Boundaries are common but poorly understood.
How and why do we establish and maintain boundaries in our relationships, friendships, at home, at work, within the classroom, with students, with parents, with colleagues, and with other agencies and service providers?
When a boundary is crossed, what does it feel like, look like, taste like? What about when there are few or no boundaries? Or when the boundaries are too rigid?
Boundaries are worked out over functional matters. Sometimes they are very clear such as in relation to money or sexual relationships and sometimes they are less defined for example when there are secrets. A boundary is primarily an interactional concept about people in their socio-relational world of connections and relationships that act to constrain, identify, define, and limit the individual or the family. Boundaries are organisational, interactional, ethical and moral. Living systems are organised so that certain interactions are more likely to take place, and other interactions are less likely to take place. Some interactions should never take place, and other interactions should always take place.
Micro-detailed interactions inside schools establish boundaries for students, keeping them safe. With the inclusion of high and complex (support) needs matters, these boundaries become confused when schools find themselves dictated to by either the family or external service providers, who may not understand or consider the context of a school and a classroom.
The relationship between a family and a school over a child is significant in terms of boundaries. The boundary can become blurred or confused as the family and school share some common responsibility for the child, as well as having certain differentiated responsibility.
The two systems, the family and the school, are not equal. This inequality is critical in working with the child across the two systems. The school is part of the broader social institution of education, helping, and social control, and the family is not part of that institution. This is the understanding set out by John Rawls (1971: A Theory of Justice) that explores the unequal relationship between the citizen and the social institution. In all matters in relation to children and schools, that inequality must be considered. When difficult matters are being negotiated by the school, family and child, it is not a level playing field.
With the addition of another system, be that Health or Human Services, the blurred boundaries over shared responsibilities for the child increases as does the complexity of managing the multiple systems. The protocol of bower (note) helps manage complex relationships, balance the inequalities and helps establish firm boundaries around who is responsible for what.
Join us for our next workshop on Boundaries on Thursday 29 August, 3:30-4:30pm.
bower(schools) provides protocols and training to assist leaders and educators to manage inequality, inclusion, crisis, and multi-system complexity. To learn more about bower(schools) visit bower(schools).
To assess whether your school has the protocols and processes to successfully manage complex situations and crisis, book a free Schools Support Assessment meeting.
For more articles and to learn more about the protocols used within bower(schools) sign up for bower(knowledge) here: https://bowerplace.com.au/bowerknowledge/
