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Disruptive behavior in the classroom in an urban, restructured middle school: Does systemic thinking help?
Abstract
Many restructured public middle schools assign their classroom teachers to interdisciplinary teams (math, English, etc.) with common planning time scheduled weekly. Students are then assigned to one team of teachers, and this team and their students stay together throughout the school year. As a result, teachers and students learn more about each other, and teachers can increase their emphasis on the social, emotional and physical needs of their students. One goal of this increased emphasis is a reduction in disruptive behaviors in the classrooms. However, many teachers from these teams have reported little or no reduction in these disruptive behaviors. This study framed middle-school restructuring as a beginning systemic intervention and hypothesized the following: If teachers learned about systemic ideas that underlie restructuring and applied systemic interventions in the classroom, the disruptive behaviors would decrease. A team of four public middle school teachers were introduced to systemic thinking and interventions during weekly meetings for ten consecutive weeks. They viewed classroom behavior from a systemic perspective and practiced systemic interventions in the classroom. They kept track of their efforts each week and reported any changes that occurred. Some of the students from the team talked about their classroom behavior as well as other events in their lives which they believed influenced their behavior in the classroom. The results show that one member of the team reported a significant decrease in disruptive behaviors and one reported some decrease. Two members who rarely experienced disruptive behaviors in their classrooms reported an increase in their confidence as a result of learning a theoretical basis for their past and present successes. The team as a whole reported feeling more cohesive and productive, and, as a result, more successful in accomplishing their goals. Almost all the student participants reported wanting their classroom teacher to know about the events in their lives outside of school. The students also reported that much of their disruptive classroom behaviors increased in amount and intensity if they could get no help or understanding with their out-of-school problems.
Subject Area
School counseling|Educational psychology
Recommended Citation
Wright, John Edward, "Disruptive behavior in the classroom in an urban, restructured middle school: Does systemic thinking help?" (1994). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9420699.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9420699