Student misbehaving in school is a common phenomenon.

It Teachers find it difficult to

organize classrooms where students misbehave. The reasons behind the misbehaviour of
students are emphasized in the report by accumulating research literature and then by
conducting a couple of interviews. This report states some significant reasons from
literature and people coming from a different genre for misbehaviour of students.
The behaviour of a student is a major concern for teachers across the globe (Ball, Maguire,
& Braun, 2012, p. 98). There is an increase in anxiety in society about the conduct of
learners in educational institutes, in countries like Australia (Ball et al., 2012, Critcher, 2003).
The inefficiency of teachers to administer the classroom effectively results in the
undesirable behaviour of students like them being inactive in class, opposing the teachers
and in few cases violence in school (Angus et al., 2009; Lewis et al., 2005). This type of
student behaviour in school is associated with isolation and absence (Soodak, 2003; Zyngier,
2007).
Moreover, teachers often complain about the misbehaviour of students in the class. Some
of the most repeated complaints are students coming late to class or leaving the class early,
keeping mobile phones on during the class, talking amongst themselves, reading news and
so forth. On the contrary students’ complaint about teachers those are unethical, critical,
inexperienced, unaware and uninformed (Patron & Bisping, 2008).
Appleby (1990) conducted a survey of students and teacher; what they find annoying about
each other. It was noted that when students act bored, uninterested and behave in an
inappropriate manner it annoyed the teachers. On the contrary, students are annoyed with
teachers whom they find rude and with teachers having inadequate communication skills.
This was supported by a study conducted by Boice (1996) that students and teacher
behaving in an inappropriate manner is common. Boice (1996) further added that students
misbehave due to the exposure of teachers’ inability to engage students in class along-with
proficiency in the subject, speedy lectures and unapproachable to students are the main
causes.
Lin & Yi (2014), states that insufficient sleep caused by physiological and societal factors
affect student behaviour in school. Lin & Yi assert that improper sleep hinders the
academics of students in addition to unacceptable behaviour in adolescence. This was
affirmed by Robert et al. (2009), in the survey conducted on students aged 11-17 years that
slept less than six hours during weekends or weeknights, they were more likely to consume
drugs and involved in abusive behaviour.
Sullivan, Johnson, Owens, and Conway (2014), imply that classrooms must be regarded as
an eco-system by teachers; eco-system that comprises of the interaction amongst the
teacher qualities, class atmosphere, syllabus that includes assets and method of instruction
along-with a large number of learners factors in evaluating particular fruitful or unfruitful
behaviour and the replies of teacher. The ecology model tries to explain that behaviour of a
student is dependent on multiple factors thus accountability for conduct must not be put
entirely on the students. These factors involve school, socioeconomic, home, religion,
culture, race and so on. Thus, this model could be used to develop a space that engages
students which is fruitful for students with respect to decline in misbehaviour in school
(Sullivan et al., 2014).
The interviews were commenced professionally in an environment where the interviewees
were comfortable. Out of six interviews, three interviews were conducted in a cafe, two in a
park and one in the library study room. All the interviews were recorded on a recording
device to keep a precise track of the interview. Before the start of each interview, the
interviewees’ were given the consent form to read and sign it. The names of the candidates
are not revealed. However relevant information is provided to get a glimpse of their
background in the report. Interview with four female candidates and two male candidates
was conducted. The age of the interviewees’ ranged between 22 to 41. The sampling, in this
case, can be criticized as out of six interviewees only one happens to be born and brought
up in Australia, who has been into the Australian school as a student.

Male 1 (age 25): M1 Pre-service teacher (Born and brought up in Australia)

Male 2 (age 33): M2 Taxi Driver and a father of two children (Migrated from India to
Australia in 2009)
Female 1 (age 27): F1 Student of Social Work and process worker (International Student
from India)
Female 2(age 35): F2 Tutor at college (Migrated to Australia from India in 2007)
Female 3(age 40): F3 Teacher at McDonald High School (Migrated to Australia from Fiji in
2000)
Female 4(age 23): F4 Student of Biomedical Engineering (International Student from India)

