Causes of Student Misbehavior

Chapter 3: Understanding Why Students Misbehave

Rachel Hayden and Staci Orendi

Psychological Factors

Social Factors

Social Factors Cont...

Four Goals of Disruptive Behaviors

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (1968) pg. 56

Maximizing Teaching Time

Piaget and Cognitive Development (1970) pg.74

Sensorimotor- birth to 2 years of age

• motor skills and senses develop

Preoperational- 2 to 7 years of age

• egocentric, motivated by impulse

Concrete Operational- 7 to 12 years of age

• difficulty with metacognition, take information at face value

Formal Operational- 12+ years of age

• critical thinking begins to develop, begin thinking about their own and others' thinking

-Television and Violence pg.49

• APA (2002): "The average child would witness 16,000 television murders and 200,000 acts of violence by the age of 18."
• "Teachers are in an ideal position to help youth understand how popular media attempt to manipulate feelings and behavior." Levin and Nolan pg. 53

-Ethnicity and the classroom pg. 53

• Only 17% of teachers are from minority groups, which can cause a cultural disconnect between students and their teachers (Strizek et al., 2006)
• Teachers should educate themselves on their students' cultures to help bridge the possible disconnect between themselves and minority students pg. 54

- Copersmith's Four Components of Self Esteem (1967) pg.55, 68

• Significance, competance, power, virtue
• "Without a positive sense of self-esttem, a child is vulnerable to a variety of social, psychological, and learning problems" (Gilliland,1986)
• "If a student starts to exhibit disruptive behavior, the teacher should consider how she could influence the student's significance, competance, virtue, and power" pg. 55

"The self-esteem, learning, self-actualization cycle can be maximized only if the home and school create environments in which the lower-level needs - physiological, safety and security, belonging and affection- are met." pg. 60

1) Attention

2)Power

3)Revenge

4)Inadequacy

Dreikurs, Grunwald, and Pepper (1982) note that these four goals tend to be sequential.

Resources:

Levin, J., & Nolan, J. F. (2014). Principles of classroom management: A professional decision making model (7th ed.). Boston: Pearson Education Inc.

Case Study 3.4, pg. 57

-Home life pg. 56

"Feldhusen, Thurston, and Benning (1973) provided clear evidence of the impact of the home environment on school behavior. Persistently disruptive students differered substantially from persistently pro-social students in a number of variables:

1.Parental Supervison and discipline were inadequate.

2.The parents were indeffierent or hostile toward the child.

3.The family operated only partially, if at all, as a unit, and the marital relationship lacked closeness and equality of partnership.

4. The parents...believed they had little influence on the child." pg. 58

• "Although belonging and affection needs are often met by family at home...elements of caring, trust, and respect are necessary in the interpersonal relationships between teachers and students" Levin and Nolan pg. 64

-School Environment pg. 60

• support structure, teacher confidence/competance, saftey/bullying, relavance of curriculum
• Curriculum should reflect student interests and be relavent to their lives (Case Study 3.1) Levin and Nolan pg. 48-49: "Traditional instructional practices used to deliver outdated content becomes meaningless and boring to youth who are growing up in a world significantly different from that of their parents."
• Teachers should facilitate "learning how to learn", not teach rote material. Levin and Nolan pg. 49
• "Teachers must genuinely believe their students are capable of suceeding" Levin and Nolan pg. 83

Piaget, Kohlberg, and Moral Development (1965) pg. 75-77

-"If teachers want to maximixe their teaching time they must minimize the effect of societal changes on student behavior. Teachers must:

1. not expect students to think and act the way they did years ago,

2. not demand respect from students solely on the basis of a title or position,

3. understand the methods and behaviors young people employ to find thier place in today's society,

4. understand the ongoing societal changes and the influence these changes have on students lives,

5. be a catalyst for encouraging resiliency for at-risk students."

(Levin and Nolan, 2014) pg.46

Adler and Dreikurs - Social Recognition (1982)

pg. 65

"1. People are social beings who have a need to belong, to be recognized, and to be accepted.

2. Behavior is goal directed and has the purpose of gaining the recognition and acceptance that people want.

3. People can choose how they behave; they can behave or misbehave. Their behavior is not outside their control. "

Teachers must maintain control of the classroom environment and intervene before a student attempts to gain social recognition through increasingly disruptive behavior. pg 68

"Teachers must understand the stages of moral and cognitive growth...[and] recognize common developmental behaviors that are a result of the interaction of the cognitive and moral states through which the children pass" Levin and Nolan pg. 76