Teachers’ Perceptions of Student Behaviours: a study of NSW secondary teachers’ attitudes

There is a dearth of empirical information concerning teachers’ attitudes to secondary students’ behaviours. A questionnaire was used to survey 105 secondary school teachers from NSW about the perceived serious or disturbing nature of 50 student behaviours. The perception of the behaviours was scored on a five‐point Liken scale. Behaviours were ranked according to the results and compared with four previous studies. It was found that ‘aggressive’ behaviours were perceived as more serious than ‘passive’ behaviours and that the rankings of the NSW teachers agreed substantially with those in previous American studies. No significant differences were found between rankings of male and female teachers or between perceptions of behaviours when observed in boy or girl students. A factor analysis extracted six fairly distinct factors which could be related to dimensions in behaviour rating scales. It was concluded that professional development courses could target the behaviours loading significantly on Factor I, as teachers perceive that they are the most disturbing.