In Loco Parentis: Should teachers be
parents too?
�Should
I worry about what my pupils eat for lunch? What about the thin girl whose
packed lunch I routinely find uneaten at the bottom of my waste bin? What about
the boy I know spends his money on cigarettes? Or the girl who only ever eats
chips and mars bars?
Which
of these cases are my concern and which are a matter for their parents?
Increasingly, teachers are being asked to step into the parent role�
TES Friday March 21 2003 p25
Teachers are often described as being �in Loco Parentis� but what does this mean? It literally
translates as in place of the parent. I would like to use this enquiry to
investigate what this means to me as classroom teacher, tutor and Head of Year,
the responsibilities this carries and whether teachers should in fact take on
the role of parent for any part of the school day. I am also curious to
investigate the views of students towards teachers as taking some parental role
in their education. There is no traditional method of enquiry which will allow
me to investigate this fully and I will therefore invent my own method as I
move through the enquiry. This methodological inventiveness has been recognised
by Dadds and Hart(2001) and they have recognised that :
�for some practitioner researchers,
creating their own unique way through their research may be as important as
their self-chosen research focus�what researchers chose to research was
important to their sense of engagement and purpose. But we had understood
fairly well that how practitioners chose to research, and their sense of
control over this, could be equally important to their motivation, their sense
of identity within the research and their research outcomes�
Dadds and Hart p.166,2001
I hope that this methodological inventiveness as well as the
content of the enquiry itself will allow other teachers to consider their own
role in developing the �emotional intelligence� (Goleman 1995) of themselves
and their students through their own style of teaching or �parenting�.
Central to this enquiry is my belief that the role of the
tutor is vital to the development of students, both academically and socially
and my belief that as Head of Year I have a responsibility to ensure that my
team of tutors are using their undoubted �emotional intelligence� to help all
students in their and ultimately my care to achieve their full potential both
in terms of their exam results and their holistic growth as young people. These
are my embodied values (Whitehead, 2003) the values
that I hope are evident in everything that I do. Whitehead describes these as:
�the reasons for why I do
things. I think of my values as embodied in what I do. They form the goals I
set for myself in living a productive life. I often feel a desire to resolve a
tension when I experience the denial of values such as freedom, care,
compassion, justice and enquiry, and explain my actions in terms of my desire
to live my values as fully as possible�
Whitehead,
2003, p.195
I hope that by conducting this enquiry I
can clarify for myself how I live these values and contribute to the
knowledge-base of education by expressing, clarifying and communicating the
value of Loco Parentis as a living standard of educational judgement. As
Catherine Snow recognised in her presidential address to the American
Educational Research Association:
�Good teachers possess a wealth of
knowledge about teaching that cannot currently be drawn upon effectively in the
preparation of novice teachers or in debates about practice. The challenge here
is not to ignore or downplay this personal knowledge, but to elevate it. The
knowledge resources of excellent teachers constitute a rich resource, but one
that is largely untapped because we have no procedures for systemizing it.�
Snow p.9
2001
As a direct result of the nature of the enquiry it will be
largely based on my own �personal practical knowledge� (Connelly &
Clandinin, 1988) defined as being:
�in the teacher�s past experience, in the
teacher�s present mind and body, and in the future plans and actions. Personal
practical knowledge is found in the teacher�s practice. It is, for any teacher,
a particular way of reconstructing the past and the intentions of the future to
deal with the exigencies of the present situation.
Connelly and
Clandinin,1988 p25
By researching how we behave as teachers and how this is
perceived by students we can evaluate the role of teachers as parents and
consider how best we can parent children or not to allow for their own
development.
Langeveld(1965) writes:
Educational studies are a �practical
science� in the sense that we do not only want to know facts and to understand
relations for the sake of knowledge, we want to know and understand in order to
be able to act �better� than we did before.(p4)
This Educational Enquiry is therefore the �story that I live
by� (Connelly and Clandinin,1999).
I am currently a Head of Year 8 in a proudly comprehensive
Secondary school where a large number of the students that I come into daily
contact with do not have a traditional parenting experience. Within my own year
group, 7/225 students live with adults other than their parents and 32/225 live
with only one of their biological parents. This has an obvious impact on the
role of my tutors in providing more than the adult who marks the register and
chases absences but emotional and social support. Oliver James has considered
the role of parents in the success of students. He states that:
�A large proportion of pupils have
separated or divorced parents, and this has a huge impact on your (the tutors)
daily life because of it�s effect on children�s behaviour�crudely put and on
average it makes children less good learners and harder to control�
Oliver James,
2002
Plato said
�All
learning has an emotional base�
I am certain that
students have to engage in a relationship that breeds emotion in order to
learn. Through this enquiry I would like to establish the level to which this
emotional relationship can be likened to that between parent and child and
whether the quality of this relationship has a direct impact on the academic
achievement of students.
