Classroom management practices and student disruptive behavior

Abstract

The paper set out to ascertain disruptive behaviours prevalent in pre-tertiary classrooms and teachers’ classroom management styles. The cross-sectional descriptive survey study was designed along quantitative paradigm. Professional teachers with more than two years of post-training experience in the classroom qualified to provide data to address the research problem. Data gathering was done via administration of questionnaires. The study unveiled noise making, chatting with others, inattentiveness and harassment as the major disruptive behaviours experienced by the teachers and teacher-centeredness was adopted by majority of the teachers as a classroom management style. The study further evinced differences in the classroom management styles of male and female teachers as well as very experienced, experienced and less experienced teachers. Educational authorities need to retrain teachers in the jurisdiction on appropriate classroom management style.