Correlations between teacher and student background and teacher perceptions of discipline problems and disciplinary techniques

Peer Models and Classroom Misbehaviour

With increasing problems of misbehaviour in the classroom affecting ever younger children, the present study examined the interaction between peer models and 5- to 6-year-old boys from middle-and working-class socioeconomic backgrounds. There was a significant difference in likelihood of copying behaviour between the classes. Working-class boys were influenced by the first peer model presented, but not the second. This latter had to compete with the influence of the first. Middle-class children, on the other hand, were not influenced by the first, but were by the second peer model. This was interpreted as a reaction to boredom. It was therefore suggested that teachers need to manipulate the classroom environment to avoid peer models of misbehaviour and, secondly, to ensure sufficient stimulation to avoid boredom occurring.

Elementary school teachers' strategies to handle externalizing classroom behavior: a study of relations between perceived control, teacher orientation and strategy preferences

Strategies for dealing with problematic student behavior are an important part of the teacher role. Relations between teachers' perceptions of control over children's classroom behavior, teacher orientation and teachers' strategy preferences when confronted with externalizing child behaviors were investigated. Eighty-six primary school teachers, 91% of all first grade teachers in one municipality in Sweden, completed a questionnaire. Disciplinary strategy preferences were measured through vignettes describing externalizing child behaviors, with response alternatives modeled after the Parental Discipline Interview (Scarr, Pinkerton & Eisenberg, 1991). Perceived control was measured with a subscale applied to teachers from the Parental Locus of Control Scale (Campis, Lyman & Prentice-Dunn, 1986). Newly constructed measures of teacher orientation were used. The results indicated that perceived low control over one's classroom situation and a custodial teacher orientation were associated with preferences for authoritarian strategies (firm verbal reprimands, physical restraint) and perceived high control and a humanistic teacher orientation were associated with non-authoritarian strategies (e.g. reasoning with students). Teachers' strategy preferences and associations between perceived control, teacher orientation and strategy preferences were to some extent validated in relations to observed teacher behavior in a subsample of the classrooms.