has emerged over the decade as the dominant political discourse relating to school discipline. It is not, however, a neutral discourse. Commonly associated descriptors in the texts include ‘bad’, ‘poor’, ‘disruptive’, ‘good’ and ‘improve’. At first glance this list of terms would appear to contain some attributional balance. The relatively small number of occurrences of each of these terms precludes conclusions based on their frequency alone. However a close reading of the texts, particularly the White Papers, suggests that ‘bad’, ‘poor’ and ‘disruptive’ occur in association with behaviour predominantly in descriptive statements whereas ‘good’ and ‘improve’ are used in association with behaviour mainly in aspirational statements. Thus overall the discourse is clearly one of ‘bad behaviour’.

The Repositioning of Social Actors

There is little doubt either as to whose behaviour is being discussed. Young people themselves (referred to by any descriptive term) become much more prominent in the discourse by terms 2 and 3. The words ‘children’ (keyness: 73.3) and ‘young’ (keyness: 61.7, reflecting usage of the phrase ‘young people’) both appear much more frequently in the term 2 corpus than they did in term 1. In part this may be explainable as a stylistic shift from the word ‘pupils’ (which appears in the term 1 list with a keyness of 32.4), a change I will return to shortly. However, overall, young people are simply mentioned much more often in terms 2 and 3.

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This increased usage is accompanied by changes in their positioning in the discourse. In term 1, pupils are mainly objects on whom schools (as agents) act. They are also primarily referred to collectively. For example

“Improving home/school links and the quality of teaching will make a major contribution to reducing indiscipline, but schools can also act directly to improve pupil behaviour.” (DfEE, 1997, p.55)

By term 2, a particular group of pupils are positioned as individuals both acting themselves (in engaging in ‘bad behaviour’) and being acted upon. For example,

“Headteachers must have the right to exclude pupils who are violent or persistently disruptive. Individual pupils cannot be allowed to disrupt classes, to the detriment of the teachers in the school and the education of their fellow pupils.” (DfES, 2001b, p.26)

However it is not only pupils who are individualised in the second quote. Where ‘schools’ were the key social agent in the first quote, now ‘headteachers’ (individuals) are positioned as having the power to act and ‘teachers’ and ‘fellow pupils’ (more individuals) have entered the discourse. This shift is reflected across the texts. Schools are themselves prominent social actors in term 1, but by term 3 are largely relegated to a mere location with heads taking over the role of key social actor in the education system.

Thus the general trend towards individualisation which has been identified in the broader discourses of ‘social exclusion’ and ‘anti-social behaviour’ does seem to have deeply penetrated educational discourses on school discipline. Further and more subtle evidence for this is found in increasing linguistic separation of young people from the educational environment. I mentioned earlier that usage of the word ‘pupil(s)’ drops considerably after the first term to be replaced by increased usage of ‘children’ and ‘young people’. This statistically significant shift seems to reflect a repositioning of young people in the discourse as separate from the educational environment. It seems likely that this is at least in part a consequence of the importation of non-educational discourses relating to young people (such as ‘anti-social behaviour’) into educational discourses after New Labour’s first term.

Up to this point I have concentrated mainly on the discourse of ‘anti-social behaviour’ and its impact on political discourses around ‘bad behaviour’ in schools. However the version of ‘Social Exclusion’ discourse which focuses on the moral underclass (MUD) concerns itself just as much with the families of excluded young people as it does with young people themselves.

This emphasis is particularly evident in the most recent texts. Both parents and the process of ‘parenting’ become increasingly foregrounded over time. However in term 3 the increased prominence of ‘parents’ as social actors in their own right is particularly striking (see Figure 3).

