Pastoral Care and Support - Case Study Example

Introduction In this paper, one aspect of care will be critically evaluated in an educational context. Different aspects of pastoral care impact on learning each in its own ways but the emotional aspect impacts most compared to the rest. The other needs will also be considered though in brief. They include social, spiritual and academic needs. Social needs are the interpersonal requirements a child needs in order to interact comfortably with other people. Spiritual needs are religious elements that should be met by a child specific to the child’s religion. Academic needs are the skills required to improve the intellectual side of the child. The strategies that will be analyzed in the effort to meet these needs include common assessment framework, staff training, staff development, student mentoring, positive relations, student achievement monitoring and community change approach. From this study, emotional guidance is conclusively observed to impact most on the well-being of the student as well as their education. Context Personal care is the help and care applied by a tutor in order to improve the personal and well-being of students or children (Ron, 2002, 43). A wide variety of aspects are encompassed by it including behavior management, emotional help, moral education and health education. In some countries such as New Zealand, university students also benefit from the support services. In these support services modern psychological as well as traditional approaches are utilized ensuring present psychological needs are met. For effective learning the tutors have to place the well-being of young people and students as a priority. These teachers are the children’s professionals and are best suited to deal with matters affecting them in all dimensions (Zins et al, 2004). ECM’s challenge to teachers to apply expertise in performance analysis and improvement reflects pastoral care’s objectives (ECM, 2009). Once the teachers analyze student performance, identify the issues to prioritize and intervene accordingly, students’ improvement will be seen. Expertise and service from other professional beyond the school together with partnership between young people, children and their families will be applied (ECM, 2009). This strategy recommended for all schools by ECM attains the same goal as pastoral care. Different professions are utilized in order to ensure the various needs of the children are met through expert analysis, evaluation and recommendation. For instance, a teacher would be at loss dealing with teenage pregnancy but with the help of a counselor get through to the students to abstain from engaging in sexual behavior. It is a national goal to have an effective education system that not only nurtures the academic needs of the students but also the other spheres of life (Colleen, 2011, 103). These spheres whose achievements are beyond the academic outcomes cannot be met by the teacher alone. Help from professionals is necessary as well as special training in student mentoring and pastoral care. More and more schools are striving to meet these additional needs of children. ECM advocates for use of qualitative and quantitative data in understanding and applying strategies for effective learning. Every student has individual needs that can not be generalized. In the deprivation theory, a child is considered to act in a particular way to satisfy a need that he or she has been deprived (Durk, n.d.). National concern has been expressed at the very prevalent instrumentalist model of education presently in use (Jill, 2011, 76). Build up of virtue, citizenship and character in students is not of much of concern yet personal and social aspects of education are necessary in enhancing students’ chances of achieving exam results. A particular case where youths took to the street, rioted, looted and robbed citizens raised the question of whether the teachers are doing enough to instill discipline in children (Jill, 2011, 76). However, the young rioters can be considered to be deprived inclusion in the society hence seeking inclusion in gangs. Only a minority of the rioters was of the idea and the rest followed suit. These children have been through an education system that prioritized education of the mind instead of including education of the heart with as much emphasis (Jill, 2011, 78). NAPCE (The National Association for Pastoral Care in Education) is of the idea that both absolute and relative deprivations should be analyzed, evaluated and met before a student’s mind is at peace to learn effectively. In the case of the rioters, relative deprivation was in play because they expected one thing from the community, peers, teachers, family or generally life but they did not get it. Their frustration led them to the very extreme behaviors they exhibited which would otherwise have never been experienced. It is important for teachers, political leaders, religious and the community at large to realize that an inclusive approach is necessary in order to satisfy the need of children to feel a part of the whole nation (Michelle, n.d.). Their various abilities, talents and skills should be recognized and valued. Topic analysis Daniel Goleman developed a theory on intelligence known as the emotional literacy. In some ways his theory relates similarly with Howard Gardner’s theory on intelligence. Emotional literacy is an individual’s ability to understand and use knowledge about their emotions as well as other people’s emotions skillfully and competently (Weare, 2004, 45). The individual emotions element can be linked to Howard Gardner’s intrapersonal intelligence while the social emotions element can be linked to Howard’s interpersonal intelligence. Goleman argued that empathy, emotional control, self-motivation, handling relations and self-awareness are aspects of an individual that must be fulfilled in order for them to be successful in all spheres of life (Goleman, 2005, 65). In a school