The Role of School Discipline, Rules, and Academic Performance

Introduction

The literature relevant to the relationship between school discipline and academic performance in schools has been reviewed in this chapter. The chapter was divided into sections: Discipline concept, theoretical framework, conceptual framework, and literature review.

Concept of Discipline

Traditionally, school administration discipline meant pain and fear of punishment. Some discipline may mean something negative, such as blindly obeying orders, kneeling, manual work, firewood and water for teachers and parents, caning, and other forms of punishment. This is associated with Bull as a physical discipline that threatens a child's condemnation. Discipline is the management's action to enforce organizational standards, according to Okumbe.

Discipline actually involves preparing an individual to be a full and efficient member of a community, and a disciplined member of a community knows his or her rights and obligations to his or her community. This means that the person must be trained to control himself, respect, obedience, and be good manner.

Okumbe and Galabawa see discipline as an activity in which someone is subject to a code of conduct that there is widespread agreement that an orderly atmosphere in school is necessary for effective teaching and learning. Discipline is reasonable in the eyes of those who receive it and in the eyes of society as a whole, according to Gossen and Lockes in Castle. The rules are expected to be known to everyone and consistently enforced. Discipline must also be reasonable if an action is to be good. A person can deny himself or herself to his or her wishes and serve others.

Types of Discipline

According to this study, only two types of discipline were investigated: Umba, Bull, and Okumbe identified positive and negative discipline. Positive discipline, the first type, is sometimes called self-discipline. Self-discipline is the type of discipline that stems from the objectives and desires within the person, where there is no element of fear. Okumbe relates positive discipline to preventive discipline and is gratifying to maintain a set of values and objectives. Self-control, individual responsibility in time management, respect for school property, school rules and authority, good governance encouraged, good relationship between students and teachers.

To increase positive discipline, disruptive behavior in schools must be reduced to create a learning-friendly environment. Cotton suggests that rules and consequences should be clearly specified and communicated to parents, students, and teachers. Once rules are communicated, the fair and consistent application of school rules and the provision of a hearing process for students to present their side of the story will also increase the perceptions of fairness of students and parents.

Gaustad reports on research in 600 secondary schools in which they found that poor discipline in schools is associated with unclear or unfair rules that are inconsistently enforced. Gaustad states that, while 'good behavior is necessary, it is not sufficient to ensure academic growth ' Gaustad further argues that effective school disciplinary strategies should promote responsible behavior and provide all students with a satisfactory school experience and discourage misconduct. However, these are students who still dislike school, despite schools trying their best to make education a satisfactory experience for them.

Research has shown that students who dislike school are poorly academic, have limited career goals, and are more likely to be disruptive. Researchers, therefore, believe that social participation in school activities could help students to be more positive about school attendance. Cotton recommends that unsuccessful students be helped by a remedial program, which would also create a more positive attitude to schoolwork if the students in question show signs of improvement. The positive attitude of teachers towards their profession also plays an important role in the attitude of learners towards school.

Gaustad found that the main component of preventive discipline is the commitment of employees to establish and maintain appropriate learning behavior as an essential precondition for learning. 16 According to Gaustad, a well-disciplined school is also typical of the creation of an acceptable social climate, characterized by a genuine concern for learners as individuals.

It shows that teachers are serious about what they say and, in turn, earn them respect as professionals by making the curriculum interesting for students so that they want to come to school to learn and also be prepared and well trained. Charlton and David agree that learners ' misconduct can be a logical and not unreasonable response to a timetable that includes subjects and material in which they have little or no interest and/or are administered in a way that is uninteresting and discourages their participation.

Bumbarger concluded that training teachers' ineffective management of the classroom can increase the consistency of discipline, potentially reducing unnecessary exclusion and preventing the erosion of the deterrent effect of suspension and expulsion.

Negative discipline, the second type of discipline, occurs when a person is blindly or without reasoning forced to obey orders. When superiors are present, the individual can pretend to do good things or behave properly, but the opposite is done once they are absent. For example, a teacher can behave well before his / her school head, maybe in search of something like a promotion or other favors. Students can also behave well when their teachers are present, but as soon as they are out of sight, they resort to mischief.

Effective Discipline Skills

The essence of effective discipline can be summarized by the following eight behaviors, according to Robbins. The immediate response means that the faster the disciplinary action follows an offense, the more likely the person to respond positively. Also warn that you have an obligation to issue a warning before you initiate the disciplinary actions. If a warning is preceded, disciplinary action is more likely to be interpreted as fair. In addition, the problem is specifically identified by the date, time, place and person concerned and any mitigating circumstances surrounding the infringement.