I feel that the
importance of teachers doing more than teaching to provide exam results or
subject knowledge has increasing significance as it is widely accepted that:
�the
group of children who present schools with special challenges are those with
emotional and behavioural difficulties. It is also noted that the number of
children falling within this group is increasing.�
Bennathan and Boxall 1998
These students are
the adults of the future and if they have not been supported in their emotional
development by their parents or their teachers then they have little chance of
passing on their emotional skills to their own children.
My own experience
of parenthood is very positive. I
have a strong, loving, relationship with my mother and father. This has, I am sure, impacted on my
drive to become a teacher and pastoral carer � to pass on more than subject
knowledge and be involved in the holistic education of students, contributing
to their moral education and helping them to become responsible citizens by
providing a happy and safe environment in which they can learn.
Initially as a
tutor and more recently as a Head of Year I have been able to make a greater
contribution towards this aspect of education.
In my previous
school, there were no tutors, just form teachers who took the register twice a
day and passed on important messages.
They undoubtedly contributed �towards the spiritual, moral, mental and
physical development of the community�, as set out in Pamphlet No. 1 of the
Ministry of Education 1945 and Education Act of 1944, but this was haphazard
and in no way structured or monitored.
As a newly
qualified teacher this made little sense to me. I had been constantly reminded throughout my teaching
practice that relationships between students and teachers were vital if
students were to achieve success, yet little opportunity was being created to
establish these relationships. When adults are asked who their favourite
teacher was at school, it is rarely a teacher that they did not have a positive
relationship with.
Research conducted
by Margaret Olszewski a Fourth Grade Teacher at Raymond Marquith Elementary
School in Illinois in the USA claimed that:
�most
parents indicated that during their childhood, they liked teachers who made
them feel special. They felt teachers who related to them and showed interest
in them as individuals were most remembered. The subject area taught was not
the reason for their choice of favourite teacher, but rather their choices were
influenced by their personal relationships with the teacher�
In a review conversation with the Head
Teacher at the end of my first year of teaching I raised these concerns and was
challenged by him to do something about it. I began my second year of teaching as the only Head of Year
in the school, responsible for implementing changes that had taken place in
many schools in the mid 1990�s. ¹
Gradually, with a
lot of enthusiastic encouragement the role was changed and Form teachers
encouraged to become Tutors, to have a wider responsibility for the students in
their care. This is described by
Marland as the transformation between �tutor subordinate� or �tutor neutral�
and �tutor ascendant�. This is described as the form teacher engaging in an
�emotional� relationship with the students, getting to know them and their �
baggage� in order to help them to achieve their full potential academically.
This relationship was clearly dependent on the values and attitudes of both
parties.
This change was
beneficial to both students and staff. Improved relationships encouraged
greater success as students were valued as people. This academic success in
turn improved relationships � a positive cycle of emotionally informed success
had been established. In a paper written by Caroline Lodge from the University
of London she describes the views of one tutor:
�The
relationship allows the tutor to support the young people�s social and
educational development. I enjoy the everyday involvement with pupils,
listening to their interaction and hearing about what they have done. It�s good
to be part of all of that and to think that you might have made a difference in
some way�
This increased
emphasis on the pastoral development of students had been recognised in the
Active Tutorial Work (ATW) project, published in 1985, which recognised:
�the
manifest need to equip young people with those personal and social skills,
which are the foundation of self esteem and personal health�.
Bolam and Medlock 1985
Further work then
led to the introduction and development of a tutor led personal education
programme and also the recognition that through their contact and relationships
with students, teachers were passing on more than their subject knowledge. They
were through their own values and emotions teaching values and emotions which
would allow students to formulate their own strategies and responses to real
life experiences and situations.
The tutor role was
now widely established and its value recognised. As in, many similar schools
the need for schools to provide more than just knowledge being brought to the
forefront. This role however,
described as a
�core role in the secondary school�
Marland, NAPCE 2002
is
rarely defined in any depth. It is difficult to write down what it means to be
a good tutor and even harder to share good practice as most of the knowledge is
�tacit� and therefore not easily passed from one person to another. It relies
completely on the values held by the individual. David Hargreaves explained the
problems with the transfer of tacit knowledge during an INSET day at the John
Bentley School in April 2003. The first problem is articulating the
skills/emotions to be transferred. As Goleman (1998) accepts �emotional
intelligence� is not easily put into words. The second problem is the �receptibility� of the recipient � some teachers are not
open to suggestions as to how they can become betters teachers/tutors and may
not in fact see the benefit of forming emotional relationships with their
students. The knowledge, therefore
is �sticky� and does not easily transfer between people.