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Number of occurrences of 'parents' and 'parenting' as a proportion of

total words

0.00%0.10%0.20%0.30%0.40%0.50%0.60%0.70%


Parents Parenting

Figure 3

At the same time the descriptive terms used for some parents and their children become increasingly negative and sometimes highly prejudicial. For example,

“… many heads and teachers have found that their authority is being challenged by violent and threatening parents, who question their decision to punish, detain or suspend badly-behaved youngsters.” (DfES, 2005, p.85)

Both the parents and their children are portrayed as violent and threatening specters. This is particularly so if they dare to “question” the social actors who actually possess the power to decide what constitutes ‘bad behaviour’ and to “punish, detain or suspend” (for further discussion and examples see Dunn, 2005). I will return to the issue of questioning in the second half of this paper.

Us vs. Them: Conclusion

Overall then there are significant changes in the language of New Labour texts relating to school discipline between 1997 and 2006. A clearly educational focus on ‘improving school discipline’ during the first term, has been overwhelmed by a discourse of ‘dealing with bad behaviour’ which appears largely to have been imported from broader political discourses external to education.

By New Labour’s third term, these texts portray the same ‘problem families’ who dominate MUD and anti-social behaviour discourses. This has become a discourse of ‘broken’ families. It constructs ‘socially excluded’ and ‘anti-social’ youth and their parents with a heavy load of personal responsibility. Particularly they are constructed as

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individuals and positioned as ‘other’ than both the speakers/writers and listeners/readers of the texts.

Uneven and unjust power relations between state and child already existed in the education system, particularly in school discipline (Parsons, 1999; Munn & Lloyd, 2005; Parsons, 2005). This trend towards the discursive individualisation and ‘othering’ of young people who resist the education system is perpetuating, embedding and even further strengthening this injustice. At the same time a second trend in the discourse is acting to camouflage it.

What Is There To Talk About?

Neo-liberal discourse: ‘There Is No Alternative’

The mid-level discourses of ‘social exclusion’ and ‘anti-social behaviour’ are themselves rooted in over-arching neo-liberal discourses. Analyses of neo-liberal discourses, including but not limited to ‘social exclusion’, repeatedly suggest that they are structured in ways which disallow alternative world-views.

In an explicitly linguistic but rather underdeveloped analysis, Fairclough (2000) argues that New Labour’s discourse of ‘social exclusion’ sees the concept as a pre-existing state rather than a process. He underpins this argument by describing a number of linguistic markers which support this contention. Most notably, in an analysis of a leaflet produced by the Social Exclusion Unit, he describes the heavy predominance of the nominalisation ‘social exclusion’ over the verb ‘to exclude’. The significance of Fairclough’s observation is that the discursive emphasis on social exclusion as a condition rather than a process eliminates reference to any agent who might bear responsibility for the exclusion. The socially excluded just are; they are not being excluded.

This camouflaging of the agency of powerful social actors has typified neo-liberal political discourse internationally and has been the basis for much critique. Fairclough concludes,

"The objective of social equality in left politics has been based upon the claim that capitalist societies by their nature create inequalities and conflicting interests. The objective of social inclusion by contrast makes no such claim - by focusing upon those who are excluded from society and ways of including them, it shifts away from inequalities and conflicts of interests amongst those who are included, and presupposes that there is nothing inherently wrong with contemporary society as long as it is made more inclusive through government policies." (Fairclough, 2000, p.65)

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The net effect of this remodelling of a discourse of inequality into a weak discourse of social exclusion is to exclude from the discourse any possibility of alternative social models to free market capitalism.

Byrne (2005) develops this analysis of social exclusion discourse further, arguing that not only are the poor set high hurdles for admission into the socially included group but that the rich and powerful are made invisible by being subsumed into that group as “normal and ordinary” (Byrne, 2005, p.57).

Ultimately, Byrne concludes,

"we can say that the weak usage of social exclusion … that sees exclusion as a condition rather than an oppressive and exploitative process, is exceptionally important in constructing the range of possible social policies in postindustrial societies in which there is a history of political parties and programmes which have in the past challenged the notion that market capitalism is the only possible form of future social arrangement.” (Byrne, 2005, p.61)

Thus New Labour's conception of social exclusion constructs a social policy discourse in which any challenge to market capitalism is completely excluded from the discourse. It does so, Byrne contends, by norming to the values of the powerful whilst at the same time disguising their agency. By these means New Labour’s ‘social exclusion’ severely limits the possibilities for counter-hegemonic discourses.

