Key Characteristics of the Teacher S Activity in Respect to Early Prevention of School

Key characteristics of the teacher‘s activity in respect to early prevention of school nonattendance

Rupsienė, Liudmila

Klaipeda University, Lithuania

Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, UniversityCollegeDublin, 7-10 September 2005

Abstract

The society began to pay more attention to the school nonattendance problem at the end of the XX century because school nonattendance is directly related to urgent social problems, such as, crime, drugs, unemployment, poverty, etc. Prevention of school nonattendance is important at both personal and social levels: on one hand, it is important to help the person to successfully integrate into the society, and on the other hand, the society must take care of its “health. The author of this paper is developing the researches in the dimension of the teacher’s activity in respect to prevention of school nonattendance in the context of the new educational paradigm, emphasizing the teacher’s responsibility for creation of conditions, favourable for self-realization of pupils, and aims to highlight the “key” characteristics of teachers’ activity in respect to early prevention of school nonattendance. We chose a non-structured, thorough interview as a research method. The interview respondents were 30 young people who, when studying at school, were extremely reluctant to studying, avoided going to school and skipped lessons.

Introduction

Prevention of school nonattendance and topicality of the research into it

School nonattendance can be defined as a phenomenon, which essential feature is the pupil’s resistance to the formal rules rejecting going to school. Such a rejection of going to school may be temporal or constant. The substantial difference between these two patterns of nonattendance is that exhibiting the first one, the pupil, though skipping some classes or several school days maintains his/her relations with the school and resumes going to school. The latter pattern of nonattendance refers to pupils, who leave school without finishing their studies (dropouts).

The school nonattendance problem is topical in all countries, realizing compulsory schooling. We can agree with Rubinstein’s (1969) statement, that this problem is a direct consequence of compulsory education. Just as soon as a certain state introduces Law on compulsory education the problem emerges: the number of children do not want to study, become truants, some of them drop out of general education schools and do not acquire the education, guaranteed to them by the state.

The society began to pay more attention to the school nonattendance problem at the end of the XX century. For example, in Great Britain the problems, related to school nonattendance, emerged in 1980-1990s. In Holland, according to Bos and Ruijters (1992), the society paid attention to school nonattendance in the early 1980s. In Lithuania we started to discuss school nonattendance actively after restoration of independence in 1991, although problems, related to school nonattendance had been investigated since 1960s already (for example, Bitinas, 1962; Rajeckas, 1966; Poškus, 1974; Stulpinas, 1976).

The UNO Convention on the rights of the child (1989) encourages the state members to take necessary measures, stimulating children to go to school constantly, and to reduce the number of dropouts. In the main educational acts of European countries and the USA, school nonattendance is referred to as one of the topical problems of school. Compulsory school attendance is established by means of the National Education Acts. The National Child and Family Codes establish parents’ obligation to take care of their child’s learning and regular school attendance.

Why is the society anxious so much about the problem of school nonattendance? The answers are given by the researches, investigating consequences of school nonattendance (for example, Schwartz, 1995; DeKalb, 1999; Overview of truancy, 1999; NCES, 2002; Harlow, 2003). The mentioned and some other researches show, that acquirement of education aids the person to integrate into the society more successfully, to find his/her place in this society realizing his/her potential opportunities. At the same time, we can clearly notice the opposite tendency: school nonattendance (thereby, acquiring no education) is directly related to urgent social problems, such as, crime, drugs, unemployment, poverty, etc. In the course of time, dropped out of school children become a great “trouble” and threat for individual members of the society and the society itself. Exhibition of truancy by a child is the first sign, testifying problems with his/her socialization and individualization. Truancy shows the child’s parents, teachers and the community, that the child is not well and needs help at this stage of his life. Hence, prevention of school nonattendance is important at both personal and social levels: on one hand, it is important to help the person to successfully integrate into the society, and on the other hand, the society must take care of its “health”.

According to Hoyle (1998), since the very emergence of the problem of school nonattendance, researches in this field have two basic trends, namely:

School nonattendance as an outcome of individual psychopathology of “incompetent” parents (for example, Reid, 1987), deviants’ disability (for example, Denney, 1974), disability of children, experiencing school phobia (for example, Chazan, 1962);
Solution of the problem of school nonattendance, striving to reduce the extent of this phenomenon (for example, Hargreaves, 1984) or return the truants back to the “normal” condition, so that they would normally attend school again (for example, Murgatroyd and Pickles, after Reid, 1987). According to Hoyle (1998) the latter researches influence education policy and decisions of the state in respect to solution of this problem.

By the research, presented in this paper, we tried to develop the second trend of researches in the problem of school nonattendance, because this second trend is directed towards prevention of the phenomenon of school nonattendance.

Word “prevention” originates from Latin word “praevenio”, meaning to forestall, to anticipate. The word “prevention” is widely used in scientific and everyday language in various contexts, such as, medicine, law, social work, ecology, economics, education, psychology, management, etc. (for example, prevention of crimes, prevention of corruption, prevention of allergy, prevention of suicides, prevention of genocide, prevention of money laundering, etc.).

