Drawing conclusions about the implications for my future practice.
Conclusions from my findings:
• that whole class behaviour tracking sheets can be useful and show unexpected outcomes.
• that sheets tracking individual's behaviour is time consuming and can interfere with normal TA duties
• that these sheets yield very little detail but provide a general picture of a child's behaviour and that this is needed if Rogers' method is being used.
• that using check lists that focus on one's own practice rather than directly on behaviour can give valuable information.
• that environmental auditing can provide some useful data and highlight problems.
• that the examination of reflections from a learning journal can provide interesting data when used in conjunction with other methods.
Action Plan
• I will attended the PRU (now scheduled for 8/06/05) and shadow a TA there using a variety of observation techniques.
• I will hold a short TA meeting to feedback the results of the visit to the PRU.
• I will attend the staff meeting at which the levels of behaviour chart is discussed.
• When setting out our new classroom for next year we will conduct an environmental audit before the class arrives.
• I will consider changing the way I dress for a few weeks and see if it has any impact on the pupil's behaviour or on my confidence.
Examination of research methods:
This very small piece of action enquiry took the form of a case study of my context. It was an examination of one instance, of one TA's context and a range of methods that might prove useful for exploring that context. As such it is highly subjective. The study provided little triangulation of data. The specific results yielded by the study might result in improvements in my practice, or even in that of my school, but cannot be generalised to other TAs even in my own school, still less those in other schools. The case study was not of sufficient rigour or scope to allow this.( Denscombe, 1998).
What may be of wider interest is the examination of the research methods used. Examining my context using these various techniques has proved useful and might do so for other TAs. This is the aspect of the study that might be widened and could move out from this single person action enquiry to a more collaborative approach. If I was able to encourage some of the other TAs in my school to use these, or other methods, to monitor their contexts in a similar way then we might have the beginnings of a useful action enquiry which could yield some interesting and possibly more transferable data. Drawing other TAs into working with me on this sort of project seems unlikely in my current context but I will continue to try to do so.
The main weaknesses of this study lie in the choice of literature used and in the small scale of the enquiry. The choice of literature I have already explained in some depth. It is still clear, however, that this is a far from comprehensive review of the literature on the subject of behaviour management.
The strengths of the study are the depth in which some of the literature is examined, and related to my day to day practice and context.
index