Supervisors info:
Θωμάς Μπαμπάλης, Καθηγητής ΠΤΔΕ, ΕΚΠΑ
Κωνσταντίνα Τσώλη, Αναπληρώτρια Καθηγήτρια ΠΤΔΕ, ΕΚΠΑ
Νικόλαος Αλεξόπουλος, Επίκουρος Καθηγητής ΠΤΔΕ, ΕΚΠΑ
Summary:
The problematic behavior of students is a thorny issue that has always been a concern for the school community generally and teachers in particular. Taking into account the strong interest of teachers in the management of such issues, the present study aims to explore teachers’ perceptions of the causes, the consequences of students’ problematic behavior and ways of dealing with it in relation to some of their demographic characteristics.
In order to carry out the present study, the “Questionnaire about Teachers and Challenging Behavior” (Westling, 2010) was distributed electronically. The participants were 120 primary school teachers in District 3 of Athens. Descriptive and inferential analysis was utilized to conduct the results through the statistical tool SPSS23.0.
Considering the existing literature and based on the research hypotheses set in this paper, the following results were found; firstly, regarding the causes of students’ problematic behavior, the majority of teachers attribute it mainly to family factors. In addition, among all the teachers, those who believe that problematic behaviors are learned, tend to change their curriculum or teaching approach in order to improve these behaviors on the part of students. Another finding that emerged was that teachers with some specialization in special education prefer investigating the causes of problematic behaviors for the purpose of future prevention more than other teachers. In addition, while it was found that there was not a statistically large difference regarding the effects of students’ problematic behavior between teachers with less than 15 years of service and teachers with 15 years of service and more, the teachers of the first category showed a higher level of agreement on some effects compared to teachers of the second category. Finally, in terms of the effect of teachers’ work experience and training, these two factors, were found to have a positive effect on the management of behavioral issues in contrast to the often limited training they received in their undergraduate studies.
Keywords: problematic behavior, problems of behavior, teacher’s perceptions, previous experience, training/specialization
Keywords:
: problematic behavior, problems of behavior, teacher’s perceptions, previous experience, training/specialization
