Teachers’ Attitudes Towards Disruptive Behaviour in Secondary Schools

Abstract

A survey was carried out of the opinions of a sample of management and pastoral care staff in six Scottish secondary schools with respect to the issue of disruptive behaviour in schools. Overall the respondents tended to see factors in the home as being the most important causes of disruptive behaviour but they saw school‐based strategies as the responses most likely to succeed in reducing it, particularly in‐service training in class management skills, greater pastoral care input and better liaison with outside agencies. A school‐by‐school analysis of staff attitudes showed that there were significant differences in the extent to which the staffs believed that the problem of disruptive behaviour is within the power of schools to control and some preliminary evidence was presented to suggest that this may affect the schools’ abilities to prevent and/or respond constructively to disruptive behaviour when it occurs.