context, everyone including the staff, parents, students and principal are affected by the operating level of emotional literacy. It is therefore necessary for students to be taught ways of expressing and handling their emotions. Goleman portrays a society hit by less and less emotional intelligence. He argues that over the past 20years the violent crimes committed by young people have risen by a factor of four Goleman (2005, 67). In the same period, suicides have gone up three times. There may be other factors such as poverty that may lead to this breakdown but lack of emotional intelligence accounts for the biggest cause. Were emotional skills to be taught to individuals, the societal life would definitely improve. The riot scenario discussed earlier is an instance of similar bearing. The young children that rioted had a deprivation to satisfy and since they had not been taught how to contain their emotions, they acted upon them without the understanding of how to steer them. Is it still expected that these same children will get to school the next day and concentrate in the respective lessons? The other aspects of education other than academic needs should be met for complete success to be realized in students. Pastoral care aims to provide these other aspects including emotional needs (Parental mentoring, 2011, 6). In understanding helping children’s emotional intelligences, parents are advised to gain necessary emotional skills because the degree of their emotional skills impacts majorly in their kid’s level of intelligence in emotions (Michelle, n.d.). When the students understand their emotions and how to control them they will have better social relations. This is the same when they understand other people’s emotions. Once parents are skilled in emotional intelligence they will always remind their children that they are loved and constantly motivate them by appreciating their positive aspects (Sears, n.d.). Motivated students are better positioned to learn effectively than those that consider themselves not loved or appreciated. Pastoral care supports school-home links whereby the parents input in offering mentoring and support to their students. This way the children are nurtured both at school and at home. The emotional need is observed to be most critical and one that should be maximized on during pastoral mentoring. This study centers on emotional need and its application to effective learning. The importance attached to emotional needs is justified because it links to the other needs in one way or the other. Without emotional intelligence the social skills of the student would not be met, neither would the spiritual or health needs. A student suffering from inferiority complex would sometimes be affected by this problem in the classroom. The student would be hesitant to participate in the classroom with the view that their opinion doesn’t matter. Lack of participation would lead to lack of interest in the lesson and eventually low grades would start reflecting in the student’s results. The parents of this particular student would help the student were they to possess emotional skills that would motivate the child and encourage him or her to be confident. This same child would possibly be willing to join a youth group in their religious institution but would not have the confidence to present their desire. Not being able to express him or herself would frustrate the child leading to more withdrawal and deprivation. This stress would reflect in their health with time. This therefore proves that emotional needs impact on the other needs of the child. The aim of analyzing the emotional topic is to identify the specific emotional needs of a child and strategize on how to meet them through pastoral care. The emotional needs of children include love, motivation appreciation, inclusion and academic support. Every child needs to be supported academically in order to take education seriously. Monitoring the child’s school work proves the parent’s commitment to the success of the child. A child feels happy when constantly reminded that they are loved as well as appreciated. Complimenting the children on their positive aspects motivates them to continue in doing the positive activities (Sears, n.d.). Including them in other activities and treating them as responsible individuals builds confidence in them of their ability to do things responsibly. A particular case is of this Asthmatic child that had taken that label seriously. I came upon it in the internet during my research in the library computer room. The author relates of this child that was brought to his clinic. The seven year old boy when asked why he had gone to the doctor’s office proudly replied “I’m Asthmatic” (Sears, n.d.). The doctor reported that although the child had Asthma the label was even harder to treat than the physical problem. After puffing severally from the bronchial dilator, the boy’s wheezing cleared. However, his label persisted because the emotional side effects of the label were far worse than those of the Asthma. This, the doctor notes, is because a child desires to find an identity and once found they do not let go off their trademark. The child wears their trademark as often as possible. Greg, the boy, grew seeing how his family focused on his illness instead of him as a whole. Substituting for compassion was weariness of his brothers and sisters constantly planning their issues around Greg’s physical problem (Sears, n.d.). The family did not know that any child with a chronic problem had to be addressed in two approaches. One approach was the on problem and the other was the family’s and child’s reaction to the matter. Since the child had already embraced the label, the doctor advised the mother to encourage the family to enjoy the child, work at giving him a healthier trademark or label to wear. This was the best step towards ensuring the boy’s asthma was completely treated because taking the child’s label all of a sudden would have led