Teachers’ responses to student misbehavior: the role of expertise

In a quasi-experimental study, we investigated whether preservice and inservice teachers differed in their responses to minor student misbehavior. The participants’ task was to estimate how likely they would be to apply various predefined intervention strategies, while we simultaneously assessed response latencies. Results indicated that preservice teachers were more likely to choose harsh interventions such as school suspension, whereas inservice teachers were more likely to use mild strategies such as ignoring and nonverbal responses. The response latencies showed that the application of mild strategies seemed to belong to the behavioral routines of inservice teachers and were less likely to belong to those of preservice teachers. However, neither the ratings nor the response latencies of the two groups of teachers differed when it came to the application of moderately harsh strategies. The results are discussed with respect to teacher development and teacher education.