ABSTRACT
When the variety of factors that affect the interactions between teachers and pupils in classrooms are considered, it is clear that it is not possible to suggest ways in which teachers can always manage to avoid unnecessary or unhelpful confrontations. The most that anyone who is not present in a classroom can do is to point to some guidelines which can help teachers to avoid confrontations which serve no useful purpose and also, as with the confrontation described later in the chapter, to suggest how this might have been more successfully managed once the situation that developed had made a confrontation inevitable. The danger is that when the confrontation between a pupil and a teacher is started by either of them – and when there is tension in a class it only needs one of them to say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing for this to happen – it can easily get out of control with consequences both regret.
