INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON Faculty of Policy and Society Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy `Fixing' Children: Producing a Hierarchy of Learners in Primary School Processes Claudine Rausch 2012 1 Abstract This research project emerged in the context of the apparent paradox between the then New Labour Government's agenda for more 'inclusive' education practices on the one hand and yet the high level of school exclusions and expansion of segregated units on the other. I sought to enquire into how these tensions were negotiated and what understandings of inclusive education emerged in the primary school context; situating these processes within wider local and national policy contexts. An ethnographic study was undertaken, located in one inner London Primary school. Fieldwork involved non-participant observation over one academic year; concluding with semi-structured interviews with both children and staff. Routine moments of every day classroom experience revealed 'rather simple technical procedures' (Rose, 1999 p.135) functioning as 'disciplinary power' that 'compares, differentiates, hierarchizes, homogenizes, excludes' (Foucault 1979). 'Dividing practices' (Foucault 1979) such as grouping by perceived ability pervaded children's daily classroom experiences as school staff worked to enact the plethora of initiatives and directives issued from central government agencies. Through the same processes that served an over-riding drive to 'fix' or repair children in order to meet the normative demands of the 'standards agenda' expressed most visibly in high stakes testing, nationally set targets and associated 'league tables', it is suggested that children as school pupils were increasingly 'fixed' as educational subjects positioned in a finely graded hierarchy. I argue that routine processes of 'good practice' in every classroom functioned as 'gentle' exclusionary practices (Bourdieu and Champagne 1999 pp. 422-423) constituting 'student identities within the terms of enduring and predictable categorisations' (Youdell 2006 p. 177). This problematises 'the interpretation of what 'inclusiveness' is and to whom it extends' (Graham 2006 p.20). 2 Declaration I hereby declare that, except where explicit attribution is made, the work presented in this thesis is entirely my own. Word count (exclusive of appendices, list of references and bibliography): 98,177 Claudine Rausch 3 Acknowledgements I wish to thank a number of people for their help and support during this process. Thank you to my supervisors, David Gillborn and Stephen Ball. The inspiration of their research, together with their time and patience has not solely been for the production of this thesis. It is, I hope, about investing in my ongoing thinking, questioning and work in education. My thanks also go to Carol Vincent and Tamara Bibby for their insightful comments and questions on the first chapters that comprised my upgrade submission. I have been encouraged in my endeavours by Roger Slee and calmly talked through statistics by Charlie Owen. The staff at the Institute of Education Library should all be handsomely rewarded for their unstinting helpfulness. Thank you to family and friends. To my parents: Dennis Rausch for his high expectations and the importance he places on education. Liliane Rausch for all of your support and involvement in whatever I am studying. To Stuart, 011ie and Chester. We can have our weekends and evenings back now. Thank you to Sophie, Sarah, Marion, Tracy, Anne, Hilary, Sam, Jessica, Marcus, Diane, Emma, Baz, HA, Asif, Gregg for variously being there in my hours of need, for engaging with or tactfully ignoring the whole thing, wherever we are in the cycle. I am grateful to my research school, the children and staff who were so generous and welcoming during the year I spent with them. I must thank the Support for Learning Service for employing me, thereby also supporting my learning! In particular to Anne Murray, Peggy Gosling, Julius Malkin, Liz Vickerie, Bob Minter and also to Lynda Haddock and John Bailey. Harry Ayres for more or less making me do an MA all those years ago, something that was way beyond my expectations. Few people read doctoral theses so I cannot imagine any of the children I have taught reading these acknowledgements, but I am particularly indebted to them for keeping my passion for education burning so brightly and engaging me in learning. They make the work enjoyable. 4 Table of Contents Introduction: 8 0.1 Asking Questions: Entering the field 8 0.2 Researching inequality: making links between questions, purpose and methodologies 10 0.3 Day 1: access, ethics and dilemmas 13 0.4 Dilemmas and role management in the field 20 0.5 Overview 24 1. Chapter One: Literature Review 27 1.1 Situating this literature review, situating this study 28 1.2 This study in context 34 1.3 Inclusive education and Special Educational Needs 36 1.4 Exclusion, inequity and racist outcomes: politics of difference 44 1.5 School Effectiveness 48 1.6 Education Policy 49 2. Chapter Two: Methods & Methodologies: Do they ring your bell? 55 2.1 Setting the Scene 55 2.2 Asking Questions 58 2.3 Access and Anonymity 63 2.4 Emancipatory Research? 