The Teacher as Disciplinarian: How do Students feel?

Abstract

This paper reports two independent investigations of the relationship between Year 9 students’ perceptions of their teachers’ classroom control techniques and the students’ affective responses. The results indicate that a number of commonly used techniques are associated with students’ anxiety and their attitude to their teacher, the miscreant and their schoolwork. Teachers’ reactions to these data indicate a need for concern, particularly as students report being disrupted from their school work by techniques otherwise acceptable to teachers, such as a lack of teacher calmness, teachers sending miscreants to other teachers and the use of class detentions. Despite these findings indicating a need for behavioural change in teachers, such change may be very unlikely, because of stress-related issues.