ABSTRACT

The chances are that you came up with a whole range of misbehaviours from minor irritations to physical attacks. Fortunately, physical violence against teachers is relatively rare, but low-level misbehaviour is present to a greater or lesser extent in almost all schools. Teachers have regularly to deal with 'pupils hindering others', 'lateness to lessons', 'talking out of turn', 'calculated idleness', 'work avoidance' and 'making unnecessary (non-verbal) noise' (DES 1989). These patterns of misbehaviour can be very irritating, even stressful, to teachers and they can also be a cause of underachievement. A classroom in which background noise and disruption is the norm is not a place that is conducive to study.