Neoliberalism, after decades of reform, continues to steer educational policies around the world. As private enterprise encroaches public education, schools are held accountable, tangled up in an internationally competitive culture of achieving benchmarks that meet technically managed standards. Not only is it academic performance that is audited…

Background: Few studies have considered policies which underpin the promotion of positive behaviour support (PBS). The present study examined policy beliefs about PBS and their relationship to restrictive practices. Methods: Discourse network analysis (a combination of critical discourse analysis and social network analysis) was used. Results: A…

Policies exist to regulate the use of restraint and seclusion so that they are only implemented when necessary and following appropriate standards and procedures. These policies often focus on students with disability. This qualitative study explored school leaders' understanding, use and perspectives of the Restraint and Seclusion Policy mandated…

The aim of the current study was to extend knowledge of occupational commitment by examining predictors at the teacher- and school-level. Several job resources hypothesized to be positively associated with occupational commitment were examined: helpful feedback, input in decision-making, teacher collaboration, and principal discipline support. The…

Keeping a good disciplinary climate is a key to student learning and well-being. Disciplinary norms need to be clearly established and applied fairly and consistently. Yet, strictness alone cannot optimise student outcomes: students need support and understanding.

Across Australia, almost one third of schools have been trained to implement school-wide positive behaviour support (SWPBS). As part of a Tier 1 approach, students are expected to demonstrate expected behaviours. By defining these behaviours in conjunction with students and families, and explicitly teaching these to students, schools implementing…

This paper studies the impact of compulsory schooling on violent behaviour and victimization in school using individual-level administrative data matching education and criminal records from Queensland (Australia). Exploiting a legislative increase in the minimum dropout age in 2006, this study defines a series of regression-discontinuity…

Despite its increasing recognition and use in U.S. schools, a limited amount of research has evaluated the effect of restorative justice (RJ) for school violence prevention and response. To date, there is no standardized method for RJ implementation. Therefore, this systematic literature review investigates peer-reviewed studies on the application…

Proactive classroom management is associated with increased teacher wellbeing and improved student learning outcomes. Yet research indicates that many teachers over-report and underuse practices associated with this approach. The research findings reported here were drawn from semi-structured interviews conducted with 26 government secondary…

This study analyses exclusion, enrolment cancellation, and suspension rates in government schools in the Australian state of Queensland to investigate the impact of legislation to extend principals' disciplinary powers. Results suggest that the provision of alternative disciplinary options, including Saturday detentions and community service,…

Psychometric properties of the 30-item Family Resource Scale (FRS) were examined in a sample of families seeking assistance for their child's behavioral difficulties (N = 300). The FRS is a measure that assesses the adequacy of family resources across several contexts including intra-family support and personal resources. Our analyses supported a…

Behaviour management is an influential educational cliché in Australia, Canada, England, New Zealand and US. In practice, efforts to control student conduct in schools frequently utilise a manage-and-discipline model: a misinformed but deeply rooted set of interconnected notions about how to ensure an orderly and productive classroom. Students…

This paper is concerned with the rise of 'the boot camp' as a means of addressing "the problem of troubled youth" in contemporary industrialised nations such as Australia and the UK. Drawing on a corpus of publicly available material including press releases and policy documents, media reports, and programme websites, the paper explores…

External suspension from school is a common disciplinary practice in traditionally English-speaking countries. Few studies have sought student perceptions of school suspension, as well as measures of problem behaviours and emotional problems, and known factors that influence the development of antisocial behaviour, to examine associations between…

This article explores the cognitive processes by which Year 7 students (aged 11 to 13 years) use personal viewpoints to interpret and resolve life-issues. A Christian school located in the North West of Sydney wanted to find out if the proportionally higher occurrence of discipline issues in newly enrolled Year 7 students could be explained by…