Children's social and emotional wellbeing in schools

Children’s friendships in diverse primary schools: teachers and the processes of policy enactment

“…Processes of classification, central to schooling, are reaching beyond measurable forms of academic ability and focusing on emotional stability and literacy. Watson et al (2012) in their consideration of school conflict resolution strategies argue that children are expected to 'continually "get on" with all their peers ' (2012, 133), a goal many adults would identify as unrealistic. Non-problematic relationships with others is often understood as a characteristic of a 'good' student, as the ability to negotiate successfully relationships with teachers and peers is seen as an indicator of emotional maturity and possession of an attitude and set of behaviours that are conducive to learning (Archer and Francis 2006), as well as a form of capital accumulation for the individual.…”

“…In the extract below, two children in Crimson class at Leewood discuss their concern over losing friends. Teachers' rather more cavalier reactions may be understood as a defence against the children's negative emotions, their displays of anger, pain (also Watson et al 2012). More prosaically, they could also be responding to the tedium and time pressure of sorting out recurrent issues with 'the same children' (Phillip, second class teacher, Leewood).…”

“…This would require that issues and topics for discussion would not be guided primarily by teachers' concern with behaviour management, but be identified by the children, in order to reach the concerns that they hold. As Watson et al (2012) argue, fluid, open debate and discussion with children may have the potential to diminish alienation, and offer safe spaces for children -all children -to explore the nature of friendship, and friend-making and maintaining. Peterson et al (2014), http://www.doingsmsc.org.uk/.…”

The management of ‘emotional labour’ in the corporate re-imagining of primary education in England

“…As pointed out by Watson et al (2012), despite the wholesale adoption of these programmes across the country, few commentators critically examine the conception of well-being they foster or the evidence of their possible negative effects for individual pupils. Of key importance here is also a gradual shift in the focus of Personal and Social Education (PSE) of the 1980s from the development of reasoning skills, affective concern and independent critical judgement (Hargreaves et al, 1988) to techniques for the regulation and utilisation of emotion.…”

“…Despite mixed evaluations of the UKRP pilot 2007-2010(Watson et al, 2012, the current UK policy of austerity and welfare cuts creates conditions under which resilience and character training programmes may be deployed by policymakers to ameliorate the negative effects of 'social policy in cold climate' (Lupton and Thomson, 2015). As emphasised by the current Conservative Education Secretary Nicky Morgan (2014), schools are now expected to 'produce' well-rounded pupils possessed of character traits of 'resilience, self-control, humour, charity and a strong work ethic'.…”