Abstract:
Bangladesh is going through major reforms in education. Prohibition of corporal punishment in educational institutions is one such reform to ensure that classrooms are safe for all students (Ministry of Education, 2010). However, despite government directives, schools across the country continue to use severe punitive strategies to respond to inappropriate student behaviour (Malak, Sharma & Deppeler, 2015; UNICEF, 2013). Hence, it remains unclear what motivates Bangladeshi teachers to use punitive approaches to address student behavioural issues. The purpose of this study was to systematically examine primary schoolteachers’ attitudes towards students who display inappropriate behaviour in regular classrooms. One thousand and ninety government primary schoolteachers were surveyed in three school sub-districts under one educational region of Bangladesh. The survey instrument comprised a demographic questionnaire consisting of 8 variables (i.e. age, gender, experience, training) and a scale called Teachers’ Attitudes towards Students’ Inappropriate Behaviour (TASIB) (Malak, Sharma & Deppeler, submitted) which consisted of 13 items in two distinct factors: aggressive behaviour and unproductive behaviour. Items of TASIB scale were designed to capture teachers’ attitudes in six-point Likert type scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (6). Data analysis involved both descriptive (i.e. Mean (M) and Standard Deviation (SD)) and inferential (Hierarchical Regression) statistics. The results revealed from the study indicate that teachers held slightly positive attitudes (M = 4.06, SD = 0.99) towards students exhibiting inappropriate behaviour in their classrooms. Results also showed that the teachers held higher level of positive attitudes toward students with unproductive behaviour (i.e. moving around the classroom, telling a lie, using culturally inappropriate language) than those with aggressive behaviour (i.e. physically and/or verbally aggressive towards their peers and teachers). The satisfaction level of training as one of the eight demographic variables was found to be a significant predictor (β=0.317,SE=2.498,p<0.05) of teachers’ attitudes towards students displaying inappropriate behaviour. This study has potential implications for policy makers and teacher educators in Bangladesh as well as teachers themselves in addressing inappropriate student behaviour in classrooms.