To cite this article: Val Gillies (2011) Social and emotional pedagogies: critiquing the new
orthodoxy of emotion in classroom behaviour management, British Journal of Sociology of
Education, 32:2, 185-202, DOI: 10.1080/01425692.2011.547305
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186 V. Gillies
feelings, empathy, motivation and social skills. The principles of SEAL are
intended to inform and guide the day-to-day running of schools, alongside
structured lessons designed to equip students with the relevant competencies.
The focus on emotional literacy builds on a recent but more established
concern with well-being, and more specifically self-esteem. The notion that
feelings about self determine life success underlies a highly individualistic
approach that attributes an array of social problems to poor self-esteem and its
corollary low aspiration. For example, social exclusion is commonly
represented as psychological barrier to social and economic opportunities
(Ecclestone and Hays 2008).
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Emotional institutions
The SEAL agenda was enthusiastically embraced by all three of the institu-
tions participating in our research, but the contrast between the policy rheto-
ric and the fraught and emotionally demanding environment of daily school
life was at times striking. Against the backdrop of institutionally governed
ideals of ‘emotional literacy’, unregulated and uncontainable feelings ran
high among pupils, staff and parents. Given the sensitive nature of our topic
we had predicted that our conversations with key staff in the schools might
incite some negative feelings, including suspicion, defensiveness, frustration,
anger and even despair. These were all present in abundance alongside more
positive attachments to pupils, colleagues and our research aims. However,
we were surprised at the extent to which antagonism bubbled under the
surface of day-to-day school life and how easily it was aroused by our
research. From early on in the project we encountered staff members break-
ing down into tears, making rude personal remarks about particular
colleagues or pupils, and even levelling serious allegations about conduct
within the school.
In both schools, challenging behaviour from pupils aroused powerful
emotions in overburdened, harassed mainstream staff. This is highlighted in a
field diary recording after a confrontation between and teacher and a pupil.
The teacher was clearly very annoyed and said something to the effect of ‘if we
were outside of school I would have knocked her [fucking] head off’. The
teacher also said that working with [these pupils] was not in her job description
anyway and she didn’t have do it – her priorities were with the pupils in the
mainstream school.
The teacher appeared to recover her composure soon afterward and was obvi-
ously concerned about being so loose-tongued in the presence of a researcher.
However, emotional outbursts from staff at the end of their tether were not
unusual in our study, with several teachers admitting they felt driven to near
violence. By drawing attention to these turbulent feelings the intention is not
British Journal of Sociology of Education 191
specialist behaviour staff against each other, resulting in acrimony and feuds.
As with every institution, micropolitics and power dynamics operate beneath
the surface, fuelled by emotionality and personal investment (Gillies and
Lucey 2007).
The SEAL programme encourages teachers to consider their own social
and emotional skills as part of staff development activities, but the broad
assumption is that staff are already proficient and practicing. The calm,
emotionally flat ideal encouraged through SEAL not only overlies a consider-
ably more turbulent reality, it also denies the significance of passion as a moti-
vator. While identified as a core domain, motivation in the SEAL literature is
an oddly self-contained concept. Centring on self-determination, and positive
belief, motivation is described as a ‘skill’ associated with goal orientation.
From this perspective, emotions derail rather than inspire intended action. Yet,
as our conversations and research interviews established, the staff in the
schools were emotionally driven and often passionate about their work. While
experiencing a wealth of stressful and difficult feelings, most were highly
committed and passionate. This intense emotional connection to the work
could make for an unconvincing arena in which to teach techniques of
emotional restraint, as pupils themselves often recognised.
