action research proposal on students misbehavior

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Analysis of misbehaviors and satisfaction with school in secondary education according to student gender and teaching competence.

• 1 Faculty of Education Sciences, University of Almería, Almería, Spain
• 2 Health Research Center, University of Almería, Almería, Spain
• 3 Department of Physical Education and Sports Science, Autonomous University of Baja California, Ensenada, Mexico
• 4 Department of Didactic of Corporal Expression, Faculty of Education Sciences, Granada, Spain

Effective classroom management is a critical teaching skill and a key concern for educators. Disruptive behaviors disturb effective classroom management and can influence school satisfaction if the teacher does not have the competencies to control them. Two objectives were set in this work: to understand the differences that exist in school satisfaction, disruptive behaviors, and teaching competencies according to the gender of the students; and to analyze school satisfaction and disruptive student behaviors based on perceived teaching competence. A non-probabilistic and convenience sample selection process was employed, based on the subjects that we were able to access. 758 students participated (male = 45.8%) from seven public secondary schools in the Murcia Region (Spain). The age range was between 13 and 18 years ( M = 15.22; DT = 1.27). A questionnaire composed of the following scales was used: Competencies Evaluation Scale for Teachers in Physical Education, School Satisfaction and Disruptive Behaviors in Physical Education. Mixed Linear Models performed with the SPSS v.23 was used for statistical analyses. The results revealed statistically significant differences based on gender and physical education teaching competencies. In conclusion, the study highlights that physical education teacher skills influence disruptive behaviors in the classroom, and that this is also related to school satisfaction. Furthermore, it highlights that boys showed higher levels of negative behaviors than girls.

Introduction

Undisciplined behaviors in the classroom are a serious problem for the teaching and learning process during adolescence ( Medina and Reverte, 2019 ), and may have an impact on feelings regarding school satisfaction, the relationship with teachers or even on school failure ( Baños et al., 2017 ). These types of behaviors commonly occur in the Physical Education (PE) class, producing conflictive situations between peers (students) and even with the teacher himself/herself. It is therefore advisable to solve the problem in a rapid and effective fashion ( Müller et al., 2018 ). Faced with these situations, the competencies of the PE teaching staff play an important role ( Baños et al., 2017 ; Trigueros and Navarro, 2019 ; Granero-Gallegos et al., 2020 ); the way in which teachers design, organize and control their sessions can affect the students’ disruptive behaviors and class outcome.

As evidenced in research by authors such as Goyette et al. (2000) and Kulinna et al. (2006) , adolescents often show certain problematic behaviors in the classroom, such as idleness, disrespect, talking out of turn and/or avoiding or skipping classes, which have a negative impact on the learning environment. Even aggressive behaviors can sometimes arise in PE classes, such as bullying and peer fighting ( Weiss et al., 2008 ). Studies looking at inappropriate behaviors in PE have demonstrated that the students’ negative behavior not only affects the quality of teaching, but also interferes with peer learning ( Kulinna et al., 2006 ; Cothran et al., 2009 ). Moreover, disruptive behaviors are more common at the secondary school level than in primary education classes, as evidenced by various works (e.g., Kulinna et al., 2006 ; Cothran and Kulinna, 2007 ). Adolescence, in particular, is characterized by a rebellious, non-conformist stage, a fight against authority, irresponsibility and low personal self-control. At this age, a disengagement with the school can occur, with a decreased willingness to comply with the rules and with expected behavior ( Fredericks et al., 2004 ).

In addition, gender has been used to analyze these behaviors, both in students and in teachers. Specifically, the female gender (both teachers and students) are those who report the highest incidence of inappropriate behaviors ( Kulinna et al., 2006 ), with females being the ones likely to receive this negativity ( Cothran and Kulinna, 2007 ). There are several studies that have found higher levels of inappropriate behaviors among boys than among girls ( Beaman et al., 2006 ; Kulinna et al., 2006 ; Cothran and Kulinna, 2007 ; Driessen, 2011 ). Boys tend to be more boisterous and disruptive with their peers ( Glock and Kleen, 2017 ) whereas girls tend to be more proactive and less problematic ( Driessen, 2011 ), albeit with more shy and introverted behaviors ( Glock and Kleen, 2017 ). Furthermore, boys are often more influenced by their peers than girls are, resulting in higher levels of truancy, punishments and challenging behaviors that teachers have to face ( Hadjar and Buchmann, 2016 ; Geven et al., 2017 ). Other authors (i.e., Baños et al., 2018 ) found that students claimed to have more aggressive behaviors during PE sessions.

Among the attributions made by the students regarding inappropriate behaviors when doing PE, the boredom they experience stands out, finding the classes monotonous, as well as expressing a certain discontent with the teacher. However, it should be noted that these are students with usually disruptive behaviors ( Cothran and Kulinna, 2007 ). In relation to the teachers, some recent studies have linked disruptive behaviors to teacher competence as perceived by the students ( Baños et al., 2019 ; Granero-Gallegos et al., 2019 ; Granero-Gallegos et al., 2020 ). This research related the high levels of teaching competencies with low levels of negative behavior in PE classes although the study did not cover the effect of the teaching staff’s competence.

In addition, the scientific literature has stated that school satisfaction reduces student misbehavior, making it advisable to develop social and emotional skills, cognitive ability, behavioral and moral competencies, the recognition of positive behavior, belief in the future and prosocial norms ( Sun, 2016 ). In contrast, ineffective classroom management causes disarray and interruptions produced by a few adolescents, affecting both the anxiety and stress of their peers and that of the teachers ( Cothran et al., 2009 ).

In this way, the work of PE teachers plays a relevant part in developing good classroom behaviors. Depending on the skills that the teachers develop, they may increase or decrease negative behaviors ( Rasmussen et al., 2014 ). Thus, teachers who have a wide repertoire of teaching styles, and who know how to adapt them to different environments and learning content, manage to improve the students’ satisfaction with the school ( Invernizzi et al., 2019 ); this is also influenced by the orientations toward learning ( Agbuga et al., 2010 ).

Regarding the study of satisfaction, Diener’s theory of subjective well-being ( Diener, 2009 ) could be of great help. This theory consists of two dimensions, the cognitive dimension and the affective dimension. The cognitive dimension relates to the evaluative judgments of global satisfaction with life and its specific areas, while the affective dimension is identified with emotions and attachments such as fun, boredom and concern ( Diener and Emmons, 1985 ). In this vein, Baena-Extremera and Granero-Gallegos (2015) highlight the importance of the student being satisfied and at ease in school. An adolescent who is satisfied with the school is associated with higher levels of life satisfaction ( Scharenberg, 2016 ), with an adequate school climate managed by the teacher ( Varela et al., 2018 ) and with better social relationships among his/her peers ( Persson et al., 2016 ). However, a student who gets bored at school decreases the efficiency of any learning style ( Ahmed et al., 2013 ). This is associated with higher school dropout rates ( Takakura et al., 2010 ), and with low teacher competencies ( Sun, 2016 ), which in turn relates to greater disruptive behavior ( Baños et al., 2019 ).

Scientific evidence has demonstrated the impact of negative behaviors and student satisfaction on both the learning and teaching processes. However, there is not enough literature that links the skills of the PE teacher with either student satisfaction with the school or with classroom misbehavior. Therefore, this work sets out two important objectives: (1) to understand the differences that exist in terms of school satisfaction, disruptive behaviors and teaching competencies according to the gender of the students; and (2) to analyze school satisfaction and disruptive student behaviors based on perceived teaching competence. From a review of the literature, the following hypotheses are made:

(1) There will be a significant and positive correlation between school satisfaction, disruptive student behaviors and the perceived competencies of the PE teacher; however, there will be a significant and negative correlation between boredom with school, disruptive student behaviors, and the perceived competencies of the PE teacher.

(2) Boys will show more negative behaviors than girls although girls will score higher in school satisfaction and in the perception of teaching competencies.

(3) Students who perceive that PE teachers are competent will show less disruptive behavior and greater school satisfaction.

Materials and Methods

Participants.

The design of this cross-sectional study was observational and descriptive selecting a non-probabilistic convenience sample according to the people that could be accessed from public high schools located in areas of medium socioeconomic level (from Murcia and Cartagena cities). No educational center is included in the program of Teaching Compensatory, program that allocates specific, material and human resources to guarantee access, permanence and promotion in the educational system for socially disadvantaged students. A total of 758 students participated (males = 45.8%) from seven public secondary schools in the Murcia region of Spain (94% Spanish, Caucasian; 4% Arab origin; 1% East European, Caucasian; 1% South American). All students of these educational centers from 2 nd , 3 rd , 4 th of ESO and 1 st of Baccalaureate (PE is also subject compulsory) were requested to participate in this research. Incomplete answers due to errors or omissions in their responses (28) were dismissed for analysis and 34 students did not obtain parental consent to participate in this investigation. The age range was between 13 and 18 years ( M = 15.22; SD = 1.27); the average age for the boys was 15.2 ( SD = 1.29) and for the girls was 15.18 ( SD = 1.26). The distribution in terms of course levels was as follows: 45.3% at ESO 2 nd level; 20.1% at ESO 3 rd level; 27.2% at ESO 4 th level; and 7.5% in the 1 st year of Baccalaureate. As PE is a compulsory subject for all students of the 1 st year of Baccalaureate, these students were also included in this research. There were no statistically significant differences in gender × age between the included participants ( p = 0.501) (see Table 1 ).

Table 1. Distribution of the sample (n) according to Gender × Age ( p = 0.501).

Instruments

To carry out this investigation, the next instruments have been used.

Teaching Competence

The Spanish version of the Competencies Evaluation Scale for Teachers in Physical Education (ETCS-PE) by Baena-Extremera et al. (2015) was used, adapted from the original Evaluation of Teaching Competencies Scale by Catano and Harvey (2011) . It consists of eight items that measure the students’ perception of teacher effectiveness. A seven-point Likert scale ranging from low (1, 2), medium (3, 4, 5), and high (6, 7) was used for the responses. The internal consistency indices were: Cronbach alpha (α) = 0.86; composite reliability = 0.86; Average Variance Extracted (AVE) = 0.59.

School Satisfaction

The Spanish version of the Intrinsic Satisfaction Classroom Questionnaire (ISC) by Castillo et al. (2001) was used, adapted from the original Intrinsic Satisfaction Classroom Scale by Nicholls et al. (1985) , Nicholls (1989) , and Duda and Nicholls (1992) . It consists of eight items that measure the degree of school satisfaction using two subscales that measure satisfaction/fun (five items) and boredom with school (three items). For the responses, a Likert scale ranging from 1 ( totally disagree ) and 5 ( totally agree ) was used. The internal consistency indices were: satisfaction/fun α = 0.76, composite reliability = 0.76, AVE = 0.54; boredom , α = 0.70; Composite reliability = 0.72; AVE = 0.52.

Disruptive Behaviors in Physical Education

The Disruptive Conduct in Physical Education Questionnaire (CCDEF) by Granero-Gallegos and Baena-Extremera (2016) was used, which is the Spanish version of the original Physical Education Classroom Instrument (PECI) by Krech et al. (2010) . This version consists of 17 items that measure disruptive behaviors in PE students in five subscales: (a) Aggressive (2 items), (b) Low engagement or irresponsibility (4 items), (c) Fails to follow directions (4 items), (d) Distracts or disturbs others (4 items), and (e) Poor self-management (3 items). A five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 ( never) to 5 ( always) was used for the responses. The internal consistency indices were: aggressive ,α = 0.58, composite reliability = 0.81, AVE = 0.54; low engagement or irresponsibility , α = 0.73, composite reliability = 0.84, AVE = 0.74; fails to follow directions , α = 0.77, composite reliability = 0.94, AVE = 0.65; distracts or disturbs others , α = 0.81, composite reliability = 0.92, AVE = 0.80; poor self-management , α = 0.84, composite reliability = 0.96, AVE = 0.92. Given the low index achieved by Cronbach’s alpha, and that the AGR subscale consists of only two items, this factor was ignored in the analyses performed.

Permission to carry out the work was obtained from the competent bodies, be they at the secondary schools or the university. Parents and adolescents were informed about the protocol and the study’s subject matter. Informed consent by both was an indispensable requirement to participate in the research. The tools measuring the different variables were administered in the classroom by the researchers themselves, without the teacher present. All participants were informed of the study objective, the voluntary and confidential nature of the responses and the data handling, as well as their rights as participants under the Helsinki Declaration (2008) . This research has been approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Murcia (REF-45-20/01/2016).

The questionnaires where completed in the classroom in about 25–30 min with the same researcher always present who expressed the possibility of consulting him about any doubts during the process, respecting the Helsinki Declaration (2008) .

Data Analysis

The descriptive statistics of the items, the correlations and the internal consistency of each subscale were calculated, as well as the asymmetry and kurtosis with values close to 0 and <2.0. It is important to note that the data from this work were collected in schools so that the students could be nested based on the center, course and/or class, that is, violating the independence of observations principle. Therefore, the Mixed Linear Models analysis (MLM) were conducted, bearing in mind the individual characteristic variables of the participants and context variables. The dependent variables were the different ETCS-PE, ISC and CCDEF subscales, and the grouping or level of the school was considered a random effect, as were the student courses. The analyses were performed using the SPSS 23.0 MIXED procedure with the Restricted Maximum Likelihood Estimation Method. The Logarithm of Likelihood -2 (-2LL) ( Pardo et al., 2007 ) was used to estimate the effects of the school and course variable on each estimated model. Different models were tested according to the different combinations of school levels and course with each of the dependent variables, including a null model. The “school” variable proved statistically significant ( p < 0.05) in all cases, so it was estimated that the context variable “school” had an effect on each model. In addition, the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was calculated for each of the compared variables. The results showed that the variance explained was greater than 6.14% in all cases, which allows us to say that a percentage of the differences between the dependent variables can be attributed to the school. The estimation method used was the restricted maximum likelihood estimation method. In light of the above, gender differences in relation to the various ETCS-PE, ISC and CCDEF subscales were calculated, in this case, the independent variable (mixed model factors) was the gender of the students. To calculate the differences according to teaching competence, the responses of this scale were categorized into three groups, low (responses 1 and 2 on the Likert scale), medium (responses 3, 4, and 5) and high (responses 6 and 7). The calculation of the differences between the three categorized groups of teaching competence in relation to satisfaction and boredom with school and disruptive behaviors was also conducted and, in this case, the independent variable (mixed model factors) was the teaching competence categorization.

Additionally, the factorial structure of each instrument was evaluated with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using the Maximum Likelihood method with the bootstrapping procedure, since the Mardia coefficient was high in each of the scales (16.71 in ETCS-PE; 12.51 in ISC and 292.55 in CCDEF). The different analyses were performed using the SPSS v.23 and AMOS v.22 statistical packages.

Psychometric Properties of the Instruments

Based on recommendations that discourage the use of a single overall model-fit measure ( Bentler, 2007 ), each model was assessed using a combination of absolute and relative fit indices. The chi-squared ratio (χ 2 ) and the degrees of freedom (df) (χ 2 /df), the comparative fit index (CFI), the Tucker-Lewis index (TLI) the incremental fit index (IFI), the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) with its confidence interval (CI 90%) and the Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) were calculated. In the (χ 2 /df) ratio, values < 2.0 are considered very good model fit indicators ( Tabachnick and Fidell, 2007 ), although values < 5.0 are considered acceptable ( Hu and Bentler, 1999 ). According to Hu and Bentler (1999) , for the incremental indices (CFI, IFI, and TLI), values ≥ 0.95 are considered to indicate a good fit, although values of ≥ 0.90 are considered acceptable. These same authors consider that, for RMSEA, a value of ≤ 0.06 is considered to indicate a good fit, while for the RMSR values ≤ 0.08 are considered acceptable. As can be observed in Table 2 , the different values for the goodness-of-fit indices of each instrument (ETCS-PE, ISC, and CCDEF) are acceptable.