Prevention is a whole of actions, taken in order to guarantee healthy, safe and efficient life ( Prevention is actions, taken in order to either reduce or eliminate psychological, social or other conditions, causing physical, mental disorders or socioeconomic problems. They are actions or an activity, guaranteeing safety, health, self-dependence, healthy behaviour, as well as helping to reduce or control the risks of diseases, disabilities and dysfunction (

The concept of prevention is one of the basic concepts of social education. In the Dictionary of Social Pedagogy (Словарь по социальной педагогике, 2002) preventive social pedagogical work is described as a professional social pedagogical activity, aiming at forestalling person’s negative behaviour, negative expression, development of negative features and intensification of negative habits. In the Dictionary of Pedagogical Terms (Jovaiša, 1993, p.183) prevention is described as “a general name for various educational methods, used in order to anticipate the events, incompatible with moral and juridical norms. Preventive upbringing is necessary for the children, who tend to communicate with delinquent friends, to give in to negative influence, who are impulsive”.

Prevention is divided into several levels or stages, depending on the time, when intervention into the phenomenon takes place. The scientific literature and practice distinguish primary, secondary and tertiary stages. On the other hand, distinguishing of early and late prevention is also commonly used. It is unambiguously acknowledged, that the primary (or early) prevention is the most effective one, because it helps to prevent emergence of the phenomenon at the very beginning. By means of early prevention they seek to eliminate the conditions, provoking emergence of the phenomenon.

In this paper the early prevention of school nonattendance at general education school is understood as strategic interventions of headmasters, teachers and social pedagogues into the process of education of the whole schoolchildren’s community with pupils, who have already become truants, aiming at reduction of the number of cases of school nonattendance and the extent of the phenomenon of school nonattendance by means of elimination of reasons, provoking school nonattendance and introduction of measures, stimulating to go to school.

Dimension of teachers’ activity in respect to prevention of school nonattendance

As we can see from the conception presented above, there are several dimensions of prevention of school nonattendance. One of them is the dimension of teachers’ activity, which is examined in this paper. The teacher is one of the most significant people in the pupil’s life; the teacher’s activity can either strengthen the pupil’s motivation to study or, on the contrary, alienate the pupils from learning and the school. Therefore, it is important to reveal peculiarities of the teachers’ activity, forestalling school nonattendance or hindering spreading of this phenomenon.

Researches, related to the dimension of the teacher’s activity, are the most popular in the field of education science. These researches root in educational philosophy, therefore the trends of researches in problems, related to the dimension of the teacher’s activity, are, first of all, distinguished on the basis of the educational paradigm. There are two well-known basic educational paradigms, namely, a classical one and a new one.

The classical educational paradigm interprets education as imparting of summarized experience of the society to the pupils. This paradigm is based on philosophic theories of idealism, realism, neothomism and materialism. Educational conceptions, based on these philosophic theories, appeared in the XVII-XVIII centuries and were established, though competing each other, in the XIX century. In the XX and early XXI centuries their development has been influenced by new philosophic trends. Within the recent centuries besides the classical educational paradigm began to form a new educational paradigm. Forming of this paradigm is related to spreading of the ideas of natural education. In Lithuania these ideas did not root in the XX century, because, due to the communistic ideology, it was impossible during the soviet years. Meanwhile, in the countries of Western Europe and the USA these ideas widely established, challenging the classical educational paradigm.

Nowadays the sphere of the educational research in Lithuania is distinguished by a specific combination of the new and the classical educational paradigms, thus, while the classical educational paradigm is still wider used in practice, the new paradigm is spreading with development of the education science. It is necessary to clearly realize both common and peculiar features of these two trends of researches. These features are very well revealed by Bitinas (2000). He explains, that the common features of the both trends of researches are acknowledgment of the facts that the child is an individuality, that education must be constructed in such a way, that the pupil could live in the society, that the teacher manages the educational process and that education is based on the educational interaction. According to Bitinas, the essential difference between these two trends is the way they answer the question about what the education must be based on: child’s individuality or needs of the society. When creating a theoretical basis for his research, the researcher always has to choose only one of these alternatives.

In the highly-developed countries school established as an educational institution in the XX century. Within this century countries, one after another, adopted education acts, providing for compulsory schooling. Due to many reasons establishment of school was influenced by the philosophy of realism. The two others classical philosophies, namely, neothomism and idealism, did not have such a considerable impact on schools in the XX century. The realistic school was orientated to education of obedient executors; it functioned as an institution for imparting of summarized experience of the humanity, where the educational process was organized through the high-level teaching of subjects, the best teaching methods were considered to be those, helping pupils to remember the knowledge better, and the best teacher was the one able to impart the knowledge best. The classical paradigm investigated the dimension of the teacher’s activity in respect to prevention of school nonattendance aiming to answer the question “Which is the best way for the teacher to impart his knowledge so, that pupils could remember it better?”

In the majority of states, they tried to “reform” the children, avoiding learning, by means of measures, provided for in the statutes, namely, punishments, reprimands, psychiatric treatment. Most often such a “reforming” did not have any positive results. Therefore, they have started searching for other ways to solve this problem, relating them to the new educational paradigm.

