A Guide to a Multi-Domain Model of Living and Education

By David Carter

Navigating the complexities of school life can be a daunting task for young people, educators, and parents alike. This book aims to provide practical guidance and insights to those who find themselves struggling in the educational landscape.

While grounded in academic theory and evidence-based research, the primary focus of this book is on offering tangible solutions and real-world examples. Through a series of stories, vignettes, and problem-solving scenarios, the authors explore the challenges faced by students, teachers, and parents from various perspectives. By delving into these narratives, readers are likely to find answers to the questions that prompted them to pick up this book in the first place.

The authors propose a model for change called the Multidomain Model of Education and Living (MDM), which aims to facilitate and enhance collaborative relationships between home and school, as well as within these two domains. Rather than advocating for sweeping, top-down changes that are often met with resistance, the MDM offers a flexible framework that can be adapted in part or in its entirety to suit the unique needs of each school community. The authors draw upon their own experiences in the Irish education system to illustrate how these ideas can be further developed and implemented. By inviting parents, guardians, pupils, and school staff to consider incorporating elements of the MDM into their own schools, the book serves as a catalyst for meaningful dialogue and incremental change. Ultimately, the authors believe that lasting transformation in Irish education will not come from above or below, but rather from the middle, where people come together to engage in open and constructive conversations. This book is a vital contribution to that ongoing dialogue.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jun 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9781035843930

David Carter

David Carter (1952-2020) had a varied career as a writer, editor, and filmmaker. He is best known as the author of Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution, considered to be the authoritative book on the subject. He is also the author of biographies of Salvador Dali and George Santayana, he edited and compiled Spontaneous Mind, a collection of interviews with Allen Ginsberg, and directed the film Meher Baba in Italy for Peter Townshend. Carter has a B.A. from Emory University and an M.A. from the University of Wisconsin. He lived in Greenwich Village in New York City.

Book preview

About the Author

Peter initially was awarded a BA Degree in Psychology from University College Dublin. He felt drawn to Youth Work rather than Psychology and this led him to study for a qualification in Community Work in Maynooth University. He has over 35 years’ experience of working with young people and their families in an effort to find solutions to emotional and behavioural difficulties which arise at home and at school and which may inhibit or prevent the young person in participating fully, or at all, in mainstream education. Peter initially worked as a Community Worker attached to a Special School in the North Inner City area of Dublin. Given his reservations regarding the individual model used in Education, when he began working with David Carter in Finglas, he trained as a Family Therapist, and subsequently also as a Systemic Supervisor. Peter is a registered psychotherapist with the Family Therapy Association of Ireland and the Irish Council for Psychotherapy.

David Carter, B.Ed. Hons. studied at Froebel College and Trinity College Dublin before teaching in the inner city of Dublin. In 1989, he then took up a teaching post in a special school dealing with young people of the ages 10-16 years with SEBD (Severe Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties). He has 34 years of experience working in this school setting, teaching, supervising, and providing programmes for and working with at-risk youth, young people with Severe Emotional Behavioural Difficulties and with their families. Since 1998 he moved into a management position as Principal/Director of St Paul’s Youth Encounter Project, Finglas, Dublin 11 and is still there at present. As associate trainer of TCI since 2001, he has worked on the implementation of TCI and adapting it to a school setting and has provided training to new and existing staff since that time. He became certified as a Professional TCI/S trainer in 2014. David has also given presentations and training on managing challenging behaviour and collaborative problem solving at several educational settings, within mainstream and special schools at both primary and secondary levels. David is also director of BEST Consultancy (Behavioural Educational Support & Training) which specialises in delivery of training and consultancy for organisations that provide care or education to children and young people who have difficulty in managing their behaviour in acceptable ways, training teachers, social workers, social care workers and by negotiation directly with families.

Website: www.bestconsultancy.ie

Dedication

To those parents/guardians, young people and staff we have had the privilege of working with and learning from. Thank you, one and all.

Copyright Information ©

David Carter and Peter Caffrey 2024

The right of David Carter and Peter Caffrey to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035843923 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035843930 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

The Board of Management of St Paul’s Y.E.P. for their support and encouragement in pursuing publication.

Prologue

We’re all familiar with the old saying that your school days are the happiest days of your life. We are not certain that many of us will agree with that statement. In fact, many of us may radically disagree with that statement. For a number of children, going to school is a trial. They find themselves going to a place they don’t like, because they’re told they have to go. They may have to mix with other children they don’t like. They may find themselves in classes with teachers they don’t like. They may find themselves getting into trouble and having to attend meetings with principals and year heads that they don’t like. They end up having to apologise when they do not believe they have done anything wrong. They find themselves having to do schoolwork which they don’t like. If these truly are the happiest days of our lives, it doesn’t say much for what lies in front of us.

Quite a few kids go through school without a major hitch. Or, if they do have a major hitch, they sort it, move on from it and get through school. However, The National Council for Secondary Education estimated in 2006 that up to 18% of children had a disability or a Special Educational Need; that is one in 5 children, The Growing up in Ireland Longitudinal Study from 5 years later estimated that the number might actually be closer to one in 4. In other words one in five kids have what we would call ‘pervasive hitches’ throughout their schooling.