Other recent critique suggests that this tendency towards the suppression of critical discourses is not limited to ‘social exclusion’ but is, rather, characteristic of neo-liberal discourses more widely. Gounari (2006) argues that neo-liberal ideology positions the linguistic act of questioning as unnecessary and consequently delegitimises critique. She quotes Mouffe’s assertion that

“we are facing a big deficit of new vocabularies, and we are at a moment in which the hegemony of neoliberal discourse is so strong that it seems as if there is no alternative” (Mouffe 1999, p.180).

The second strand of the research presented here, therefore, investigates indications of change in the degree to which political discourses around ‘bad behaviour’ in schools are engaged in dialogue with potential critics and critical discourses.

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Public Consultation

The wider research investigates a disparate range of factors which might shed light on changes in the degree to which the government is engaged in genuine dialogue with critical positions. With limited space I want to address here just two of these aspects of the texts. The first is the changing role of public consultation.

Public consultations are one of the key means by which governments engage in dialogue with the electorate. Keyword comparisons from the corpus analysis indicate that ‘consult’ (keyness: 27.7) occurs significantly more frequently in term 1 compared with term 2 and ‘consultation’ (keyness: 39.7) occurs significantly more frequently in term 1 compared with term 3. Not all of these occurrences necessarily relate to public consultations. However concordancing and close text analysis of the 3 White Papers both support a tentative conclusion that references to public consultation have dropped considerably over the decade, as well as providing more detailed information about the changes.

‘Excellence in Schools’ (DfEE, 1997) is laden with references to public consultations. It contains a specific section on ‘how to respond’ and a section of questions for consultation at the end of each Chapter. Comparison of the short sections of the White Papers selected for close text analysis found, in the extract from 1997, 39 references to the public consultation on the White Paper itself. In addition it contained 21 references to planned future public consultations on specific issues, including four such references to consultation on issues relating to school discipline (see Figure 4).

‘Schools Achieving Success’ (DfES, 2001b) and ‘Higher Standards, Better Schools for All’ (DfES, 2005) contain far fewer references to public consultations. Many more of the occurrences of CONSULT than in 1997 are in fact references to the use of consultants by schools, LEAs and government agencies and not references to public consultation by the government. Those that are references to public consultations include a proportionately greater number of references to past and ongoing consultations than in 1997. Of course this is at least partially explicable by the newness of the government in 1997. However the considerable drop (in 2001 and 2005) in the number of proposed consultations on the proposals in each of the White Papers still appears to represent an actual reduction in the extent to which the government consulted the public given that each of the White Papers ultimately led to new legislation.

In the extract from ‘Schools Achieving Success’ (DfES, 2001b) only six topics for which consultations were planned are mentioned (none affecting school discipline). Five current consultations are mentioned, of which two relate to school discipline. The results of one, a Teacher Training Agency consultation on requirements for teacher training courses, are pre-empted in the White Paper by the statement that

“Those requirements will emphasise behaviour management;” (DfES, 2001b, p.26 emphasis added)

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References to past, current and future consultations in the White Paper

extracts

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5

10

15

20

25

30

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1997 2001 2005

Past

CurrentFuture

Figure 4

This would seem to indicate that the government, by 2001, does not intend for its policy to be influenced by the outcome of the consultation – at least on this point.

Additionally, one might expect that the later White Papers would include more references to the results of past consultations (given the length of time the government had been in office at these points). However ‘Schools Achieving Success’ reports the results of only five such consultations in the extract analysed and just one relating to school discipline – the rather vague result that 85% of respondents supported government plans for “education with character” (p.27). What little definition is given of this strange term suggests that it relates to extended schools and nutritional standards. No explanation is provided of how this relates to school discipline and, although plausible connections are possible, the topic does not suggest that the government considers the outcome of consultations critical to its key policy proposals in the area.

