The Centre for Analytic Criminology recently hosted the launch of a new education project, to encourage prosocial behaviour and development among adolescents.
The SATNAV programme is led by Dr Beth Hardie, Senior Research and Innovation Associate at the Institute of Criminology, and Dr Neema Trivedi-Bateman, Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Loughborough University and Institute of Criminology alumna. Both Hardie and Trivedi-Bateman are affiliated to the Institute of Criminology’s Centre for Analytic Criminology. They summarise SATNAV as “a comprehensive schools-based programme of change, centred around developing individual personal morality and school moral contexts”.
SATNAV utilises Situational Action Theory (SAT), a theory developed by the Centre for Analytic Criminology. SAT argues that crime is best understood by studying people’s engagement with their social environments, and in particular, their morality and that of their surroundings. Researchers testing SAT in UK and German education settings have conducted studies into cheating, criminal behaviour and school moral climates, and peer-influence on school-based aggression. All these observed people’s responses to their school environment, including fellow pupils, to determine who and what is most likely to influence their behaviour and how.
These studies demonstrated that pupils’ antisocial behaviour is often determined by their personal moral rules, in response to the moral contexts in which they operate. Moral rules refer to beliefs about whether a certain action is right or wrong. Moral contexts refer to the moral rules of a social environment, such as a school classroom or corridor, and the degree to which they are enforced.
If an individual does not consider antisocial behaviours wrong, and the school setting does not have a strong pro-social moral climate, they are more likely to commit antisocial behaviour. Being in school contexts with lax moral rules also makes it harder for individuals with more pro-social moral rules to resist peer pressure to break rules and misbehave. Furthermore, since SAT research also determines that contexts are important for long-term adolescent development as well as their behaviour in the moment, the moral climate of schools is crucial for improving behaviour in both the short and long term. Hardie summarises the implications of this approach by saying, “we cannot separate individuals and environments when talking about behaviour, and behavioural management is inseparable from personal development”.
Hardie founded SATNAV in response to increased calls for stricter school regimes to control adolescents as a means to discourage antisocial behaviour. She argues that the evidence from the Centre for Analytic Criminology and associated studies suggests that this control focus takes the wrong approach.
Hardie argues that responses to reducing antisocial behaviour by parents, schools and other social institutions can be broadly categorised as being either control or guidance focussed. A controls-based approach involves people or institutions implementing punishment or restrictions in response to breaching moral rules (or threat of). By contrast, a guidance-based approach involves providing education and advice, to inform and develop people towards more pro-social actions and decision-making.
The key difference is the nature of these responses. Control is reactive, implemented in response to antisocial behaviour, aiming for compliance. Guidance is more proactive, used to develop characteristics and encourage activities that are crucial for pro-social, co-operative, behaviour. Hardie argues that since schools are a major part of children’s social environment, they play a crucial role in providing such guidance.
“Schools should focus on the development side as well as the action and behaviour side,” Hardie says. “It’s not just about stopping kids doing bad things in classrooms, schools should also be about growing young people and their socialisation.” Hardie believes that intense pressure on schools to meet academic and other targets means that they need support to become places where moral development flourishes in a prosocial moral climate – something that she says that many educators want.
This led to the creation of SATNAV, to work with schools to improve moral climates and provide this moral education. Hardie and Trivedi-Bateman have worked to varying degrees with nine schools across England so far: Commonweal, The Ashcombe School, North Gosforth Academy, The Petersfield School, Ash Manor School, Chelmer Valley High School, Countesthorpe Academy, Ibstock Community College, and Winstanley School. Further trials are in the pipeline including in China and Sweden.
The programme consists of several parts, at various stages of implementation. SATNAV:Compass, developed and led by Trivedi-Bateman, aims to provide moral education for those students who would most benefit from the programme. It consists of weekly one-hour sessions between a facilitator and 6 to 8 students, doing activities and discussing empathy, morality, mindfulness, emotional engagement, and peer resistance. Already, Trivedi-Bateman reports positive feedback about SATNAV:Compass. Both teachers and students have been highly engaged throughout trials and have said they have enjoyed and benefitted from their sessions.
SATNAV:Climate, developed and piloted collaboratively by teachers with Hardie, aims to improve the moral climate of the school environment itself. The programme is extensive and involves regular meaningful discussions embedded throughout the whole curriculum. They now plan to install SATNAV:Climate’s moral deliberation in extracurricular contexts, such as in tutorials, assemblies, and after-school clubs.
“You can build your school values into a football team, have discussions about fairness and respect for each other,” Hardie explains. “And you can see how they can play into it, the same way they built it into the curriculum. There’s no way it can’t be built into everything they do in school.”
Other parts of SATNAV are in development. SATNAV:Skills intends to provide schoolchildren with the self-management and communication skills to support the development and expression of their moral values. SATNAV:Enforce supports the school in devising and implementing effective, proportionate and safe behaviour management strategies.
Finally, SATNAV:Global aims to broadly support the school to underpin the success of the various SATNAV programmes, for example by delivering staff training in staff-student relationships and leadership and providing strategic guidance. For example, in the schools that have applied SATNAV so far, the existence or establishment of attachment relationships between students and staff has been crucial. These are relationships that acknowledge a care relationship between the two, and a need to ensure students feel safe. Building mutual trust is the first step to ensuring students feel supported and seek help in relation to their behaviour, while also developing and learning.
“By successfully maintaining that attachment relationship in a professional child interaction setting, it can help the young person relax, feel more at ease, and understand their place and belong,” explains Hardie.
Eventually, Hardie and Trivedi-Bateman aim to install all SATNAV components together in schools as an integrated programme of change.
Hardie is keen to emphasise that neither she nor SATNAV advocate for a permissive approach or for removing control measures from education. Schools should address breaches of moral rules. However, they should focus on the nature and development of those moral rules in their school and students in the first place.
“What we’re really talking about,” she says, “is the difference between an approach that is control and focus driven, as opposed to one that’s development and guidance driven. Moral development and strong moral contexts are primary and fundamental. Controls are only relevant in certain circumstances at certain times.”
The Centre for Analytic Criminology was founded to advocate that understanding the causes of crime is necessary for effective crime prevention. In the case of SATNAV, this means recognising schools have a role to play in influencing students’ behaviour.
“It's about doing what we know to be effective for behaviour, which is focusing on the moral development of students and school environments,” Hardie concludes. “We still have controls in place, but we’re making sure that they're fair, proportional, and they're not the be all and end all. More than that though, we're aiming to develop people rather than just getting academic results. If you develop people, results will come because there’s less disruption and more engagement for learning. And you’ll get longer term outcomes that benefit society.”
For more information about SATNAV, see: www.bethhardie.me/SATNAV, and for more information about SATNAV:Compass specifically see: www.lboro.ac.uk/research/compass-project/.