Table 2. The goodness of fit index of the models.

Descriptive and Correlation Analysis

Table 3 shows that teaching competence presented moderately high average values, that for the ISC, the average values were higher for bored than for satisfaction with school , and that for disruptive behaviors, the average values were moderately low, oscillating between low engagement or irresponsibility and poor self-management , which presented the lowest average.

Table 3. Descriptives and correlations of the ECTS-PE, ISC, and CCDEF subscales.

The correlations show that teaching competence only presented positive, moderate, and statistically significant values for satisfaction with school . Disruptive behaviors presented high, positive and statistically significant correlations between the same CCDEF subscales although positive correlations with more moderate values were also found between the different disruptive and boredom with school subscales (see Table 3 ).

Differences According to the Gender Variable

The differences were analyzed between the various subscales of teacher competence, school satisfaction and disruptive behaviors according to the gender variable. As shown in Table 4 , the analyses indicate that there are statistically significant differences in the boredom with school and the four CCDEF subscales, and that, in all of them, the average values are higher for boys.

Table 4. Gender differences based on the ETCS-PE, ISC, and CCDEF subscales according to the mixed regression model.

Differences According to Teaching Competence

In order to check the differences in the satisfaction with school and the disruptive behaviors subscales, according to the three teaching competence groups (low, medium, and high), the analysis performed indicates that the p -value associated with the comparative statistical tests of marginal averages has been calculated and corrected for multiple comparisons using SIDAK ( Table 5 ).

Table 5. Differences in teaching competence (ETCS-PE) based on the ISC and CCDEF subscales according to the mixed regression model.

Table 5 shows that there are statistically significant differences in all the subscales studied. In the case of satisfaction with school, the highest averages correspond to the high teaching competence group, whereas for boredom with school and the four CCDEF subscales, the highest average values are presented by the low teaching competence group.

Regarding satisfaction with school and boredom with school, comparison tests show statistically significant differences between low and high teaching competence and between those of medium and high teaching competence, corrected using SIDAK (see Table 5 ). In the cases of disruptive behaviors, for low engagement or irresponsibility and fails to follow directions, statistically significant differences are notable between medium and high teaching competence; in the case of the Distracts or disturbs others subscale, statistically significant differences were found between high teaching competence and the other two groups, while in poor self-management, they were only found between low and high teaching competence.

This study set out two objectives: to understand the differences that exist in school satisfaction, disruptive behaviors and teaching competencies according to the gender of the students; and to analyze school satisfaction and disruptive behaviors based on teaching competence.

The results of this work relate teaching competence, satisfaction with school and inappropriate behaviors in the classroom. As in other studies (e.g., Kulinna et al., 2006 ; Cothran and Kulinna, 2007 ), the children presented higher levels of disruptive behavior. These results might be due to the boredom experienced by adolescents coming from a lack of attachment to social institutions and from disruptive behaviors at school ( Feinberg et al., 2013 ; Granero-Gallegos et al., 2020 ). It is essential that students do not experience boredom in school, given that it is related to school violence, and this in turn can contribute to reduced academic performance, mental health and general well-being of the students ( Huebner et al., 2014 ; Olweus and Breivik, 2014 ). In addition, boredom has been associated with high-risk behaviors such as drinking, drug use, joyriding and criminal activity ( Yang and Yoh, 2005 ; Wegner and Flisher, 2009 ). Therefore, it is important that teachers work on their social skills with students and acquire sufficient competency as educators so that, amongst other things, both feel satisfied in classes ( Allen et al., 2015 ; Trigueros and Navarro, 2019 ). Accordingly, this confirms Hypothesis 1.

If one looks at the mixed regression model, no significant differences were found in the teacher competence and school satisfaction variables based on gender. However, significant differences were found in the boredom with school, low engagement or irresponsibility, fails to follow directions, distracts or disturbs others and poor self-management variables, with boys presenting higher values than girls. These results are similar to those obtained in previous studies (e.g., Beaman et al., 2006 ; Kulinna et al., 2006 ; Cothran and Kulinna, 2007 ; Driessen, 2011 ), in which higher levels of disruptive behavior were also found in boys. They may be due to boys being more defiant with the teacher and more competitive with their peers, seeking to get the attention of the girls. In addition, it has been observed that males tend to engage in louder and more intentional behaviors to distract their peers in class ( Glock and Kleen, 2017 ). Also, a possible cause for the increased level of negative behaviors has been linked to low emotional support from the teacher ( Shin and Ryan, 2017 ). All this can be the basis for proposing more comprehensive teacher training, not only at the technical level, but also in the management of emotions, both in the initial training and in the continuous workplace training. In contrast, the girls presented more positive and less problematic behaviors, as was the case in other studies (e.g., Driessen, 2011 ). This may be because girls tend to demonstrate more introverted behavior, being uninvolved, shy and avoiding working as a group to give their opinion on a topic ( Glock and Kleen, 2017 ). Therefore, this does not confirm Hypothesis 2 in its entirety.

The model analyzed based on teacher competencies found that when students perceived PE teachers as being competent, they felt more satisfied with the school, less bored and that their disruptive behavior level fell. Conversely, when students perceived their teachers as being incompetent, they became more bored and inappropriate behaviors increased. Similar results were found in the study by Baños et al. (2019) , which was conducted in the same country as our work. These results suggest that the way teachers interact with their students affects classroom behavior ( Ryan et al., 2015 ). This highlights the importance of PE teachers acquiring a great deal of skills to control and manage the sessions, creating a proactive environment among students, thus decreasing the likelihood of bad behaviors ( Shin and Ryan, 2014 ; Fortuin et al., 2015 ). However, teachers reporting high levels of concern regarding how to effectively manage discipline issues in the classroom are common ( Evertson and Weinstein, 2006 ; Tsouloupas et al., 2010 ) as they feel incompetent in the face of certain situations and this can be related to academic failure ( Jurado-de-los-Santos and Tejada-Fernández, 2019 ). The inability to prevent and control student misbehavior is one of the main generators of teacher stress and anxiety, resulting in teachers burning out and increasing the likelihood of student truancy – with all the expenses that this involves for the educational system in terms of having to find substitute teachers ( Tsouloupas et al., 2010 ; Ervasti et al., 2011 ). Therefore, this confirms Hypothesis 3.

PE teachers affirm that they find it more difficult to manage the boys’ behavior ( Jackson and Smith, 2000 ). These higher management issues may be due to the fact that teachers assess the temperament and educational competence of boys more negatively than those of girls ( Mullola et al., 2012 ) and that boys more frequently show emotional opposition behaviors than girls do ( McClowry et al., 2013 ). These differential behaviors in students and the teachers’ perceptions are reflected in less intimate and more conflictive relationships between teachers and boys ( Spilt et al., 2012 ). As a result, male students receive more reprimands ( Beaman et al., 2006 ) than female students, making it harder to manage the boys’ behavior ( McClowry et al., 2013 ). This implies less effective classroom management with respect to males, as research has emphasized the importance of positive relationships between the teachers and the students to promote good classroom management ( Marzano and Marzano, 2003 ). Therefore, teacher training is needed to better support trust and good management in the classroom.

The results obtained from this study identify males as having higher levels of inappropriate behaviors and the importance of students perceiving their teachers as being competent, that teachers have a command of the pedagogical content ( Voss et al., 2011 ) and knowledge of classroom management techniques ( Emmer and Stough, 2001 ) so that they can help reduce misbehavior in PE. Therefore, it is essential that adolescents perceive the PE teacher as competent, providing emotional support to his/her students, and that he/she continues to train in areas such as conflict resolution in the classroom, didactics and teacher pedagogy.

From this study, some recommendations can be made to bring, both to the classroom and to school. In general, the creation or strengthening of classrooms for school coexistence that improves the reflection, help, and accompaniment by other selected students can be recommended; it would be a program based on responsibility and without punishments or sanctions, and contribute to the resolution of conflicts in a positive way. By law, all educational centers must have a School Coexistence Plan, which must be implemented. More particularly, it is possible to focus on approaches that imply an enhancement of the motivation among students, especially in boys. Also, the enhancement of teaching competence in several topics (e.g., communication, work awareness, individual consideration of the student, problem-solving, social awareness, etc.), although the educational administration should supply teachers continuous training to improve social skills and capacity to solve conflicts among students.

Limitations and Strengths

The notable strengths of this work are the sample size and the theme, which can contribute to remedying one of the main problems found on a day-by-day basis in secondary schools. However, despite the novelty and interest of the topic and the results provided in this study such as the relationship between teaching competence and disruptive behaviors, as well as the implications this might have at the pedagogical and teacher-training level, certain limitations should be taken into account. The sample is composed of secondary school students from a single autonomous region and, in addition, no probabilistic sample design was carried out, so the results cannot be generalized and the method used does not allow to deeper into the disruptive causes in the classroom. Further studies should be performed in which other research designs are proposed, such as experimental studies with intervention programs to reduce disruptive behaviors in the classroom, and which consider other variables related to teacher, or mixed quantitative and qualitative research designs could be proposed, focusing on all subjects, not just PE. Some of these studies could also include private schools and public schools located in different socioeconomic level areas. On the other hand, it would also be convenient to perform longitudinal researches, with various data collections, in which the effectiveness of coexistence programs is valued.

Data Availability Statement

The datasets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding author.

Ethics Statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by REF-45-20/01/2016. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin.

Author Contributions

AG-G, RB, and AB-E conceived the hypothesis of this study. RB, AB-E, and MM-M participated in data collection. RB and AG-G analyzed the data. AG-G, AB-E, and MM-M wrote the manuscript with the most significant input from AB-E. All authors contributed to data interpretation of statistical analysis and read and approved the final manuscript.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords : physical education, disruptive behavior, indiscipline, high school, satisfaction

Citation: Granero-Gallegos A, Baños R, Baena-Extremera A and Martínez-Molina M (2020) Analysis of Misbehaviors and Satisfaction With School in Secondary Education According to Student Gender and Teaching Competence. Front. Psychol. 11:63. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00063

Received: 12 November 2019; Accepted: 10 January 2020; Published: 28 January 2020.

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Copyright © 2020 Granero-Gallegos, Baños, Baena-Extremera and Martínez-Molina. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Raúl Baños, [email protected]

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Interventions to Address Students' Misbehavior in Puro National High School

• Jonie Oliver

INTRODUCTION

Students misbehavior as defined by Reed & Kirkpatrick (1998) as disruptive talking, chronic avoidance of work, clowning, interfering with teaching activities, harassing classmates, verbal insults, rudeness to teacher, defiance, and hostility. Furthermore, misbehavior was also related to high school grades, test scores, and graduation and dropout rates (Finn, Fish & Scott,2010). Drop out is one of the school's problems that cannot be avoided. Thus, it triggered them to identify the misbehavior of students inside the classroom and the intervention to address the problem.

This descriptive-qualitative action research aimed to produce interventions to address the problem of misbehavior among Grade 7 to 10 students of Puro National High School. The respondents to this study were students, teachers, and school head, parents, and other community members. Survey questionnaires and interview guide were the research instrument used in gathering the data.

The study found that fighting, bullying, cutting class, disrespect to teachers, and disturbing other classmates and verbal abuse are the most common student misbehavior. Peer pressure (influence from "barkada"), exposure to violence (parents quarrel/argue often and habitual involvement in fighting), poor role models (parent/guardian with vices), and poor diet/nutrition (did not eat breakfast), respectively, are considered topmost in rank as causes of bad behavior. To address these concerns, the usual interventions made by teachers and school administrator are behavior conference, informing the parents, and reminder, and guidance counseling among others, respectively. Parents also intervene through reprimand and one-on-one talk.

DISCUSSIONS

Reconsidering these interventions, the study concludes that immediate interventions are necessary, such as supervising of "barkada" relations, counseling of parents who often quarrel and parents with vices and encouraging students to eat breakfast. More importantly, this research stated that a procedural and reasonable intervention involves the revision of school rules and regulations, crafting of a step-by-step intervention process, and creation of a committee on guidance and counseling with a document on the roles and responsibilities of the members. Lastly, recommendations were given such as information dissemination regarding school rules and regulations, strict observance to the intervention process, and continuous annual research by the committee on guidance and counseling members.

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Introduction

Classroom management is one of the most important dimensions of the teaching and learning process. It is believed that good classroom management helps establish an effective and conducive learning environment (Kubat & Dedebali, 2018); improve students’ learning outcome (Slater & Main, 2020); effectively deal with children who have behavioral issues (Zulkifli et al., 2019), and help reduce students’ disruptive behaviors in the classroom (Affandi et al., 2020). For these reasons, classroom management has become the frequent subject of research in the educational field (George et al., 2017), including in the EFL contexts (e.g., Habibi et al., 2018; Soleimani & Razmjoo, 2016). Consequently, although there are several evidence-based strategies highlighted by previous studies on classroom management, a little is discussed on disruptive behaviors of students and how it is being managed by secondary teachers in the EFL context, Bhutan. This study was conducted considering teachers should be aware of practices to overcome disruptive behaviors in the classroom in order to effectively conduct the classes and for the success of students’ learning (Simonsen et al., 2008).

Disruptive behavior is roughly defined as inappropriate behavior of students in the classroom that impedes both learning and teacher’s instructions (Gómez Mármol et al., 2018; Närhi et al., 2017). Some of the most common disruptive behaviors include learners’ inappropriate gestures, talking with classmates, physical and verbal aggressiveness, moving in the class, shouting, and not respecting the classroom rules (Esturgó-Deu & Sala-Roca, 2010). Fact that disruptive behavior in the classroom is an undeniable problem faced by teachers of all generations (Abeygunawardena & Vithanapathirana, 2019), many research studies have been carried out investigating the causes of this disruptive behavior and developing possible intervention strategies (Rafi et al., 2020).

Although there is a vast literature on students’ disruptive behavior in the field of education, little has been done in EFL classrooms, particularly in the Asian context. As each region, country, local setting/context and school have a different learning environment, culture, and tradition, there was a need to conduct a study in Bhutan regarding the issue of disruptive behavior. As evidence-based intervention strategies were not regularly followed by institutions/schools to reduce disruptive behavior (Dufrene et al., 2014), this study was conducted to specifically investigate how seating arrangements can help reduce students’ disruptive behavior in the language classroom.

Literature Review

Disruptive behavior

Disruptive behavior in the classroom is one of the most widely expressed concerns among teachers and school administrators (Duesund & Ødegård, 2018; Nash et al., 2016). The belief is that the presence of disruptive behavior or discipline issues in the classroom negatively affects students learning (Gómez Mármol et al., 2018) and lowers students’ academic performance (Granero-Gallegos et al., 2020). Not only students are affected. Cameron and Lovett (2015) asserted that disruptive behavior in the classroom was one of the factors which adversely shaped teachers’ attitudes about teaching, and also highlighted those teachers show less interest in teaching when students exhibit disruptive behavior in the classroom. Moreover, students’ disruptive behavior is considered to have a direct link with the mental, physical and emotional well-being of teachers and may deteriorate teachers’ ability to educate the students to some extent (Shakespeare et al., 2018).

