Assessment 1

Introduction

Education plays a significant role in contemporary society both for students

and teachers. However, students’ inappropriate behaviours have been the

major concerns for schools. Schools and teachers are intended to educate

students not only in contents and literature materials, but also people’s

philosophy, boundaries and norms. In fact, many teachers are confronted

challenges with managing students’ misbehaviours in the classroom. If

student misbehave during the class, teacher often spend a lot of time on

managing that student, and other students in the classroom have been

distracted by misbehaviour as well. Therefore, it is important for schools and

teachers to understand the outcomes of students’ misbehaviours in order to

design some productive and effective classroom management strategy and

build a positive learning environment for students. The purpose of this report

is to investigate the outcomes of students’ misbehaviours by interviewing 6

people from different gender and occupation, as well as to compare and

contrast the results from these participants with academic literature.

Literature review

Deprived of successful behaviour management, a positive and constructive

classroom environment is difficult to achieve. Discovering the most effective

methods for making behaviour change and avoiding the classroom discipline

problems is a demanding fragment for many teachers. Dr. Rudolf Dreikurs,

summarised five possible motives for students misbehave in the Goal Centred

Theory, the common factors that cause students’ misbehave in the classroom

are seeking attention both from teachers and peer students, desire for power,

lack of self-confidence, exacting revenge and problems with curriculum

(Lyons, 2015). There are may other factors to cause students’ misbehave,

then these five factors are more likely happened in the classroom and make it

problematic for students to enjoy the learning process. For example, if one of

students appearing misbehaviour such as talking out of turn, then maybe

some students would followed; other students who are doing their work may

be distracted; teacher has to correct the misbehave student and spend time

on managing the classroom; therefore, the whole learning environment is

negative and disruptive, if this kind of situation happens in every lesson, then

it would definitely impact to students’ academic performance.

Demanet & Van Houtte (2012) demonstrated that teacher attitudes could have

a reflective impact on students’ educational development. Students often

misbehave in the classroom such as talking out of turn and loosing attention

on content, these outcomes of misbehaviour may subject to teachers’ attitude.

When teachers have low expectations on some of their students, they spend

less effort and time teaching these students, their student more likely to

perform misbehaviours in the classroom because students seeking attention

from their teacher. For example, if a student who is struggling in mathematics

class, then he never asks teachers or other students to help him on content;
when he has troubles to understand the question during the class, he started

to disturbing other students by talking or poking them, and he lost the interest

of studying mathematics. Due to this student’s situation, if teacher constantly

shows less expectation on this student and pay less effort and attention on

this student, the relationship between this teacher and student will be severely

negative and this student may potentially performed worse behaviours such

as aggressive behaviour.

Alvare (2007) demonstrated that aggressive behaviour has been exposed to

extremely disrupt students’ academic. From teachers’ perspective, students’

aggressive behaviour tends to be considered more riskily than any other

misbehaviour problems. Alter, Walker & Landers (2013) also showed that in

today classroom, the major misbehaviours that teachers are faced are high

magnitude incident of aggression and disruption. Teachers are often

approving severe penalties of having aggressive students in their classroom.

Additionally, there are some different interference, which may impact upon

classroom communication between teachers and students; they are external,

internal and sociocultural interference (Lyons, 2015). In external interferences,

the setting and context variables are playing a major part in communication, it

also related to internal interferences, such as familiarity, self-esteem,

expectations, and it affects communication for both the receiver and sender.

In sociocultural interferences, the variables are also played a significant role,

these variables are included cultural beliefs, attitudes and values, gender, age

and ethnic and social background (Lyons, 2015).

The student-teacher relationship is censoriously significant on influencing

students’ academic, social, behavioural and emotional development. Students

are more likely to have risks in their life when they experienced negative

student-teacher relationship. McGrath & Van Bergen (2015) introduced three

theories to explain teacher-student relationship. The first and more commonly

used one is attachment theory, which describes that children were attached to

their parents when they were young, later when they grown up they began to

attached to their teachers for seeking secure, safe and comfort. The second

theory is self-determination theory, which explains that students’ motivation

are related to school environment, if the school provides students’ needs in

competence, relatedness and autonomy, students are more likely to have

secure and satisfying relationship with teachers. The last one is ecological

system theory, which is connected to human development (McGrath & Van

Bergen, 2015). Positive student-teacher relationship is encouraged to all

schools in primary and secondary, especially in high school. Students have

experienced cognitive and physical develop during their adolescent period,

they are more likely to rebel disciplines from parents and teachers. Students’

misbehaviours at school can explained as one of their rebellion and showing

off to peers and teachers that they have grown up already.

Methodology

The interview was conducted to six different people from four categories:

parents, teachers, pre-service teachers and non-teaching friend, the

participants include 2 males and 4 females. All participants were contributed

to a short discussion interview each, and the interviews were not recorded.

