Behaviour, classroom management and student ‘control’: enacting policy in the English secondary school

This paper draws on an ESRC‐funded study of policy enactments in English secondary schools (RES‐062‐23‐1484) based on case‐study work in four similar ‘ordinary’ schools. The study has two main objectives; to develop a theory of policy enactment and to explore empirically the differences in the enactment of policy in similar contexts. Taking these objectives as drivers for analysis, this paper explores the way that managing behaviour is translated and enacted in institutional policy and practice. This paper argues that behaviour, classroom management and student ‘control’ continue to be significant aspects of education policy and practice in schools. It examines what is involved in policy enactment from a policy sociology perspective. Some examples of ‘doing’ discipline policy work are then considered. The paper argues that policy, even when it is centrally mandated, is translated, adjusted and worked on differently by diverse sets of policy actors. Thus, variability and distinctiveness characterise policy enactments at the different levels of practice within and between individual, but similar, schools.