Applying logical consequences to descreas students disruptive behavior n in Form Two students

Author
IPG Kampus Temenggong Ibrahim
email.penulis@gmail.com

Abstract
This case study aims to solve the problem of disruptive students who manifested attention seeking
attitude in the classroom. Participants were two Form Two students in a suburban secondary school.
Logical consequences has been introduced by Dreikurs Discpline Theory and the intervention was
implemented for 3 weeks. Data were collected using observation form and reflection sheet before and
after the intervention. Data analysis showed that logical consequences has successfully reduced the
frequency of participants displaying attention seeking attitude. It is thus recommended that the logical
consequences application in a long run so that teacher can prevent disruptive behavior from happening in
classroom as students realize there are always consequences for their action.

Keywords: classroom management, disruptive behaviour, Dreikurs theory

INTRODUCTION

Classroom management has always been a taxing task especially for novice teachers. Without a
conducive classroom environment, the process of teaching and learning could be jeopardized. (Emmer
and Stough 2001).

With an average number of students per class is 35 for 25 minutes or 50 minutes lesson, a novice teacher
nowadays are facing various challenges pertaining to students attitudes and behaviours. For example, I
am required to teach 5 Form 1 and Form 2 classes with mixed abilities and characteristic. Most of the
students have low proficiency level in English, therefore learning English could be a painful and
complicated experience for them. In order to face these challenges, teachers should always be aptly
equipped with classroom management skills to manage students behavior and reaction in the classroom
to provide conducive and non threatening learning environment. Teacher with effective classroom
management skills are capable in handling students emotion and behavior and help them to achieve
learning objective by ensuring they are able to participate actively in a safe learning environment.
(Cameron, 1998; Charles, 2005; Morrison, 2009). However, classroom management is one of the most
common problem facing by teachers as misbehaving students take up valuable learning time. For
instance, attention seeking can waste instructional time by persistently asking unnecessary questions and
would disrupt other peers if they didnt receive attention that they asked for. Sometimes, I wasted
instructional time and paid excessive attention to these two students up to a point I neglected the rest of
the students in the classroom . I felt frustrated with myself as I feel ineffective and biased towards other
students as explained as Witzel & Mercer ( 2003 ) Educators who have to deal with problematic
students often feel ineffective and inadequate and lead to frustration. Furthermore, a wide range of
misbehaviors occurs in class daily and teachers spent too much time on handling students misbehaviors
and it leads to teachers burnout (Bibou-Nakou, Stogiannidou, & Kiosseo- glou, 1999). Hence a cohesive
and thoughtfully constructed personal philosophy of classroom management can provide the strong
fooundation for teachers to make classroom management decision and respond to students misbehavior
in instant.

