ABSTRACT
It is very easy, when referring to classroom disruption, to make it seem uniform, all of one kind. It is even easier, when referring to a pupil whose behaviour is disruptive, to think of him or her as disruptive. The ascription of the label ‘disruptive’ can be made as generally as common adjectives like naughty, bright, or lazy, or it can be made into a pseudo-psychological word like maladjusted or disturbed. The usage has become loose, and the hidden assumptions behind the word can shift imperceptibly. A ‘disruptive pupil’ comes to mean a pupil who can indulge in any sort of behaviour that a teacher finds problematical for the purposes of teaching and, moreover, is liable to do so at any time, in any circumstances. For this reason, such pupils have special teachers to deal with them, who have special methods, so the train of inference goes.