Cause of disruptive behavior

There seem to be several reasons why students exhibit disruptive behavior in the classroom. Many are associated with the community, parents, teachers, and students themselves. Factors such as a bad influence from the community, a lack of preparation and low teaching quality, poor parenting, students’ attitude towards learning, and students’ emotional and mental problems (Khasinah, 2017) can cause unsuitable behavior in the classroom. Likewise, Latif et al. (2016) also noted others including large classes, teachers’ biased attitudes toward students, and students’ desires to get attention in the classroom as other reasons students exhibit disruptive behavior in the classroom.

As for the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom, the cause of discipline problems have been reported to be a low level of student engagement when students cannot understand the lesson taught in the classroom and experience minimal progress of target language; learning difficulties caused by their difficulty in understanding vocabulary, and grammar in the English language; attention-seeking when students want to attract teachers’ and peers’ attention; fatiguewhen students are sleepy and bored, and the influence of technology when students use mobile phones and other electronic gadgets in the middle of class activity (Jati et al., 2019).

Preventing disruptive behavior

Admittedly, much of the previous research in the field does not discuss how intervention strategies assist in reducing or overcoming the disruptive behavior of students, particularly in the language classroom. This is not surprising since the teachers’ abilities differ in terms of classroom management skills (Khasinah, 2017). Intervention strategies most often proposed in the literature to combat discipline issues in the classroom are, for example: praising, motivating, or reinforcing students; maintaining a positive/close relationship with students; formulating basic classroom rules at the beginning of the courses; adapting student-centered learning, and frequently changing the seating arrangements (Rafi et al., 2020).

Intervention strategies used in this study

Much is written on the benefits of the seating arrangement on the classroom learning environment including students’ academic performance, students’ cognitive ability, participation in class, and general behavior. For instance, Tobia et al. (2020) asserted that children become more logical, creative, and exhibit better classroom behavior when they were seated individually on a single desk. Likewise, Pichierri and Guido (2016) noted that classroom seating arrangement is a crucial factor that can have a significant influence on students’ academic performance. These authors supported this statement with their findings which showed that the students sitting in front of the class significantly outperformed the students who were seating on the back rows. Additionally, Egounléti et al. (2018) pointed out that the seating arrangement facilitates students’ participation, especially when they are seated in pairs or groups. In general, previous research seems to suggest that seating arrangements can have a positive effect on teaching and learning in language classrooms.

• Therefore, the study had the following objectives:
• To investigate the most common disruptive behaviors among seventh grade EFL students in the English language classroom.
• To examine whether an intervention strategy such as seating arrangements as used in this study could help reduce students’ disruptive behavior in the classroom.
• To explore students' perceptions about classroom disruptive behavior.

Methodology

This study was conducted in one of the countries which has been the least studied, Bhutan (Wangdi & Tharchen, 2021). For this reason, readers need to understand the context of the study to allow them to understand the importance of carrying out this action research (AR). Bhutan is a small land-locked country located in South Asia with a population of approximately 775,000 people. To date, more than half (57.4%) of the Bhutanese population live in rural areas. The first modern school in Bhutan was established in 1914 by then the first king of Bhutan, Gongsa Ugyen Wangchuk. Ever since then education has been the primary focus in Bhutan. The present overall literacy rate for over 6 years is 66 % (73% male and 59% female). Although this is a great achievement for a developing country like Bhutan, as with any other country, Bhutan's education system faces a lot of challenges. One of the prominent challenges that Bhutanese students face is mastering the English language. The English proficiency level of the Bhutanese students is still below the expected competency even to date (Choeda et al., 2020). As Wangdi and Tharchen (2021) stated that having research done by the teachers themselves helps promote their pedagogical knowledge, teaching practices, and students learning outcome at large, thus this study was conducted with the hope to help students learn English properly in the classroom without any disruptions.

Participants

It should be noted that this study was classroom-based AR. Therefore, this research employed a convenient sampling technique to recruit the participants. A total of 32 secondary students from Dechentsemo Central (public) School in Bhutan participated in this study. These students were studying with the researcher, who was also a classroom teacher. Out of the 32, twenty were boys and twelve were girls aged between twelve and fourteen. The majority of participants were thirteen years old (nineteen students), followed by fourteen years old (eight students), and twelve years old (five students). They were in grade seven and they took a basic English as communication course.

Ethical considerations

First, researchers asked written permission from the head of Dechentsemo Central (public) School in Bhutan. After getting a letter of consent from the head of the school, the consent letter from classroom teachers and students’ parents was acquired through emails. For this, an email consisting of a brief explanation of research objectives was sent to classroom teachers and students’ parents. They were informed that the data collection would be done solely for research purposes and it would neither hinder or affect the teaching schedule nor students’ grades in any way. Following this, verbal consent from students was also obtained. After having permission from the school head, classroom teachers, student parents, and students themselves the researchers started collecting the data.

Research design

This article summarises AR conducted by a classroom teacher, who was also a researcher as part of continuing professional development. AR is critical classroom-based inquiry conducted by teachers or academicians themselves to identify a specific classroom problem and concurrently to improve them (Zambo, 2007). Conducting AR by teachers themselves not only helps them grow professionally, but also improves their teaching practices (Makoelle & Thwala, 2019). AR may also enhance the level of teachers’ effectiveness and quality of education at large. In this sense, following Dickens and Watkins (1999) and a modified Lewin’s (1946) model that includes four cycles in conducting AR, (planning, acting, observing, and reflection), this study investigated to what extent the frequent change of seating arrangements in the classroom helps reduce students’ disruptive behaviors. The AR model used in this research is presented below.

Figure 1: Dickens and Watkins’s (1999) AR model

To carry out this study, researchers followed the following steps.

The researchers reviewed the current issues and practices available in the literature that discussed disruptive behaviors in the language classroom and how it negatively impacted teachers’ instruction and students’ learning. Having identified the aspect that we wanted to explore or use as an intervention strategy, we decided to explore the effectiveness of a frequent change of seating arrangements in reducing disruptive behavior.

Step 1. Researchers observed two EFL classes for almost a month, eight classes to be precise (twice per week) to examine the most common disruptive behavior among the students in the classroom. In other words, the observation was done before the treatment (pre-intervention, hereafter). The data were recorded using two different instrumentations. First, for two classes, the researcher observed different types of disruptive behavior that the students exhibited and took note of it. Second, a daily checklist was used to identify the most frequent/repeating types of disruptive behavior among these students to compare with the post-intervention data.

Step 2. Researchers examined how the seating arrangements used as an intervention strategy in this study assisted in reducing disruptive behavior that students exhibited in the English language classroom. The students were observed two times per week (Monday & Wednesday) for three months. The treatment was the frequent change of seating arrangements. Each week, the students were exposed to different types of seating arrangements that included pair seating, change of pair, group seating, U-shape seating, double U-shape seating, circle shape seating, etc. To do this smoothly, the teacher collected a name card from each student in the first week of the term. This name card was used throughout the treatment to assign the seat to the students. The teacher randomly placed this name card on different tables before the class started. Each week, the students were instructed to find their name cards and seat accordingly for two consecutive classes (Monday and Wednesday). While grouping or pairing students, the teacher made sure that none of the group or pair consisted of only dominant or passive students (Storch, 2002). And, the disruptive behavior that students exhibited in the classroom during the treatment (post-intervention, hereafter) from each meeting was recorded using the checklist (See Appendix).

Step 3. The average of post-intervention data was then compared with the pre-intervention data to find out to what extent the intervention strategy used in this study helped reduce students’ improper behavior in the language classroom.

Step 4. Furthermore, ten of the 32 students (five males and five females) were randomly selected a week after the intervention for the semi-structured interview to explore their perceptions about disturbing behavior in the classroom. Each student was interviewed for seven to ten minutes in the English language. The data from each student were recorded for thematic analysis following the guidance of Braun and Clarke (2006). The analysis included, transcribing, coding, collating, checking themes, generating clear names for themes, and finally compiling extracts of interviews to answer the research objectives. First, transcripts from interviews were evaluated and analyzed to identify potential common themes. The derived/potential themes from the participants’ responses were further refined by researchers during multiple readings. Finally, a few themes were identified that best-fit participants’ responses to the perception about disruptive behavior in the classroom.

Observation

This study employed a qualitative AR method. Data collection involved a naturalistic type of observation and semi-structured interviews carried out after the intervention. The naturalistic observation allowed researchers to observe students in their everyday context/environment. This enhanced construct validity of collected data in identifying the common disruptive behavior in the language classroom (Debreli & Ishanova, 2019). All observations were done using a set of weekly checklists designed by the researchers (See Appendix).

After completing the observations, students were interviewed on their perceptions of classroom disruption. The interview was done to understand in-depth views of how students view undisciplined behavior when they see their friends exhibit it in the classroom. Following this, the findings were discussed and reported in this paper for future implications.

The conceptual framework of this study

A brief conceptual framework of the study is presented below in figure 2..

Figure 2: Conceptual framework of the study

Data collection and analysis

Figure 3: The most common types of disruptive behavior

Figure 3 illustrates the number of students in the percentage who exhibited disruptive behaviors in the English language classroom. The pre-observation data which was carried out to investigate the common types of disruptive behaviors that the participant exhibits in the language classroom revealed six common types of disruptive behavior namely, looking outside the window (25%), coming late to the classroom (28.1%), talking with their friends (37.5%), laughing/shouting out loud in the classroom (43.8%), drawing unrelated pictures (25%), and shifting from one chair to another in the classroom (28.1%).

Figure 4: Comparison between pre-and post-intervention data on disruptive behaviors exhibited by the participants

Figure 4 demonstrates the comparison of disruptive behaviors that the participants exhibited before (pre-intervention) and while in the treatment (post-intervention). The pre-and post-intervention data were compared to examine whether or not the frequent change of seating arrangements had any influence in reducing students’ disruptive behaviors in the classroom. The result revealed that the number of disruptive behaviors that the participants exhibited before the intervention is comparatively higher than that of while in the treatment. For instance, looking out of window was reduced from 25 % of students to 15. 6% after the intervention. Similarly, the number of students coming late to the classroom got reduced by 9.3%, talking in the classroom got reduced by 12.5%, laughing and shouting in the classroom declined by 15.7%, drawing unrelated pictures by students got reduced by 6.2%, and finally the movement of students in the classroom were reduced by 12.5%. On the whole, the result indicated a positive influence of the frequent change of seating arrangements in reducing students' disruptive behaviors in the language classroom.

The semi-structured interviews which aimed at exploring students’ perceptions about disruptive behavior in the classroom gave the researchers a few themes that would be useful in mainstream education. The following themes/categories were revealed in participants’ responses to the interviews, in particular, included disruptive behavior in the classroom impedes learning as students get distracted and disturbed; both teachers and students are responsible for disruptive behaviors in the classroom, teachers’ role in reducing students’ disruptive behavior. Pseudonyms such as S1. S2…S10 were used to represent participants and some excerpts related to the themes/categories were given under each theme.

Theme 1 : Disruptive behavior in the classroom impedes learning as students get distracted and disturbed.

Three students (S1, S6, S8) reported that disruptive behavior in the classroom impeded their learning. They pointed out that when their friends behaved disruptively in the classroom, they lost the track of the lesson, diverted their attention away from the teacher, and sometimes could not hear the teachers properly. One student (S7) even expressed the frustration of not being able to understand teachers’ instructions and lectures because of the presence of disruptive behavior in the classroom.

When my friends show disruptive behavior it diverts my attention which affects my learning. (S1)

I get disturbed and I lose the lesson track when my friends misbehave in the middle of the lesson. (S6)

I get distracted from my study. I feel angry as I cannot hear the teacher properly. (S7)

Two participants (S3, S5) commented that they get distracted and disturbed when their friends exhibit disruptive behavior in the classroom. S9 pointed out that discipline issues in the classroom not only disrupt individuals but the whole class. Likewise, S10 asserted that she does not like when her friends behave disruptively in the classroom because she cannot concentrate on her learning. She pointed out that she loses interest in the lesson.

I often get distracted when a friend shows disruptive behavior. Sometimes, I even cannot focus on my studies. (S3)

Whenever I try to give my full concentration in class, I get distracted when they show disruptive behavior. (S5)

I don’t like to be in the classroom where students exhibit disruptive behavior because I cannot concentrate on what the teacher teaches us and after that, I lose interest in studying. (S10)

Theme 2: Both teachers and students are responsible for disruptive behaviors in the classroom

Two participants (S6, S8) pointed out that teachers were responsible for students’ disruptive behavior in the classroom.They stated that teachers should guide students concerning discipline issues and come up with different methods, such as group discussion where students remain engaged:

I think teachers are responsible for their behavior and some students are responsible as well. Teachers can guide them and use a different method to engage them in studying by group discussion and assigning group work. (S6)

It is teachers’ responsibility to correct their behavior. It is difficult for them to change. (S8)

On the other hand, some of the students (S2, S3, S4, S10) admitted that students were responsible for disruptive behavior in class. They said that students should seek help from teachers and parents and help themselves to improve their discipline in the classroom.

Yes, we are responsible for our behavior. We can improve it by taking the advice of our teachers and parents. We can also look upon our friends who possess good behavior. (S2)

Yes, they are responsible for their behavior. They should seek help to improve it. (S3)

Yes, they can improve their behavior if they follow the instruction given by a teacher or if they do something valuable, they may change the way they behave in class. (S4)

Yes, our behavior must be controlled by ourselves. Maybe a teacher can play an important role to get the students on right track by advising the students frequently. (S10)

Theme 3 : Teachers role in reducing students ’ disruptive behavior

All students who participated in this study believed that the teacher had full control over disruptive behavior in the classroom. Some students (S1, S4, S8) suggested that disruptive behavior of students could be reduced to a certain extent if teachers set rules at the beginning of the class with clear consequences agreed upon if the rules are breached.Additionally, S2 and S9 commented that the teaching methods should be student-centered and be more engaging.

If a teacher sets certain rules that no one should show disruptive behavior, if they happen to break rules then they will get punished. This might help to improve the discipline in the class of the students in the classroom. (S1)

Keep note of students with disruptive behavior. Develop different means of approaching them. Make them engage by using different teaching methods. Give feedback and guidance. (S2)

This study investigated the common types of disruptive behavior that EFL students exhibit in the English language classroom. It examined whether the intervention strategy used in this study help reduce students’ disruptive behavior in the classroom, and explored students’ perceptions of disruptive behavior in the classroom.

This research project revealed six common types of disruptive behaviors that students exhibit while in the English language classroom. We observed that students misbehave especially when they were disinterested and did not understand the subject matter well. This finding was in line with Jati et al. (2019) which claimed that students show disruptive behaviors when they are less interested to learn and face difficulties understanding the subject being taught. The findings also revealed that students’ disruptive behavior can be reduced to a certain extent by implementing different types of seating arrangements in the classroom (Rafi et al., 2020). More so, we also noticed that frequent changes of seating arrangements excite students and make them curious about their seats, seat partners, group members, etc. This improves their motivation to come to class. Of many seating arrangements implemented in this study, the most effective way to reduce disruptive behavior was making students sit in pairs or groups of three or four. This should be however followed by group activities to keep students engaged. Another benefit of seating in pairs or groups is that it helps students facilitate and complement each other in completing assigned tasks in the classroom and gives students more space to communicate with their peers (Alfares, 2017). This also promotes social relationships among the students. Furthermore, we observe that pairing or grouping students increase students’ participation in the classroom(Egounléti et al., 2018). They tend to participate more actively to help their group complete the assigned task. That said, teachers are suggested to be careful when switching group members to avoid only dominant or only passive patterns of the group (Storch, 2002).

As for perception, our findings resonate with earlier studies (e.g., Duesund & Ødegård, 2018; Gómez Mármol et al., 2018; Närhi et al., 2017; Nash et al., 2016) which claimed that disruptive behavior in the classroom is one of the biggest issues in educational settings. We noticed that when students behaved disruptively in the classroom, it negatively impacted the classroom environment, students learning, and teachers’ instruction. In addition, in the interviews, many students commented that when their classmates' misbehaved in the classroom, they got distracted, lost interest in learning, lost attention, and also lost track of the lesson. All together, disruptive behavior of students in the classroom was found disturbing not only by teachers but also by students themselves in this context.

Our findings also revealed that the cause of disruptive behavior in the classroom was attributed to both teachers' classroom management skills and students' behavior. In the interviews, participants reported that teachers had full control over students' behavior in the classroom and they should know how to manage the classroom. The participants suggested that teachers should give proper guidance, advice, and come up with better teaching methods or set strong classroom rules at the beginning of the class with clear consequences to keep students in control. That being said, many students also agreed that students were the major contributor to indisciplined action in the classroom. They pointed out that students should seek advice from teachers and parents and look up to those classmates with good/model behavior and improve their behavior.

The present study may have a direct contribution to theoretical and practical implications concerning second or foreign language classroom management. This study showed that students' disruptive behavior can be reduced to a certain extent by implementing seating arrangements as an intervention strategy in the classroom. More interestingly, this study revealed that both teachers and students could be the cause of disruptive behavior in the classroom, which adversely impacts teachers’ instruction, students’ learning, and the classroom environment as a whole. The present findings are in line with the suggestion that students’ disruptive behavior is one of the major problems in education. Also, it came to our attention that not only teachers but also students feel burden when their mates behave improperly in the classroom.

Implication and recommendation

Based on the findings of this study, several implications and recommendations were discussed. First, students’ disruptive behavior in the classroom is likely to be an issue of classroom management in the context. However, there is a need for further study to confirm these findings. Second, not only teachers, even students may feel overwhelmed when classmates in the classroom exhibit disruptive behavior. Third, in addition to what previous studies have pointed out regarding seating arrangements as a crucial strategy to enhance students’ participation, students learning ability, and student's academic performance (e.g., Egounléti et al., 2018; Pichierri & Guido, 2016; Tobia et al., 2020), this study proposed the seating arrangement as a strategy to reduce students’ disruptive behavior in the classroom.

Finally, although the present study suggested that seating arrangements are an effective measure to reduce students' disruptive behavior in the classroom, it should be noted that disruptive behavior that students exhibit in the classroom is likely to be context-dependent. Therefore, the disruptive behavior presented in this study may not be consistent with other educational settings and contexts. For instance, since participants in this study were young and did not use mobile phones in the classroom, there was no technological disruption in the classroom. The case may be different in another context where students are allowed to use mobile phones and other technological gadgets in the classroom. Moreover, this study had some limitations, the sample size was relatively small and the study tested only one type of intervention strategy-seating arrangements in the classroom. Therefore, it would be of interest to future researchers to conduct a similar kind of study with a larger sample size to confirm the present findings. Further, future studies may consider comparing different types of seating arrangements and their influence on students' disruptive behaviors. This may help corroborate the present findings.

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STUDENTS MISBEHAVIOR AS PERCEIVED BY AMBO UNIVERSITY TEACHERS20200510 81028 7frmkt

2020, Journal of the Social Sciences

Abstract The main purpose of this study was to assess the nature, and perceived causes of Ambo University students’ misbehavior. The study used descriptive research design with a quantitative approach. Stratified sampling was used to choose teachers from different departments while simple random sampling technique was employed to select the teachers from the chosen departments. The instrument of data collection was self-administered questionnaire and SPSS.20 was used to analyze percentages and frequencies. Results of the study showed that almost all teachers reported that their students had committed minor and major violations. Students at the University were involved in minor and major thefts (n = 334, 100%), caused ethnic based conflicts (n = 260, 77.8%), advocated political activism in campus (n=42, 72.5%). About half of the teachers reported that the students stole test/exam papers (n=168, 50.3%) and had destroyed University property. Similarly, students had injured University employees in fights (n=242, 72.5%). Displaying inappropriate sexual behavior openly in the University were observed by some teachers (n=260, 77.8%). Most of the misbehaviors are cause for concern and questions the future of the nation given the extent and enormity of the misbehaviors

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What does the research say about how to reduce student misbehavior in schools?

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, rachel m. perera and rachel m. perera fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy melissa kay diliberti melissa kay diliberti assistant policy researcher - rand, ph.d. candidate - pardee rand graduate school.

September 21, 2023

• In response to concerning reports of increasing student misbehavior, lawmakers in at least eight states are working to make it easier for teachers and principals to suspend misbehaving students from school.
• However, research indicates that suspension-promoting policies do not reduce student misbehavior, nor do they make schools safer.
• Research on the effectiveness of alternative discipline practices like restorative justice programs and Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports suggests both are promising alternatives to punishment-based approaches.
• 12 min read

This blog is part of the  “School Discipline in America”  series. In this series, experts from Brookings and RAND explore how U.S. public schools approach student discipline and educators’ perspectives on disciplinary approaches and challenges, providing key insights into contemporary debates over student discipline practices and policies.

Schools across the U.S. have been reporting increased student misbehavior ever since students returned to in-person schooling following the COVID-19 pandemic-related school closures. While much about the heightened student behavioral challenges facing schools remains unknown, experts suspect students are still recovering from the trauma of the pandemic and struggling from missed social and emotional development opportunities.

In response to these concerning trends, lawmakers in at least eight states are working to make it easier for teachers and principals to remove misbehaving students from school. The policy proposals put forth by these lawmakers represent a stunning about-face after 10+ years of state- and district- led reforms to promote less-punitive approaches like restorative justice practices as alternatives to suspensions. These reforms were intended to replace the types of strict discipline policies that proliferated in the 1990s and early 2000s, which emphasized suspensions and expulsions as the solution to schools’ discipline problems. But heightened student misbehavior is now raising questions about the effectiveness of these reform efforts.

Supporters of these more punitive proposals argue that recent reforms have made schools too lenient and that less-punitive approaches aren’t effectively curbing disruptions. Opponents argue that reform efforts were stymied by a variety of factors—inadequate resources for implementation, educator buy-in, and ultimately pandemic disruptions—and that a return to strict discipline policies will wrongly punish kids who are dealing with lingering mental health issues and struggling to readjust to the norms of in-person schooling.

Have schools become too lenient when it comes to student misbehavior? Can less-punitive approaches to student discipline work, especially in the context of pandemic recovery?

Over the last year, we’ve used survey data from principals to understand the current landscape of school discipline policies and practices , principals’ perspectives on suspensions , and what principals say they need to reduce student misbehavior . In this post—the final installment in this series—we use findings from this work and a review of student discipline research to reflect on school discipline in the context of pandemic recovery. We also discuss what else state and district leaders can do to reduce student misbehavior and improve school climate.

More than a half dozen states are considering a return to stricter student discipline policies, including four that have already done so

In 2023 state legislative sessions, at least eight states introduced policy proposals related to school discipline, including four states (Arizona, Kentucky, Nevada, and West Virginia) where the bills have already become law. Although the specifics differ (see Table 1), these bills broadly aim to give educators more discretion to suspend and expel misbehaving students. This includes more discretion over which types of misbehaviors can be punished (e.g., a North Carolina bill would allow suspensions for cursing and dress code violations); the conditions under which schools can suspend students and for how long (e.g., Nevada’s new law removes a requirement that schools first attempt restorative justice practices); and which students can be suspended (e.g., a new Arizona law lowers the minimum suspension grade from 5th grade to kindergarten). Two states (Florida and Nebraska) would also loosen rules guiding when educators are allowed to physically restrain students.

Table 1. State legislation related to student discipline introduced in 2023

What does the research say about these policy ideas?

Based on our review of the research, we believe a return to stricter discipline policies (such as those described in detail in Table 1) would sacrifice the learning, development, and well-being of one group of kids for the potential benefit of another. And the groups most likely to bear the burden of a return to stricter discipline policies are the same groups who were most harmed by similar policies the last time around—Black students and other students of color, as well as students with disabilities. Making matters worse, these groups are still recovering from being among those most negatively affected by the pandemic and pandemic-related disruptions to schooling.

Here’s how we came to this conclusion:

An abundance of research indicates that strict discipline policies that promote the use of suspensions as punishment—like the types of discipline policies that proliferated in the 1990s/2000s and the ones proposed in the 2023 legislative sessions— do not reduce student misbehavior , nor do they make schools safer . What’s more, suspension-promoting policies often led to sharp increases in suspension rates, especially for students of color. In fact, research on the ineffectiveness of strict discipline policies and the resulting over-suspension of Black, Native American, and Latino students was used as motivation for the discipline reform efforts that these new policy proposals aim to reverse.

The research identifies at least three reasons why strict discipline policies don’t work for misbehaving students:

• The theory of change is deeply flawed. These policies are based on a model of deterrence that assumes that students are rational decisionmakers who will take into account the known harsh consequences associated with breaking school rules (like getting suspended or expelled) before taking an action in violation of school rules. But kids’ brains aren’t capable of the type of reasoned thinking that a deterrence model of discipline requires. Experts also stress that “ behavior is skill, not will ,” meaning that relying on punishment to improve student behavior wrongly assumes that students have the skills (e.g., frustration tolerance and emotional regulation ) to meet school’s behavioral expectations in the first place.
• Increased discretion over who to remove from the classroom, for what reason, and how to punish them only leaves more room for conscious and unconscious biases to factor into educators’ decision-making. Discipline reforms of the 2010s sought to limit the impact of biases by defining, in law or policy, when students could not be suspended or expelled. They did so amid research documenting the prevalence of racial discrimination in educators’ disciplinary decision-making , and other work showing that racial disparities are larger for infractions that rely on subjective assessments (e.g., infractions like disruption, disobedience, and willful defiance). For example, in 2011, North Carolina lawmakers formalized guidance outlining the types of infractions that could merit long-term suspensions that explicitly excluded subjective, nonviolent infractions like inappropriate or disrespectful language and “noncompliance” with staff directions.
• Suspensions harm students academically, in both the short and long run. Suspensions are associated with lower subsequent test scores , and lower rates of high school and college graduation . And research suggests that the more students struggle academically, the more likely they are to act out, creating a vicious cycle that won’t end until the student is pushed out of school altogether.

How strict discipline policies benefit non-misbehaving students—if at all—is far less clear. Proponents of recent bills (including local teachers’ unions in some states) argue that increased suspensions for misbehaving students are necessary to preserve the learning environment for non-misbehaving students. Some studies have found that non-misbehaving students’ outcomes improve when their misbehaving peers are removed. However, if suspensions do not improve the behavior of suspended students over the long run, this benefit to the learning environment could be short-lived. Indeed, other research finds a negative relationship between non-misbehaving students’ test scores and peers’ suspensions. Still others find no effect. All told, the question of how suspension-promoting policies affect non-misbehaving students remains unsettled in the research literature.

What can policymakers do to support schools in their efforts to address heightened student misbehavior instead of returning to strict discipline policies?

Principals have consistently said they need two things to reduce student misbehavior: better training for teachers and more funding . In a November 2021 survey, for example, only one-third of a nationally representative sample of principals said their teachers had been adequately trained by their teacher preparation programs to deal with student misbehavior and discipline. Similarly, when asked in a May 2022 federal survey what their schools need to better support student behavior and socioemotional development, trainings on supporting students’ socioemotional development (70%) and classroom management strategies (51%) were among principals’ top answers.

Beyond teacher training, principals also say they need more support for student and staff mental health (79%) and to hire more teachers and/or other staff (60%) to better support student behavior. More funding for mental health supports, in particular, stands out as an area where policymakers could offer schools support. Schools needed more mental health supports before the COVID-19 pandemic—and that need has only intensified since then.

Inadequate training and resources are also likely why reform efforts, including those aimed at promoting alternative practices like restorative justice (RJ) programs or Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) , have stalled in some places. Research on the effectiveness of these two popular approaches—which our work shows became widespread in U.S. public schools over the last decade—suggests both are promising alternatives. A large body of research suggests that PBIS (a schoolwide program and set of practices that aim to make behavioral expectations clear and positively rewards students for following behavioral norms) reduce behavioral incidents and suspensions and improves school climate. While the literature on RJ programs—which aim to promote conflict resolution skills in lieu of punishment—is more nascent, early studies suggest similar positive effects on behavior and school climate. This is especially true in places where sufficient time and resources were dedicated to implementing either PBIS or RJ.

When proponents of stricter discipline policies argue that schools have become too lenient on student misbehavior, it’s possible they’re describing a real dynamic driven by inadequate implementation of alternative approaches. Put another way, if these programs haven’t been implemented well (or at all) and schools have done away with traditional forms of consequences, then students’ misbehaviors may in fact be going unchecked.

Students need more caring and supportive schooling environments, not more punitive ones

Figuring out how to prevent student misbehavior and improve school climate should be a top priority for state lawmakers. Instead of falling back on old approaches to student discipline that research has largely shown to be ineffective, policymakers should listen to what the vast majority of school leaders say they need: more resources for teacher-trainings, hiring of additional teachers and staff, and mental health supports. And given the promising track record of alternative approaches like PBIS and restorative justice—and the fact that implementation of these programs is already underway in a large share of K–12 public schools—policymakers should invest more resources to ensure their success.

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The authors thank Ayanna Platt for excellent research assistance for this blog post.

Rachel M. Perera is an alumna of the Pardee RAND Graduate School and a past employee of the RAND Corporation during which time she completed the majority of her contribution to this project. Perera remains an adjunct policy researcher with the RAND Corporation and received financial support from RAND to complete this project. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of the authors and do not represent positions or policies of the RAND Corporation, Brookings Institution, its officers, employees, or other donors. Brookings is committed to quality, independence, and impact in all its work.

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Zachary Billot, Annie Vong, Nicole Dias Del Valle, Emily Markovich Morris

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Classroom Misbehavior in the Eyes of Students: A Qualitative Study

Rachel c. f. sun.

1 Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Daniel T. L. Shek

2 Department of Applied Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong

3 Public Policy Research Institute, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong

4 Kiang Wu Nursing College of Macau, Macau

5 Division of Adolescent Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Lexington, KY 40506, USA

6 Department of Social Work, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China

Using individual interviews, this study investigated perceptions of classroom misbehaviors among secondary school students in Hong Kong ( N = 18). Nineteen categories of classroom misbehaviors were identified, with talking out of turn, disrespecting teacher, and doing something in private being most frequently mentioned. Findings revealed that students tended to perceive misbehaviors as those actions inappropriate in the classroom settings and even disrupting teachers' teaching and other students' learning. Among various misbehaviors, talking out of turn and disrespecting teacher were seen as the most disruptive and unacceptable. These misbehaviors were unacceptable because they disturbed teaching and learning, and violated the values of respect, conformity, and obedience in the teacher-student relationship within the classroom. The frequency and intensity of misbehaviors would escalate if students found it fun, no punishment for such misbehaviors, or teachers were not authoritative enough in controlling the situations. Implications for further research and classroom management are discussed.

