Students' misbehavior.

Students' misbehavior

Mr. / Girgis

It is a skill:

Classroom management and management of student conduct are

skills that teachers acquire over time.  Personal experience and

research indicate that many beginning teachers have difficulty

effectively managing their classrooms.

While there is no one best solution for every problem or classroom

setting, the following principles, drawn from a number of sources,

might help.

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the conceptions of junior secondary school student misbehavior in classroom, and to identify the most common, disruptive, and unacceptable student problem behaviors from teachers' perspective.

Twelve individual interviews with teachers were conducted. A list of 17 student problem behaviors was generated. Results showed that the most common and disruptive problem behavior was talking out of turn, followed by non-attentiveness, daydreaming, and idleness.

The most unacceptable problem behavior was disrespecting teachers in terms of disobedience and rudeness, followed by talking out of turn and verbal aggression.

The findings revealed that teachers perceived student problem behaviors as those behaviors involving rule-breaking, violating the implicit norms or expectations, being inappropriate in the classroom settings and upsetting teaching and learning, which mainly required intervention from teachers.

How to respond:

There are many ways to respond to inappropriate behaviors, of course,

and they vary in how much they focus on the immediate behavior

compared to longer-term features or patterns of a student’s behavior.

There are so many ways to respond, in fact, that we can describe only

a sample of the possibilities here. None are effective all of the time,

though all do work at least some of the time. We start with a response

that may not seem on the surface like a remedy at all—simply ignoring

misbehavior.

 If a student who is usually quiet during class happens to whisper to a neighbor once in awhile, it is probably less disruptive and just as effective to ignore the infraction than to respond to it. Some misbehavior may not be worth a response even if they are frequent, as long as they do not seem to bother others.

Suppose, for example, that a certain student has a habit of choosing quiet seat-work times to sharpen her pencil. She is continually out of her seat to go to the sharpener.

Yet this behavior is not really noticed by others. Is it then really a problem, however unnecessary or ill-timed it may be?

In both examples ignoring the behavior may be wise because there is little danger of the behavior disrupting other students or of becoming more frequent. Interrupting your activities—or the students’—might cause more disruption than simply ignoring the problem.

Gesturing non-verbally

Sometimes it works to communicate using gestures, eye contact, or

“body language” that involve little or no speaking. Nonverbal cues are

often appropriate if a misbehavior is just a bit too serious or frequent to

ignore, but not serious or frequent enough to merit taking the time

deliberately to speak to or talk with the student.

If two students are chatting off-task for a relatively extended time, for

example, sometimes a glance in their direction, a frown, or even just

moving closer to the students is enough of a reminder to get them back

on task.

Natural and logical consequences

Consequences are the outcomes or results of an action. When

managing a classroom, two kinds of consequences are especially

effective for influencing students’ behavior: natural consequences and

logical consequences.

As the term implies, natural consequences happen “naturally,”

without deliberate intention by anyone. If a student is late for class,

for example, a natural consequence is that he misses information or

material that needed to do an assignment. Logical consequences

are ones that happen because of the responses of or decisions by

others, but that also have an obvious or “logical” relationship to the

original action.

Natural and logical consequences are often woven

together and thus hard to distinguish:

if one student picks a fight with another student, a natural consequence

might be injury not only to the victim, but also to the aggressor (an

inherent byproduct of fighting), but a logical consequence might be to

lose friends (the response of others to fighting). In practice both may

occur.

Conflict resolution and problem solving

Step 1: clarifying and focusing: problem ownership

Classrooms can be emotional places even though their primary purpose is to promote thinking rather than expression of feelings. The emotions can be quite desirable: they can give teachers and students “passion” for learning and a sense of care among members of the class.

But feelings can also cause trouble if students misbehave: at those moments negative feelings—annoyance, anger, discomfort—can interfere with understanding exactly what is wrong and how to set things right again.

Gaining a bit of distance from the negative feelings is exactly what those moments need, especially on the part of the teacher, the person with (presumably) the greatest maturity.

Step 2: active, empathetic listening

Diagnosing accurately who really has a problem with a behavior—who “owns” it—is helped by a number of strategies. One is active listening—attending carefully to all aspects of what a student says and attempting to understand or empathize as fully as possible

Active listening involves asking questions in order continually to check your understanding. It also involves encouraging the student to elaborate on his or her remarks, and paraphrasing and summarizing what the student says in order to check your perceptions of what is said.

It is important not to move too fast toward solving the problem with advice, instructions, or scolding, even if these are responses that you might, as a teacher, feel responsible for making.

Step 3: assertive discipline and messages

Once you have listened well to the student’s point of view, it helps to frame your responses and comments in terms of how the student’s behavior affects you in particular, especially in your role as the teacher. The comments should have several features:

• They should be assertive—neither passive and apologetic, nor unnecessarily hostile and aggressive (Cantor, 1996). State the problem as matter-of-factly as possible: “Joe, you are talking while I’m explaining something,” instead of either “Joe, do you think you could be quiet now?” or “Joe, be quiet!”

• The comments should emphasize I-messages (Gordon, 1981), which are comments that focus on how the problem behavior is affecting the teacher’s ability to teach, as well as how the behavior makes the teacher feel.

•  They are distinct from you-messages, which focus on evaluating the mistake or problem which the student has created. An I-message might be, “Your talking is making it hard for me to remember what I’m trying to say.” A you-message might be, “Your talking is rude.”

• The comments should encourage the student to think about the effects of his or her actions on others—a strategy that in effect encourages the student to consider the ethical implications of the actions .
  

Step 4: negotiation

The first three steps describe ways of interacting that are desirable, but also fairly specific in scope and limited in duration. But in themselves, they may not be enough when conflict persists over time and develops a number of complications or confusing features.

A student may persist in being late for class, for example, in spite of efforts by the teacher to modify this behavior. Or two students may repeatedly speak rudely to each other, even though the teacher has mediated this conflict in the past.

Or a student may fail to complete homework, time after time. Because these problems develop over time, and because they may involve repeated disagreements, they can eventually become stressful for the teacher, the student, and any classmates who may be affected. Their persistence can tempt a teacher simply to dictate a resolution—a decision that can leave everyone feeling defeated, including the teacher.

• Decide as accurately as possible what the problem is. Usually this step involves a lot of the active listening described above.

• Brainstorm possible solutions, and then consider their effectiveness. Remember to include students in this step; otherwise you end up simply imposing a solution on others, which is not what negotiation is supposed to achieve.

• If possible, choose a solution by consensus. Complete agreement on the choice may not be possible, but strive for it as best you can. Remember that taking a vote may be a democratic, acceptable way to settle differences in some situations, but if feelings are running high, voting does not work as well.
• 
  
• 
  
•  In that case voting may simply allow the majority to impose its will on the minority, leaving the underlying conflict unresolved.

• Pay attention to how well the solution works after it is underway.

•  For many reasons, things may not work out the way you or
  
• students hope or expect. You may need to renegotiate the
•  solution at a later time.