When rewards and sanctions fail: a case study of a primary school rule‐breaker

UK schools commonly employ a behavioral discipline method comprising rules, rewards awarded when children follow the rules and sanctions when children break them. To date, this approach has had only limited success in halting classroom disruption (Render, Padilla and Krank, 1989; Riley & Rustique‐Forrester, 2002; Gutherson & Pickard, 2006). This paper sought explanations for this limited success through a case study of a British primary school boy who persistently broke school rules. Participant observation, interviews and questionnaires were used to explore his perspective over a period of over two years. The data pinpoint three issues which were implicated in the boy’s antagonistic response to school discipline: emotions (particularly anger), perceptions of fairness and trust, and the role of the peer group in providing alternative morals, rewards and punishments which conflict with those operating in the classroom. It is argued that behavioral discipline methods sometimes fail because they neglect these important dimensions of children’s experience.