1. Introduction

There are numerous studies examining the definitions and range of student misbehaviors. For example, in the United Kingdom and Australia, researchers defined classroom misbehaviors as behaviors which are disruptive to classroom order and cause trouble to teachers, such as making nonverbal noise, disobedience, talking out of turn, idleness/slowness, nonpunctuality, hindering others, physical aggression, untidiness, out of seat, and verbal abuse [ 1 – 3 ]. In the United States, James [ 4 ] conceived students misbehaved when they “either did what they were not supposed to do or did not do what they were supposed to do” (page 9), ranging from fooling around as mild misbehavior to fighting as severe misbehavior. In the Caribbean contexts, student misbehaviors in classroom included those disruptive behavior which hampered teaching, and learning, such as classroom disconformity, verbal and physical hostility, defiance of authority, task avoidance, inappropriate use of school property, inconsiderate interpersonal relationships, over-reactions to normal situations, and technological related factors [ 5 ].

While classroom misbehavior is generally interpreted as disruptive and improper behavior that adversely affects the order, teaching, and learning in classroom, it is noteworthy that the range of student misbehavior varies across cultures [ 6 , 7 ]. Particularly, as respect for authority, conformity, and obedience are highly valued in the Chinese school context [ 8 ], some student behaviors would be considered as problematic or unacceptable in Chinese classroom but not elsewhere. For example, in the traditional Chinese culture, students who kept on asking questions would be regarded as “troublesome” students whereas students strictly followed teachers' orders were regarded as excellent students. However, in contrast to the studies conducted in the Western cultural contexts, there have been very limited research findings on student misbehavior in the Chinese cultural contexts [ 9 , 10 ], particularly in Hong Kong [ 11 , 12 ]. Therefore, it is necessary to understand more about the definition and conception of student misbehavior in Hong Kong. This need is particularly acute when we realize that adolescent behavior has changed tremendously with the advance in technology. Through the Internet, it does not take long to popularize certain misbehavior in young people.

Against the above background, a recent study was conducted in Hong Kong Chinese schools by Sun and Shek [ 13 ], which showed that most of the classroom misbehaviors reported by the teachers included doing something in private, talking out of turn, verbal aggression, disrespecting teachers, nonattentiveness/daydreaming/idleness, sleeping, habitual failure in submitting assignments, and out of seat. These findings suggest that classroom misbehaviors can be defined as those behaviors that involve rule breaking, violating the implicit norms or expectations, being inappropriate in the classroom settings and upsetting teaching and learning. The findings also matched with the categorization of misbehavior as off-task, disruptive, and unruly behaviors [ 14 ]. Off-task behaviors like doing things irrelevant to the class learning, or daydreaming and sleeping, are regarded as classroom misbehaviors. These misbehaviors would become disruptive if their frequency and intensity escalated. Similar to those obvious disruptive behaviors such as talking out of turn and out of seat, they impede teachers' teaching and students' learning. Failing one's responsibility in handing homework on time and lacking respect to classmates and teachers by showing verbal and physical aggressiveness are definitely breaking the conventional rules and values in Chinese classroom. Among the various forms of misbehaviors, “talking out of turn” was constantly rated by teachers as the most frequent and troublesome misbehavior across contexts [ 15 ]. However, it is doubtful whether behaviors considered as problematic, inappropriate, disturbing, or unruly in the eyes of teachers are necessarily shared by the students.

One serious limitation of the research on student misbehavior is that most of the existing studies on school misbehavior were primarily based on teachers' perceptions and ratings, (for example, [ 1 , 9 , 11 , 12 ]). However, it can be criticized that teachers usually have a dissimilar conception of school misbehavior with their students due to differences in social roles and values [ 16 ]. Moreover, teachers and students might have different degree of tolerance in judging whether a particular action is a misbehavior or not, or in rating the intensity of disruptiveness on the same misbehavior [ 17 ]. Hence, it is argued that findings simply based on teachers' responses might be partial or biased, and the perceptions of students should also be included. Nevertheless, there is scant research studies investigating students' perceptions of classroom misbehavior [ 4 , 18 ]. Although a study was conducted in Hong Kong to examine misbehavior from the students' perspective [ 19 ], it focused on students' explanations of their school misbehavior and effective means to deal with student misbehavior. However, it can be argued that any meaningful intervention would not be possible if students' conceptions and definitions of classroom misbehavior are not thoroughly examined before the intervention. Thus, the present study attempted to examine classroom misbehavior from the students' point of views, and to understand what are the most common, disruptive, and unacceptable misbehaviors in the eyes of students.

The overarching goal of this study was to examine classroom misbehavior from the perspective of students in junior secondary school settings in Hong Kong. In this study, classroom misbehavior was regarded as a kind of problem behavior [ 20 – 22 ]. It is a descriptive and exploratory qualitative research study which attempted to identify and categorize classroom misbehaviors reported by a group of Grade 7 to 9 students. By understanding the issue from the students' perspective, the present findings would contribute to the existing literature and shed light on teaching, discipline, or guidance work in the school context.

A qualitative research method was adopted in this study. This method can enrich our understanding of the problem area because most of the studies in this area are quantitative in nature. By listening to the voices of the students, it is expected that the findings can help generate findings that cannot be adequately captured by those based on the teachers. A general qualitative study orientation (i.e., no particular qualitative research strand was adhered to) was adopted, with the following elements intrinsic to the study. First, voices of the students instead of the “experts” or “adults” were heard. Second, narratives of the students were focused upon. Third, individual interviews were conducted in nonartificial setting. As it is an exploratory study, a general qualitative orientation close to a postpositivistic tradition (qualitative data collection with coding and thematic analyses) was sufficient for this purpose.

2.1. Participants

The informants were 18 junior secondary school students from three schools, with each school admitting students having low, medium, or high academic competencies. In each school, six students (one boy and one girl in Grade 7, Grade 8, and Grade 9) were randomly selected by their teachers and they were invited to join an individual interview on a voluntary basis. The informants comprised nine boys and nine girls, with a mean age of 13.9 years old (range = 12–17 years old). Although there is no “sacred number” in qualitative research, an engagement of 18 participants could be regarded as on the high side. Also, recruitment of students from schools with different academic abilities and gender could ensure that a wide range of experiences would be examined. Written consent from the school principals and the informants, as well as passive parental consent from the student informants, were obtained prior to data collection. At the beginning of each interview, anonymity and confidentiality of the study were clearly explained to the informants. Before conducting this research, ethical approval was obtained from the Human Research Ethics Committee, The University of Hong Kong.

2.2. Instruments

A self-constructed semi-structured interview guide was used for each individual interview. In the interview guide, questions and prompts were used to explore the informants' perceptions of students' problem behaviors and teachers' management strategies in the classroom and school contexts. The informants were asked to define “problem behaviors” based on their own understanding and interpretation. They were invited to use real-life examples to further illustrate their views. The average time for an interview was 48 minutes (range = 33–71 minutes). Each interview was conducted by two trained interviewers in Cantonese (the mother tongue of both the interviewers and interviewees). The interviews were audio-taped with informants' prior consent and transcribed in verbatim after the interviews.

As many open-ended questions were covered in the interview guide, only data related to the following questions were analyzed in this paper. Interested readers can write to the first author to obtain the full list of interview questions.

• In the classroom, what student problem behaviors are there? Please list out as many as possible and describe them.
• Among these problem behaviors, which one(s) is/are the most common?
• Among these problem behaviors, which one(s) is/are the most disruptive to teaching and learning?
• Among these problem behaviors, which one(s) is/are the most unacceptable? Please illustrate.

2.3. Data Analysis

The data were analyzed by general qualitative analyses techniques [ 23 ], in which codes and categories of misbehavior were inductively derived from the data. A colleague who has a Bachelor degree in psychology and teaching experiences conducted the first-level coding to cluster semantically similar words, phrases, and/or sentences that formed meaningful units in each conclusion at the raw response level. The first author further checked and carried out second-level coding and categorization, in which similar codes were grouped to reflect higher-order categories of themes. The coding and categorization were finalized with consensus among the coders, and agreed by another colleague with a Bachelor degree in psychology and professional counseling training.

The researchers were aware of their possible biases in their conceptions of student misbehavior because they had worked in the education field for some time. Therefore, checking procedures were carried out to look at the consistency in the coding process without the involvement of the authors. Both intra- and interrater reliability on the coding were calculated to ensure the credibility of the findings. Intrarater reliability tests were conducted by the two coders independently, whereas interrater reliability tests were conducted by two colleagues (one has a Master degree and several years of teaching experience and one has a Bachelor degree) independently. In each reliability test, 20 raw responses were randomly selected for each rater to code without referring to the original codes. Results of the reliability analyses were on the high side: intrarater agreement percentages were both 100% for both coders; interrater agreement percentages were 80% and 90% for each coder when they coded the analyses of the counterpart. To enhance the quality of the research, audit trails were developed and data analyses processes were systematically documented.

Table 1 summarizes the categorization of responses based on students' perceptions of problem behaviors inside classroom reported by 18 student informants. The 107 responses could be classified into 19 main categories and six of them could further be divided into subcategories. The frequently reported classroom misbehaviors were “talking out of turn”, “disrespecting teachers”, “doing something in private”, “verbal aggression”, “out of seat”, “sleeping”, “playing”, “clowning/making fun”, “(habitual) failure in submitting assignments”, “non-attentiveness/looking out of window”, and “non-verbal communication”. Among them, “talking out of turn” and “out of seat” were viewed as the most common misbehavior in the classroom. “Talking out of turn” and “disrespecting teachers” were rated as the most disruptive and unacceptable problem behaviors.

A Summary of students' perceptions of student problem behaviors inside classroom ( N = 18).

3.1. Talking Out of Turn

The informants perceived that students usually talked out of turn, such as “do not put up their hands before answering questions” and “shout the answer out” (Student A05). This kind of calling out, as well as asking nonsense questions without teacher permission, were regarded as disturbing. As mentioned by Student B08:

“No one likes to hear people speaking too loudly. It will affect the learning environment. The class is often distracted by this kind of noise. Also the noise will largely affect each student psychologically. I mean student may be annoyed by the noise. They will become more agitated, easy to lose their temper and becomes inattentive in class. It is fine if you make noise but you should not disturb others” .

They also revealed that “conversation among students” was the most common and annoying. Student B10 described:

“When the teacher is teaching, students at the back talk to each other… Sometimes they are not too excessive, but sometimes they speak too loudly that we can hardly hear what the teacher is saying… There are not just two (students) but sometimes a cluster… just like to kick up a fuss, because sometimes you won't sit next to your friend. Your friend may sit far away from you at the diagonal corner. You have to speak out loudly in order to let your friend hear you. Then, other students will hear you and all of them will laugh together. This is like ripple effect” .

“Talking out of turn”, especially chatting among students, was perceived as most disruptive to teachers' teaching and students' learning. Student C10 explained:

“Chatting will disturb teaching. If they chat very loudly or do not listen to the teacher, they and other students will miss some new knowledge. Also the teacher may think that you do not have motivation to learn which may make him/her unhappy” .

It was perceived as unacceptable when the misbehavior becomes so noisy and uncontrollable that it adversely affects other students' learning. Student A10 revealed :

“It is acceptable if you chat in a low voice. But the point is you chat louder and louder despite being asked to stop. This is the most distracting behavior which makes others unable to concentrate in class” .

3.2. Disrespecting Teacher

Behaviors that were disrespectful to teachers, such as disobedience, refusing to follow instructions, rudeness, talking back, arguing with teacher, offending, or attacking teachers, were reported as an obvious problem behavior in the classroom. Student B08 described how students used some subtle ways to offend their teachers:

“The students do not respect their teacher. Sometimes they do not treat their teacher as a person. Generally speaking, they do not care about him/her. They may pretend to be good, but in fact, they behave differently at the back of their teacher” .

On the other hand, some students would attack teachers directly. Student A06 recalled:

“Such as our class teacher, when teaching, some boys offended him/her for no reason. It is because the teacher does not know how to scold the students. That's why those boys like to assault him/her” .

Arguing with teachers could disrupt teaching and learning because it was time consuming. Student C07 commented that “if the teacher scolds us, we will argue back, and then the teacher will scold us even much more. It uses up all the time” . Student B08 also considered it as an unacceptable behavior: “ I think politeness of a student is very important. Sometimes if the teacher asks you to do something, you need to show your politeness in addition to respect… A person's virtue is more important than his/her knowledge” .

3.3. Doing Something in Private

Students liked to do something unrelated to classroom learning, such as doing homework of other subjects, dealing with personal stuff, having irrelevant drawing, or using mobile phone. However, not all informants would regard “doing something in private” as a kind of problem behavior. For example, Student C09 explained: “some students use mobile phone to text when the teacher is not looking at them… Actually, I think using mobile phone or pushing classmates are not problematic. It will not affect the learning atmosphere… playing mobile phone only affects the individual…a person's learning attitude… and usually the teacher do not see them so that it affects nothing” .

3.4. Out of Seat and Sleeping

The informants also pointed out that “out of seat” (including changing seats and wandering around the classroom) and “sleeping” were other problem behaviors in the classroom. Moreover, these problem behaviors would become more serious and spread over if without proper teacher control. Some students also considered that both of these behaviors would affect classroom teaching and learning. As two students described:

“The teacher sometimes is not aware of students who are out of seat, and also he/she may be dealing with the students who are making noise…so he/she is not able to handle those who leave their seats” .  (Student A06)

“When the students, who are very tired but try to endure the sleepiness, find their classmate is sleeping, they will begin to lay on the table, sleep or do other things because they realize that the sleeping student will not be punished, that means they are allowed to do so” .    (Student A09)

3.5. Verbal Aggression and Physical Aggression

“Verbal aggression” (including attacking classmates, quarrelling with classmates, speaking foul language, teasing classmates, and gossiping) and “physical aggression” (including striking, attacking and pushing classmates, and destroying things) were reported as problem behaviors. Student might feel bad and even threatening when there was hostility. As Student C09 expressed, “I feel hurt when I saw my classmate was struck by others… We are classmates, we are friends… I don't dare to stop them because I'm afraid that they will strike me too” .

3.6. Other Forms of Misbehaviors

As shown in Table 1 , there were other problem behaviors reported by the informants. They were “playing”, “clowning/making fun”, “failure in submitting assignments” (and in a habitual manner), “nonattentiveness” (also including looking out of window), “nonverbal communication” (via body language or passing papers), “making noise” (like rocking chair and singing), “isolating classmates”, “copying homework”, “forget to bring textbook and other learning materials to class”, and “disturbing other classmates” (e.g., pulling classmate's braid, tickling others, messing up other's things). Individual informants also reported that “invasion of privacy” (tried to sneak a quick look of other personal stuffs) and “intimate physical contact” (likes touching and hugging during class) were problem behaviors in the classroom.

4. Discussion

The present study attempted to examine classroom misbehaviors perceived by junior secondary school students in Hong Kong. A total of 19 problem behaviors were mentioned by the students, including talking out of turn, disrespecting teachers, doing something in private, verbal aggression, out of seat, sleeping, playing, clowning/making fun, (habitual) failure in submitting assignments, nonattentiveness/looking out of window, nonverbal communication, physical aggression, isolating classmates, making noise, copying homework, forget to bring textbook and other learning materials to class, disturbing other classmates, invasion of privacy, and intimate physical contact (see Table 1 ). The present findings showed that many of the misbehavior categories are similar to those reported in the studies conducted in the Western and Chinese cultural contexts [ 1 , 9 , 11 ], and they are consistent with those reported by teachers and students as well [ 4 , 13 ]. The findings generated from the Chinese students' perspective lent support to the previous research findings that “talking out of turn” is the most common and disruptive misbehavior inside the classroom [ 15 ].

