Attitudes to students misbehavior - Essay Example

Attitudes to students’ misbehavior Education has been perceived as the most vital element of social fabric that plays a crucial in the character building of the children and adults alike. Jefferson, an eminent reformer of eighteenth century had asserted that education is necessary as it is the main facilitator of moral values within the society and thereby a virtue in itself. But in the recent times, the changing attitude of the students and their misbehavior inside and outside the schools has become a major social problem. Educational psychology has thus, become a critical tool to analyze and identify the factors that are responsible for their changing behavioral problems. The report would investigate the students’ increasing behavioral problems through literature review and interviews of parents, teachers, pre-service teachers and non teaching friends. The interviewees broadly comprised of a father (P), a high school teacher (HT), two pre-service teachers (PT1 & PT2) and two non teaching friends (NF1 & NF2). The interviews were conducted under neutral environment where they were asked to respond on two questions: 1) Why students misbehave in classroom and outside of classroom and 2) what can teachers and school do to address students’ misbehaviour? The questions generated wide ranging themes encompassing parenting, home life, class management, discipline, boredom in classroom, lack of understanding across cross cultural segment of students etc. ADHD, learning disability etc were also issues that were raised. The report would be evaluating the findings of the interviews and efforts would be made to analyze the same with inputs from the literature reviews. The report would be adhering to the wider implications of students-teachers relationship and the teaching tools that could be used to address students’ behavioral problems. Parenting and home life have emerged as one of the major factors for the misbehavior of the students. All the six interviewees have reiterated that parents have little control over their children and bad parenting allows the children to misbehave with impunity inside and outside the school. As P says ‘Parents make less clear boundaries about what kids are allowed to do and what not allowed to do. And this causes kids to misbehave more’. Indeed, the role of parents in molding the character and behavioral pattern of their children have remained the most important areas of concern for the psychologists and social scientists. PT1 asserts that ‘family problems and domestic violence may promote misbehavior amongst children’. Johnson et al. (2001) have claimed that disturbed family environment and drug abuse has largely been responsible for the Latino youth to move towards alcohol, drugs, leading to school drop-out, anti-social behavior and low educational attainment which later lead to unemployment. Cahill and Freeman (2006) also maintain that there is need for curriculum that ‘develops students’ capacity to cope effectively with change, challenge and adversity’ (p. 94) as children, as innocent victims, not only carry the scar all through life but low achievement in education increasingly creates barriers in the process of their empowerment and becoming part of mainstream population. Researchers also stress that intervention and prevention measures for various social problems need to be addressed on individual basis rather than adopting one approach to all problem (Hemphill et al., 2007; Little, 2005). The teaching methodology is the other major issue that is observed as one of the most critical aspect that significantly impacts students within and outside the school. The lack luster teaching creates boredom amongst the students who misbehave to relieve the boredom. While HT says that ‘teachers should engaging students more in the classroom’, PT1 believes that teachers do not ‘teach properly and their lessons are boring’. NF1 also says that most of the time teachers do not how to manage the class. De Jongs (2005) asserts that best practice for managing students’ behavior greatly facilitates in generating interest and creating inspiring learning environment for the students. Hence, art of effective communication is one of the most important ingredients of teaching. Peer pressure, ADHD and learning disability are other factors that impact students’ behavior and attitude as asserted by NF2 and HT. Interesting NF2 thinks that as the students easily get part time jobs, studying hard is more relevant to them! Peer pressure can broadly be defined as the influence of friends, acquaintances, elders and other on the behavioral pattern of the people, especially adolescent children and teenagers. Peer pressure is a specific instance of social influence, which typically produces conformity to a particular way of acting or thinking (Csikszentmihalyi & Larson, 1984). Peer pressure in the recent times has catapulted into serious concern for the parents as it adversely impacts the personality traits and behavior of children. It often adversely influences the psyche of the adolescents when they fail to see the long term consequences of their actions and behavior. Their foray into drug abuse, smoking, sex, violence etc. are few of the areas which are highly damaging and therefore, require careful guidance and intervention during growing up period of the teenagers. The participants have all agreed that congenial home environment and more interesting methodology of teaching which can engage the students’ attention needs to be evolved. P is emphatic that teachers and parents must make boundaries clear and ensure consistency. The focused and disciplined approach greatly facilitates respect for the authority and impacts positively on the attitude of the students. Lewis (2001 emphasizes the role of classroom discipline in promoting ‘students’ sense of responsibility’ (p. 315). Indeed, the adolescence is the most difficult phase of the growing up. Effective management strategies that promote positive parent-child and teacher-student relationship become highly critical element of a student’s behavior and personality development. PT2 asserts that understanding students’ psychology goes a long way in building relationships based on honesty and mutual respect that promotes better behavior through resolution of conflicts. Education leadership has become significant because it encourages improvisation in the teaching methodology as well as accepts the challenge of creating a cohesive and encouraging atmosphere. NF1 and P have also raised the issue of diversity and ethnicity. The contemporary society has necessitated development of curricula that promote diversity so that it could facilitate incorporation of the changing values and help establish a social system based on mutual cooperation and inter-personal skill. The social inclusion of vulnerable segment of society is important. PT2 says that ‘how the students’ are treated outside the school has serious impact on their lives’ that could reflect in their bad behavior in the classroom. The need to create congenial environment to understand the problems of the youth has become the need of the hour and the new curricula must address this serious issue. ‘The diversity, complexity, and changing nature of basic learning needs of children, youth and adults necessitate broadening and constantly redefining the scope of basic education’ (UNESCO, 1995). The various elements of curricula and class management are important ingredients of education that must promote more interest in the classroom teaching. The education system must emphasize on expanding teachers’ knowledge base. It should provide them with opportunities to widen their area of developmental learning so to improve and improvise teaching to make it more effective. Creative inputs, effective communication and use of resources in their teaching plans and teaching reflect their commitment towards the profession. P has been very vocal on the reflective practices of teachers and students alike. He affirms that reflective practice helps to identify one’s shortcoming and promote wider understanding of the various methodologies to become more articulate and become familiar with the emerging new paradigms in the social dynamics. They also encourage confidence building so that they are better prepared to tackle critical situations and meet the challenges with more conviction and composure. Brandt (1998) emphasizes that encouraging environment must be created for continuous learning, both for teachers as well as students, so as to ‘nurture and sustain their growth at every stage’ (p. 36). Researches have shown that parents have the ability to nourish the inherent tendencies of the children to develop into healthy and happy adults. Behavioral geneticists have emphasized the fact that the parents and the environment within which the child is growing up, has great capacity to exert considerable influence to mould the personalities of their children. The parents have the most important task of providing that environment which would not only promote good behavior but also help inculcate values that would stand by their children in the hour of their need. Social scientists insist that inclusion of tools that promote socio-emotional learning have increasingly become relevant in the contemporary environment as they help to nurture children into responsible and confident adult (Elias, 2006, Zins et al., 2004). Thus one can conclude that students’ misbehavior can largely be contributed to the home environment, parenting and lack luster teaching that fail to generate requisite interest in the curricula. The role of parents and teachers is of utmost importance because of their proactive involvement in the molding of the character of the students. It is therefore, imperative that parents must make more efforts to create congenial environment to promote trust and mutual respect amongst children. 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