the child to lose his self-esteem. This case is a reflection of how emotional intelligence is important to the child or student. In an education setting, a student who performs well in calculations but poorly in computer studies can gain a label “mathematical genius” or “computer amateur”. The label the student will get depends on which of the two is treated with more importance than the other. If the teacher and the students overlook complimenting the student on their good performance in calculations and spend more time criticizing their poor performance in computer studies, the child will embrace the trademark of a computer studies failure or amateur. The emotional effects of this label will be very pronounced and will affect some elements of the student’s academics. Accepting their label as a poor computer studies performer would mean that no matter how much effort is put in improving their performance the student will not exhibit an improvement. Continued failure will lead to more effort from teachers and parents which will put pressure on the child who consider that they cannot improve. The pressure will lead to frustration and sometimes depression. These constraints will definitely impact negatively on the student’s learning. It is at this point that pastoral support would be applied. The pastoral mentor would be able to investigate and in the course find out about the child’s label. Next would be to strategize on how best to remove the label from the student and thereafter the efforts to improve his or her performance could bear fruit because the negative attitude is gone. A child whose teachers or parents have good emotional skills could not have gotten to that point because according to the emotional literacy theory the parent would have monitored the child’s academic progress, noticed the poor performance early enough and motivated the child to work harder in the subject. The teacher would also have approached the computer studies problem in a better way encouraging the student to believe in him or herself because he or she is the same individual who performed well in calculations. This would have led the student to realize that the same potential they posses in calculations can also be realized in computer studies. Lessons on how to understand, control and steer their emotions would have helped the student through the period of failure. The best strategy to ensure the emotional intelligence need is met would be to use the school-home link where the teachers and parents work together to satisfy these needs in the child (Michelle, n.d.). In cases where the parent is often absent, a house system could be employed and necessary care provided by the teachers as well as boarding. The whole school approach is also another strategy that takes into consideration ethos, the curriculum and partnerships (Michelle, n.d.). The curriculum ensures the formal aspects of education are met, partnerships encourage the involvement of outside parties in learning and ethos includes the culture, procedures and policies of the school. Teacher application of pastoral care is found in the curriculum and ethos elements. Parent involvement is in partnerships. All staff in the school should realize that they impact on the student’s pastoral needs inside and outside the classroom. Implementing the priorities would require following a series of linked strategies. The progress realized should be reviewed through a series of steps including collaboration, consolidation, coordination and revision (Michelle, n.d.). This skillful and competent application of the strategies will eventually ensure that teachers include their students in learning, support inter-personal learning, teach emotional skills and mentor students with different pastoral needs. The parents will know their part in satisfying the children’s social, emotional, spiritual and health needs. They will realize the importance of building self-confidence in their children and offering emotion literacy to them. In the case of Greg, the asthmatic boy, the doctor advocated for a link strategy where the family would help Greg emotionally and the doctor would help him physically. By helping fix Greg’s emotional problem, the physical problem would then be easily treated. Goleman’s theory recognizes that different professions can be used to better the overall needs of a child. The doctor uses his profession and the family members use their attachment both pursuing the ultimate goal of solving Greg’s emotional and physical problems. The national policies on child protection and health care support efforts by teachers, parents and the community in ensuring the well-being of the child is improved. Evaluation The strategies suggested are elaborate and produce results. The house-system would ensure that children whose parents are frequently absent don’t suffer from deprivation of certain needs. The whole school approach would guarantee student, teacher, parent and societal involvement in the parental support of the students. The school-home link works quite the dam as the whole school approach. The pastoral needs would be met to a great extent when these strategies are implemented. Self-esteem, depression, drug use, poor performance, anti-social behavior, labeling, responsibility and integrity are some of the needs that would be improved (Stephen and Mike, n.d.). The teacher would understand the benefits of physical education in satisfying physical needs of the student. Also poor performance, self-esteem, depression, labeling and anti-social behavior would be corrected by observation, intervention and mentoring of affected students (Pastoral Care in Education, 2011). The teacher with the help of parents and other parties would help instill emotional literacy in the students. The parent would understand the importance of monitoring their child’s performance. Appreciating the child’s achievements would build his or her confidence in their ability and this would be motivational to them (Needs of a