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Children and disruptive behaviour

June 10, 2002

Teachers who use competition among students as a way of motivating them to improve their grades may inadvertently increase disruptive behaviour in their classrooms.

This was the finding of Avi Kaplan from Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel along with Margaret Gheen and Carol Midgley from the University of Michigan, published today, Monday 10 June 2002, in the British Journal of Educational Psychology.

The researchers examined the relationship between what teachers emphasise in the classroom, student's goals and their patterns of learning and behaviour. More than three hundred and eighty ninth-grade students were surveyed along with their teachers.

It was found that boys and low achieving students were more likely to report that they had engaged in disruptive behaviour. In addition, being particularly concerned with how performance appeared and compared with others was linked to a higher degree of disruptive behaviour. Focusing on learning and improvement was linked to lower degrees of disruption.

More significantly, the level of disruption was higher in classrooms where teachers emphasized appearing able, and lower in classrooms where teachers emphasized improvement and learning from mistakes.

The findings could have implications for how teachers deal with disruptive behaviour. Avi Kaplan said: 'Too often, the blame for high levels of disruption in classrooms is put on individual students or on teacher discipline that is too permissive. These findings suggest that we should also, perhaps primarily, pay attention to the contribution of educational practices at the classroom, school and even national levels to this phenomenon.'

British Psychological Society (BPS)