TEACHERS’ BELIEFS AND PRACTICES IN MANAGING BEHAVIOUR PROBLEMS

Abstract

Students’ behaviour problems have become an issue in schools that prevent students from performing in class. The purpose of this study was to examine the students’ behaviour problems in classroom, the causes of behaviour problems, teachers’ practices of managing behaviour problems, and the need of help in managing behaviour problems. A total of 113 teachers from six National Type Chinese Primary Schools in Johor Bahru, Malaysia participated in this study. The results substantiated that the teachers spent more time on dealing with students’ behaviour problem (72.6%). Teachers also felt stressed up with students’ behaviour problems (65.5%). They agreed that behaviour problems adversely affected teaching and learning process (92.0%). Further, boys (87.6%) had more behaviour problems than girls (8.8%). Particularly, the most common disruptive was hyperactivity behaviour (60.20%), followed by conduct behaviour (22.1%), emotional behaviour (9.7%) and peer problems (8.0%). In fact, talking out of turn (75.25%) was the most common hyperactivity behaviour problems in school. Family, school, teacher and Student were the roots of the problems. Moreover, teacher adopted reasoning with students (36.3%) as a conventional strategy in the classroom to overcome behaviour problems. They reported that they would like to assist in getting knowledge on pyschological development of children (96.4%), suggestions from experienced teachers (95.6%), practical strategies or advice (90.3%), consultations from expert (97.3%), trainings and instructions (94.6%), as well as educational system reformation (93.0%). The findings ascertained that student behaviour problems required intervention from teachers.