The broader context to this preoccupation with violence and fear is the
hazardous environment these young people are forced to navigate on a day-to-
day basis. The catchment district for all three schools covers an area of
extreme deprivation and high crime. During the course of our fieldwork, three
teenagers known to our research participants were fatally stabbed while two of
the participants themselves were hospitalised with knife wounds. A majority
of the young men in our research had fallen victim to of street robbery or
violence and most were aware of criminal activities such as drug dealing
or dog fighting taking place in the immediate vicinity of their homes. Some of
the older pupils themselves faced difficult choices about their involvement in
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In a workshop you might realise, very quickly, that, ‘This is not the appropriate
support for you’. … and that’s happened before, where, you know, some girl is
talking so inappropriately about stuff, that ‘This is not the right place for you to
be talking about, you know, sharing your, your home life here’.
violence, hardship and racism that shaped the lives of the pupils in our
research. As we found, poignant, matter-of-fact accounts given by pupils
evoked a range of emotions in key staff (and ourselves as researchers), includ-
ing sadness, concern, anxiety and anger, which might translate into difficult
feelings of impotence in the face of such social injustice. While this could
relate to young people’s personal experiences such as housing or immigration
insecurity, being victimised or not having access to basic resources, teachers
also struggled when faced with wider issues. This is highlighted by a field
diary entry during the time when the case of a missing child (Madeline
McCain) was dominating the news headlines:
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The pupils were finding stories on the internet to talk about assisted by [a
teacher, a teaching assistant and a mentor]. [12 year old] Linden and some of the
others were gathered round a computer screen with the image of Madeline, the
little girl abducted in Portugal. They used a Jamaican slang word ‘buttass’, to
describe her as ugly. Linden said ‘if I was kidnapped nobody would make this
much fuss’ and some of the other pupils thought about it and agreed. He said
something similar several times (if it was just some kid from [deprived area] no
one would care etc.). He seemed quite angry, and the teacher struggled to
address his point. She said that might be true to a certain extent but that they
should think about the poor little girl that this has actually happened to. Linden
and the others didn’t seem very impressed.
The contrast between Linden and Madeline is sharp. In many ways the image
of Madeline embodies white privilege, particularly for Linden, a black, work-
ing-class child from a stigmatised area of London. As the daughter of two
doctors from a well-to-do Leicestershire village, her disappearance was met
with almost wall-to-wall media coverage and international appeals for infor-
mation. While there is no denying the tragic and troubling nature of the case,
it is hard to imagine that the abduction of a poor black child would receive
anything like the same kind of publicity. Linden’s anger and voicing of this
unspoken truth made the teacher uncomfortable and her response was an inef-
fective request to express empathy instead.
This kind of encounter was not unusual for Linden. Throughout the course
of our research we came to know him as sharp-witted and passionate about
issues of social justice. While his volatile anger and frustration led him to the
brink of permanent exclusion, it was often powered by political sensitivities.
For example, when faced with pictures of British prime ministers hanging in
a school corridor he demanded to know why none of them were black. As Guy
Claxton (2005) points out, there are many political activists who value the
righteous anger that fires their commitment and beliefs. Rather than indicating
psychological immaturity, the emotional responses of pupils like Linden might
be read in terms of challenging a school system that reproduces unjustifiable
inequity. As Claxton asks, ‘If we all develop our Emotional Intelligence, and
we restrain our aggression and deploy our empathy, will there be anyone left
to ask hard questions about what is going on around us?’ (2005, 22).
British Journal of Sociology of Education 195
I mean, we’ve had Harry Dunbar this year, who’s a very tall lad, a bit chubby,
very blond, ADHD, a bit camp, erm, was in cheer leading at primary school!
[laughter] Quite bright, but also [pause] you know, there’s social needs there,
and emotional needs. He’s very [pause] yeah, a bit of [pause] maybe a bit of
autism.
While Harry was not involved in our research, Kate’s description and tenta-
tive diagnosis of autism reveals how this individualistic gaze might risk
distorting and obscuring the wider social context. Harry’s problems are firmly
located within his ‘needy’ and developmentally challenged self, with little
consideration given to the pervasive and often vicious culture of homophobia
that flourished within the school. Our conversations with the other pupils at
196 V. Gillies
the school left us in little doubt about how a ‘camp’ boy interested in cheer-
leading would have been received. Yet Harry’s problems in relating to others
are viewed solely in terms of personal deficit, and he is removed from main-
stream classrooms in which sexual bullying is rife, in order to receive help.
