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Challenging Dominant Views on Student Behaviour at School pp 115–131Cite as

‘Schoolwork’ and ‘Teachers’: Disaffected Boys Talk About Their Problems with School

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Abstract

Thirty-three boys, aged between 9 and 16 years of age, who were enrolled in special schools for students with disruptive behaviour each participated in a nine-part semi-structured interview that opened with the question ‘Do you like school?’ Not surprisingly, almost 90 % responded negatively. These boys were then asked to describe when they first began to dislike school, what had triggered their dislike, what they liked least about school, what they tended to get in trouble for, and whether their previous (mainstream) school(s) could have done anything differently. This chapter draws on these students’ own words to understand the contributions that schools and teachers make to disruptive student behaviour and how best to engage difficult students from the perspectives of the students themselves.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Numbers do not add to 29 as one participant was unable to recall when he first began to dislike school.

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Acknowledgments

This chapter is dedicated to James Ciappara who was a participant in this research. James was killed in a collision with two cars when evading police whilst riding a motorised mountain bike without a helmet. He was 14 years old. The research was supported under the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Projects funding scheme (DP110103093). The views expressed herein are those of the author and are not necessarily those of the Australian Research Council. Ethics approval was obtained from the Macquarie University Ethics Committee (Final Approval No. 5201000654) and the NSW Department of Education and Communities (SERAP No. 2011027).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia

    Linda J. Graham

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  1. Linda J. Graham
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Correspondence to Linda J. Graham .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of South Australia, School of Education, South Australia, Australia

    Anna Sullivan

  2. University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

    Bruce Johnson

  3. University of South Australia, Adelaide, Magill, South Australia, Australia

    Bill Lucas

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Graham, L.J. (2016). ‘Schoolwork’ and ‘Teachers’: Disaffected Boys Talk About Their Problems with School. In: Sullivan, A., Johnson, B., Lucas, B. (eds) Challenging Dominant Views on Student Behaviour at School. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0628-9_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0628-9_8

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-10-0626-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-0628-9

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