Influence of the Youth Tutor upon teachers' perception of some maladjusted behaviour

Authors: Pritchard, C. and Butler, A.W.J.

Journal: Child: Care, Health and Development

Volume: 1

Pages: 251-261

ISSN: 0305-1862

DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2214.1975.tb00019.x

Abstract:

SUMMARY There has been a long-standing interest in attempting to link home and school (Central Advisory Council 1967) and the recognition of the importance of the child's home background upon his educational achievement has grown (Douglas et al. 1972, Wedge & Prosser 1973). It would seem that in practice however, the main school-home contact has been the Education Welfare Officer (Pritchard 1973). While Plowden stressed the potential of the Education Welfare Officer it is known that there are difficulties in realizing this because of shortcomings in the Education Welfare Officer's training and status (Pritchard 1974, Local Government Training Board 1974).

In the United States home and school have been brought together by the long-established School Cotmsellor or School Social Worker (Clegg & Megson 1970). It has been found however, that even in the United States their role has been diffuse, depending upon variations in local policy and there has been little examination of their work (Know et al. 1974). IN the United Kingdom social work has grown (Lyons 1973) as local education authorities have made various efforts to orientate schools towards the community; one such method was the Central Lancashire Family and Community Project (Marshall & Rose 1975). The project centred upon the work of School Social Workers, and their work in reducing maladaptive behaviour was encouraging. Another such scheme was introduced by the West Riding County Council who appointed Youth Tutors to some of their secondary schools. The Youth Tutors' work varied greatly as different emphasis was placed upon their work, though they generally acted in a counselling role and sought to involve the home and commvmity with the school and also attempted t o establish more extracurricular activities (Sedgwick 1975). It is with this development that the present study is concerned.

We attempted to discover something of the Youth Tutors' influence, if any, upon the teachers' perception of children's behaviour in school. We wished to determine whether there would be any variation in the perception of teachers who came from schools which had a Youth Tutor and those which had not. We focused upon teachers' views of the origin of the behaviour and what action they might take in response to such children.

Source: Manual