It
is clear, however, that some people are very skilled tutors and through their
dedication to the holistic education of students, improve their life chances
and perhaps even their levels of achievement.
From
my current position of Head of Year, .I am therefore faced with numerous
questions related to the role of the tutor
How
do tutors influence students?
How
can I as ahead of Year influence tutors to influence students?
How
involved should I become as a tutor?
What
is the relationship between all of these roles and the teachers� responsibility
to be in �Loco Parentis�?
Process
As
far as my own role is concerned I have recently had cause to become closely
involved with a student as a result of particular circumstances. He was placed �in care� at the end of
August 2002 and so returned to school in September from a foster home.
Sam
has SpLD and has required a lot of support school since he joined in September
2001, but my relationship with him had been relatively distant. From September 2002 however, I adopted
the role of 1:1 tutor and as the relationship developed, I realised I was
becoming to an extent his �parent�.
He would �check-in� with me each morning when I would check that he was
equipped for the day, often providing necessities for the day and sometimes
breakfast as well as an emotional start.
Sam would then �visit� several times a day for support of one sort or
another. In addition, we would
spend one or two hours a week talking about whatever Sam wanted � often his
home/family situation. At times it
was difficult to maintain the emotional distance required as my �maternal�
instincts drew me to protect him.
I soon realised, however, that protection was non productive as Sam was
using this to get himself out of awkward situations �Mrs Percy said that I
could��. Having adjusted my
tutoring style to suit, I began to analyse the relationship and the impact that
this was having. Sam was, at
school, �happy� � he told me this at most of our sessions � he said that this
was because
�you
look after me and smile at me�
I hadn�t realised that something so
simple could make such a difference! Looking into this further however
confirmed my own belief that passion is vital and the way that this is
expressed crucial to allow students to achieve their best.
According
to Dr Emanuel Donchin at the University of Illinois, ninety-nine per cent of
what children learn at school is not what we think we are teaching but what
they pick up through the way we dress, the way we look, the way we say things,
the environment, the hidden agendas, the relationships we have. In smiling and
conveying my emotions to Sam I am expressing what he wants to be and what I
want him to be. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi:
�Be
the change you want to see in the world�
Research
has found that the muscles around your mouth do react, albeit imperceptibly,
when someone smiles at us. In other words by smiling at someone you are
encouraging them to smile and feel the positive effects of the emotions that
are related.
This
�happiness� appeared to be translating to a calmer approach towards school and
a more positive level of achievement.
It also coincided with a change in Sam�s care arrangements, where he had
bee moved to a longer-term foster placement with a foster carer described to me
by Sam�s Social Worker as a �mother� figure.
These
conversations with Sam led me to investigate the role of the tutor in
�parenting� students and my role as Head of Year in influencing tutor,
influencing students. It had been recognised in research conducted by the Johns
Hopkins Center on School, Family and Community Partnerships in collaboration
with the Center for Research Education of students placed at Risk in the USA
that:
�student performance in reading and
mathematics achievement increased when parents and families were directly
involved with their students�. A variety of parent involvement options all seemed
to contribute to learning gains�
Johns Hopkins Center, 1999
So
does the way that teachers act as parents in supporting students, particularly
those described by Bennathan and Boxall (1988) as providing �special
challenges� influence their achievement?
I
began by targeting one tutor group and conducting a questionnaire asking them
to consider the role of the tutor. The tutor group selected had experienced a
number of tutors during their first year and a half of secondary school and
were very clear about their expectations of a tutor. When asked what the job
involved, their answers all reflected the following
� to look after the group
� take the register
� lead PSHE and
� be a trusted friend.
When
asked the same question but for a Head of Year, the answers were the same but
on a larger scale the main theme being the role of �looking after�. When asked if the role of the tutor was
completed successfully, the majority answered positively, although expressed a
wish for their tutor to be stricter.
As a Head of Year, they respected my �strict� boundaries and wish to
provide them with a �safe� environment. Comments made included:
�keeps
us in a safe environment and teaches us about life�
�checks
how we are doing and strict when she needs to be�.
All
students were appreciative of consistency. During the previous year they had a number of tutors and
felt that this was �not very good�.