However, the participants were all signed consent form to be interviewed and

the interviewer was taking notes by hand through the conversation, and by the

end of interview, the interviewer summarised key comments and ideas to the

participants. The topic was “why do young students misbehave at school”. All

participants have been asked this question and they are required to elaborate

their opinions and ideas further more by examples. The interview was not

proceeding successfully at the beginning; participants were not corporate with

the interviewer seriously. Due to the interview is informal and conversational,

when they answered the first or second question; they expressed their answer

without thinking. However, after a few questions, when they are asked to

elaborate answers in-depth, they started to treat this interview more formally

and showed a lot of constructional opinions.

Discussion

The most three common answers that provided by all participants on students’

misbehave at school topic are students seek attention from teachers and

others peers; students feel bored from the learning content and activities;

students are challenging authority and craving for more control in the

classroom. Participant A has explained that students desired to receive

attention from their teacher because they want praise and compliment. Nighty

percent of students desired to be the centre of attention, therefore students

have high academic result can easily acquire teachers’ attention, however,
students with poor performance may used extreme method, which is

misbehaviour to seek teachers’ attention. Hence, teachers played a

meaningful role in students schooling life. Demanet & Van Houtte (2012)

suggested that when teachers established equal and supportive relationship

with every student, make them feel safe like home, students are less likely to

misbehave at school.

Moreover, participants B and C have suggested that students might feel bore

with class activities or content, or they might have troubles to understand the

curriculum, then they are more likely to misbehave and distracted other

students. It is a method for students to seek attention. Alter, Walker & Landers

(2013) pointed out that off task is the most regularly and problematic

behaviour occurring at school, when students are not concentrated on their

work, they started to involve verbal disruption and aggressive behaviours. For

example, when a family is having gathering dinner with relatives and friends,

adults are all talking about finance and politics, older children are talking

about idols and dramas, one toddler only have toys to company with;

however, he is observing other people, if he sees his mother is talking and

laughing without looking at him, he will definitely cry out loud and break things

to show his displeasure and seek attention from parents. Students are

experiencing same situation, but the context is in school, the most reliable

person in school is teacher, so students want teachers attention.

Additionally, participants E and F both agreed that teachers should designed

more effective strategies to deal with student misbehaviours. First of all,

teachers should take more ownership on managing students’ behaviours, set

more rules and disciplines in the classroom. For example, they suggested that

teachers should show serious punishment on students’ misbehaviours, send a

warning letter or call their parents. However, Sullivan, Johnson, Owens &

Conway (2014) argues that the mainstream rules and policies related to

student behaviour is only locate to the “individual problem student” rather than

to consider the whole context of classroom, there are may other factors that

contributed to students’ misbehaviour. Teachers are often focusing on correct

students’ inappropriate behaviours, and expecting students to gain self-control

on their behaviour. When students show misbehaviour in the classroom,

teachers always blamed that particular student, sometimes humiliated that

student in front of other peer students, this action may decrease students’

self-esteem and increased students’ misbehaviour more often.

Lastly, participant D has suggested that both parents and teachers should

work in cooperation to help students reduce their misbehaviours in school.

Parents should pay more attention on their children’s discipline, they should

set up strict boundaries for their children, as well as to frequently keep in

touch with school teachers about their children’s performance. Teachers

should show more attention and patience to students, when students

appearing misbehaviours in class try to know the outcomes and factors

behind students’ misbehave rather than just blame or punish students.

Conclusion

Following researched numerous academic findings and conducted some

interviews; the common answer for students’ misbehave at school is students

seek attention from other people. However, there are lots of outcomes and

factors behind students’ misbehave, it is hard for teachers to know exactly

why that student misbehaves, but teachers have the responsibility to find out

the outcome and factor to cause student misbehaves, and teachers also

obligated to help student to build positive behaviour. Education is arduous but

important, both teachers and students form part of education. Teachers are

obliged to present 100 percent of patience and positive attitude to every

student, no matter students’ age, gender, social background and status, every

student at school is equally same and they are required to treat them same.

Therefore, teachers are always expected to be patient and positive when they

are in teaching role; they are required to understand students’ cognitive and

physical development in order to teach them; they must have equal

expectations for every student and never to give up on any of students.

 Reference

Lyons, G. F. M. (2015). Classroom Management. South Melbourne: Cengage

Learning Australia.

Alvarez, H. K. (2007). The impact of teacher preparation on responses to

student aggression in the classroom. Teaching and Teacher Education,

23(7), 1113-1126.

Alter, P., Walker, J. N., & Landers, E. (2013). Teachers' perceptions of

students' challenging behavior and the impact of teacher

demographics. Education and Treatment of Children, 36(4), 51-69.

Demanet, J., & Van Houtte, M. (2012). Teachers' attitudes and students'

opposition. School misconduct as a reaction to teachers' diminished

effort and affect. Teaching and Teacher Education, 28(6), 860-869.

McGrath, K. F., & Van Bergen, P. (2015). Who, when, why and to what end?

Students at risk of negative student–teacher relationships and their

outcomes. Educational Research Review, 14, 1-17.

Sullivan, A. M., Johnson, B., Owens, L., & Conway, R. (2014). Punish them or

engage them?: Teachers' views of unproductive student behaviours in

the classroom. Australian Journal of Teacher Education (Online), 39(6),

43.