ABSTRACT
A survey of what teachers described as disruptive behaviour was also conducted in two London secondary schools by Lawrence, Steed and Young (1983). When these teachers talked about acts of disruption they meant rowdyness, abuse, bad language, talking and refusing to accept the teacher’s authority. In these schools disruptive behaviour did not take the form of violence and aggression against teachers. This extreme type of disruption is reported in other investigations, however, and these reports suggest that violent and aggressive behaviour makes demands on teachers which range from minor infractions to incidents that stretch their coping methods to their limits-and sometimes beyond them.