The extract from ‘Higher Standards, Better Schools for All’ (DfES, 2005) contains 3 references to current consultations (none affecting school discipline), 2 planned and 1 possible consultation. Only one of these is relevant to school discipline: a planned consultation on the framing of the proposed law on a teacher’s right to discipline pupils. What is interesting about this consultation is the constituency which the government intends to consult:

“We will consult with schools and teachers on how we frame the new law.” (DfES, 2005, p.85)

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Key social actors are missing from this proposed consultation, most notably parents and children. This appears to be limiting consultation to those groups most likely to be largely in favour of the proposed new law and excluding groups which might be more critical.

The numbers of references to consultations in the extracts from the White Papers are only indicative since the extracts vary in length somewhat. However the decrease in references is so substantial, and supported by keyword analysis from the corpora as a whole, that it does suggest a pattern of decreasing references to public consultations in the texts – both asking questions of the public and referring to consultation responses in making policy proposals. There is also some evidence of a changing attitude to consultations: there are examples of outcomes being assumed in advance and only limited and favourable constituencies being consulted.

Thus political discourses around ‘bad behaviour’ in schools appear to have become less concerned with engaging with the public, pressure groups and other critical voices through public consultation. They also appear to be increasingly devaluing such consultation. The indications are elusive and patchy. Further work is needed to integrate and consolidate analyses of the disparate factors which this research is examining in an attempt to find ways of gauging changes in dialogic engagement. Nevertheless these findings on consultation are suggestive of a growing prevalence of an assumption that consultation is of limited use or necessity because ‘There Is No Alternative’.

It doesn’t have to make sense

Persistent indications of TINA ideology are also evident from examination of the styles of argumentation used in the texts. Earlier analysis of DfES Press Releases (Dunn, 2005) found that texts from terms 2 and 3 were dominated by hortatory forms of argumentation, which Fairclough describes as

“descriptions with a covert prescriptive intent, aimed at getting people to act in certain ways on the basis of representations of what is.” (2003, p.96)

One example is the repeated use of the phrase “violent or persistently disruptive pupils” (DfES, 2001a) which equates violence with persistent disruption by including both in a paratactic7 grammatical relationship. Similarly a comparison of two newspaper articles written by Secretaries of State for Education (Dunn, 2006) suggested post-2001 shifts in argumentation style. In this paper I want to briefly illustrate in more detail changes in argumentation strategies in the White Papers which further support and augment this earlier work.

Fallacies of informal logic are common in political discourses, particularly those which seek to legitimate policies which ‘other’ particular groups (Reisigl & Wodak, 2001, 7 Parataxis describes clauses which are in a relation of equivalence, often joined by a conjunction such as ‘and’ or included as elements in a list. According to Fairclough (2003) paratactic relations serve to background differences by making entities appear equivalent.

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p.71). Two particular fallacies of argumentation are commonplace in all 3 White Papers: from 1997, 2001 and 2005. However analysis indicates that they occur more frequently and more blatantly in later examples.

The first is secundum quid or the ‘hasty generalisation’. In each of the White Papers, case studies are frequently used as the justification for general policies without any reference to factors which might make the specific case unrepresentative. For example in ‘Higher Standards, Better Schools for All’ Hillcrest School and Community College, Dudley is extolled as an example of how a school in special measures can become oversubscribed

“following the implementation of a whole-school behaviour improvement strategy” (DfES, 2005, p.88)

However the case study mentions many changes (such as improved staffing, staggering the school day, ‘buddy’ support for new starters, a mentoring and anti-bullying strategy and the employment of a parent link worker) which are unrelated to the policy proposals contained in the White Paper (introducing a legal right for teachers to discipline, extending parenting orders, requiring parents to be responsible for excluded pupils for the first 5 days of an exclusion, partnerships with other schools, requiring LEAs to make provision for permanently excluded pupils after 5 days and making school discipline a key factor in school evaluation). Only one policy proposed by the White Paper is actually represented by the case study (the provision of an internal exclusion room).