In Lithuania this process has lingered due to political situation in the country. Many years, while Lithuania was incorporated in the USSR, solving of various scientific educational problems (including those, related to school nonattendance) was closely related to development of Russian science. Before restoration of independence, Lithuanian scientists were prompted to keep within soviet ideology. Scientific ideas, developed in the West, were usually declared to be bourgeois and inappropriate for the Soviet people; therefore the influence of these ideas on the researches of Lithuanian scientists was considerably restricted.

Within the Soviet years children’s learning was considered as a social obligation, as a specific form of activity, significant to the society. They stated that when learning, a child takes part in life of the society. Therefore, the main suggestion to solve the problem wasfollowing: a child must understand and “accept” learning as an activity, significant to the society, he must not only understand importance of education, but also have a strong cognitive interest (Божович, 1995). Therefore a lot of attention was paid to revealing and explanation of the obligation to learn. According to Podlasyi, as long ago as in 1980s there was the only main way, recommended for the pedagogue in the USSR to encourage students to learn, namely, explaining social significance of learning to students (Подласый, 1999).

At the same time in the USSR were spread researches in development of pupils’ cognitive interest, because problems of school nonattendance were related to lack of cognitive interest. Then they thought, that development of students’ cognitive interest aided to create a positive attitude to the educational process, teacher’s actions, school tasks, self-dependent learning activity (Щукина, 1971; Rajeckas, 1966, Poškus, 1974, Juška, 1976 et al.).

At the end of the XX century Lithuanian scientists were influenced not only by classical, but also by a new educational paradigm – their researches broke the framework of the classical educational paradigm. The new educational paradigm sees the teacher’s role absolutely differently from the classical one. The teacher is considered not as an imparter of knowledge, but as a free personality, deciding himself what and how to teach. “The teacher teaches what students are able to learn and what they want to learn, he explains to the students until they understand”, comments on the teacher’s role Bitinas (2000, p.161). This peculiarity of the teacher’s work creates a free, warm teaching/learning atmosphere and increases teachers’ responsibility in respect to parents. When teaching (choosing aims, contents and methods) the teacher must take into consideration his pupils’ motivation to study and their experience.

The influence of the newest educational paradigm is clearly seen in researches by Laužikas. They withdraw from the classical conception of a teacher as an imparter of knowledge, and turn to the pupil, his experiences and individuality. Pedagogues must perceive the student’s individuality and do their best to adjust the educational process to it (Laužikas, 1974, 1993).

In 1981 a group of scientists, including Paurienė, Barkauskaitė, Uzdila, Gylienė, Gedvilas, Giedrienė, Meškauskaitė, Ramanauskas et al., headed by Laužikas, performed a large-scale complex research. They established, that striving to improve the teaching process at school, teachers should pay a special attention to their relationship with pupils, basing this relationship on a constructive interaction.

Researches by Lithuanian scientists in the trend of the new educational paradigm were not an exception in the USSR. Some Russian scientists also advocated the new paradigm and strived to break out of the “grip” of the classical school (for example, Славина, 1958; Ефимова, 1985; Маркова, Матис, Орлов, 1990; Гусева, 1997).

The author of this paper is developing the researches in the dimension of the teacher’s activity in respect to prevention of school nonattendance in the context of the new educational paradigm, emphasizing the teacher’s responsibility for creation of conditions, favourable for self-realization of pupils, and aims to highlight the “key” characteristics of teachers’ activity in respect to early prevention of school nonattendance.

Methodology

We chose a non-structured, thorough interview as a research method (Polit, Hungler, 1995). It is used as a measure to understand complex (generalized) people’s behaviour, without beforehand dividing the respondents into categories and implementing any other limitations of the research.

The interview respondents were young people who, when studying at school, were extremely reluctant to studying, avoided going to school, sometimes skipped lessons. However, they managed to cope with this augmentative problem. Sampling of these young people can be defined as purposive nonstochastic. We applied two sampling criterions as follow: 1) nonsystematic truancy, school nonattendance; 2) coping with the problem of school nonattendance and finishing school.

The total number of participants of the research was 30 young people from various towns of Lithuania. Their age ranged from 19 to 27 years old. Two thirds of the respondents were men.

The primary question of the interview was When did you feel the first signals of reluctance in respect to going to school? Among additional questions were following: Why did it happen? What events at school was it related to? What, in your opinion, provoked your wish not to attend school? How did you manage to solve this problem? What teachers helped you to cope with this problem? What “key” characteristics can such teachers be distinguished by? What are essential peculiarities of work of such teachers?

The author of the paperinterprets impediments to prevention of school nonattendance as peculiarities of teachers’ activity, hindering other prevention executors to perform preventive activity.

Perception of impediments to early prevention of school nonattendance is important, aiming toenforce prevention of school nonattendance. Knowing factors provoking school nonattendance and those, which do not let to forestall school nonattendance, teachers can evaluate their work with pupils critically and change their behaviour, eliminating reasons, stimulating emergence of the problem of school nonattendance.