A study on teachers' strategies for managing undesired behaviours in classroom

In this study, it was aimed to determine the strategies of managing undesired behaviors used by kindergarten and primary school teachers working in Yozgat in 2017-2018 academic year. The population of the research was composed of pre-school and classroom teachers in primary and independent kindergartens in Yozgat in 2017-2018 academic year. In the study, which was designed by using both quantitative and qualitative research models, convenience sampling method was used. For the quantitative dimension the Inventory of Strategies to Manage Undesired Behaviors of Teachers which was developed by the researcher, was applied to 230 teachers. The qualitative dimension was conducted by interviewing 11 class and preschool teachers. The quantitative data were analyzed by SPSS and qualitative data were analyzed by content analysis. In order to analyze the data obtained from the research, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, percentage, t-test, Mann Whitney U, one-way ANOVA and Kruskal Wallis H tests were performed. As a result of the research, "Physical and verbal violence", "Disturbing friends" and "not obeying classroom rules" were found as the most common classroom undesired behaviors. It was observed that teachers mostly adopted "thinking-based strategies" to manage undesired behaviors in the classroom. It was followed by "emotion-based strategies" and the least adopted strategies were "behavior-based strategies". It was found that "thinking and emotion based strategies" were applied at "often" level and "behavior based strategies" were applied at "sometimes" level. It was determined that gender was a significant variable for each strategy; female teachers preferred all strategies more than male teachers. There was a significant difference in "emotion-based strategies"; preschool teachers preferred them more than classroom teachers. Key words: Classroom management, Undesired behavior, Teacher.