Abstract:

This research was performed to identify teacher reactions towards undesirable behaviors of primary students based on students’ perceptions. The research was conducted with the case study method of qualitative research methods. In the research, 51 girls and 54 boys, determined through the criterion sampling method, participated as 4th-grade elementary school students. Additionally, 15 classroom teachers have been included in the research. The observations and opinions of the participants were determined through an open-ended survey form prepared by the researchers. In the research conducted on a voluntary basis, the data were analyzed by descriptive analysis methods. Undesirable behaviors frequently observed in the classroom were identified with a literature review. The identified behaviors were chosen as 4 types of behavior. Students were asked for their opinions of teacher reactions towards those behaviors, and their opinions were themed as being pedagogical or non-pedagogical. Furthermore, non-pedagogical reactions were grouped into subthemes of verbal violence, non-verbal violence, exposure, deprivation, and physical violence and then, teacher reactions towards the undesirable behaviors and their levels of severity were determined. In addition, teacher opinions have also been consulted regarding the reactions provided by the teachers. Consequently, almost all of the teachers were found to exhibit non-pedagogical reactions toward undesirable student behaviors. The most frequent type of non-pedagogical reaction was found to be verbal violence whereas the least frequent type was physical violence. The teacher reactions were found to be moderate in severity. It was therefore concluded that the teachers did not exhibit pedagogical teacher reactions toward undesirable student behaviors and had little awareness of the matter in question. According to the evaluation results concerning teacher opinions, the views of teachers, especially regarding verbal violence, have shown parallelism with student opinions. Thus, it was recommended to improve teachers’ awareness of their pedagogical behaviors.

Keywords: