The Investigation of students' misbehaviors and strategies to cope with misbehaviors according to teachers', students and parents' perspectives and the effects of assessertive discipline model based training program on teachers' discipline strategies

ivABSTRACTTHE INVESTIGATION OF STUDENTS? MISBEHAVIORS AND STRATEGIESTO COPE WITH MISBEHAVIORS ACCORDING TO TEACHERS?,STUDENTS AND PARENTS? PERSPECTIVES AND THE EFFECTS OFASSESSERTIVE DISCIPLINE MODEL BASED TRAINING PROGRAM ONTEACHERS? DISCIPLINE STRATEGIESFatma SADIKPh D. Dissertation, Department of Educational SciencesSupervisor: Asst. Prof. Ahmet DOĞANAYDecember-2006, 513 pagesAn educational environment requires a good discipline. As the misbehaviorsincrease the need of management and discipline, managing students? undesirablebehaviors has become one of the main focus of classroom management recently. In therelated literature, it is obvious that this issue has been approached from only theteachers? perspective. In addition, the present literature reveals that the research hasbeen inadequate to clarify some issues such as (1) which behaviors are defined asundesirable by teachers, students and parents; and why, (2) how students perceiveteachers? strategies to deal with misbehaviors, (3) how these misbehaviors are dealt withat home, and (4) teachers? expectations from parents, students and parents? expectationsfrom teachers in this process. Although it has been emphasized that teachers are in needof practice of classroom management during their pre-service and while service, noresearch has been found on evaluating the results of in-service teacher trainingprograms in this respect. This study is a descriptive / case study investigating theperspectives of teachers, students and parents on students? classroom misbehaviors andstrategies to deal with these strategies, and the possible effects of an AssertiveDiscipline model based program on teachers? strategies to cope with misbehaviors.vThe participant school is a low-status suburban primary school. A two-phasedesign was used to collect the data. In the first phase of the study, the data was collectedon the basis of a triangulation among the methods and the data. The data was obtainedby different techniques such as critical incident, observation, interviews, documents,personal information forms, and questionnaires, which were conducted on teachers,students, and parents. One of the participant teachers was female and four of them weremale. Three teachers were teaching fourth grade and two teachers were teaching fifthgrade. The participant students consisted of 75 girls and 97 boys (fourth grade and fifthgrade). The parents representing 20 students were just mothers. In the second phase, theresearcher employed the developed program on five teachers and observed theirbehaviors in the classroom before and after the treatment. The results can besummarized as in the following;All participants agreed on the definition of undesirable behaviors and theydefined the socially inappropriate behaviors as misbehaviors. Concerning the reason todefine a behavior as a problem, the teachers reported the negative academic results onthemselves and the other students while the parents reported negative psychological andsocial results on themselves. Student participants were found to be aware of the resultsof the behaviors, whereas boys were found unaware of the psychological results of thebehaviors on others. The teachers? perceptions of the frequency of observation of thebehavior in the classroom was higher compared to the participant students and theirparents. According to the classroom observations, the frequency of observation of theproblematic behavior was higher than the perceptions of the students and the teachers.The teachers were the participant group who consider the misbehavior most importantcompared to the other participants. The participant groups connected the reasons ofmisbehaviors to external factors and they showed an attitude putting the blame on theothers rather than themselves. The teachers found strategies dealing with misbehaviorspositive as preventive and repairing, whereas students determined their teachers?behaviors as punishing, threatening, and unfair. During the classroom observations, themost common strategies used by the teachers were verbal warning (shouting), ignoring,warning by gestures, dressing down and threatening.The parents and the students agreed on the first reactions to misbehavior at homewhich were shouting with an angry tone of voice, dressing down and threatening, butvialso physical punishment if the behavior was repeated. The teachers and the parentsbelieve that teachers-parents co-operation was needed to solve discipline problems. Theparents determined that they expected the teachers to get angry-and-shout and beat thechild when s/he misbehaved while the teachers expected the parents not to beat butshow interest and kindness. However, the students expected the teachers not to beat, notto punish, not to shout or threaten them. In order to solve the discipline problems atschool, the teachers thought that it was necessary to improve the physical conditions, tocomplement the missing equipments and materials, and to develop family relations. Theparents, on the other hand, reported the need of taking security measures, removingproblematic students away from school as well as repairing the physical conditions.The biggest difference among the teachers after the treatment of strategiesdealing with undesirable behaviors was found in the use of ?ignoring? strategy that is?ignoring? the problematic behavior was used 23.5 % less frequent. After the training,important differences were found in the content and the expression of verbal warning;shouting, dressing down and threatening, offensive words-ridiculing and forcing toimitate were used less than they were used before. Nonetheless, it was observed that theteachers, who could practice the positive methods, kept on using the inappropriatestrategies. As a result, it was revealed in the study that we need some research on (1) theeffectiveness of the current and advised strategies to decrease the behavioral problemsand to improve the school system, (2) making the parents conscious about behaviormanagement, (3) coordination of supplementary programs for the students and theirparents.Key words: Classroom Management, Misbehaviors, Deal with Misbehaviors,Assertive Discipline, Teachers-Parents Co-Operation, Family.