67 2.5 Methods 73 3. Chapter Three: Pupil Grouping 80 3.1 Patrice: Some are good at learnin' and some ain't. 80 3.2 Research and policy context 81 3.3 In the classroom 87 3.4 Morning all day 97 3.5 Hexagons are top table: Children talk about classroom organization. 99 3.6 Circles is the lowest: We're the dumest table. 109 4. Chapter Four: Teachers' decision-making processes: Fixing children as educational subjects 115 4.1 Introduction 116 5 4.2 A certain amount of freedom 120 4.3 Playing to their tune 134 4.4 Achievement levels of children: 'You hardly don't do SATS' 139 4.5 Setting three levels of ability work-wise 145 4.6 Easy work for the thick ones and hard work for the bright ones' 148 4.7 Amaze me 159 5. Chapter Five: Special Educational Needs and every day processes as dividing practice 163 5.1 Introduction 163 5.2 Special Educational Needs: In whose best interests? 164 5.3 Following the instructions: Operating interventions 166 5.4 Fitting children into interventions: the interlocking hierarchy 172 5.5 'Little grey cells' Individualising children, diagnosis and 'gentle' exclusions 174 5.6 Ledley has had everything under the sun and David wears glasses, but he manages that very well: Delineating ab/normal 183 5.7 'That's just been revolutionary to my thinking since I found out about this!': Social and medical models in action. 192 5.8 Happy Child, Sad Child: Children's feelings, technologies of the self and the construction of the 'appropriate learner' 197 5.9 Potential outcasts: Expanding SEN 200 5.10 When what works, doesn't work 203 6. Chapter Six: Inclusive education 206 6.1 ...if it doesn't work here then I don't think it's going to work anywhere for them and then an inclusive school isn't the place for them' 206 6.2 'How good the school is' 207 6.3 Inclusion Experience 225 7. Chapter Seven: Conclusion 237 7.1 Introduction 237 7.2 A hierarchy of learners: Ability grouping in a new millennium 239 7.3 Education policy: researching the good teacher, good pupil, good school 240 7.4 Inclusion/exclusion 244 7.5 Flaws and limitations 247 7.6 Implications and potential for further research 249 6 Appendices 252 a. Graph 1: Percentage of children allocated to tables 1 (high) to 5 (low) whether in receipt of Free School Meals or not. 253 b. Graph 2: Allocation to tables 1 (high) to 5 (low) by broad categories 'White' and 'Black Caribbean'. 254 c. Monitoring document: Children's table allocations in 4 classes studied 255 d. Sample teacher interview 269 e. List of acronyms used 271 f. Sample sketch of table positions in one classroom 273 g. List of participants 274 References 275 7 Introduction This chapter is intended as an overture: introducing key themes and issues in the thesis. It has been influenced by questions and discussion during the examination meeting as part of the 'upgrading' process from MPhil study to PhD. These questions recalled for me my first day in 'the field' as vividly illustrative of both key methodological issues as well as subsequent findings. I was therefore fascinated to subsequently find the chapter by Watford (2001) titled First Days in the Field, 'presumptiously copied directly from Blanche Geer's classic chapter first published in 1964'. Watford continues, 'Her concern is with the relationships between initial fieldwork experiences, her thinking before entering the field and her final understanding achieved at the end of the research process' (Watford 2001 p.50). On a modest scale, I hope to achieve some of this here. Keeping with the musical analogies, this introductory chapter could be used to >> fast forward' directly to ensuing chapters in which these key issues and themes are further explored. The thesis is the written report of an educational ethnography (Watford 2008); a case study that sets out to explore inclusion and exclusion in the primary school context". It comprises a literature review, methodologies chapter, four chapters in which data are presented and discussed and a conclusion. I will outline these in more detail at the end of this chapter. Asking Questions: Entering the field Just as Clough and Barton assert 'how we choose to research a subject is itself constitutive of that subject' (1995 p.2) so the commencement of a report immediately raises methodological and ethical questions. As Murphy and Dingwall (2001) counsel, I have done 'much to protect settings and participants by removing identifying information...routinely using pseudonyms, and altering non-relevant details' (p.341).