Abstract:

Of all the causes that can be mentioned by teachers as obstructive to their practices, the lack of discipline of their students is often the focus of recurrent comments among them. But could it be that teachers themselves negatively influence the undisciplined behavior of students by means of practices eventually unadjusted to the school’s context in which these behaviors occur?

Although school indiscipline is a phenomenon not confined to the classroom, several studies have demonstrated that the teachers’ attitude and the pedagogical relationship established, when inadequate, contribute to the group of causes which are associated to it.

Investigations around this phenomenon have approached it from different perspectives, from the psychological, which relates indiscipline to psychological and social or family factors, to the sociological and educational perspectives, whose focus is, instead, the school operational system itself and the organization of the classroom.

The motivation for this study arises from the curricular traineeship context, once from the observation of a 5th grade class (Primary School) it was possible to notice that the behavior of the same group of students and the class atmosphere itself differed depending on the teacher that was giving the lecture.

Three questions came up:
(i) To which extent does the teacher’s attitude and the pedagogical relationship established can influence the students’ behavior?
(ii) Could it be that the students’ and teachers’ perspectives on unruly behavior are the same?;
(iii) In case they aren’t, would it be possible that this difference generates the occurrence of such behaviors?

The motivation arose, then, to study the perspectives of both students and teachers on indiscipline, particularly their insights on this such subjective matter, regarding its causes, consequences and strategies to fight it. In order to do so, a quantitative study was put up by means of questionnaires applied to 10 teachers and 78 5th grade students within 5 different classes. The data were processed by using SPSS software (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences).

It was then possible to realize that students and teachers have similar concepts of indiscipline and are aware of its consequences. Nevertheless, it was also perceived that teachers assign more value to the causes related to the familiar context and the students’ attitude towards school, while students value most the causes related to the teacher’s posture and the pedagogical relationship established. This reveals that students and teachers impute the responsibility of unruly behaviors to different causes. That alone may be a derangement in classroom.

Although this is not a study from which it is possible to draw any general conclusions extendable to other pedagogical contexts, given the reduced size of the sample used, it is intended to add another contribute in the evaluation of this phenomenon of indiscipline in the classroom, hoping that this research may, at least, raise the need for reflection on the teaching practice in all the teachers who come to read it.

Keywords:

Indiscipline, Indiscipline causes, Indiscipline consequences, Strategies to deal with indiscipline.