ABSTRACT

This chapter is based on a study (Cooper, 1989, 1993) that was carried out in 1985 in two residential schools for boys with emotional and behavioural difficulties. The study set out to answer the question: ‘What are the effects of residential schooling on pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties?’ The research methods involved participant observation, semi-structured, ‘informant’ style (see Powney and Watts, 1987) interviews with pupils, and staff (though the staff data is not reported here), as well as questionnaires. The questionnaires were designed to test the generalisability across the full pupil populations of both schools, of hypotheses generated from interviews with 24 pupils. Of particular interest were the pupils’ perceptions of the nature and effects of their experience. The study did not seek to establish an objective measure of ‘effects’, but rather took the view that, by concentrating on the pupils’ perceptions of ‘effects’, pupils would be encouraged to relate their experience of schooling to their actual behaviour and attitudes. In this way the researcher was able to uncover evidence which is central to the aims of school effectiveness research (see Chapter 9). In existing research, such connections can only be made on an inferential basis, owing to the absence of qualitative data of the type gathered in this study.