The second common argumentation fallacy is petitio principii or the ‘circular argument’. This is where the argument assumes as a starting point the same principle it is seeking to prove. According to Reisigl & Wodak (2001, p.73) this fallacy is often disguised linguistically by paraphrasing the proposition to avoid detection of its similarity. For example

“Good discipline also depends on partnership. It starts in the home and must continue into school. Most schools are well-ordered communities but it is vital, in the interests of all pupils, that standards of behaviour are improved where they are not satisfactory.

Improving home/school links … will make a major contribution to reducing indiscipline …” (DfEE, 1997, p.55)

Here the argument begins by asserting that good home/school relations (‘partnership’) are essential to achieving good discipline in schools. The argument concludes that good home/school relations are essential to achieving good discipline in schools. The paraphrasing attempts to disguise the circular nature of this argument, but the initial assumption and the conclusion are fundamentally the same assertion.

Both of these argumentation strategies carry undercurrents of a core assumption that contrary positions are simply impossible (ie TINA). The case studies are assumed to prove the argument even though they are not representative. The discourse assumes that explanations of their success other than the policies being advocated are simply

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inconceivable. Similarly circular arguments are presented as if persuasive because their assertions are assumed to be fact. The possibility of alternative positions is again disallowed.

The apparent increase in prevalence over the decade of these two fallacies supports my contention of a reduction in the degree to which government is engaged in genuine dialogue with regard to its policies on ‘bad behaviour’ in schools. Both are illustrative of the growing dominance of TINA ideology in these political discourses.

The Logic of Appearances

Some indications are also emerging from the research of a progressive loss of coherence in argumentation. Two argumentation fallacies which are virtually unique to the later White Papers are illustrative of this trend. Ignoratio elenchi or ‘ignoring the counter-argument’ consists of introducing a point which is actually irrelevant to the position being advocated. Non sequitur is where the premises are insufficient to justify the conclusion, even though the conclusion per se may be correct.

To illustrate, I have broken down an argument from ‘Schools Achieving Success’ into its premises and conclusions (see Figure 5 & Figure 6 and Appendix A for the original text). The paragraph contains two separate, though related, arguments. In Argument B, the premise (4) is not sufficient to warrant the conclusion (5) since it fails to provide a reason why the conclusion is true – non sequitur. One of the premises of Argument A (2), on the other hand, probably does provide sufficient support for the conclusion of Argument B (5). However instead of being used in support of this argument, it is instead offered as a premise in support of Argument A. In this role it is an example of ignoratio elenchi since evidence that full-time, good quality education improves excluded pupils’ behaviour and attitudes to learning is not actually evidence that providing such education will prevent those pupils becoming involved in criminality or being socially excluded. At the same time, the premises of Argument A (1) and (2) are not sufficient to warrant the conclusion (3), a further example of non sequitur.

This confused and confusing style of argumentation appears characteristic of the more recent texts. Statements follow upon statements with little or no coherent argumentative connection between them. In my view this loss of coherence is also illustrative of a reduction in dialogic engagement since it suggests that the discourses analysed are no longer engaged in ‘arguing’ with anyone. They appear to be increasingly disengaged from genuine dialogue with critical discourses. Rather they appear content with what Fairclough describes as

“this tendency to prefer report and a logic of appearances over exposition and an explanatory logic … [and] often appear to be promotional rather than analytical, concerned more to persuade people that these are indeed the only practicable policies than to open up dialogue.” (2003, p.95-6)

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Figure 5

Figure 6

Conclusions

When New Labour came to power in 1997, school discipline was already a site of significant social injustice. Exclusions were at a record level and those shut out of mainstream education in this way were to a highly disproportionate extent black, poor, disabled and ‘looked after’. Contrary to government claims this situation has not been addressed but rather disguised and perpetuated. While exclusions (as measured by permanent exclusion – the only consistent measure available over the whole period) dropped slightly between 1997 and 1999 in response to a much-publicized target, they