In conjunction with the previous study conducted by the authors [ 13 ], the present study showed that the views of both the teachers and students were complementary in understanding the definition and types of student misbehaviors inside classroom. In terms of the categorization of the classroom misbehavior, there was a consensus in some of the misbehavior, though some differences were also identified. While teachers perceived lateness to class, eating/drinking and passive engagement in class were problem behaviors, students did not regard these to be misbehaviors. On the other hand, while students reported that disturbing classmates, intimate physical contact, invasion of privacy, isolating classmates, and making noise were problem behaviors, their teachers did not mention these behaviors in their narratives.

There are two explanations for the discrepancies in the conceptions of misbehavior between teachers and students. First, some misbehaviors may be more easily identified among students than by teachers such as those misbehaviors performed at the back of the teacher inside the classroom. It was mentioned by the students that teachers were not aware of some misbehaviors when they were concentrated in teaching or dealing with other problem behaviors in the classroom. Second, the discrepancies might be due to different levels of tolerance between the students and teachers. For example, some students did not perceive some off-task behaviors as problematic as they considered that these behaviors would not cause disturbances to others. Moreover, students and teachers might view the same thing through different lens. For example, students who had not brought textbook to class were perceived as “forgetfulness” in the eyes of the students but perceived as “unprepared for learning” by the teachers. Both “forgetfulness” and “unpreparedness” refer to a lack of responsibility in the expected role of students, but the level of accusation for “unprepared for learning” seemed to be more serious than that for “forgetfulness”. Obviously, the present study shows that collecting students' views can help provide a more comprehensive picture in describing various types of student misbehaviors.

In the present findings, all the reported misbehaviors were actually off-task and inappropriate behaviors inside classrooms. This observation is in line with the assertion that misbehavior is behavior “students either did what they were not supposed to do or did not do what they were supposed to do” [ 4 , page 9]. It is noteworthy that some of these misbehaviors are disruptive to teaching and learning as well. For instance, asking nonsense questions and fighting with teachers are wasting the time which is timetabled for valuable learning. Students who are running out of seat and playing would disturb others. Students would learn nothing if they fell asleep in class, and the worse was more students would slumber as a result of imitation. Interestingly, some misbehaviors, such as chatting in a low voice and doing irrelevant things in private, were perceived as nonproblematic as they simply affected one's own learning and did not disturbing other students', or when these behaviors were not detected by the teachers and thus did not disturb teachers' teaching. This observation may be due to the fact that contemporary young people have become more egocentric (i.e., not really caring about others' feelings) and pragmatic (i.e., less emphasis on moral principles).

Among various misbehaviors reported in this study, both talking out of turn and disrespecting teachers were rated as the most unacceptable problem behaviors. Obviously, these behaviors, particularly if uncontrollable, are disruptive to classroom learning and thus unacceptable. Moreover, it is interesting to note that some students found these misbehaviors as intolerable, when they upheld the personal virtues of politeness and respect, and the Chinese values of conformity and obedience, in the teacher-student relationship within the school context [ 8 ]. Therefore, they regarded misbehaviors as those behaviors that were impolite, challenging, noncompliant, and rebellious behaviors because they violated the hierarchical teacher-student relationship as well as the order and organization of the classroom [ 24 ]. Also, attacking and striking classmates, though rarely happened, were unacceptable because they upset the harmonious peer relationship and classroom atmosphere. All these misbehaviors would elicit negative emotions, such as annoying, hurtful, and even threatening, that in turn affected learning adversely.

Some students also mentioned that the frequency and intensity of misbehaviors, such as chatting, sleeping, and out of seat, would escalate if they found it fun, or no punishment for such misbehaviors, or teachers were not authoritarian enough in controlling the situations. Dreikurs [ 25 ] stated that student misbehavior is a purposeful endeavor to gain social recognition, while Glasser [ 26 ] stated that student misbehavior is a response to the classroom context or instruction that cannot satisfy their basic needs of love, belongingness, self-worth, freedom, fun, and survival. Thus, misbehavior usually occurs when there is a mismatch between the school and student needs [ 27 ]. It was suggested that having caring teachers who are willing to cater for students needs might be one of the helpful means to deal with student misbehavior [ 19 ]. Research findings also showed that a combination of care and behavioral control [ 28 ], schoolwide/whole-school positive behavior support [ 29 , 30 ], character education [ 31 ], social skills training [ 32 ], and positive youth development programs [ 33 – 35 ] was effective in mitigating students' problem behavior. In particular, positive youth development programs such as the Project P.A.T.H.S. would help to reduce misbehavior in class. The existing evaluation findings showed that this program was able to promote psychosocial competencies (which may eventually lower classroom misbehavior) and reduce adolescent delinquency [ 36 – 39 ].

The present findings underscore the importance to view student misbehavior through the lens of students. Practically, they shed lights on managing student behavior and enhancing student learning and development via identifying students' needs and matching up with the classroom context. It is equally important for future research to further explore the reasons behind student misbehaviors and the effective means of managing student behaviors from both students' and teachers' perspectives. As mentioned above, there are few studies looking at both the perspectives of the teachers and students. Theoretically, it is important to look at the discrepancies between teachers and students on student misbehavior and understand how such differences may affect school policies on school discipline and counseling. For researchers adopting an interpretive perspective, the social reality is fluid in nature. Hence, it is important to look at things from different angles and hear voices of different parties. For critical theories, it is even more important to understand the views of different stakeholders so that we can empower them.

There are several limitations in this study. First, it was a small-scale exploratory study with 18 students from three secondary schools recruited via convenience sampling. Hence, representativeness of the findings should be viewed with caution. However, it is noteworthy that the informants were randomly selected from the students. Second, as the informants were junior secondary school students, generalization of the findings to other age groups, like upper secondary or elementary school students, needs further validation. Third, only a one-shot interview was conducted for each informant. It would be ideal if more interviews over a longer period of time can be conducted. Finally, it may be criticized that the students may share the ideologies of the teachers. However, as the students were randomly selected, this possibility is not too high. Regardless of these limitations, this study is a good endeavor to understand the issue of classroom misbehavior from the perspectives of students, which helps to give a fuller picture of the phenomenon of classroom misbehavior, particularly in Hong Kong Chinese school context.

To what extent the present study is an acceptable qualitative study? Based on the criteria proposed by Shek et al. [ 40 ] to evaluate the quality of qualitative research, the present study can be regarded as having good quality. First, there was an explicit statement of the philosophical base of the study (Criteria 1). Second, the number and nature of the participants of the study were justified (Criteria 2). Third, the data collection procedures were given in details (Criteria 3). Fourth, biases and preoccupations of the researchers were discussed (Criteria 4) and how such biases were handled (Criteria 5) are described. Sixth, interrater reliability and intrarater reliability procedures were used (Criteria 6) and the present findings were triangulated with those collected from the teachers (Criteria 7). Seventh, the researchers were consciousness of the importance and development of audit trails (Criteria 9). Eighth, alternative explanations for the observed findings were discussed (Criteria 10). Ninth, negative evidence were accounted for (Criteria 11). Finally, limitations of the study were examined (Criteria 12). Because of time and manpower constraints, the researchers were not able to include peer checking and member checking procedures (Criteria 8), which should be carried out in future studies.

Acknowledgments

The authorship of this paper is equally shared by both authors. The research and preparation for this paper was financially supported by the Faculty Research Fund, Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong. Special thanks to Ms. Katrina Cheung and Ms. Evana Lam for their assistance in data collection and analysis.

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Research on students’ action behavior recognition method based on classroom time-series images.

1. Introduction

• We propose an action behavior detection model based on an improved AIA network [ 11 ]. The Multi-scale Temporal Attention (MsTA) module and Multi-scale Channel Spatial Attention (MsCSA) module are added to the video backbone network SlowFast, which improves the accuracy of students’ action recognition.
• The EFL function [ 12 ] was introduced to dynamically adjust the categorization loss weights of different categories to improve the category imbalance problem existing in the dataset.
• Experiments are conducted on a self-made student action behavior dataset. The experimental results show that the algorithm proposed in this paper improves the mean average precision (mAP) value of action behavior detection. Based on the results of action behavior recognition, the student’s seat number is used as the index to analyze the sequence of students’ action behavior during the teaching time of knowledge points.

2. Related Work

2.1. video behavior recognition, 2.2. behavior recognition in classroom scenarios, 3. proposed method, 3.1. detection of students’ action behavior, 3.1.1. video backbone network, 3.1.2. feature extraction, 3.1.3. modeling and aggregation of interactions, 3.1.4. msta module, 3.1.5. mscsa module, 3.1.6. equalized focal loss function, 3.2. seat-association-based analysis of students’ action behavior sequence, 4. experimental results and analysis, 4.1. datasets, 4.2. experimental results on the public dataset, 4.3. student action behavior detection performance, 4.3.1. experimental results and analysis of the student action behavior dataset, 4.3.2. comparative experiments and analysis, 4.4. analysis of students’ action behavior sequences, 5. conclusions, author contributions, informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

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Shou, Z.; Yan, M.; Wen, H.; Liu, J.; Mo, J.; Zhang, H. Research on Students’ Action Behavior Recognition Method Based on Classroom Time-Series Images. Appl. Sci. 2023 , 13 , 10426. https://doi.org/10.3390/app131810426

Shou Z, Yan M, Wen H, Liu J, Mo J, Zhang H. Research on Students’ Action Behavior Recognition Method Based on Classroom Time-Series Images. Applied Sciences . 2023; 13(18):10426. https://doi.org/10.3390/app131810426

Shou, Zhaoyu, Mingbang Yan, Hui Wen, Jinghua Liu, Jianwen Mo, and Huibing Zhang. 2023. "Research on Students’ Action Behavior Recognition Method Based on Classroom Time-Series Images" Applied Sciences 13, no. 18: 10426. https://doi.org/10.3390/app131810426

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Teacher interventions to student misbehaviors: The role of ethnicity, emotional intelligence, and multicultural attitudes

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• Published: 14 November 2019
• Volume 40 , pages 5934–5946, ( 2021 )

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• Ceren Su Abacioglu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9931-1401 1 ,
• Monique Volman 1 &
• Agneta H. Fischer 2  

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Teachers play an important role in students’ educational trajectories. As a consequence, their approach to diversity in the classroom might contribute to an unfavorable educational position for ethnic minority students. The current study tested whether teachers in Dutch primary schools differed in their interventions towards ethnic minority students compared to ethnic majority students for the same kind of misbehavior and whether this difference was related to their multicultural attitudes and their abilities to recognize and interpret emotions. Teachers responded to scenarios depicted in vignettes, describing student misbehaviors, by providing the frequency with which they would engage in various intervention strategies. Our results yielded no significant differences in teachers’ intervention strategies to student misbehaviors based on student ethnic background. A notable finding was that teachers’ multicultural attitudes were related to their intervention strategies: an increase in teachers’ positive multicultural attitudes predicted an increase in relatively tolerant (e.g., discussing the misbehavior) as opposed to more dismissive intervention strategies (e.g., sending the student out of class). This finding may suggest that demonstrating positive attitudes towards multiculturalism reflects an awareness of and comfort with cultural diversity, as well as general understanding of individual differences between students and their behaviors.

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Introduction

Ethnic minority students in Europe, while steadily improving their achievement, still continue to have an unfavorable educational position compared to their ethnic majority counterparts. They perform more poorly, have lower levels of retention and attainment, and thus are overrepresented in lower level and vocational tracks (OECD 2014 ). Even after controlling for their educational performance, ethnic minority students are less frequently recommended by their teachers for the higher-level educational tracks (Glock and Karbach 2015 ). As teachers can play an important role in shaping students’ educational trajectories, how they manage diversity in their classrooms might contribute to the unfavorable educational position of the ethnic minority students.

Daily interactions in and around the classroom have been suggested to have at least an equally high impact on students’ educational functioning as formal instruction does (Crystal et al. 2010 ; Verkuyten and Thijs 2013 ). Previous research suggested that teachers often react differently to students with a minority compared to a majority background during their daily interactions (e.g., classroom management; Glock 2016 ). The social and emotional functioning of teachers during these interactions can contribute to students’ social as well as educational functioning, including children’s motivation and educational achievement (Brown et al. 2010 ; Roorda et al. 2011 ). Therefore, it is valuable to investigate potential reasons for unfair treatment of students with ethnic minority backgrounds. The Netherlands, where the current research is conducted, stands out amongst other European countries: migrants and minorities maintaining their cultural identities has increasingly been seen as holding them back from socio-economic mobility. Multiculturalism is thus perceived as a threat to their integration into the Dutch society (Rijkschroeff et al. 2005 ); and, although support for multiculturalism and multicultural policies are showing modest increases in other parts of Europe, it has been decreasing in the Netherlands (Banting and Kymlicka 2013 ). This may suggest a lack of awareness on the part of the teachers of the need to acknowledge cultural diversity.

A multicultural approach to diversity, on the other hand, acknowledges and values diversity and favors equal educational opportunities for students, no matter their backgrounds (Banks 2004 ). Teachers who have positive multicultural attitudes are more likely to recognize and value cultural differences between students, and are more likely to be aware of their own biases that might affect their judgments (Ponterotto et al. 1998 ). In addition, teachers’ sensitivity to emotional cues can help to recognize and interpret students’ feelings and intentions, and can thus promote more accurate judgments (Brackett and Katulak 2007 ; Lee et al. 2016 ).

With the current study, we therefore aimed: 1) to investigate whether teachers in Dutch primary schools differ in their interventions toward ethnic majority versus ethnic minority children, and 2) to examine whether teachers’ multicultural attitudes and their abilities to attend to, recognize, and correctly interpret emotions (emotional intelligence) can account for these differences.

Teacher Interventions to Student Misbehaviors

Classroom management constitutes a major challenge for teachers. It has been previously reported that 30 to 80% of teachers’ time can be spent addressing student misbehaviors (Levin and Nolan 2014 ). The most commonly listed misbehaviors by teachers are negative attitudes including emotional, verbal, or physical bullying, lack of concentration/daydreaming/idleness, disobedience, being late to class, talking out of turn or chatting during the lesson (e.g., Iran: Aliakbari et al. 2013 ; US: Beaman et al. 2007 ; UK: Houghton et al. 1988 ; Spain: Kyriacou and Martín 2010 ; Australia: Little 2005 ; Norway: Stephens et al. 2005 ; China: Sun and Shek 2012 ; Turkey: Türnüklü and Galton 2001 ). Previous research on classroom management strategies has shown that these misbehaviors are more easily prevented if teachers give positively stated directives that describe the expected behaviors from the students, instead of instructing what not to do (Kerr and Nelson 2002 ). Positive relationship between students and teachers, and positive reinforcement of appropriate behavior are especially emphasized as key to promoting desirable behaviors and reaching positive educational outcomes (De Jong 2005 ).

It has been widely documented, however, that teachers are more likely to have positive interactions with majority groups students than with minority group students (Thijs et al. 2012 ). Minority students receive less attention, praise, feedback, and emotional support from their teachers than their ethnic majority peers (Gay 2000 ). These students, in addition, are more often subjected to disciplinary sanctions, and are treated more harshly (e.g., with office referral, suspension, and expulsion), even after controlling for achievement and behavior (Peguero and Shekarkhar 2011 ; Rocque and Paternoster 2011 ). The findings, however, seem to differ depending on the ethnic background of the students. In the U.S., African-American and Hispanic students fit this trend, whereas Asian students tend to be exceptions (Skiba 2015 ). While most research on the topic is conducted in the US, studies from Europe suggest that ethnic minorities residing in Europe might fit the overall pattern of unfair treatment. Glock ( 2016 ), for instance, investigated how likely German pre-service teachers were to apply varying intervention strategies to the same misbehavior of ‘talking out of turn’, when students’ names were varied to reflect either an ethnic minority or a majority student. The author showed that teachers were more likely to apply harsh (compared to moderately harsh and mild) intervention strategies to ethnic minority students. Weiner ( 2016 ) similarly showed that in a Dutch primary school, Turkish and Surinamese ethnic minority children were most likely to be subjected to negative classroom practices, such as call outs, discouragement, silencing, and disciplinary actions.