Allow the person to explain his / her position regardless of the facts you have discovered, due process requires you to give another person an opportunity to state his / her position. Similarly, the discussion should be impersonal and penalties should be linked to a particular violation, not to the individual violator's personality. In addition, it is consistent with fair treatment of the demands of individuals for consistent disciplinary actions. Inconsistency allows rules to lose their impact, moral decline and question your competence. Finally, take progressive action and if the offense is repeated, penalties will become stronger.

Theoretical Framework

This study was familiar with McGregor's X and Y theory, which replaces Max Weber's classical organizational theory. Theory X refers to a set of assumptions about the behavior of people at work, which a school considers to be an organization made up of teachers, students and non-teaching staff who use discipline as a means of enforcing external demands for responsible behavior in order to achieve the desired organizational goals and objectives, which this group needs to discipline by establishing rules and regulations and punishments for lawbreakers. The use of punishment in schools is to instill discipline and is melted on a student who violates the agreed rules and regulations in schools.

Theory Y viewed a school as an organization with leaders as person who work effectively by efficiently apply leadership skills so as to gain willing support from teachers, students and non-teaching staff through the use of rules and regulations set by management. McGregor’s Theory X and is Y help education managers to identify extreme form of management style which can be used for effective management of rules and regulations, disciplinary actions mainly punishments and time management especially when administering punishments in the school.

The main variables in the application of McGregor's theory to this study will be school rules and regulations for the efficient management and administration of punishments for the deterrence and retribution of offenders and the management of time, which refers to the effective use of time allocated to individual activities in an educational institution. Activities to be carried out include.

The Conceptual Framework

Most of the world's education period has narrowed and limited the concept and knowledge of discipline. In the punishment model, the idea of punishment was predicted. Punishment is considered necessary as a disciplinary measure in the schools and therefore used as a means to maintain “good discipline,” often referring to conformity and order in schools. Punis in this case However, corporal punishment is often problematic and it is still a problem today unless strictly monitored. Gossen and Omari argue that punishment does not teach the correct behaviour, it destroys even the opportunity to demonstrate the acceptable behaviours. From the age of eighteen onwards, there is growing opposition to any use of physical force in disciplining individuals.

This view brought two opposing views on discipline to the surface, which are in line with the assumptions of Douglas McGregor's theory 'X' and theory 'Y'. There are people who only consider discipline to be a punishment applied to the assumptions of theory ' X.' A teacher or student, for example, does not want to follow the code of conduct in schools. To make them disciplined threat punishment, control, rewards and incentives have been seen to be the most effective measure in maintaining discipline in schools.

Another group of people are opposed to corporal punishment. Philosophers and psychologists in education are among these. They see discipline as a process that encourages teachers and students to act more uniformly in order to achieve educational objectives. This group of people is using people's theory 'Y' assumptions. They argue that external coercion and control are not only means of achieving organizational goals. Management cannot give self-respect to a man, but create conditions that promote self-discipline. According to them, punishment in school creates a tendency to blind the imitation and fear in the child.

On the other hand, Omari's conceptual framework for quality assurance has also been integrated into the assumptions of theory 'X' and 'Y' by providing basic school  extra-school inputs to show the connection between school discipline and academic performance.

In a descriptive research of student reactions in discipline of school, Brantlinger conducts a study of face to face interview of students from the upper and lower class areas regarding their reactions to school environment and school discipline. Both lower and high-class students agreed that lower-class students were unfairly targeted by school disciplinary sanctions. The study also found that there are differences in the kind of punishment meted out to students of different social classes. While higher class students are mostly seen receiving mild and moderate consequences (e.g., teacher reprimand, seat reassignment), lower class students are seen receiving most severe reasons, sometimes delivered in a less-than-professional manner (e.g., being yelled at in front of the class, made to stand in the hall all day, a search of personal belongings)

Conclusion

Simba et al 2016 found that there is a positive relationship between discipline and students' academic performance. If the level of discipline is high it will positively affect on the student’s academic performance. The student’s academic level will be high when the discipline level is high. It is also found that there is a need to improve discipline for the betterment in the level of students’ academic performance. Researcher recommended that discipline should be improved at the level of class eight in Kenya to improve academic performance of students at elementary level.

Ehiane & Stanley investigated that rules and regulations of school management had an influence on students’ academic performance. It is found that when rules and regulations are strictly followed it becomes the reason for expected behavior by students and teachers in school. The researcher found that there are many activities in school and often these activities took more time rather than which time is given on time table.

The study recommended that activities should take place on a given time according to time table and students and teachers should respect the time. The study founds that 78.9% of respondents were not agreed with the management of punishment. They thought that punishment is the mean of changing the behavior of students. Students who commit offense should be referred to counsel, counseling help students to prevent offense and help them to understand why they are punished. Study also recommends that there is a need of disciplinary committee to deal with such cases.