A commonly discussed aspect of using sanctions to improve behaviour is deterrence - the idea that the threat of being caught and sanctioned reduces the level of rule-breaking.
There is quite a lot of research out there on deterrence, but the vast majority of it relates to the criminal justice system, which is a shame as I generally avoid drawing comparisons between (mostly adults) committing crime in wider society and children breaking rules in schools.
There are, though, some broad principles that are useful for us as teachers to think about in terms of how deterrence can influence children’s behaviour.
Certainty and severity
Two of the main features of deterrence that are always brought up when discussing sanctions are certainty and severity.
Certainty works in two ways in schools: the certainty that you will be caught breaking a rule, and the certainty that a sanction will be administered. The distinction is important.
Who among us hasn’t met a child who has pleaded with us to offset a sanction against the promise of future good conduct or completed work? “C’mon, sir! Can I work off the detention if I work really hard/behave perfectly for the rest of the lesson?”
The answer to that should be no (and the reasons are not as sour as you might think). The knowledge that a sanction can be sidestepped reduces the deterrent effect.
Educative option
This is not the same as opting for a speed awareness course to avoid points on your driving licence and a fine. In that case, the educative option is designed to be an appealing alternative with the sole aim of reducing the chances of reoffending by making explicit the consequences to others of the driver’s actions (as opposed to the points and the fine being consequences to the individual).
The certainty of being caught depends, for the most part, on the levels of supervision (including CCTV) in and around the school.
In my first school, I used to stand in the middle of the Millennium Gardens on duty at break time because that was a favoured spot for smokers.
Their tactic to hide who was actually smoking was to huddle together like a waddle of Emperor penguins keeping out the Antarctic wind, and it was highly effective if you weren’t near them. So, they simply relocated to another dead spot somewhere else in the school.
In this case, I was the equivalent of the speed camera: effective in deterring wrongdoing so long as people were within my line of sight. Once out of sight, the chances of being caught dropped, the balance of probabilities changed and so did their behaviour.
Studying severity
Severity is an interesting topic, largely because the sanctions available to schools these days are not actually that severe (and thank goodness we don’t hit children in schools any more). This means that severity plays a weaker role in deterring behaviour in schools than certainty.
All we really have is the threat of loss of time, including exclusion, or privileges. And even then, if a child cares little for either of those things - and many do not, including plenty of children who struggle to behave well in schools - the sting of this deterrent is weakened even further or disappears almost entirely.
Fostering self-interest
I don’t believe that deterrence plays a significant role in schools in influencing the behaviour of children. I have never agreed with the view that making an example of one child will prove a deterrent to others from behaving in a similar way in the future.
Deterrence is utilitarian in nature. Yes, part of that is about the protection of wider society, but another part - and certainly one of its weaknesses - is that it can foster self-interest. Its aim is to influence behaviour to avoid potential harm to the individual, not to others.
It has nothing to do with encouraging children to do the right thing because it is the right thing to do. It does nothing to encourage children to value rule following or to value the reasons why the rules exist in the first place. It has nothing to do with the needs of individuals and how they may influence how they behave in certain situations.
And these reasons are why, in my view, deterrence will never be a prime mover in improving behaviour.
Jarlath O’Brien works in a mainstream secondary school and a special school and is the author of Leading Better Behaviour - A Guide for School Leaders published by Corwin Press