Yet, with the exception of one qualitative study (see Weiner 2016 ), there are, to our knowledge, no studies investigating teachers’ different intervention strategies to ethnic minority students in the Netherlands–in a context with decreasing support for multiculturalism. We therefore tested the hypothesis that (H1) teachers in Dutch primary schools differentially react to the same kind of student misbehavior, depending on the ethnic background of the student. More specifically, we expected that H1a) Teachers choose milder intervention strategies (do nothing or discuss the misbehavior) more frequently toward ethnic majority students than toward minority students for the same kind of misbehavior; and H1b) Teachers choose harsher intervention strategies (warn the student, send out of the classroom, or contact the parents) more frequently toward ethnic minority students than toward minority students for the same kind of misbehavior.

Accounting for Differences in Teacher Interventions

A second question is what may explain teachers’ differing intervention strategies based on students’ ethnic background. An obvious explanation is that the differences are due to ethnic minority students’ higher rates of misbehavior compared to that of the ethnic majority (Skiba 2015 ). While some studies showed that ethnic minority students engaged in problematic behaviors more often than the ethnic majority (e.g., Demanet and Van Houtte 2012 ), other studies documented unfair treatment from teachers even after controlling for the type of misbehavior (Peguero and Shekarkhar 2011 ; Rocque and Paternoster 2011 ). Research on teacher-reported problem behavior in Turkish immigrant and Dutch children similarly revealed no significant differences between the two groups in showing problematic behavior in the classroom, including social problems, attention problems, and delinquent and aggressive behavior (Crijnen et al. 2000 ).

In light of lacking consensus on actual differences in misbehavior, what explains how teachers react differently to misbehaviors of students with different backgrounds? One such factor could be the potential misunderstandings between students and teachers with different ethnic backgrounds, which has been listed by previous research in the Netherlands as one of the biggest challenges of diversity in education (van Tartwijk et al. 2009 ). Indeed, there is evidence that teachers often classify disruptive behaviors differently for majority and minority group students, and therefore respond more severely towards misbehaviors of ethnic minority children than towards identical behaviors of ethnic majority children (Ferguson 2001 ).

We argue that teachers may therefore differ in their awareness, knowledge, and skills in dealing with problematic behavior. In particular, some attitudes and skills could allow them to comprehend students with different backgrounds better, and to promote an open and tolerant learning atmosphere towards being different. We therefore investigated two factors that may explain differences (if any) in teacher intervention strategies to misbehaviors of students from different ethnic backgrounds: multicultural attitudes and emotional intelligence .

Multicultural Attitudes

Previous research has shown that teachers both expect and report on ethnic minority students to engage in more negative behaviors (Downey and Pribesh 2004 ; Pigott and Cowen 2000 ), amongst which are disruptive behavior, inattentiveness, and not completing homework (Weiner 2016 ). It has been suggested that cultural misunderstandings and social biases contribute to these negative teacher perceptions when interacting with students from different cultural backgrounds (Thijs et al. 2012 ). Indeed, in order to deal with the richness of information, we use our mental schemas about the world to process all information (Pickens 2005 ). These mental schemas, however, are informed by cultural assumptions and tend to bias judgments regarding appropriate behavior. These biases distort not only the perception of current behavior but also the expectations of future behavior (Gawronski et al. 2003 ).

Consequently, the intervention strategies that teachers find appropriate seem to also differ. Skiba et al. ( 2002 ) suggested that teachers with negative ethnic stereotypes – a set of characteristics attributed to a group or a member of that group (Dovidio et al. 2010 ), tend to react quicker and more severely to minority students’ misbehaviors. Similarly, Ferguson ( 2001 ) reports that ethnic minority students are punished more often whereas ethnic majority students receive more positive interventions. Using semi-structured interviews with teachers, Gregory and Mosely ( 2004 ) found that only less than 10% of the teachers considered how diversity issues were reflected in their beliefs and classroom practices when accounting for the disparities in their intervention strategies. The authors further argued that such a color-blind approach to diversity harms students as it fails to acknowledge their realities (e.g., discrimination) and allows teachers to disregard internalized beliefs that may influence their practices. Therefore, recognizing and valuing different perspectives, belief systems, and cultures, and understanding that one’s own values, beliefs, and attitudes might be biased can decrease the likelihood of misinterpretations and the use of unfair intervention strategies (Weinstein et al. 2004 ).

In the current study, we measured multicultural attitudes to capture these teacher qualities. Following Ponterotto et al. ( 1998 , p. 1003), we define multicultural attitudes as “the level of comfort with and general attitudes towards cultural diversity in the classroom”. Teachers who hold positive multicultural attitudes are more aware of, sensitive to, and willing to embrace interpersonal differences and issues that accompany diversity, and are more aware of their own biases that may lead to unequitable outcomes (Ponterotto et al. 1998 ). We therefore expected that (H2) teachers who hold more positive multicultural attitudes would differ less in their interventions towards majority versus minority group children’s misbehaviors. Footnote 1

Emotional Intelligence

The role of emotions in educational contexts has been slow to gain attention (Schutz and Pekrun 2007 ) even though accurate emotion perception has been proposed to be crucial for interpersonal interactions (Fischer and Manstead 2008 ; Fridlund 1994 ; Keltner and Haidt 1999 ; Scherer 1988 ; Van Kleef et al. 2004 ). Emotional displays can rapidly and reliably convey information about others’ mental states, intentions, and inclinations (Fridlund 1994 ; Keltner and Kring 1998 ).

The recognition and interpretation of emotion expression, however, might differ depending on implicit stereotypes or expectations. Elfenbein and Ambady ( 2002 ) showed that people are less accurate in recognizing emotions from members of another ethnic group. For example, teachers may interpret looking away either as a sign of shame or of indifference, depending on the ethnic background of the student (Kommattam et al.  2017 ). Townsend ( 2000 ) similarly suggested that majority group teachers in the U.S. might misinterpret passionate or emotive interactions as hostile or argumentative if they are unfamiliar with the interactional patterns of the African American culture. Another study by Fu et al. ( 2012 ) revealed that depending on their implicit biases, Chinese participants differed in their intensity ratings of Caucasian people’s facial expressions of anger, fear, and sadness. Lack of accurate emotion perception can seriously hamper communication of social information, negatively influence teacher judgments, and contribute to the disadvantaged educational position of ethnic minority students.

We argue that teachers who have higher emotional intelligence–in other words who are better in attending to, recognizing, and correctly interpreting others’ emotional signals, as well as recognizing, understanding, and managing one’s own emotions (Salovey and Mayer 1990 )–would differ less in their interventions to student misbehaviors. However, we expect this to be the case only if they are also aware that cultural differences between the majority and the minority culture and teachers’ own social biases can affect their emotion perceptions, recognitions, and interpretations. Therefore, we expect (H3) an interaction effect between teachers’ multicultural attitudes and their emotional intelligence in accounting for any differences in their interventions to ethnic minority versus ethnic majority students.

The Present Research

The aim of the present research was two-fold. Firstly, to examine whether teachers differ in their interventions to misbehaviors of students with different ethnic background and secondly, whether these differences are related to multicultural attitudes and emotional intelligence.

Our target group was primary school teachers. In Dutch primary schools, children usually have one or two teachers throughout the school year, which increases individual teachers’ impact on student outcomes (Geerlings et al. 2017 ). Additionally, the Dutch educational system is characterized by hierarchical tracking, which allocates students to different tracks according to their primary school performance at the beginning of secondary education. Each track has consequences for access to either vocational or higher education. Therefore, it is important to map out factors that may influence student motivation and achievement starting from primary school years. Moreover, primary school years are important years in children’s developmental trajectories. The associations children make around these ages have long-term consequences because of their effect on the development of their social identity (Swanson et al. 2009 ).

We focused on teachers’ intervention strategies to students with no migration history (i.e., ethnic majority Dutch) versus students with a migration history from Morocco. This ethnic group is (i) one of the largest ethnic groups in the Netherlands, forming 5% of the Dutch population together with students with a migration history from Turkey, (ii) there are noteworthy cultural and religious differences compared to the ethnic majority group, oftentimes making them the target of negative discourse and ethnic victimization, and (iii) their educational position consistently lags behind that of their majority group counterparts (Van Den Bergh et al. 2010 ).

Based on previous findings, we controlled for teacher background characteristics that might influence their responses to student misbehaviors: we asked teachers to report on their own ethnic background, as Downey and Pribesh ( 2004 ) showed that in cases where the background of the teachers is the same as that of their students, teachers may perceive student misbehavior more favorably. In addition, we included teachers’ years of teaching experience in our study as compared to more experienced teachers, beginning teachers may find dealing with diversity more challenging (van Tartwijk et al. 2009 ). Moreover, teachers’ age and gender were also included in the study since younger teachers are more likely to use conflict-avoiding intervention strategies (e.g., ignoring, time out) especially if the teachers are male (He 2013 ). Lastly, we included the ethnic composition of classrooms in our study, because ethnic minority students are most likely to experience unequal interventions on their behaviors in contexts that are less diverse (Edwards 2016 ). Teachers in diverse classrooms may develop more knowledge and/or positive multicultural attitudes; hence, they might have fewer misunderstandings with ethnic minority students as a result of increased exposure to different cultures (Allport 1954 ; Pettigrew and Tropp 2006 ).

Participants

Primary school teachers were recruited from cities in all regions of the Netherlands through an online advertisement targeting our specific sample. All participants were given the option to participate in a lottery from which one sixth of the participants would be randomly chosen and would receive a €50 reward in exchange for their participation. In total, 148 primary school teachers completed the study, 136 of which were female (92%, M age = 42.2, SD  = 10.92), 11 were male (7%, M age = 46.82; SD  = 14.28), and one person’s gender was unknown. Ninety-six percent of the participants were Dutch, whereas the rest of the participants indicated other primary ethnic identification (2%) or did not provide any information (2%).

For the measurement of teachers’ intervention strategies, we conducted a pilot study with 25 participants that we reached through an online advertisement targeting teachers in Dutch primary schools located in Amsterdam. With this pilot study, we wanted to find out about the student misbehaviors that teachers experience in their classrooms and their intervention strategies in response to these misbehaviors. Using a free association paradigm to investigate which specific student behaviors teachers associate with problematic situations allowed us to get an understanding on the current state of affairs in Dutch primary school classrooms. Based on the findings (see supplementary materials for a detailed description), we created six scenarios described in vignettes based on the most frequently reported student misbehaviors. We also created five intervention strategies for each of these scenarios based on the most frequently reported teacher intervention strategies.

As part of the main study, participants filled in an online survey comprising of four instruments, which together lasted about 15 min to complete. Informed consent was obtained at the beginning of the online survey, which resulted in immediately ending the survey if the participant did not wish to proceed. Participation was voluntary and anonymous.

While the other three instruments were formulated as questionnaires, teacher intervention strategies were measured by providing participants with vignettes, created based on the most frequently reported classroom misbehaviors from the pilot study (further detailed below).

The initial design of the study also included an Implicit Association Task (Greenwald et al. 1998 ) as an implicit measure of teachers’ attitudes. However, we have observed very high drop-out rates, which appeared to be caused by participants’ reluctance towards completing this task, due to a lack of trust in its validity. We therefore dropped the task and re-started the data collection, without including the IAT in the study design. Our analyses do not contain data from the dropped-out participants.

Teacher Intervention Strategies

Teachers responded to six scenarios depicted in vignettes describing the following student misbehaviors: not cooperating with others, showing verbal aggression, hindering others, disrespecting the teacher, being non-attentive/daydreaming/idleness, and being out of seat (see supplementary materials for the full description). Each vignette scenario had two versions, which slightly differed in their descriptions (therefore 12 vignettes in total). The matching versions of the scenarios involved either a student with no migration history (i.e., six vignettes with ethnic majority, Dutch) or a student with a migration history from Morocco (i.e., six vignettes with ethnic minority, Moroccan-Dutch), signaled by the students’ names (e.g., Joris, Hassan respectively).

The presentation of the vignettes was counterbalanced. Every participant received both versions of each scenario randomly with either an ethnic majority or an ethnic minority name (i.e., either version 1 for scenario 1 as ethnic majority or version 2 for scenario 1 as ethnic majority) such that half of the versions 1 for each scenario were presented with an ethnic majority name and the other half with an ethnic minority name. Independent from this randomization, half of the matching scenarios were randomly assigned a male name (e.g., Joris, Hassan) while the other half was assigned a female name (e.g., Marlous, Fatima)–either an ethnic majority or minority name depending on the version. As a last step, the presentation orders of the 12 vignettes were randomized per participant.

Each participant responded to these twelve vignettes by providing an answer to the question how often they would engage in each of the provided intervention strategies, on a scale from 0 to 100 (0: never, 100: always), if they were faced with the described scenario. The same intervention options were provided for every vignette scenario: do nothing, warn, expel, discuss, and contact parents. The internal consistency of each intervention across vignettes were adequate, ranging between α = .81–.92.

Teachers’ Multicultural Attitudes

We used the Teacher Multicultural Attitude Survey (TMAS; Ponterotto et al. 1998 ) to assess the multicultural attitudes of teachers. TMAS is comprised of 20 statements, seven of which are reverse-scored (3, 6, 12, 15, 16, 19, and 20). Some example statements include “I find the idea of teaching a culturally diverse group rewarding” and “when dealing with bilingual students, some teachers may misinterpret different communication styles as behavior problems”. Participants replied to the statements on a 5-point Likert-type scale (1: strongly disagree, 5: strongly agree). TMAS has low social desirability contamination, and its construct validity has been tested using convergent correlations with racial equity issues in society (measured by the Quick Discrimination Index; Ponterotto et al. 1995 ) and positive attitudes toward other racial/ethnic groups (measured by the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure, Other Group Orientation subscale; Phinney 1992 ) with r  = .45 and r  = .31 respectively (Ponterotto et al. 1998 ). A total multicultural attitudes score was calculated per participant, with higher scores indicating more positive multicultural attitudes and higher awareness of issues around diversity (α = .86).

Teachers’ Emotional Intelligence

We used both self-report and performance-based measures to tap emotional intelligence.

Self-Reported Emotional Intelligence

We used Schutte’s Self-Report Emotional Intelligence Test (SSEIT; Schutte et al. 1998 ) to assess teachers’ emotional intelligence. SSEIT consists of 33 statements, based on a 5-point Likert-type scale (1: strongly disagree, 5: strongly agree). Three items are reverse-scored (5, 28, and 33). Some example statements include “I am aware of my emotions as I experience them” and “it is difficult for me to understand why people feel the way they do” . A total emotional intelligence score was calculated per participant, with higher scores indicating higher emotional intelligence (α = .82).

Performance-Based Emotional Intelligence

We used Amsterdam Emotion Recognition test (AERt), which assessed the correct recognition and interpretation of basic emotional expressions via prototypical communicative facial signals. The AERt consists of 36 still pictures, derived from the Amsterdam Dynamic Facial Expression Set (van der Schalk et al. 2011 ). It includes both North-European (Dutch) and Mediterranean (Moroccan-Dutch) faces displaying anger, contempt, fear, joy, pride, shame, disgust, surprise, and sadness. For each of the nine emotions, one male and one female North-European and Mediterranean face were randomly presented to the participants. The intensity of emotion displays was similar for all faces. The answer options were as follows: anger, contempt, fear, pride, shame, disgust, or something else. Participants’ percentages of correct responses were calculated per person.

