Many student misbehaviors are communication directed. The students want to be noticed, recognized, or attended to by the teacher. Hence, many of our students engage in disruptive misbehaviors of the highest magnitude to gain our attention. Much of their misbehavior is of a verbal or nonverbal form.
Attention
One of the major reasons our students misbehave is they "want our attention," even if the attention is not very positive. Even the youngest, brightest, or sweetest will
misbehave to gain our attention. Often students are very well aware of the appropriate behaviors an individual instructor expects from them, yet they knowingly and intentionally violate that standard. Instructor attention, even though it may not be positive, is often more desired than instructor inattention.
Rebellion
Another goal of student misbehavior is to demonstrate that the student does not and will not follow established, conventional school or classroom policies or norms. Some students rebel in order to illustrate they are independent, assertive, free, autonomous, self-reliant, self-sufficient, and are not dependent. It is not unusual for students around the sixth or seventh grade to start rebelling against the rules and policies applied in each individual instructional system. While we do not like it, it is as predictable as our students becoming interested in the opposite gender before we think they should.
Psychological or Physiological Release
Many times students misbehave as a means of releasing mental, emotional, or physical energy. Often we give considerable attention to students' academic needs but we neglect their need for psychological or physical energy release. When our students become mentally, emotionally, or physically aroused, they often need to release that energy in an appropriate manner. If they are not allowed to release the energy in an appropriate manner, they release it in our classrooms, often in the form of a student misbehavior. For example, they toss a spit wad at another student, or whistle at another student, or poke another student in the arm.
Apathy
While it seems counterintuitive, one of the goals of student misbehavior is to resist teacher instruction or control by being apathetic. Students often exhibit apathetic communication responses such as listlessness, indifference, little emotion, or unconcern as a form of passive, destructive behavior. While some would argue that communicating apathy is not a goal of student misbehavior, students know apathy is a goal of their misbehavior. Students realize that apathetic tendencies or the "who cares response" often irritate their teacher. In essence, then, apathetic communication is a goal of student misbehavior.
Chapter Ten - 122 Challenge the Teacher's Power or Control
Occasionally, students will openly, flagrantly, glaringly, and obnoxiously disregard, ignore, or refuse to comply with an instructor's request or appeal. This kind of destructive, open, defensive misbehavior is usually motivated by the student wanting to demonstrate to her or his peers that they can challenge the teacher's power or control. Unfortunately, this type of flagrant student misbehavior often places the teacher in an untenable, precarious situation. He or she must "do something" about the student's open misbehavior without hurting the student or the class. Very few instructors are likely to disregard or ignore an open challenge of their power or control.
Classroom Fatigue
Classroom fatigue syndrome can lead to misbehavior problems. When our students become fatigued, bored, frustrated, exhausted, or weary they will often exhibit verbal or nonverbal misbehaviors. Students demand that we keep them entertained. In fact, besides being a helper, manager, controller, and provider, we are often expected to be entertainers. Let’s face it, we often use teaching methods of the 16th Century on children of the 21st.
When the classroom is boring, students of all ages develop "classroom fatigue syndrome," and begin to misbehave in a verbal or nonverbal manner. They often misbehave in order to "liven up" an otherwise slow, boring class session or lesson.
Revenge
Revenge is commonly known as the "get even response." Sometimes our students will misbehave in order to get revenge, get even with, or make our lives very uncomfortable for something we did or didn't do. Often we may never know what we did or didn't do to cause a student to seek revenge. Regardless, when a student decides to seek revenge or retribution for past offenses, they can make our lives very uncomfortable. Revenge can take any misbehavior form. It can be active, passive, destructive, direct, or indirect, but it can interrupt our classrooms and our instructional communicator style.
Depressed Teacher Affect
The instructional communication literature is very clear in this area. When students have low or depressed affect or liking for their teacher, they learn less, engage in recommended behaviors less often, are less responsive in the classroom, are less likely to comply with a teacher's request, and if not forced to attend class will attend class less frequently than students who have higher affect for the teacher. This is known as a "student
hates teacher condition." Throughout this text we directly and indirectly discuss methods we can use to increase teacher/student affect. We should attempt to use the affective methods which work for us so our students will not have depressed teacher affect. This condition impacts student performance and our performance. Students who don't like their teachers exhibit more misbehaviors and misbehave more frequently than students who like their teachers.
Unhealthy Attitude about School
Often students who perceive the school environment to be hostile, unreceptive to their needs, impersonal, cold, and position-oriented will have discipline or behavior problems in their classrooms. At the heart of the issue is whether the student's perception is incorrect or whether the school is actually cold and impersonal. A student's perception is the way he or she will view things. Hence, if we can change a student's perception about the general school environment, her or his behavior might improve. However, if our school is actually cold and impersonal, then we need to change the school's image. Either way, we can improve student behavior and decrease student misbehaviors.
Disorganized Teachers
While this is not very complimentary to our profession, we know of many "scatter- brained" teachers. We often wonder how they can be so disorganized and still call themselves professionals. Disorganized, disorderly teachers usually communicate disorganization, chaos, and unconcern to their students. Students who have teachers with low organizational skills often misbehave. When students perceive teachers don't care, the students don't care to behave appropriately either.
Expectancy Orientation
Often some students will misbehave because this is what is "expected" of them. They have been classified as "behavior problems," "misfits," or "disciplinary problems" from the time they entered school. Hence, they have learned to communicate and behave in the way which is expected of them by school personnel. Year after year these students will work at fulfilling the prophecy by continuing to misbehave or be disruptive.
External Variables Impact
Occasionally, we have to look beyond the obvious reasons for student misbehavior and look for other external causes. External variables that could impact student behavior in
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school are hyperactivity, malnutrition, lack of sleep, abuse and/or neglect, excessive television viewing, family violence or disputes, divorce, new birth in family, family member’s death, and so on. If there is no known immediate cause of a student's misbehavior, perhaps we should inquire (through appropriate channels) about their home life. Often variables beyond our control can impact how our students behave or misbehave.
In conclusion, a major challenge facing all teachers is how to determine why or what causes students to be disruptive or misbehave. The next major challenge is managing, handling, or controlling classroom misbehavior problems. We know that when misbehavior gets out of control, learning, affect, and communication is negatively impacted. Before we continue, we need to make clear what are misbehaviors and what are simply common classrooms behaviors.