The data collected was then thematically assessed and analysed. The responses from all the
interviews were first heard again and sorted in a tabular form. The themes were set up by
the most frequent answers received during the interviews. The common themes that were
found in the interview for children to misbehave in schools are peer pressure, child’s
upbringing, attention seeking and boredom.
All the interviewees gave two to three reasons for the misbehavior of children at school. The
common reason mentioned by four interviewees was child’s upbringing. M2 in his interview
said, “the personality of a child is the result of the values that parents teach their child, and
the environment at home when parents cannot give proper attention to the child or quarrel
amongst themselves in front of children, the children tends to misbehave in their daily life”.
M1 mentioned, “behaviour of a child depends on his upbringing.” F4 reported, “personally I
feel I behaved well in school because my parents did not tolerate my misbehavior. So yes,
the upbringing of the child is a key factor for the behavior of child in school”. F3 maintains,
“behavior of children depends on the parenting and nature how they are brought up
because respect starts at home and the way how they are thought to respect elders, and
that is what reflected in school.” The statements of the interviewees gave three dimensions
as to how child upbringing affects their behavior; a) the relation of parents with each other,
b) importance of behavior for parents and c) children respect towards elders.
The next factor that was reported by three of the interviewees was peer pressure. M2
states, “my son is well behaved, but when my son is with children one or two years older
than him, he generally misbehaves to get along with them.” F4 states, that “at times when
the entire class misbehaved, I use to join in. Other than that I got along well in school”. F3
reports, ”the other factor could be peer pressure because they wanted to look cool I guess
in front of other kids.” From the interviews two subthemes can be drawn; a) not to be left
isolated and b) to establish identity.
Attention seeking was linked up with different factors by the interviewees and stated as a
reason for misbehaviour in school. F3 links attention seeking with peer pressure. M2 said,
”in a family for the proper upbringing of children, parents need to give them time. If
children feel they are not given the attention, they misbehave to grab attention”. F2 states,
”children misbehave to get recognized in class and get along with their peers.”

Students getting bored in class is another reason for misbehavior in class. F1 said, ”I found
Maths difficult and could not get along with the course, so was bored in that a lot.” F2
mentioned, “at times topics were very interesting in school, but teachers were really very
boring, who made the topics boring.” F4 said, ”sometimes you are just not in the mood to
study because of disengaging teachers, and you get bored in their classes.” Subthemes that
can be drawn are a) difficulty in the subject and b) disengaging teachers.

Parenting is a key factor that influences the behavior of children. Children learn to socialize
with parents; this implies that having a positive relation between parents and children
results in better social-emotional skills in children (Sheridan et al., 2010). In the interviews it
was mentioned that student misbehaved because of parenting, peer pressure, attention
seeking and students getting bored. However social and biological factors like low socio-
economic status, ethnicity, gender, student temperament, age and so forth were ignored.

The character of a person to some extent is based on their genetic structure which has a
direct influence on their attitude towards some factors (Rothbart & Posner, 2005, p. 102).
This defines why every student acts and react differently to the same situation also explains
the way they manage their responses are different from each other (Rothbart & Posner,
2005). Temperament is most commonly referred as an inherited disposition led to the belief
that it is possible to predict (to some extent) a child's nature at a young age (Grist &
McCord, 2010) which will help to stabilize the temperament in teenage (Rothbart and
Posner, 2005). In support of their claim, Caspi and Silva (1995) classified temperament into
few groups like, shy, self-restrained, self-assured, realistic and under-controlled. Usually,
students with low self-esteem or low self-control, anger management issues avoid active
communication with their teachers (Hamre & Pianta, 2001; Ladd et al., 1999). Like Silva et
al. (2011) presented most of the "undercontrolled" students suffer from anxiety, depression
and inferiority complex which led to a negative influence on student-teacher relation
whereas the resilient student is having more relationship with their teachers. Rudasill et al.
(2010) pointed the dangerous side of socially withdrawn teenagers because they are already
suffering from low self-esteem and anger issues with negligible constructive communication
with their teacher are more prone to act irresponsible and put themselves and others at
danger. Thus, it becomes clear that there are factors other than the ones mentioned above
that play a grave role in student misbehavior.
It is widely discussed and accepted that education of young children is crucial and to provide
better education it is essential for a teacher to develop a well-connected relation with
students and create an engaging teaching-learning environment (Roorda et al., 2011). They
emphasized that if a student has less support from a teacher in their primary school, it is
highly possible that if the student receives more help from the teacher in high school, they
perform better (Midgley et al., 1989). Likewise, if any student received good help from
primary teach receive less help from the secondary gradually lost interest in the study. The
students with a positive attitude and well interaction with their teachers continue to do well
both academically, mentally and in behavior perspective (Murray & Zvoch, 2011).

There are ample of reasons for students to misbehave in class. It becomes important to
identify the reason for the misbehavior of students in class and intervene accordingly, to
develop a positive student-teacher relationship to have a positive learning environment.

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