Classroom disciplinary climate in secondary schools in England: What is the real picture?

Abstract

This paper uses international data from a range of sources, principally the 2013 round of the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS 2013), to provide new information on classroom disciplinary climate in secondary schools in England. The paper advances the literature in three distinct ways. Firstly, the data show that teachers in England perceive that there is considerable disruption in their classrooms. While some reports, especially from official sources, have suggested that classroom disruption is minimal in schools in England that does not seem plausible given these results from TALIS. Secondly, since TALIS contains comparable data for over 30 countries, the results for England can be set in a wider context. Reports in the media frequently highlight pupil disruption and suggest that classroom climate tends to be worse in England than in many other countries. In fact what emerges from the international comparison is that, on each of the items measuring classroom climate in TALIS 2013, the results for England were somewhat better than both the all-country average and the average for a group of European comparators. Thirdly, the survey also includes a range of information about the school in which the teacher worked, the pupils which they taught, and the teachers themselves. We draw on this data to investigate which school-level characteristics, teacher attributes, and characteristics of pupils in the classroom, were associated with favourable classroom climate in England. While some commentators have focused exclusively on school-level factors, we emphasise the importance of within-school variation.The high rates of attrition of staff from the teaching profession continue to be a concern in many countries, and have been linked to disruptive behaviour, that is, a poor classroom climate. As Haydn (2014) observes 'there are very few things in professional life less edifying than being, in effect, locked in a room with 30 children not fully under your control'. Difficulties in coping with poor pupil behaviour is associated with burnout and emotional exhaustion among teachers (Dicke et al., 2014) and challenging behaviour from students is one of the most commonly cited reasons for quitting the teaching profession (Barmby, 2006;Buchanan, 2010).Thus, the topic of classroom climate is clearly an important one for researchers and policy-makers. In this article we use data from the 2013 round of the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS 2013) to provide new information on classroom disciplinary climate in lower secondary schools in England. The English case is of particular interest because there has been considerable disagreement about the extent to which disruptive behaviour there is, or is not, a problem. TALIS contains data that enables us to assess the extent of disruption in their classes, as perceived by teachers. Moreover, as it contains data from over 30 other countries, the results for England can be set in a wider context. Is there any compelling evidence that classroom climate tends to ...

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