Derrington 2012 thesis.pdf - Anglia Ruskin Research Online

The school focuses on individual learning where students follow personalised
learning plans which can be tailored to their strengths. The students are taught core
subjects, such as literacy, maths and science, in small classes in the morning. After
break they usually go off-site and learn through other activities such as art, cooking
and shopping. The students are also offered lots of different sports including
swimming, tennis, boxing, horse-riding, golf, sailing, go-karting, driving and quadbiking.
The Centre School has a student-centred approach and its ethos is about helping
students see the positives and celebrating small changes. It could be seen to provide
support which allies with Bowlby’s attachment theory (Bowlby, 1988) and his
concern for children to have a secure base. Students need a constant and dependable
space from which they can operate, that is a secure physical base, and a place to
which they can return (Bombèr, 2009). The staff team does not have a separate
staffroom which means that all the teachers, instructors and students share the same
space at break times. They play games such as table tennis, pool, cards or board
games together allowing healthy and positive relationships to develop which are
based on mutual respect and trust. Such interaction, together with the dependable
infrastructure of school, enables students to become more confident and try new
things with people they know will help them.
This sense of holding, described by Bowlby (1984) as an essential environmental
provision for the baby, and the term ‘container’ from Bion’s psychoanalytic theory
(Bion, 1962), is helpful to consider within the context of school. For some students
this holding provides security that they are not experiencing at home. The caregiver
and teaching staff learn to hold the young person, providing ‘a capacity to identify’
(Bowlby, 1988, p.28). In this way staff understand what is going on and what the
young person may be feeling. Alongside the emotional stability which The Centre
School provides for students, this holding facilitates the student’s personal
development and a sense of self and autonomy.
A school’s systems approach (Dowling and Osbourne, 1994; Farell, 2006b) looks at
challenging behaviour in context and not just for a rationale to explain it. This can be
healthy and empowering for the young person who is then involved in their schooling
and, for example, will know and understand their own behaviour plan. Similarly, a
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