This book is written for the one in five who struggle with major hitches.

This book is also written for those who have to reach and/or teach those one in five.

When you are a pupil who would like to turn the situation around but have no idea how to do so, it is an extremely lonely place to be. When you are a teacher, the last line of defence, trying to turn things around for the child in question, and not succeeding, it is a lonely place to be. When you find yourself as a parent/ guardian trying to help your child, it is a lonely place to be. If that’s the situation you find yourself in, this book is for you.

We have tried to write for the educators and the parents. There is an academic theory behind what we say, it is also evidence-based, some of which may be found in the final section (Further Reading and Supporting Theory). We doubt that understanding the theory or the evidence base is the primary reason people will read this book; and have sought therefore to keep our emphasis on the practicalities of how we can help young people, their families and the educators who support them, to set and to achieve their goals. The book will contain lots of examples which are based on real events while respecting the confidentiality of all concerned. There will be stories, vignettes and problems discussed from different perspectives of parent, of teacher and of pupil. We hope that in all these stories, your question concerning whatever it is that makes you want to read this book in the first place will be answered for you.

These stories, vignettes and discussions reflect our recollections of experiences over time. Names and characteristics have been changed, some events have been compressed, and some dialogue has been recreated. All efforts have been made to respect everyone’s confidentiality and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Introduction

Schools can be difficult places for some kids, and not for others. Schools are there so the children can be educated. We know this, and we hold that the main issue in school concerns the quality of teaching and education that is offered to pupils. So, the most important indicators for a successful school are the quality of engagement amongst staff, and also the quality of engagement between staff and pupils. Schools are also realistic places and staff support the idea that the involvement of family is essential to the success of school-based education. Meeting the educational needs of its pupils is, for most of us, the primary purpose of the existence of the school. This is what the staff are paid for and trained to provide. Schools carry out this function by primarily working with the young person and the buildings are usually set up for this function with rooms in schools consisting in the main of classrooms, staff rooms, a principal’s office and administrative support.

Over the last generation or so, this model has changed somewhat as understanding has deepened around the importance of home-school contact and the need to provide some sort of support for the pupil beyond simply making available pedagogical services. This has extended to the introduction of the home-school liaison teacher in the school, alongside increasing involvement of parents and guardians in the form of membership of parents’ committees, and representation of parents and guardians on the board of management. The drivers for this change have, in the main, been changes in our understanding of society, and also in the Irish context, the abolition of corporal punishment in the early 1980s. Teachers today understand that they can no longer locate the power to control what happens in schools entirely within themselves as their colleagues might have thought and taught previously, but nowadays they require a measure of support from home.

Schools have evolved this network of support driven by the need to adjust the traditional top-down hierarchical model. This shift has been in response to an awareness of how the traditional top-down model of society, with those who are ‘better than’ sitting at the top, no longer applies. This model located power in terms of class, wealth, political or clerical position. Everyone had a place within this hierarchy, similar to the one we see when we watch series such as Downton Abbey. Within this model, knowledge was not located within the individual but within the class. Those who were better than knew more than we did; that is why they were known as our betters.

We suggest that the school network is one of the last places in Ireland where this outdated model of society still applies. We need to have a realistic understanding of the limitations of this model, and to begin a dialogue around how to change it. We do not believe that current school structures reflect the educational expertise of the people of this country. Most Irish people stay in education until they are at least 16 years old, many beyond the age of 18, or in third level until their early or mid-twenties. Similar experiences are shared amongst many of those who come to Ireland as adults or children from abroad to live here. What this means is that:

Parents and guardians have considerable educational expertise, having spent at least 10 years in the education system themselves and so have been significant service users as pupils. Now, they are significant experienced service users as parents. Pupils attending school also have considerable educational experience, as they are current service users.

Most especially, we argue that the education system does not always acknowledge the expertise students possess. We argue that if this expertise was acknowledged more and was integrated into the day-to-day structure of how schools are run, how student voices are heard and how conflict is managed, most significant destructive conflict between pupils and staff would lessen or disappear almost altogether. However controversial this statement may be; our intention is merely to provide another viewpoint, to help our readers to widen the lens, and our reality is that our experience over many years has and continues to hold this statement to be true.

We believe that this change in school performance will best come about if there is a shift in understanding around how power is managed within schools. We believe this shift can best be understood as a move away from a hierarchical model which locates power in substantially a top-down approach, and towards a more systemic model in which it is understood that power is something which ought to be negotiated within and among people, in this case the service users of the school. We argue that a reduction in top-down power can, paradoxically, result in an increase in an increased level of authority over/control of what happens in school as pupils, parents, guardians, and staff move to a model of cooperation.

