ABSTRACT
The term ‘contract’ is one that is familiar to most of us yet it does not often inspire positive emotions or enthusiastic applause. To some the term is associated with signing away one’s life savings and possibly future earnings to obtain a house or car; to others the dread and uncertainty of putting one’s faith in the hands of the legal profession, or perhaps an equally doubtful arrangement with a Mafia hit man. Few would immediately associate the idea of a contract with education, yet in recent years contracting has received positive reviews for use in both life skills training (e.g. NelsonJones 1983) and behaviour monitoring and management (e.g. Fletcher and Presland 1990) within primary and secondary education.