This example also highlights the normative pull of such therapeutic
discourses. As Kate’s laughter in the above quote indicates, Harry’s manor and
interests are viewed as eccentric and socially incongruous. Distinctions
between emotional disturbance and lack of social conformity can be complex
and inevitably reflect and reinforce a range of gendered, racialised and classed
assumptions (Burman 2009).
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Managing anger
As our research suggests, SEAL initiatives encourage institutions to look
beyond the socially embedded experiences of pupils to identify individual
deficits. In the process, significant everyday factors contributing or exacerbat-
ing disruptive conduct in the classroom can be overlooked, while the complex
social and emotional interactions characterising pupils’ lives and experiences
are misinterpreted or go unnoticed. For example, large numbers of young men
were referred to the BSUs because of aggressive behaviour that might include
fighting, swearing, throwing objects and making violent threats and some-
times carrying them out. This was invariably construed as indicating an anger
management problem, and offending pupils were made to attend classes
designed to equip them with techniques for controlling their temper. Anger
management classes were a staple BSU provision in all three schools. These
were run internally by members of staff who taught basic methods distilled
from cognitive behavioural therapy, such as staying calm, recognising patterns
and counting to 10. While pupils could find these techniques useful, aggres-
sive acting out often continued regardless.
Anger was a theme we explored in some detail with pupils during the
course of our research, discovering its expression was characterised by high
levels of ambivalence and contradiction. Large numbers (although not all)
accepted they had anger problems, but we found many of these pupils were
also personally invested in this diagnosis. While they might acknowledge
intrinsic anger difficulties and emphasise their desire to change, conversations
often revealed deeper and more positive meanings associated with being an
angry person. Marcus, a 15-year-old Black Caribbean pupil, confessed to us
that he had anger management issues he needed to work through. While in our
sessions Marcus was charming, reflexive and insightful, he was regularly
involved in fights inside and outside school and had been attending various
groups within a BSU for several years. In a classroom context, Marcus readily
accepted the dominant construction of anger as a negative problematic
emotion, but in our research interview he provided a more telling account of
the power and control his anger can generate.
British Journal of Sociology of Education 197
Like when I’m angry, people can’t stop me, they have to just let me do what I do,
because I’m gonna switch on you … For some reason when I’m angry, and I
have to do something, I will do it, and then I will calm down. I cannot calm
down and not do it … I don’t have, er, like, er, second thoughts. I don’t think of
any. Once, something is in my mind, once I have a task to do something, I’m
doing it, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna worry about this, or worry about that,
I will just do it. I don’t know … it’s like I don’t have no fear, I don’t know, I
just go into a different world. Everybody knows that. ‘Don’t touch Marcus’.
ing to Marcus his fury triggers determination, purpose and fearlessness, and
has earned him a formidable reputation amongst other pupils and potential
contenders on the street. This protective function of anger was highly signifi-
cant for Marcus and many of the other young men in our study. White hot fury
in the context of serious threat could be experienced as a valuable strength, as
Marcus articulates in his account of being confronted with a knife:
Outside of school, like, if stuff happened, I’m gonna try and defend myself. I’m
not gonna stay there and … Cos, one time, when we was at a bus, one boy tried
to stab me, so I had to try to defend myself. He barge into me, and I just looked
at him and went ‘what?’ It’s just like people that wanna start hype [trouble] …
Because me, like, if someone says, like, ‘I’m gonna stab you’, that’s like taking
my life, so I’m just gonna … I go berserk … he’s showed me his knife. So then
I’ve come after him, and he, like, once he saw my, my reaction, he’s backed
away. I mean, I was. I went for him, and he just ran off.
Like Marcus, Jake – a 13-year-old white pupil – was also the focus of anger
management interventions. His aggressive outbursts had begun at primary
school and he had been excluded on numerous occasions. He was generally
calm and thoughtful in the research sessions, but in a classroom context he
could be provoked by groups of pupils. Jake was slightly overweight and his
clothes were tattered, worn and sometimes a bit dirty. His mother struggled to
keep him in school uniform and he often wore tracks suit bottoms and tee-
shirts instead. He explained how he had been bullied from a young age by two
boys in particular, and he described the powerful effect of losing his temper
and fighting back:
There was this train thing, and he climbed to the top, and I kicked him off. And
after that he stopped bullying me. And another one say, ‘Just because you beat
up one of my friends, don’t mean I’ll stop bullying you’, and then he, he laughed
at me, he laughed at my dungarees and said, ‘Where did your mum get that?
