Strategies to Deal with Misbehaviours

There are different types of misbehaviors, like, talking out of turn, disrespecting teachers, sleeping during teaching, trying to be the boss in the class to threaten teacher, chatting with other students, shouting loudly to create excitement in classroom, leaving seat to circulating in classroom, challenging the teacher on certain concept to gain classmates’ attention. (Ghazi et al., 2013)

Therefore, to deal with these misbehaviors, the following strategies should be used:

• Ignore the behavior: sometimes there is a behavior that is rare occurrence, the result of unusual and temporary conditions, isn’t interfering with classroom learning, or won’t repeated, in this case the teacher can ignore the behavior in order to not stop the instructional activity, and doesn’t get peer’s attention which is can reinforce the behavior. For example, if an attentive and serious student is talking with his classmate for a while, the teacher can ignore this behavior because it is rare occurrence.
• Cueing students: when there is a minor behavior, the teacher can handle it and cue the student by using a signal that indicates the desired behavior, without disrupting the classroom learning environment and distracting other students. For example, if two students talk during the explanation, the teacher can use a signal to indicate that this behavior should stop.
• Discuss the problem privately with the student: when cues can’t change the misbehavior, the teacher should discuss the problem with the student privately, without calling peer’s attention, which can reinforce the behavior and hurt the students’ feelings. So the private discussion give the students the chance to explain why they misbehave as they do, and provide the teacher clues about how to deal with this misbehavior. For example, a student is always sleeping in classroom in the first period, the teacher always punish him, but when she talked privately with him, she knew that every morning he is taking an allergy medication what causes sleep.
• Confer with parents: sometimes the teacher needs to get parents’ help to deal with some misbehaviors, so a simple call for parents may decrease the behavior or stop it. For example, when a capable student comes to class without doing his homework, or when he got a bad grade on exam, the teacher needs to consult with student’s parents to deal with this behavior.
• Logical consequences: from the first day of the scholar year, the teacher should implement his/her rules, expectations, and consequences in the classroom to decrease the students’ misbehavior and maintain a management classroom. These consequences, unlike punishment, must be relevant, realistic, and respectful. Moreover, research by Barbetta et al (2005) supports that classroom rules have the most important role in managing a classroom, because following these rules help the teacher create a productive classrooms.

These rules should be 4 to 6 rules maximum, simple and clear, easy for students to remember, posted, reviewed frequently, and stated positively. For example, instead of stating “you can’t speak without raising your hand”, state, “please raise hand before speaking, unless we are having a really good discussion”. Furthermore, the teacher must be consistent by using a clear consequences for following and not following the rules, because an inconsistent consequences maintain misbehavior and increase it sometimes.