Literature Review

1. Background of Dreikurs Model

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 Logical consequences has been articulated by Rudolf Dreikur (1968) and this model is derived
from the work of Alfred Adler. It implies that misbehavior happens as a result of individuals
purposes or goals and it is based upon premise that most of students behavior is a result of the
need of belonging and feeling inadaqueate as they try to find their place in the social structure in
classroom. .Additionally, a students behavior is a product of students appraisal and perception of
the situation. Unfortunately, the appraisal is often biased and inaccurate ; but to students this
perception are real and therefore not questioned. The underlying assumptions of this model is
that all students crave and need for social recognition. When they need is not fulfilled , students
will portray a hierarchy of misbehavior known as mistaken goals (Dreikurs, Grunwald, and
Pepper 1998,). Hence is imperative for teacher to understand the reasons behind the behavior to
create effective classroom management plan. In order to to deal with the students action,
teachers need to identify the mistaken goals students are trying to achieve namely seeking
attention, power seeking, revenge seeking and displays of inadequacy. The most common goal
for the children is to seek attention where they mistakenly equated self worth with attention paid to
them by the teacher. Although all children require attention, it becomes problem when students
feels that being ignored is intolerable and willing to receive any pain, punishment and humiliation
to get attention. When students no longer satisfied with small amount of attention, they become
nuisance and class clown and constantly ask a lot of questions, not for information but for
attention. From attention seeking students point of view, they want a relationship with the teacher
hence, teacher can direct this appropriate behavior and design a classroom management plan so
that they receive attention in an appropriate manner ( Albert, 1996). The next mistaken goals is
power seeking where students try to control the teacher and situation and lead to power struggle
between both side. The power seeking students wants to be the boss and will contradict, lie and
questions teacher authority and ability. Although the teacher may feel physically or professionally
threaten, it is crucial for teacher not to involve in the power struggle. However, teacher might
redirect the behavior and use the leadership, creative thinking and assertiveness skills to create
beneficial classroom management plan. For revenge seeking students, they usually feel
mistreated by teacher and peers and result in taking out their revenge to others as they are
experience series of discouragement. They may manifest revenge by destroying teachers
belonging, publicly defying the teacher and tearing pages from book. They may even feel deeply
discouraged up to a point they believe by hurting others is the only way to find a place in a social
atmosphere of classroom. Revenge seeking students also intentionally violates rules that
teacher hold on dearly in order to getting back to the teacher. Hence, eventhough teacher might
feel he/she is personally attacked, it is advisable for teacher not to retaliate or emotionally upset.
Failure avoiding students usually struggle to achieve self worth and detach themselves from the
classroom. They also expect only failure and defeat in academic achievement and develop self
defense mechanism. They may rarely disrupt class yet the students sleep or daydream in the
lesson. Unfortunately, the discouragement is contagious, and soon,the teacher feels helpless to
help students and resulting in further students withdrawal from the class.

2. Logical consequences to descrease disruptive behavior in classroom.

Dreikur disapprove the use of punishment to reduce students disruption in class because he thought
students associate the punishment with the punisher not of their own action. Punishment is defined as any
change that occur after a behavior that reduces the likehood of that behavior will occur again. Punishment
might not work in reducing students disruption because any behavioral change are temprorary and the
punishment does not offer any information about more appropriate or desired behaviors (Skinner,1974).
Students also prefer lying in order to avoid themselves getting caught by the teachers. In addition,
ineffective punishment leads to students lack ofr motivation and self esteem as they think they cant do
anything right. By using punishment to solve problems, students may use violent to solve problems or
conflict. In contrast, by using consequences to discipline student, it allows students to learn and grow as
students learn from their experience. Students must also learn to expect natural and logical consequences
of their behavioral choices as all people need feedback of their appropriate and inappropriate behavior
(Marzano, Marzano, & Pickering, 2003) . Natural consequences deals with the result of students behavior
or action. An example of natural consequence is when a student climbed a tree during recess, he fell
down and injured his knees. Logical consequences are those teacher deems appropriate for instance,

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having five minutes timeout from his/her group if a student talks to his/her friends while teacher are talking
at the front. (Eby, Herrell, & Jordan, 2005)

Ideally, consequences must have logical and clear connection to the behavior or offense and should be
aligned with the severity of the behavior. All students must see a correlation between their choices and
the outcomes. Thus, students will be better able to choose appropriate behaviors in the future (Wong &
Wong, 1998) , It is advisable for teacher to discus the consequences with the students in order to assist
students to draw connection between his/her choice and the natural process of cause and effect.
Thereofore, logical consequences is an effective tool to reduce students disruptive behavior because it
teach students important life lesson ; Each time a student breaks a rule, a logical consequence will deter
him/her from doing the same mistakes next time. Logical consequences also avoid power struggle
between the student if they claim they didnt know the rules. By warning them ahead of them, he/she
needs to make decision about his behavior. Furthermore, logical consequences when they are fairly
immediate as the student will be able to associate the consequence with the misbehavior.

