Disruptive behaviours and classroom management strategies of teachers at a secondary school in Serian / Wilson Seling Jalong

The purpose of this study was to study classroom disruptive behaviours amongst students in a Secondary School in Serian. The study used questionnaires and interview as instruments to collect data from respondents. Respondents were 84 teachers and 325 secondary school students. Two sets of questionnaires were used, one for teacher respondents and another for student respondents. Teachers’ questionnaire has eighteen items on disruptive behaviour in Section A, and another eighteen for classroom management strategies in Section B. Students’ questionnaire only consisted of eighteen items on disruptive behaviour they commonly exhibited in the classroom. Group interview was also conducted to obtain additional information from five teachers on students’ disruptive behaviour and how teachers could possibly address the problem. This study provided teachers some important information on the common types and the most dominant form of disruptive classroom behaviours exhibited by students in the classroom and how teachers deal with the problem. The study indicated that the most dominant form of disruptive behaviour in the classroom from teachers’ perspectives was sleeping during the lesson while from students’ perspectives the most dominant was packing up before the bell rang. Both behaviours were from disrespecting the teacher category. The findings indicated that disruptive behaviour was high and needed attention from the school administration. This study found that there was a strong relationship between disrespecting form of disruptive behaviours and classroom management strategies. This study also provided some useful suggestions and recommendations to teachers on how to go with future studies in order to obtain more reliable data such as by employing voice recording device in the classroom, enlarging the sample size and including students themselves as respondents of the study.