Research: Becoming a problem

Research summary

• September 2006 to February 2008

This 18-month project focused on problematic behaviour as it emerged within, and was shaped by, the culture of the classroom. A key question driving the research was: what makes it difficult for some children to be, and get recognised as, ‘good’ students?

The research showed how the culture of the classroom is an important site for the production of problematic reputations.

It stemmed from the premise that building a reputation as a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ pupil is never the sole responsibility of the individual child. Children must not only act appropriately but must be recognised as having done so. Reputation is therefore a public matter - a child becomes a problem in the eyes of others (teachers, school staff, classmates and other parents).

The research was based in a reception class (consisting of 4-5 year-olds) in four primary and infant schools in Greater Manchester. The project team worked closely with teachers and other staff, visiting each school once a week from the start of the first term in the reception class, continuing through the reception year and into the first term of the following school year. Field notes and video recordings were made of all aspects of school life, from the daily minutiae of classroom and playground activities to assemblies, concerts and parties. Interviews were held with the class teachers, and two workshops were convened at which the participating teachers met with the project team to review video and field note data and discuss emergent themes. Field notes were collated for analysis, and interviews, video recordings and meetings were transcribed.

Towards the end of the project a video for use by practitioners and teacher educators was made, incorporating video and field note excerpts exemplifying key themes such as those addressed in this article, with discussion of these themes by the participating teachers and project team.

The public nature of discipline, conducted under the imperative to form a crowd of children into the collectivity of a class, means that children who diverge from the rules are identified as ‘different’ in plain view of other children and adults. There are undoubtedly good reasons for classroom rules – courtesy, democratic participation, safety, a congenial learning environment. However, these rules are operationalised in ways that marginalise a minority of children, who become examples against which the preponderance may recognise itself as ‘normal’.

Research outputs

Academic papers

• MacLure, M., Jones, L., Holmes, R. and MacRae, C. (2011). ‘Becoming a problem: behaviour and reputation in the early years classroom’. British Educational Research Journal, 38 (3), 447 – 471.

• Jones, L., MacLure, M., Holmes, R. and MacRae, C. (2011). ‘Children and objects: affection and infection’, Early Years, 32 (1), 49 – 60.

• MacLure, M, Holmes, R, MacRae, C. and Jones, L. (2010). ‘Animating classroom ethnography: overcoming video-fear’. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Volume 23 Issue 5, 543 – 556.

• MacLure, M, Holmes, R, Jones, L. and MacRae, C. (2010) Silence as resistance to analysis. Or, on not opening one’s mouth properly. Qualitative Inquiry, volume 16, number 6, pp. 492 – 500.

• Jones, L., Holmes, R., MacLure, M. and MacRae, C. (2010) Documenting classroom life: how can I write about what I am seeing? Qualitative Research, Volume 10 Issue 4, 479-491