Creating enabling spaces for young people (a segue)

Humans are social creatures who tend to thrive when connected to others, and individuals cope less well when these connections are damaged or missing. In schools, students who generally relate reasonably well to each other and teachers experience school as an enabling space. Those who do not (or cannot) form reasonable relationships with peers and staff are at risk of not benefitting from what school has to offer them and begin to disengage from it.

The Hands On Learning (HOL) method, discussed in the case study below, is predicated on the belief that providing quality relationships for students who lack them will have a significant positive impact on their lives. Arguably this notion also underpins the success of institutionalised responses in the form of interventions that provide disengaged students with temporary alternatives to mainstream school such as Teaching Units, alternative education settings, or community agency ‘boot camps’. Such responses are often found to give these students an opportunity to connect to others in meaningful ways, with a concomitant reduction in disruptive and self-destructive behaviours (Cole, 2004; Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, 2010; Whitted & Dupper, 2008). However, a phenomenon not well researched in Australia – although some work has been done in North America viz. McCall (2003) and Reeder (2005) – is that many principals and student wellbeing staff report that students who have come back refreshed from alternative settings often revert to previous negative patterns within weeks of their return, frequently leading to more permanent forms of exclusion. In terms of enabling spaces built on respectful relationships, it is plausible that the successes these students experienced at the alternative sites evaporated along with the relationships they had formed there.

The positive impact of such relationships is reinforced by a growing body of research (Noble & McGrath 2012). For example, in Moore and Hamilton’s (2010) analysis of 4,000 interviews with students and their parents, they identified the key aspects of programs that are significantly associated with improved outcomes are where students experience: positive, warm, and trusting relationships; emotional and physical safety; and, a focus on life skills such as teamwork, leadership, and conflict resolution. Similarly, in a meta-analysis of mentoring evaluations Lawner, Beltz, and Moore (2013) identified that greatest gains were attained in programs: targeting at risk young people; that focussed on the development of their social skills; and, which lasted for a year or more. The conclusions of these studies suggest that a space in schools that can provide disengaging students with opportunities to form positive, warm, and trusting relationships in safety, and where they can develop their interpersonal skills over a long period of time would enable them to remain attached to school and benefit from all that inheres from doing so. HOL is one such enabling space.