Teachers' Skillful Coping with Disruptive Behavior in Norwegian and American Classrooms - In the Face of Adversity and the Importance of Resilience

The study in this master thesis is written as a part of a larger research project: “Teachers’ Skillful Coping with Disruptive Behavior in Norwegian and American Classrooms”, led by Professor Liv Duesund. The research groups focus on disruptive behavior in Norwegian and American classrooms and how the teachers approach and cope with disruptive behavior that occurs in the classroom context. The purpose of this thesis was to examine teachers’ experiences in stress management and in which way they could see the importance of emotional resilience when coping with stressful situations in the classroom environment. Resilience refers to a pattern of positive adaption in the context of past or present adversity (Wright & Masten, 2006, p. 18). Emotional resilience refers to one’s ability to handle stressful situations of adversities within everyday life more sufficient and calmly, and it can be seen as stress management within the concept of resilience (Scott, 2019). Research question: The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of teachers and how they cope with stressful situations, and the following research questions were developed: In which ways do the teachers see the importance of being resilient when it comes to coping with disruptive behavior in the classroom? What are the experiences regarding teachers´ own stress management when coping with disruptive behavior during classroom teaching? Methodology: Since the study in this thesis is a part of the larger research project, I was required to apply a qualitative research methodology with interview as a research method. I conducted interviews with 3 teachers in two different American middle schools, where the interviews lasted for 20-35 minutes. I was provided with an interview guide from the larger project with the opportunity of adding a few questions of my own. Results: The findings of this study suggest that emotional resilience may be important for the teachers to become better at coping with stressful situations. In the face of adversity, it can be indicated that the teachers in the study may see the importance of resilience in different ways through having various protective factors they consider important. These factors may give better possibilities to skillfully cope with stressful situations and disruptive behavior in the classroom context, along with the complexity that comes with teaching. The importance of resilience among teachers may also be applicable to explore the different protective and risk factors teachers are dealing with in their work situation