ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how discipline is constructed in education policy and practice . I fi rst suggest that the rise of measurement and accountability in education means that schools are now consistently under the spotlight in respect to issues of student discipline. The bulk of the chapter is concerned to show how discourses of behaviour management and zero tolerance have recently dominated discipline policy and practice in the UK and the US respectively. I further claim that behaviour management and zero tolerance approaches are both unhelpful as they 1) do not encourage students to take meaningful responsibility for their learning or behaviour in school; and 2) marginalise opportunity for the consideration of the wider educational purposes of school discipline. Such discipline policies and practices also give school staff too little incentive to care about the long-term destinations and life chances of individual students who misbehave.