Oxfam?’ And then I punched his teeth out. … But after that day, no one bullied
me.
tially dangerous psychological flaw could intensify its significance and effect.
Some pupils actively cultivated the image that they were ‘mad’ or unhinged,
with one 13-year-old boy proudly explaining how his wild, volatile behaviour
had earned the nickname ‘crazy kid’. However, investing in this kind of
intimidating identity could be a risky strategy. Unboundaried expression of
anger not only led to school exclusion, it could also raise the stakes in physi-
cal conflicts. Shortly after we had completed our work with Marcus, he was
confronted and stabbed outside the school in the middle of the day. The
expression of anger as a protective force relies on its impact to overwhelm
and frighten, in turn encouraging ever more extreme displays of anger and
power in response. Marcus recovered in hospital but did not come back to
school.
trust and responsibility and emphasised the importance of friends and particu-
larly family (see Gillies 2010) Interviews with parents confirmed this picture
of their socially integrated lives, sometimes revealing hidden dimensions such
as caring practices towards sick relatives, younger siblings, nieces or nephews.
We also discovered that many of the most challenging pupils experienced
close, trusting relationships with BSU staff (particularly mentors). There was
little sign of the social corrosion and disconnection characterising Daniel
Goleman’s account of contemporary troubled youth.
This observation is not to downplay or trivialise the problems many pupils
experienced and caused, or the troubling and troublesome behaviour that was
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These discussions were plainly emotionally driven, but the horror and confu-
sion provoked by the case were managed through lurid conversations and
humour. From a SEAL perspective, this bypassing of social taboos and
conventions is indicative of poor social skills and low emotional intelligence.
Yet this kind of talk effectively worked to defuse difficult feelings while
fostering supportive social bonds.
The strong and often challenging emotions expressed by the young people
in our research could obscure remarkable abilities to repress and contain feel-
ings. Personal traumas, hardships and worries were commonly normalised and
discussed as if they were everyday annoyances. Affect rarely featured in the
telling of these experiences, with pupils ignoring emotional consequences and
preferring to present themselves as in control. Sometimes, no mention was
made at all of the serious anxieties they were dealing with. In an interview
with 12-year-old Linden’s mother we discovered she was seriously ill. She
produced a heartrending letter he had written while she was in hospital,
conveying just how worried he had been throughout the period we were work-
ing with him. Linden’s behaviour had at times been extremely challenging, but
he was also good humoured and enthusiastic. He had really seemed to enjoy
our sessions and we had no suspicion that he was particularly troubled. For
Linden, it appeared, silence and lack of reflexivity was an effective coping
strategy. While his emotions could bubble up into problematic displays of
frustration or over-exuberance, he made it to school every day, participated
eagerly in BSU activities and was popular with other pupils. It might be spec-
ulated that Linden valued school, precisely because it provided respite from
(rather than a forum for) his difficult feelings.
Conclusion
This paper has critically explored understandings and expressions of emotion
within secondary school BSUs in the context of SEAL programmes. Through
an appropriation of a therapeutic language of feelings and affect, SEAL initi-
atives claim to deliver the psychological stability that learning depends upon.
However, closer examination reveals a considerably more contested and
contestable reality.
British Journal of Sociology of Education 201
Notes
1. The project, ‘Disruptive Behaviour in the Classroom: Exploring the Social Subjec-
tivity of Disaffection’, was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council
under grant number RES-061-23-0073.
2. BSUs are facilities (often self-contained) within mainstream schools and are
designed to address issues around conduct. Pupils are sent to the units for varying
amounts of time, ranging from weeks to years. The terminology used to describe
these units varied between schools. We use BSU as a generic term to describe
them all.
3. Circle time was a regular event in the BSUs and required pupils to sit in groups
with a teacher and discuss their personal feelings about a variety of issues.
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