Child during Growth, 2011). The parent’s emotional skill would lead them to help their child grow in emotional literacy hence avoid cases of stress, misunderstanding, peer pressure and depression which often lead to gang involvement, crime and substance abuse. Assigning responsibilities and ‘special” jobs to the child would open their eyes to responsibility (Sears, n.d.). The “special” jobs excite children as they consider that in order to be assigned a special task one has to be special. This builds their confidence which translates to the classroom as well. These strategies are advantageous because they produce results. They are practical and can apply to people of different intellectual level. This is especially important in parents because a strategy that is not universal would favor a particular group. The disadvantages of these strategies include time, training and difficulty in ascertaining limits of responsibilities. A lot of time must be spent on pastoral education to the teachers, parents and the community as a whole. The training would mean that other equally important matters would have to be sacrificed. Encouraging outside involvement other than teachers would confuse the other parties as to what limits they are expected to reach in implementing support and mentoring. What should be left to the religious leader, parent, community member or teacher? A limitation of this study would be the analysis and evaluation of emotional needs in length when the other needs are considerably important too. The social, spiritual, physical and health needs are important as well. The two specific cases observed have a specific setting therefore lack of diversity. Greg’s situation was addressed on the emotional context. The young rioters exhibited emotional imbalance and the inability to control their emotions hence still an emotional context. A child’s needs are more diverse therefore evaluating one need is a limitation in the setting analyzed. The implementation of these strategies would reduce cases of emotional problems in students. A student abusing drugs would be less likely to learn effectively. The school-home link introduced would ensure emotional needs of the child are met both at home and in school hence no drug abuse and emotional distress and in effect the concentration of the student would be focused completely on learning. The strategies are aimed at meeting the collective pastoral needs of the student. Once these needs are met the student would be comfortable, happy, focused, confident, motivated, responsible, emotionally in control, loved, understanding, empathetic, self-actualized and many more traits. This type of student is ideal and ready to learn. The strategies would therefore promote effective learning. School-home link strategy would meet the emotional needs of the student especially confidence, motivation, self-esteem and emotional literacy in general. The teacher would support the student at school and the parent would support the child at home. Whole school approach would cover even more needs because the school staff, the community and any other parties are welcome to help. Restructuring school policies in order to handle grievances and new suggestions would improve interpersonal relations between the school staff and the students. Community input in student support would give rise to a generation of young respectful individuals. They would feel included hence a part of the society which would build pride in them and a sense of belonging. Conclusion Pastoral care and support are very important in improving learning as well as fulfilling the overall needs of a child. ECM’s challenge to teachers to use different professionals in the learning process has been seen to be justified from this study’s findings. The different needs, when not met, cause the student to be disoriented hence reducing the effectiveness of learning. The pastoral care provided ensures that individual needs of students are regarded with importance and met. Goleman’s theory especially advocates for emotional literacy as a preferred approach in meeting these needs. The academic needs of the student are not the only needs that impact on the life of the student but rather the child to grow effectively as a whole the different needs have to be satisfied. Pastoral learning ensures that the academic as well as the social, spiritual, emotional, health and physical needs of the students are met. A future study would produce more reliable findings if the settings were diverse so that more aspects are covered. The pastoral needs should all be analyzed in the future rather than specifying a particular aspect and majoring on it. The strategies here recommended can be improved by including a strategy that recognizes the teacher as the ultimate party with the biggest responsibility of mentoring and meeting majority of the student’s pastoral needs. The strategies suggested here regard the teachers, parents, community and any other party to be with equal responsibility in providing pastoral care to the students. However, teachers are professionally qualified to relate with students hence they are better placed to offer the services here suggested. A future study undertaken should also focus on rehabilitation of affected students. Some students possess certain behaviors emanating from the experiences they have had. Their needs were not all met but it is never too late to reform. Helping these students by mentoring and supporting them should be an objective in a future study. Bibliography Colleen M, (2011): “Pastoral Care in Education: The International Journal for Pastoral Care & Personal-Social Education vol. 25 no. 4 Steven C. and Dr Mike C. n.d. Every Child Matters: challenges and opportunities for CPD, Optimus Professional Publishing Limited, viewed 15 September 2011 from: http://www.teachingexpertise.com/articles/every-child-matters-challenges-and-opportunities-for-cpd-3233 Durk, H. Hak, n.d. 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