Student Misbehaviors Confronted by Academics and Their Coping Experiences

This study aims to put forth student misbehaviors confronted by academics and their experiences of coping with these behaviors with respect to types of student misbehaviors, setting, student characteristics, academics’ responses, students’ reaction to intervention, academics’ feelings, attributions to possible causes of misbehaviors, and precautions to prevent repetition of misbehaviors. In this phenomenological study, the data were gathered from 19 academics working at different departments of various universities in Turkey through a semi-structured interview form in which they were asked to narrate a memory about a student misbehavior. Descriptive analysis was employed in analysis process and the codes were constantly compared. Interrater reliability of the coding was found as .80. Some of the main findings of the study include; student misbehaviors are grouped into categories of interfering with teaching of a lesson, not being interested in the lesson, inappropriate behaviors towards the academic, inappropriate behaviors towards peers, and disobeying the rules. The ratio of misbehaviors conducted by ‘problematic’ students is close to students who are perceived as ‘unproblematic’ or ‘agreeable’ students by the academics. The academics’ responses to student misbehaviors include verbal warming, ignoring, imposing sanctions, resorting to violence, making changes about the class and leaving the setting. The students continued misbehavior, quitted misbehavior, resorted to violence or left the setting. Academics’ attributions to misbehaviors are out-of-class causes (family-related, society-related and school administration related) and in-class causes (students-related, academic-related and curriculum/ school system related). With this study, it is aimed to contribute to research in the literature on academics’ classroom management.