Students’ Discipline Problems and Teachers’ Behavior Management Strategies: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

The psychological well-being of students is a well-established concept in context to Western and few Asian academic settings. It is an emerging idea to improve student’s conduct in classrooms by integrating it with evidence based behavior management strategies by teachers e.g. (Evans, Harden, & Thomas, 2004). Use of effective and targeted behavior management strategies is beneficial for students to manage their behavior problems at earliest before they develop into clinically significant mental health problems. However, in context to Pakistan, little research has focused on the discipline problems of students and corresponding behavior management strategies in classrooms. One of the objectives of this study is to explore the discipline problems that teachers face in the classroom settings as it is the first phase of this study. Second objective of this study is to explore the types of behavior management strategies that teachers use in classrooms. Third objective is to search for behavior management strategies specific to each category of discipline problem. Fourth objective of this study is to search for the behavior management strategies that are used specifically in primary and secondary school sections. Lastly, fifth objective of this study is to search for the behavior management strategies that teachers use for girls and boys sections. The sample consists of 30 federal government school teachers (males & females both with minimum 1 year of teaching experience) and participants were selected through convenient sampling. Sample was approached after getting permission letter from Federal Directorate of Education. The data was collected through audio recorded interviews for both phases of this study. Thematic analysis was xvi done to analyze the data (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Results of the first phase revealed ten categories of discipline problems of students in classrooms. Results of the second phase revealed that there are three major behavior management strategies that teachers use in classroom settings. These are reactive, corrective and preventive strategies. Findings show that teachers use different strategies according to discipline problems they face. Also there are differences in behavior management strategies for primary and high school sections. Likewise, teachers use different strategies in girls and boys sections. However, there is an overlap in the use of few strategies that are used for more than one discipline problem, used for both in girls and boys sections as well as both in primary and high school sections both.