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Argument APremises:

(1) For some children exclusion leads to criminality and social exclusion

(2) Full time, good quality education improves excluded pupils’ behaviour and attitudes to learning

Conclusions

(3) Full time, good quality education for excluded children will compensate for the effects of exclusion

(argument drawn from DfES, 2001b, p.27 para 3.41)

Grey is used to indicate an assertion which, while clearly inferred is not explicitly stated in the text.

Argument B

Premise:

(4) Excluded children used to receive only 2 or 3 hours of often poor quality education each week

Conclusion:

(5) Full time, good quality education should be provided for excluded children

(argument drawn from DfES, 2001b, p.27 para 3.41)


have largely remained stable at around 9,000 permanent exclusions per year ever since. The huge over-representation of marginialised groups amongst these children shows little sign of improvement.

What has changed over the decade is that the social injustice of this situation has become ever more invisible. The importation of discourses of ‘anti-social behaviour’ and a weak version of ‘social exclusion’ into educational policy discourse has seen the progressive individualisation and ‘othering’ of a particular group of socially disadvantaged young people and their parents. At the same time political discourses around ‘bad behaviour’ in schools have become increasingly disengaged from dialogue with critical discourses. Instead they have been subsumed into a broader neo-liberal discourse which denies any possibility of an alternative world-view.

Taken together these trends in political discourses around ‘bad behaviour’ in schools are increasingly squeezing out any spaces in which counter-hegemonic discourses might be constructed. The discourse constructs any resistance by the child (or its parents) to the socially conforming forces of the state as ‘bad behaviour’. The dominant conception of ‘bad behaviour’ recognizes only individuals and holds those individuals personally responsible for any adverse social consequences they may experience. At the same time the government’s discourse disengages from dialogue with anyone who might offer an opposing view. The government even seems to have become divorced from the need to make a coherent argument, as if counter-argument is simply an impossibility.

In my view the only avenue open to resisting this hegemonic discourse is to attempt to deconstruct the discourse itself. Understanding and laying bare the mechanisms through which social injustice is perpetuated provides a first step to resisting that injustice.

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References

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Davies, J. S. (2005) The Social Exclusion Debate: Strategies, controversies and dilemmas, Policy Studies, 26(1), 3-27.

DfEE (1997). Excellence in Schools. DfEE.

DfES (2001a). New Measures will Tackle Violent Pupils and Parents and Help Promote Good Behaviour: Estelle Morris. DfES, 9th July 2001. 2001/0300.

DfES (2001b). Schools Achieving Success. DfES.

DfES (2005). Higher Standards, Better Schools for All. DfES.

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Dunn, Y. (2006). Closing the door on conflict: The framing of debate on school discipline policy. Conference paper presented at BERA conference, (Warwick University, 6th September 2006). Available online at: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/157719.htm

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Appendix A

“3.41 For some children, exclusion can be a first step on a downward spiral towards criminality and social exclusion. In 1996/97, there were 12,500 permanent exclusions and excluded pupils typically received only 2 or 3 hours of often poor quality education each week. We have already reduced the number of exclusions by one third, to 8,300 and from September 2002, we will make sure that LEAs provide full-time education for all children who are excluded. We are investing over £200 million a year in order to meet this commitment. There will be a further 40 Pupil Referral Units this year. The number of staff employed in PRUs has grown by nearly 600 since 1997 and the quality of education has been transformed. A third already provide full-time education. Ofsted reports that nearly all are successful in improving pupils’ behaviour and attitudes to learning.”

(Extract from DfES, 2001b, p.27 para 3.41)

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Documents

Political discourse and ‘bad behaviour’ in schools: trends ... · Web viewDiscursive patterns such as grammatical shifts and changes in word usage are initially identified through