Teacher perceptions of classroom management and problematic behaviors in primary schools

The aim of this research is to determine and evaluate the problematic behaviors teachers that work in primary schools encounter in classroom management, the reasons of these behaviors and the methods, activities they use to cope with these behaviors, and their ideas and thoughts regarding classroom management. The interview method which is one of the qualitative research methods has been used. Maximum variety exemplification, which is one of the purposeful exemplification methods, is employed in this paper. Eighteen teachers that work in different schools in central districts of Kayseri in the school years of 2006-2007 participated in the sample of this research. Research results show that teachers that work in primary schools are faced with various problematic behaviors of students in the process of learning-teaching activities. Among these behaviors are students' coming unprepared to the lessons and lack of attention to the lesson, and especially their speaking without permission, and being disrespectful to the teacher. To cope with these problems, teachers first employ nonverbal warnings (jests and mimics), then spoke with the student one by one, gave difficult homework, and employed reward-punishment system. Some of the teachers agreed that teacher's coming prepared to the lesson is the most important factor in facilitating classroom management. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserve