Chinese teachers' attributions and coping strategies for student classroom misbehaviour

Abstract

In this study, we investigated Chinese teachers' attributions and coping strategies for classroom misbehaviour across grade levels. A total of 244 teachers (Grades 1–12) from the Chinese mainland participated in this survey. Results indicated that Chinese teachers first attributed misbehaviour to student characteristics, such as being “lazy, not making enough effort”, and second to “bad learning habits”. Looking across grade levels, elementary teachers first blamed student learning habits while secondary teachers blamed student effort. With regard to coping strategies, inconsistencies were found across grade levels and between teachers' perceptions and actions. The majority of sampled elementary teachers tended to choose “praising good students” as the most effective and often-used strategy, while secondary teachers believed in “talking after class”. In fact, “talking after class” was viewed to be more effective as grade level increased. However, teachers reported that they did not actually use the strategy of “talking after class” very often when coping with misbehaviours.

Keywords:

• Chinese teachers
• classroom misbehaviour
• coping strategies
• teacher attributions