In this book we propose to look at how Irish schools could make adjustments to the boundaries around this power issue. While we believe that sweeping change in the long run is vital, arguments about sweeping change tend to evoke very little curiosity due to being dismissed early on, and therefore providing very little learning and improvement at all. We offer in this book our model of change which we believe could help to facilitate and improve collaborative relationships between home and school, and within both respectively. We call this model the Multidomain Model of Living and Education, MDM for short (easier to type). We offer a model which can be adapted partly or wholly. This book is not, therefore, a Utopian tome. (That would simply be another top-down model!). What we share here are our ideas and the practices which have arisen from and been developed by us as a result of what we have experienced in our school. We also share our thoughts on how these ideas could be further developed and integrated. We invite parents, guardians, pupils, and school staff to consider if there is anything in what we say that might be worth incorporating into whatever school/s they or their children are engaging with or enrolled within, nothing more. Meaningful change within the Irish education system will not come from above, in some kind of power struggle, now will it come from below in the form of a revolution, but it will come from the middle if people choose to meet there in dialogue. This book endeavours to become a part of that dialogue.

Peter Caffrey, family therapist

David Carter, principal.

It Shouldn’t Be This Way

Their Stories

We will be familiar with this scenario. If it has not happened to us, or to our children, we have probably heard of it happening to someone. And we have all been in school, so we know how this plays out. But this does not help Peter, who may now be without a school placement or on a reduced timetable. Equally, it doesn’t help his parents/guardians, who are desperate to find a solution. It is not a good result for the teacher either; she has had an awful experience with a pupil, and has to participate in the follow-up process, and teach the class after the incident. It is not great for the other parents either. Their children witness all of this, and also witness a child being excluded from school because his needs cannot be met. It is not the message of inclusiveness we would wish our children to receive in school. So, everyone loses out to some degree; Peter the most.

We believe a different solution could be found to these dilemmas which occur on a daily basis in our schools. The first step to finding a different solution is to look at the problem in a different way. We will try that now; we invite you to look at the same interaction from the three perspectives chiefly involved, the teacher, pupil, and pupil’s mother:

Everybody is trying really hard to make this school placement work, including, if you read his account closely, Peter. But the system as it is at present causes difficulties for pupils, parents, and teachers. Traditional school approach realistically relies on consequences and rewards, on rules with punishments. Threats if you don’t do this, then this will happen, if you don’t do this again then this will happen even twice more. Quite often with this cohort of young people like Peter, who need a different alternative approach, the threat of consequences can actually add fuel to the fire and escalate things. We need to actually regard these behavioural difficulties in the same way that we would if we were trying to teach the young person with reading difficulties or with mathematical difficulties. We should address those issues and try to offer support. We must approach behaviour in the same way, we can’t rely on just consequences and rewards, we have to begin to teach behaviour and social skills so that these kids learn the skills to behave well. Their challenging behaviour is really a manifestation of the stress and feelings about the fact that they are having a hard time coping with the expectations that are imposed upon them.

At present the educational system and the external support system isn’t devised to respond compassionately to this reality. Teachers are left on their own in class to impose consequences or sanctions and to escalate to higher up authority if those consequences or sanctions are not working. The support mechanisms are external to the classroom and even external to the school and are very dependent on the willingness of the families in need to attend. Quite often these families are in such chaos that they are unable to attend, and families therefore miss out on the support. The system is therefore leaving all parties with difficulties and problems. Everyone loses, with problems such as:

Teacher stress

Teachers leaving the profession

Staff turnover

Staff sick leave

Teachers’ long-term absence

Lack of job satisfaction for professionals, teachers, social workers, counsellors etc.

Increased levels of detention for pupils

Suspension of pupils

Exclusion and expulsion of pupils

Truancy

Disaffection of pupils

Disruptive behaviour of pupils

Levels of time and resources spent by schools on behaviour management to detriment of class instruction

Parents feeling guilty, embarrassed, disappointed, let down, angry

Parents being blamed

Damaged parent/school relationships

Parents feeling unsupported

External support agencies with missed appointments

Family reluctance

Resistance to participation in programmes

So now we have a richer description of the problem behaviour and some ideas of what happens outside the classroom which impacts on it; can this help us to find a better solution?

This will not be like other books and there are plenty out there, that try and indicate better ways for individual teachers to handle various individual scenarios or give tips to handle certain individual situations that may arise in a school. We are advocating that an effort is made to move away from those individual styles and approaches which can confuse young people and leave them feeling unfairly treated. We are insisting that schools move away from that traditional, ‘power over’ hierarchical approach and towards the more collaborative approach of working with and negotiating ‘power with’ young people.

The following chapter provides extracts arising out of interviews and discussions we have had with families and young people at the referral stage of our admissions process. We ask them about their experiences in their previous school so that we can sit with them and discuss a plan with the aim of preventing some of those same difficulties arising again. We accumulated a number of stories, comments and viewpoints from both parents and young people which we would like to share. We feel that the examples we share here will provide an interesting insight into how the system as it stands at the moment is leaving many of these families and young people with a less than positive viewpoint, perspective, or experience of the educational system. The subsequent narratives which inevitably develop and are shared within these families and the communities they move within serve only to reinforce the idea of us & them, those who are better and those who are not. These ideas, beliefs & narratives are what our young people carry within them wherever they go, including when they come to school. Within the current traditional, hierarchical system which prevails, is it little wonder that young people’s insecurities are so easily triggered throughout the course of the school day?

Problems with the Educational System as

Pupils and Parents See It

---

---

---