The
students felt that both their tutor and Head of Year had an influence on their
school day, their school work and their attitude towards school. Their school
day and their attitude towards school being more influenced than their work.
The
findings of this questionnaire led me to interview a Year 12 class, in more
depth, about what makes a good tutor. I chose to question older students as
they would be more able to identify and separate the level of influence of
various contributors to their academic and social development. I began the
discussion by asking general questions about what made a good teacher. The following characteristics were
identified by the group:
�enthusiastic, confident, respectful, a
sense of humour, friendly, a variety of teaching methods, flexible boundaries
between fun and work and most importantly they have to like children�
They
felt that the relationship was vital and all of these characteristics were more
important for a tutor. I was interested that subject knowledge or ability to
pass this on was not even mentioned and when I asked the students they all
agreed that this was not a priority. When there was a positive atmosphere
within the classroom and a positive relationship between the student and
teacher, the subject or topic that was being taught was irrelevant. The group felt that the relationship
above all else had to be trusting and as far as a tutor was concerned like a
parent as their main responsibility was to help with social issues and solve
social problems within school.
The
role of a classroom teacher was to inspire and help with exam results but not
to interfere or even take an interest in the social interactions of school. A
tutor on the other hand was there to act as a friend and at some times students
felt that they would even discuss more sensitive and personal things with their
tutor than they would with their parents. This was not the case with subject
teachers as there was rarely the time within the teaching situation to discuss
personal or even social relationships or issues. The year 12 students were keen
to mention here that the relationship with the tutor was not like the relationship
that they had with any other teacher or person that they had a relationship
with in school. Even the relationship with the school counsellor was not the
same as this was superficial as consultations were regarding a single issue and
the counsellor often had no knowledge of the student apart from the issue that
they were discussing.
As
a result of this discussion with my Year 12 students I decided that I needed to
investigate in more depth the differences between the relationships with
teachers and tutors. I decided that a 1:1 discussion with a student would
provide a different perspective and wondered whether the opinions and views
expressed by the group of Year 12 students was representative of those held by
all students. I interviewed one of my Year 10 students called John. He agreed
that I could quote him and he felt that his opinions and views were probably
representative of his peers.
John
felt that the relationship between tutor and student was closer than between
teacher and student because of the amount of quality time spent together. The
teacher relationship was at times difficult because time spent with the teacher
was focussed solely on subject knowledge and did not allow for time to build up
a mutual understanding and respect. With a tutor there was time to establish
this relationship and as the student stayed with the tutor for several years
the relationship became established.
John
felt however that the relationship had to be balanced and there needed to be a
set of established and respected rules that were stuck to by the student and
enforced by the tutor. There needed to be a certain amount of humour and
freedom but this had to be balanced with a certain amount of control. Much to
use John�s words:
�to act as a parent in school. Keeping a
close eye on us. Taking the time to understand us and talk to us about our
problems�
John
felt that it was important for parents to know that there children were being
looked after fully in school and that tutors were seen as holding this position
of responsibility being in �Loco Parentis�. He was keen to stress however that
this role of tutor was carried out differently by different people but each of
the various styles of tutoring had positive influences on the students.
This
led me to investigate the various styles of parenting. According to
Baumrind(1971,1989), and Maccoby and Martin(1983), parenting styles consist of
two dimensions. Demandingness refers
to the extent to which parents show control, maturity demands and supervision
in their parenting; responsiveness
refers to the extent to which parents show affective warmth, acceptance and
involvement. Based on these two dimensions a four-fold classification of
parenting styles has been described(Maccoby and Martin, 1983;Baumrind, 1991). Authoritative parents are both demanding and responsive.
This means that they are controlling but not restrictive. Authoritarian parents are demanding but not responsive.
This means that they have a low level of trust in their children and a high
level of psychological control. Permissive parents are responsive but not demanding. They have a warm
and child centred attitude towards their children but often do not require
mature behaviour from their children and there is often a lack of parental
control. Neglectful parents
are neither responsive nor demanding. They are generally uninvolved in the
raising of their children. All of these parenting styles can be recognised in
tutors and perhaps reflect their levels of success in encouraging and nurturing
success in their students. These various parenting styles have been linked to
various levels of academic success in terms of their impact upon children.
Authoritative parents have generally been found to have the greatest levels of
success in terms of their performance in school, engagement in lessons and
attitude towards school (Aunola, Stattin and Nurmi, 2000).
The results of their study suggested
that:
�parenting styles play an important role in
the development of adolescents� achievement strategies�
The
role of the tutor is therefore vital as the way in which a student is tutored
or parented whilst in school could have a direct influence on their levels of
academic achievement.