Demographics

Participants were asked to report on relevant individual and school characteristics. These included teachers’ age, sex, ethnic background, years of teaching experience, and ethnic minority percentage in their classroom and in their school. Some of the demographic variables were excluded from the analyses (explained further below), and the variables that were included have been treated as continuous.

Analytical Approach

In order to determine whether there are any differences in multiple dependent variables (i.e., teacher intervention strategies) between two different versions of the same scenario depicted in the vignettes (i.e., ethnic minority versus majority student version), we will perform a repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance with and without covariates.

Firstly, in order to test our first hypothesis, teachers’ mean intervention frequencies will be submitted to a 2 (type of teacher intervention strategy: dismissive vs. tolerant) × 2 (students’ ethnic background: ethnic majority vs. ethnic minority) within-subjects multivariate analysis of variance without any covariates (MANOVA). Next, if we find any differences between the frequencies of teachers’ interventions towards ethnic majority versus minority students, we will test our second and third hypotheses by performing the same analysis with multicultural attitudes, and with multicultural attitudes’ interaction with emotional intelligence variables as additional covariates (MANCOVA). For our model, we will use type III sums of squares in order to tease out the unique effects of our variables after controlling for any other effects on the differences in teacher interventions.

One the one hand, a within-subjects approach might make teachers relatively more aware of the aim of our study. On the other hand, it was not ecologically valid to assume that half of the teachers in service deals with students only with a migrant background and the other half deal with students only without a migrant background. In order to investigate whether the same teachers change their approach when they deal with students with differing backgrounds, the use of within-subjects design was warranted. We believe that the counterbalancing and the variation in the wording of the vignettes, and a sensitive response scale (i.e., 0–100 continuous instead of e.g., 1–5 Likert-type) allowed us to reach somewhat unbiased responses even if participants were inclined to respond in a socially desirable manner.

For each vignette (12 in total), participants indicated how often (ranging from 0 to 100), they would engage in each of the Intervention Strategies if they would be faced with the described misbehavior. Per Intervention Strategy (5 in total), teachers’ answers were examined for consistency across the 12 vignettes. Cronbach’s alphas indicate high consistency for all Intervention Strategies, ranging between .81 and .92. Therefore, we averaged the frequencies for each Teacher Intervention Strategies across 6 vignette scenarios, separately for the ethnic majority and ethnic minority targets for further analyses (Table 1 ). On average, the Intervention Strategy that teachers engaged in the most was discussing the misbehavior with the student, and the least frequent one was doing nothing.

There were quite a number of correlations between the five Teacher Intervention Strategies Footnote 2 that were higher than .3, which suggests a factor structure. We therefore conducted an exploratory factor analysis (for the tables and a detailed description, see supplementary materials) for the Teacher Intervention Strategies, separately for ethnic majority and ethnic minority target groups.

The same two factors were extracted for both target groups, using principal component analysis (PCA), explaining 59.5% and 60% of variance for ethnic majority and ethnic minority target groups respectively. Intervention Strategies that loaded on the first factor (i.e., ‘warn’, ‘expel’, ‘contact parents’) suggested intervention strategies that are mostly dismissive in nature, whereas the second factor (i.e., ‘do nothing”, ‘discuss’) suggests a more tolerant, and understanding approach. We therefore created 4 new variables, ‘Dismissive Intervention Strategies’ and ‘Tolerant Intervention Strategies’ to both ethnic majority and ethnic minority students on the basis of this factor analysis.

Multicultural Attitudes, Emotional Intelligence, and Demographics

We inspected the correlations between Teachers’ Multicultural Attitudes, Emotional Intelligence measures, Background Characteristics, and Teachers’ Dismissive and Tolerant Intervention frequencies (for the descriptive statistics of these variables see Table 2 ).

Teachers’ Ethnic Background and Sex were not included in order not to confound our results by the highly uneven number of ethnic majority and ethnic minority, and male and female teachers included in this study. In addition, because the Ethnic Minority Percentage in teachers’ School was very strongly correlated with the Ethnic Minority Percentage in their Classroom ( r =  .93, p  < .01), we only included the Classroom Percentage as a possible covariate (referred to as ‘Classroom Ethnic Composition’).

Table 3 shows correlations between all variables. Only Teachers’ Multicultural Attitudes (TMAS scores) significantly correlated with Teachers’ Tolerant Intervention Strategies for both ethnic majority and ethnic minority target group students. We further found significant correlations between Teachers’ Multicultural Attitudes and Self-report Emotional Intelligence test, between Multicultural Attitudes and Classroom Ethnic Composition, between Self-report Emotional Intelligence and Classroom Ethnic Composition, and between Age and Classroom Ethnic Composition. In addition, there was a significant negative correlation between Self-report and Performance-based Emotional Intelligence scores. This echoes previous findings on the discrepancy between self-perceptions and actual performance (e.g., Fischer et al. 2018 ; Murphy and Hall 2011 ) emphasizing the importance of accompanying self-report measures with more objective ones.

Within-Subjects Multivariate Analysis of Variance

Before testing whether Teachers’ Multicultural Attitudes and its interaction with their Emotional Intelligence would account for any differences between Teachers’ Intervention Strategies towards ethnic majority versus minority students’ misbehaviors, we first inspected whether teachers actually differed in their Intervention Strategies to these different groups of students. To this end, teachers’ mean intervention frequencies were submitted to a 2 (Type of Teacher Intervention: dismissive vs. tolerant) × 2 (Students’ Ethnic Background: ethnic majority vs. ethnic minority) within-subjects multivariate analysis of variance.

We did not find any differences in frequencies of teachers’ Dismissive and Tolerant Intervention Strategies depending on Students’ Ethnic Background, with an omnibus test result of F (2, 146) = .00, p  > .05, η p 2  = .00. Footnote 3 In fact, teachers’ mean Intervention frequencies were almost identical for the two groups (see supplementary materials for the descriptive statistics). We therefore did not further investigate whether Teachers’ Multicultural Attitudes and its interaction with their Emotional Intelligence would account for any differences between Teacher Intervention Strategies towards ethnic majority versus minority students’ misbehaviors.

Exploratory Analysis

As we did not observe any effect of Students’ Ethnic background, we averaged Teachers’ Intervention frequencies across ethnic majority and ethnic minority target groups for both Intervention Types (dismissive and tolerant). Next, we examined whether Multicultural Attitudes predicted Tolerant Intervention frequencies in order to follow-up on their identified significant correlation. As such, we separately regressed Dismissive and Tolerant Teachers’ Intervention types against Multicultural Attitudes.

Expectedly, Multicultural Attitudes did not significantly predict Teachers’ Dismissive Intervention Strategies. Multicultural Attitudes, however, did significantly predict Teachers’ Tolerant Intervention Strategies, b  = .02, t (146) = 2.41, p  = .017, and explained a significant proportion of variance in Teachers’ Tolerant Intervention Strategies, R 2  = .20, F (1, 146) = 5.80, p  = .017. With increasing positive Multicultural Attitudes, Tolerant Teacher Intervention frequencies also increase. For Dismissive Intervention frequencies, no such effect was found (see Table 4 for the regression results and Fig.  1 for regression plots).

Regression plot of Teachers’ a Dismissive, and b Tolerant Intervention frequencies against their multicultural attitudes

The aim of this study was to investigate whether and how teachers’ self-reported intervention strategies towards problematic behavior of ethnic majority versus ethnic minority students differed, and how teachers’ multicultural attitudes and emotional intelligence relate to these intervention strategies.

Our prediction that teachers would differ in their reported intervention strategies towards misbehaviors of students with and without a migration background was not supported. As we did not find any differences in teachers’ intervention strategies, we could not test our second and third hypotheses that multicultural attitudes and emotional intelligence would predict the size of the differences.

Previous research has often shown more negative intervention strategies for ethnic minority students. However, most of this research focused on secondary education in the US (with the exception of Petras et al. 2011 ; Rocque and Paternoster 2011 ) or had pre-service teachers as participants (with the exception of Glock 2016 ), which may account for the difference between our results and the majority of the previous research findings.

Another explanation for the absence of any differences in teachers’ interventions based on students’ ethnic backgrounds could be the prevalence of a tolerant and colorblind approach to diversity in Dutch schools (Weiner 2016 ). While Dutch studies previously recorded prejudiced attitudes towards ethnic minorities (e.g., Van Den Bergh et al. 2010 ), other research suggests that teachers may try to prevent their biases from playing out due to having egalitarian self-concepts or because they want to avoid societal disapproval of discriminatory behavior (Park et al. 2008 ). In line with the latter, teachers in our sample scored rather high on the survey measuring teachers’ explicit multicultural attitudes and awareness. This may signal that they have egalitarian self-concepts, and/or they might have been relatively aware of the possibility that their own biases and frames of reference can lead to misinterpretations or misjudgments (Ponterotto et al. 1998 ).

Yet, discrimination is mostly perceived as disproportionate use of negative intervention strategies whereas more frequent use of positive intervention strategies with certain groups of students tend to receive less attention in research and this might be the case for teachers as well. It has been previously reported that ethnic majority students not only receive less punishment but also receive more positive interventions (e.g., Ferguson 2001 ). In these cases, teachers might engage in less self-regulation. Therefore, including a wider range of possible teacher intervention strategies such as praising accomplishments (positive intervention) or exclusionary disciplinary actions (more extreme negative intervention strategies similar to that in the previous studies) might yield different results.

Additionally, our results indicated that, in general, teachers engaged more frequently in tolerant intervention strategies compared to dismissive intervention strategies. This is promising as amongst the tolerant intervention strategies, discussing the misbehavior with the students was the most frequently applied. Previous research suggests that teachers can only effectively prevent a misbehavior from happening if students understand why a behavior was problematic and what the expected consequences of the misbehavior are (De Jong 2005 ).

A notable finding in the current study was that teachers who hold more positive multicultural attitudes showed less dismissive and more tolerant intervention strategies. Only the latter relationship was significant. This finding might signal that teachers who are more aware of and are comfortable with ethnic and cultural diversity are, in general, more understanding of individual differences between their students and their behaviors. The significant relationship that we found between teachers’ multicultural attitudes and their emotional intelligence might further suggest that both constructs tap an underlying factor that increases teachers’ interpersonal understanding, such as perspective taking abilities.

Finally, our results showed that teachers who had more positive multicultural attitudes and higher emotional intelligence were appointed in classrooms with higher ethnic minority concentration. This could be due to teachers’ active choices to go to schools/classrooms with higher minority concentrations (Ponterotto and Pedersen 1993 ). They might be also more likely to stay as they can deal with diversity better than their colleagues (Thijs and Verkuyten 2014 ). Alternatively, they might develop more positive attitudes due to increased exposure to a diverse student body (Allport 1954 ; Pettigrew and Tropp 2006 ). Consistent with the last account, we also found a significant positive relationship between ethnic minority concentration of the classrooms and teachers’ age, which was in return strongly related to their years of teaching experience.

Limitations

Several limitations constrain the interpretation of our study’s findings. To start with, we recognize the limitations of relying on self-reported data, which might have led to socially desirable answers. However, notwithstanding the benefits of having trained observers collect data in a more natural environment, this approach would only provide us with a much more limited sample, and only a fraction of their usual practice.

In addition, we used a performance-based emotional intelligence test to complement the self-report emotional intelligence measure. However, the performance-based measure was rather limited in its scope compared to the self-report, as it focused only on emotion perception. This may be accompanied in future research by a measure that would inform us also on how teachers would respond to the emotions they perceived.

Next, we had to take out the Implicit Association Task (IAT; Greenwald et al. 1998 ) from our initial design due to high drop-out rates as teachers were reluctant to complete the task. We do acknowledge, however, that the implicit attitudes might have predicted the size of any difference in teacher behaviors over and above explicit attitudes (Van Den Bergh et al. 2010 ). One solution could be to conduct a similar study with participants from schools that already have collaboration with research institutions. Teachers might be more motivated to complete tasks under those circumstances.

Lastly, we advise caution when generalizing our results to other samples and settings. Our sample was primarily comprised of relatively middle-aged, female teachers with no migration background. Hence, future investigators could benefit from relying on a more heterogeneous sample.

Our results prevent us from making strong claims about educational benefits of our findings. Nevertheless, we observed that positive multicultural attitudes can be important for all students. Teacher education programs can benefit from increasing information about social biases and knowledge about different groups in society, which has been previously shown to be useful in increasing understanding of differences and reduce prejudices (e.g., Dovidio et al. 2004 ).

Directions for Future Research

Despite the potential limitations, the current study supplements the literature on classroom management in diverse settings, role of emotions in education, and multiculturalism that has been primarily focused on the US educational context. Future research can overcome these limitations, and look further into the relationship between multicultural attitudes and emotional intelligence and investigate whether there might be any interpersonal skills that underlie both teacher characteristics.

Next, differences in teacher behaviors would lead to differing educational outcomes to the extent that the difference is perceived as such by the students themselves (Suarez-Balcazar et al. 2003 ). Hence, another next step could be to include both teachers and students as informants in the investigation of teacher intervention strategies and examine them in relation to student outcomes such as school engagement and academic achievement.

Lastly, we encourage further research that includes not only problematic but a broader range of situations in vignette scenarios. Moreover, future research can provide both dismissive as well as rewarding intervention strategies as potential expressions of any difference in teacher interventions based on their students’ ethnic backgrounds. Differences in rewarding behavior may be a subtler form of differentiation between ethnic majority and minority group students. Providing a broader range of possible intervention strategies might not only better conceal the aim of the study and lead to less social desirability, but also reduce defensiveness in participants.

In conclusion, the current study addressed the need to better understand teachers’ classroom management within multicultural European classrooms. Our findings signal that teachers’ intervention strategies did not differ based on students’ ethnic backgrounds, and multicultural attitudes in education can potentially benefit all students regardless of their backgrounds.

In saying this it should be note that we do not claim a general colorblind approach to diversity. Rather, our hypothesis is specific to the intervention strategies identified and used in our study, which are not reinforcing in their nature.

In order to study the difference in teacher intervention strategies toward male and female students, we conducted two separate Hotelling’s T 2 tests (one each for the ethnic majority and ethnic minority target group students). The results indicated no statistically significant difference between the male and female student populations with T 2  = .91, df  = 5, 290; p  = .48 for the ethnic majority, and T 2  = .78, df  = 5, 290; p  = .57 for the ethnic minority target groups respectively. In contrast, previous research suggests that boys are more likely than girls to be punished for a range of misbehaviors, which is argued to be related to the higher prevalence rates of externalizing behaviors amongst boys (Skiba et al. 2002 ). Our vignettes, however, were not representative of major problematic situations such as bullying or sexual offense, which might account for the inconsistent findings.

We reached similar results when we investigated possible differences for all five teacher intervention strategies (do nothing, warn discuss, expel, contact parents), F (5, 143) = .88, p  > .05, η p 2  = .03.

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The authors would like to thank the editor, the two anonymous reviewers, and Max Kortlander for their comments and contributions, which improved the quality of the manuscript.

This work was supported by the Yield Graduate Programme grant [project number 022.006.013] obtained from the Nederlands Organisation for Scientific Research (De Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek; NWO).

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Abacioglu, C.S., Volman, M. & Fischer, A.H. Teacher interventions to student misbehaviors: The role of ethnicity, emotional intelligence, and multicultural attitudes. Curr Psychol 40 , 5934–5946 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-019-00498-1

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