Children's rights, responsibilities and understandings of school discipline.

This paper reports on research carried out with pupils in five English schools to establish their understandings of effective school discipline. It formed part of a broader research project to identify strategies which schools and local education authorities have adopted to minimize the use of exclusion from school as a disciplinary measure. Pupils were asked about relationships in school; systems of rewards and sanctions; specific problems which they faced and ways in which these might be effectively resolved. They were also invited to comment on the mechanisms within their school for raising concerns and for participating in decision-making. The perceptions of the pupils and those of their teachers are used as a basis for a broader discussion about pupil behaviour and school discipline, setting these issues within a framework of children's rights and responsibilities as outlined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. From this discussion the paper seeks to identify practices and principles which schools might adopt to promote good discipline and guarantee the rights and responsibilities of pupils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]