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Recently, the OECD published two reports that show a drastic change in

students’ behaviour in Australia. Students in Australia are found to be the most

misbehaving and problematic amongst the OECD developed countries (Matthews,

2017). Further, New South Wales was ranked as one of the most problematic areas

for students who behave badly. Nearly half of the students in NSW responded that

noise and disorders are prevalent in everyday classroom setting, especially at grade

4, 8, 9 and 10 (Matthews, 2017). The following is the investigation of the question

‘why do young people misbehave at school?’.

The article of Demanet & Van Houtte (2012) expands on the understanding

of students’ misbehaviours in a relation to teacher’s attitude and expectation which

influence how student behave or learn in school. Their research is based on the

concept for Pygmalion effect which refers to the correlation between positive

expectation with positive performance and negative expectation with negative

performance (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968). Demanet & Van Houette (2012) notes

that when the teacher’s expectation of a student is low, it can particularly lead to

students behaving disruptive. Therefore, it was suggested that building a positive

teacher-student relationship and having a high expectation for students could result

in minimizing the students’ misbehaviours. This concept is also evident in McGrath &

Van Bergen’s (2014) article that highlighted that students who are experiencing a

negative teacher-student relationship are at a higher risk of misbehaving. In

particular, this article explains that younger boys are at higher risk of experiencing

negative student-teacher relationship (McGrath & Van Bergen, 2014).

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Another relevant article by Li & Yi (2015), this article draws an emphasis on

the relation between a lack of sleep and a student behavior, particularly looking at

biological and social factors that adolescence might be going through. Insufficient

amount of sleep and Irregular sleeping practices could have lead to various negative

impacts on adolescence such as negative emotion, poor academic performance,

defiant thinking, short concentration as well as misbehaviours (Li & Yi, 2015).

Cothran, Kulinna and Garrahy (2009) explain that there are different

attributions from teachers and students for why student misbehave. As a

perspective of teachers, two main categories have emerged. Firstly, teacher believes

that reasons for student misbehaviour are ‘unknown’ because there could be many

that affect them to behave in certain ways. For instance, students have no breakfast

or they broke up with boyfriends/girlfriends. The other was due to poor home

environment in which students have no parental guidance, troubled situations at

home and a lack of mannerism. This ultimately could lead to attention seeking

behaviour (Cothran et al., 2009). As for students, they responded differently to why

they think they misbehave at school. Students misbehave in order to gain attention

from their teachers and peers, and popularity or social status. Another factor that

students misbehave is due to boredom of the lessons. Students often become

interruptive in the class when they have no interest in topic or prefer to have fun

when the subject is too difficult to understand (Cothran et al., 2009).

All four different articles that have been discussed above have provided

relevant information about understanding behavioural issues of the young. Although

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these article suggested diverse responses, they have provided perspectives and

possibilities from different angle. It is interesting to note that only Cothran et al.,

(2009)’s article has thoroughly mentioned why students think that they misbehave

at school. The other views were mainly come from teachers, educators as well as

authors by themselves, which commonly was the ways teachers treat students, poor

teacher-student relationship and insufficient amount of sleep resulted in increasing

misconduct in the classroom.

The interviews were conducted professionally and accordingly with the

instructions provided by the university. Before the interview started, all interviewees

were asked to carefully read and sign the consent form, told the purpose of the

interview and confidentiality of the interview data. The interviews were conducted

at their own homes to avoid any distractions. The interviewees were chosen evenly

to obtain the diverse demographics including and the following is the details about

interviewees’ age, gender, occupation and etc.

MNTF1 Male, 28. Non-teaching friend. Car mechanic engineer.

MP2 Male, 42. A parent of year 7 boy.

FPT1 Female, 21. Pre-service teacher.

FT2 Female, 26. Graduated and working as a math teacher for 3 years.

FNTF3 Female, 32. Non-teaching friend who is a graphic designer.

FPT4 Female, 22. Pre-service teacher. Works at university.

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The interview process was both written down as scripts and recorded. It

began by asking the opening question and then followed by open-ended questions.

If there was anything interviewee wanted to say, they were allowed to say their

opinions regardless of the topics. Notes were written when each interviewee

mentions certain words to describe behaviours (e.g. disruptive, impress peer and so

on) repeatedly as to keep the consistency of the interviews and data. Before the

ending of interviews, interviewees were explained that what words they were

mostly describing during the interviews and asked to summaries their opinions on

three main themes that they think are the ultimate reasons of student

misbehaviours. In overall, interviewees chose themes such as attention seeking,

home environment, teacher-student relationship as well as the impact of parenting

and sleep deprivation. Though boredom was mentioned continuously during the

interviews, it is surprising that no interviewees chose it as the main reason of

misbehaviours.

All the interviewees agreed that students misbehave due to attention

seeking. MNTF1 in a relation to his own experience as a student and said “Boys are

like that, I used to break school rules because that was the cool thing to do.” FT2 a

teacher stated, “I struggle when my year 7 boys makes funny noises or imitate my

voice during the lesson to get my attention.” FPT4 recently went to placements said

that students misbehave because they want to impress their peers.

The importance of teacher-student relationship was another common theme

emerged from the interviewees. FPT4 stated, “Students would act out if the teacher

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is casual.” Two interviewees including one male and one female mentioned that it is

likely that boys would have more of a conflict relationship with teachers. FPT1 who

have done two placements mentioned that teachers in school often talks about

female students are easier to handle and teach when comparing with male students.

MP2 has stated, “my son told me that his English teacher treats girls and boys

differently.”

