Kids blame teacher, not their own behaviour

BEING sent out of class is viewed as a personal attack by most students, prompted by a teacher's anger or dislike.

BEING sent out of class is viewed as a personal attack by most students, prompted by a teacher's anger or dislike, rather than as a consequence of disruptive and unruly behaviour.

A survey of high school students shows 71 per cent believe they were sent out of class because they made the teacher angry, while almost half thought the reason was the teacher hated them or that the teacher unfairly picked on them.

While the most common reason among teachers for sending students out of class was to stop noisy, disruptive behaviour, only 38 per cent of students said they were sent out for distracting other students and 35 per cent said the reason was being too noisy.

"Students are not passive recipients of a teacher's classroom management actions," says the study, to be published in the journal Teaching and Teacher Education. "They choose to resist or to comply, to acquiesce, question, ignore, avoid or sabotage.

"The way teachers choose to manage a class affects students' concentration, their attitudes towards schoolwork and their teachers, and their developing pro-social values."

The study, conducted by La Trobe education professor Ramon Lewis, is based on exit surveys with students after they were sent out of class in eight high schools in Melbourne's northern suburbs over two months.

 "Students who . . . received an explanation as to why they were told to leave . . . are significantly more likely to take responsibility for the exclusion and less likely to blame the teacher compared to those who did not receive an explanation," it says.

Professor Lewis works with about 250 schools across Melbourne in implementing a system of classroom management based on students accepting responsibility for their behaviour and the negative impact it has on the rest of the class.

He argues that teachers' "misbehaviour" in handling the disciplining of their students contributes to the bad behaviour of some students and can even exacerbate it.

Professor Lewis, who wrote one of the leading textbooks on classroom management used in teaching degrees, advocates teachers giving three escalating consequences for misbehaviour before students are sent out of class.

If they are, teachers should clearly explain that it's necessary to allow other students to learn, and have a follow-up conversation highlighting the negative impact of the student's behaviour on their classmates.

But the study found that only 42 per cent of students were given a reason before being sent out, and a follow-up discussion occurred in fewer than half the cases.

When a follow-up talk was held, the vast majority of teachers, 83 per cent, attempted to help students see they had done the wrong thing and 60-70 per cent explained how the behaviour was unacceptable and helped students work out better ways to behave.

Professor Lewis said students' perceptions that teachers were angry or disliked them were not necessarily true; it was their perception and that became the focus, rather than students accepting responsibility for behaving badly.

Data collected by Professor Lewis from 1999, 2006 and 2010 suggests teachers are using aggressive techniques such as yelling and anger more often.