When
considering this in relation to my own investigation it is clear to me that
students expect �good� tutors to be �good� authoritative parents. They should
provide balanced levels of demand and response, high levels of support and the
expectation of high levels of achievement and behaviour. It has also become
clear to me that at times we get this wrong and veer towards the other
parenting styles that have been proven not to support students in achieving
their best. During some of my contact with Sam I am sure that I have been too
permissive. I have allowed him too much autonomy and this has often led to Sam
taking advantage and expecting to get away with things. This has led me to
adjust the way that I work and to realise that it does not pay to be permissive
and that the old adage of firm but fair really is the most productive both in
terms of the relationship between student and teacher but also in terms of the
long term achievement and establishment of life skills of the student.
Conclusion
In
conclusion therefore I have become assured by this enquiry that the role of
tutor remains vital in the holistic development of students and that there are
lessons that can be learnt from parenting that can allow the relationships
between tutor and student to be more productive in terms of he development of
the individual and also in allowing the student to use the emotional strength
generated by this relationship to achieve greater success in their academic
life at school. When talking to the parent of one of my students recently she
exclaimed that we probably knew her daughter better than she did as she
appeared from her bedroom to leave for school in the morning and disappeared
into her bedroom when she returned from school in the afternoon. We saw more of
her than her parents and probably had more conversations with her in the course
of a day than her parents did in a week. We therefore have a responsibility to
these students to act in Loco Parentis and provide the support that they may receive at home but if
not to go some way in providing the support that it has been proven allows
students to achieve more than they ever thought possible.
References
Annola
K, Stattin H and Nurmi J (2000) Parenting styles and Adolescents�
achievement strategies in Journal of Adolescence No 23pp205-222
Baumrind
D (1971) Types of adolescent lifestyles Development Psychology
Monographs ,4
Baumrind
D (1989) Rearing competent children in Child Development Today and
Tomorrow, Damon W (Ed) San
Francisco:Jossey-Bass
Baumrind
D (1991) The influence of parenting styles on adolescent competence and
substance use in Journal of Early Adolescence,11 pp56-95
Bennathan
M and Boxall M (1998) The Boxall Profile � Handbook for Teachers Inner
London Education Authority
Bolam
R and Medlock P (1985) Active tutorial work: Training and Dissemination, An
evaluation, Oxford: Basil Blackwell for the Health Education Council
Connelly
FM and Clandinin J (1988) Teachers as Curriculum Planners: Narratives of
experience New York: Teachers College Press
Connely
FM and Clandinin J (1999) Shaping a Professional Identity - stories of Educational Practice
London Ontario: Althouse Press
Dadds
M and Harts S (2001) Doing Practitioner Research Differently London:RoutledgeFalmer
Donchin
E (2002) University of Illinois Research in Essential Motivation in the
Classroom London:RoutledgeFalmer
Education
Act 1944 (1944) London:HMSO
Goleman
D (1995) Emotional Intelligence New York:Bantam Books
Goleman
D (1998) Working with Emotional Intelligence London:Bloomsbury
James
O (2003) If only we graded mental well being in The Times Educational
Supplement April 11th 2003
Johns
Hopkins Center (1999) Research project into the relationship between
parental involvement and student attainment
Langeveld
MJ (1965) In search of research in Paedagogica Europoea (The European
Year Book of Educational Research) Vol 1 Amsterdam:Elsevier
Lodge
C (2000) Tutors and Students Learning or Why do schools have tutors?
Pastoral Care in Education 18(2)pp35-41
Maccoby
EE and Martin JA (1983) Socialization in the context of the
family:Parent-Child interaction in Handbook of Chuild Psychology Vol
4pp1-101 Missen PH (Ed) New York:Wiley
Marland
M (1974) Pastoral Care London: Hienemann Organisation in Schools Series
Marland
M (2002) From Form Teacher to Tutor : The development from the Fifties to
the Seventies in Pastoral Care in Education December pp3-11
Olszewski
M (2000) Merging in Loco Parentis with in Loco Educatoris:How can parents be
teachers too? Research project
Snow
CE (2001) Knowing what we know: Children,Teachers,Children Presidential
Address to AERA 2001 in Seattle in Educational Researcher Vol 30 No7 pp3-9
Whitehead
J (2003) Knowledge creation in educational leadership and administration
through teacher research in Teacher Inquiry: Living the research in
everyday practice, Clarke A and Erickson G (Eds) London and New
York:RoutledgeFalmer
Williams
J (2003) Whose child is it anyway? In Times Educational Supplement 21st
March 2003 p25