At-risk or a risk? SENCOs' conceptualisations of vulnerability and risk in relation to school exclusion

Journal article

In this paper we explore how Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCOs) conceptualise vulnerability and risk, and how these conceptualisations inform their responses to students at risk of exclusion from school. The literature typically makes a distinction between within-child and systemic or structural factors. We draw on interview data from SENCOs working in 11 secondary schools in England, and an activity theory approach to unpick the contradictions and tensions in their conceptualisations and responses. Overall, we identify a mismatch between SENCOs’ conceptualisations of risk and vulnerability intersecting at multiple levels, and interventions that are primarily located at an individual level. National policy, with its shift away from a contextual understanding of difficulties and difference towards a requirement for clinical diagnosis to access additional funding plays a key role in mediating or shaping SENCO responses, including the tools that schools use to identify at-risk students. The conceptualisations indicate a source of differential impact with some students shifting from being seen as ‘at-risk’ and requiring support, to being ‘a risk’ and better educated elsewhere. In the face of these conceptualisations, we argue for the place of a social relational understanding, emphasising the dialogic spaces in which behaviour is framed, and interventions planned.

Authors: Porter, J; Tawell, A

• Publication status: Published
• Publisher: Routledge
• Journal: Oxford Review of Education
• Volume: 50
• Issue: 6
• Pages: 834-853
• Publication date: 2024-10-11
• Acceptance date: 2024-08-10
• DOI: 10.1080/03054985.2024.2392170
• EISSN: 1465-3915
• ISSN: 0305-4985
• Language: English
• Keywords: social relational; risk and vulnerability; SENCO; school exclusion