Home environment was an interesting theme as it overlaps with few other

subcategories such as parenting and insufficient sleep. Two female and two males

agreed that student’s home environment could be the main reason that causes how

they behave. MP2said, “how parents behave at home or talks to their child can

influence on how they perceive it is okay to behave in a certain way.” FPT4 pointed

out that sometime students might stay up to study, play video game or help their

parents do house work during weekdays or weekends. Hence, students can be

disengaged in tasks and less focused when they feel sleepy. Considering that these

could essentially be what their parents can control at their home, parenting and lack

of sleep were also considered as subcategories under home environment.

Although all the interviewees agreed that student misbehave to get attention

of the teacher, peer and obtain popularity and social status, it is worth noting that

this aspect came from teachers and pre-service teacher as opposed to students’ in

the article of Cothran et al., (2009). This belief from teachers were mentioned in the

article, however, only to the extent that students do not receive enough attention

from their parents at home. Thus, causing attention seeking behaviours at school.

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The interview findings, especially come from FT2 and FPT4, provided an interesting

insight that pre-service teachers and teachers, as a matter of fact, do have an

understanding of young people often misbehave to get teachers’ attentions.

As mentioned earlier, students misbehave more likely when teacher-student

relationship is negative and teachers present low expectation in students (McGrath

& Van Bergen, 2005; Demanet & Van Houtte, 2012). Except for one comment made

by FPT4 that students misbehave easier when there was a casual teacher, other

interviewees did not discuss the significance of teacher expectations in a relation to

student behaviour. Of six interviewees, only two emphasized on the difference of

the gender that affect teacher-student relationship. FPT1 and MP2 mentioned how

teachers perceive different images toward boys and girls, and this influences how

teachers approach the students and how students behave in the classroom.

Poor home environment along with the subcategories of poor parenting and

lack of sleep can lead to severe student behavioral problems (Cothran et al., 2009; Li

& Yi, 2015). Although parenting was not included in the earlier literature review,

Stormshak, Bierman, McMahon & Lengua (2010) supports the correlation between

child disruptive behaviour problems and parenting practices. Interestingly, MP2 who

is a father of a year 7 boy admitted that parenting affects how children misbehave in

certain ways. FT2 mentioned, “one kid in my year 8 class suddenly acted out and

verbally abused his peer.” FPT4 mentioned that sleep deprivation could cause

disengagement in the task or lack of concentration. However, it is important to note

that this lack of sleep that FPT4 mentioned during the interview is due to parenting

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in a sense that parents ask their child to do some chores and student ending up to

do extra work.

After conducting thorough research on the possibilities of why young people

misbehave at school and the interviews with six different participants on this topic, I

have a better understanding of these misbehaviours of the students. Along with

Demanet & Van Houtte (2012) and McGrath & Van Bergen’s (2014), Lane, Pierson &

Carter (2010) has supported the correlation between increasing teachers’ high

expectation, positive relationship with student and students’ positive behaviours.

Students may feel disengaged or unmotivated in tasks because their teachers do not

show high expectation in them. I now understand that the significance on my

expectations and relationship with students that would affect on that student

behaviour. It is essential that I will let every student know I believe in him or her and

building a positive relationship with me is important. When teaching, I would change

the way of my thinking from ‘how can they learn?’ to ‘how can I make it my teaching

accessible to all students?’. With this concept, it does not matter where my students

started at, rather how much they have progresses is all it matters. It is also

important for me to give students the equal opportunities to contribute in class.

Some students with low expectations in themselves or from teachers might not be

brave enough to voice their opinions, however, this does not mean that they do not

understand the content. As a teacher, I should make my lesson accessible for

everyone and tell students that every student’s contribution matters and brings a

new idea.

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Further, Li & Yi (2015) discussed that irregular sleeping routine could lead to

numbers of negative factors for student misbehaviours. Li & Yi (2015) have

suggested that promoting healthy sleeping practices could be a primary

intervention. Educating parents about the significance of having regular sleeping

practices and consequences of not having one could give them an idea to help

student establish their own sleep schedule (Li & Yi, 2015). Similarly, Buckhalt,

Wolfson & El-Sheik (2009) reinforced on the importance of educating students,

parents and schools on sleep as well as recognizing behaviours that are related to

sleep deprivations. Hence, I believe that school can provide a brochure or pamphlet

with the important information of having regular sleeping schedule or allocate one

class in physical education to talk about this matter.

Some students may act out in class or verbally abuse other peers or teachers,

including myself, however I realize that they are not always purposely behaving

badly. Cothran et al., (2009) stated, in order to reduce the problem behaviours,

students and teachers both have to take ownership to the contributing factors of

misbehaviours by reflecting on their own behaviours. This can be simply done for

teachers to reflect on their own actions and ask other teachers to observe, however,

it can be difficult and hard for students to do so. Reflecting on the choice theory

(Wubbolding, 2010), if a student verbally abuses others or starts acting out, I would

calmly question them ‘what are you doing?’, ‘how do you feel when you…?’, or ‘what

can we come up with together to work things out for you?’. This is important for me

because I can make utilize this practice in everyday classroom in order to reflect

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their own behaviours and help them identify the circumstance that drive certain

behaviours.

In conclusion, conducting the interviews and research about why young

people misbehave has provided many different insights and findings for teacher, pre-

service teachers, parents and so on. The findings could then be utilized in order to

understand better about young people, minimize the factors that could influence

them to conduct misbehaviours as well as to foster a better relationship with their

students.

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