'Schoolwork' and 'teachers': Disaffected boys talk about their problems with school

Thirty-three boys, aged between 9 and 16 years of age and who were enrolled in special schools for students with disruptive behaviour, each participated in a nine-part semi-structured interview that opened with the question “Do you like school?” Not surprisingly, almost 90 percent responded negatively. These boys (n=29) were then asked to describe when they first began to dislike school, what had triggered their dislike, what they liked least about school, what they tended to get in trouble for, and whether their previous (mainstream) school/s could have done anything differently. The following chapter draws on these students’ own words to understand the contributions that schools and teachers make to disruptive student behaviour and how best to engage difficult students from the perspectives of the students themselves