The case I had encountered in class of 2 Harmoni was there were three students who are
attention seeker. They talked a lot and asked a lot of unnecessary questions; not for information
but merely to get me to pay attention to them. When I ignored the students, they would try to
disrupt their peers. I already established a classroom rules, however, the classroom rules were
pre-determined by myself because of limited time. I took over this class one month before mid
term examination and feeling pressured to finish the syllabus on time. The element in the
classroom rules comprising of 1) Be responsible, 2) Be respectful 3) Be ready and they were not
discussed by the students and I. If students violated the classroom rules, I will write their names
on the whiteboard. If it happens thrice in a row, students name will be written in discipline card
and the card will be submitted to discpline teacher for disciplinary action that revolved around
corporal punishment. The weaknesses of classroom rule and its consequences is the students
could not see the relevance of the consequences and their behavior. Students perceive the
consequences as punishment and they feel like they are not included and involved in decision
making proccess. Furthermore, those designed consequences intended to only stop the
misbehavior not to prevent them. Students were barely able to have a chance to learn what
happens he/she wants to misbehave.Hence, it is very imperative to reassess and reevaluate my
classroom rules in order to establish logical consequences that appropriate to my students
The attention seeking students come from the broken family and crave for attention from adult ; in
the classroom setting, it would be the teacher.Surprisingly, the students who value adult attention
doesnt care if the attention is delivered in the form of positive reinforcement (praise) or negative
consequence ( reprimands). Furthermore,they feel the dire need to be socially accpeted by social
class and resulting in becoming class clown. The peer pressure also stimulate the natural
inclination to follow the herd and behave in a way that the students might not behave if she/he
was on his/her own.These students are also trying to win approval from their peers in order to
climb into social order.

According to Dreikurs Discipline model, logical consequences is a effective and powerful tool that offer
clear and logical choice of behavior and results. Logical consequence articulates that every act has a
consequence, and in order to guarantee more favorable results in future, we must behave well (Dreikurs,
1968, p. 62). Logical consequences help students to think they have a choice and accept the relationship
of their choices to what followed. Eventhough the logical consequences might be scaffolded by the
teacher, students must have a voice in determining what kind of logical consequences work best for them
to promote empowerment of the students

Therefore, this study aims to see behavioral change in attention seeking student by applying
logical consequences in classroom. The intervention was conducted to whole class as these logical
consequences were improvements from existing classroom rules but data were analyzed and gathered
based on the behavioral change of these three particular students.
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METHODOLOGY

The participants of this case study were three Form Two students in a poor urban secondary
school located in Pasir Gudang. There are approximately 3200 in this school. The students in this school
are streamed according to their end year examination results of the previous year in Malay Language and
History. The participants come from intermediate class and their English proficiency level is considerably
weak relatively to their Mid Year English Examination result. All of them come from middle income family
and 2 of them are male and 1 of them is Female. These three students portrayed attention seeking
behavior where they tend to become class clown and blurted out any answers even though they might be
incorrect loudly. They also love to ask a lot of questions and request special attention from the teacher.
The implementation of logical consequences in my classroom was conducted for two weeks in October
2016.The process began every time teacher conducted a lesson with the class of 2 Harmoni and teacher
had a meeting with the students of 2 Harmoni to reassess and discuss about which classroom rules and
consequences applicable to them. Students are divided into groups and they were involved in deciding
what the reasonable consequences should be if they violated the classroom rules. Students were also
briefed about why consequences are necessary and important as the consequences are not the displays
of teacher power but ways to maintaining productive and safe environment in the classroom. Students
involvement in this decision making process will increase the likehood of they will be committed to
classroom rules and regulations. The logical consequences had been discussed by the students that are
aligning with classroom rules are stated in the picture table 1 below

Logical consequences
Wasting instructional time by asking unnecessary Step 1 : Ignore the students
questions Step 2: Make up the wasted time during recess.

Talking during instructions 1.5 minutes time out and fill in the reflection sheet.
& Disrespectful 2. During recess, teacher will discuss with students
what is her/his improvement plan
Incomplete work Finish up during reccess

Abuse it, Lose it Temporary lose the privileges , item or equipment.

( Destroy the classroom instrument such as traffic
light cards, flash cards, reward sheet)

After that, during classroom, teacher will record the frequencies of misbehavior for students A, B
and C. If students violated the classroom rules, they need to face the logical consequences that had been
set up previously. If the students undergo time out, he/she needs to fill up the reflection sheet. After a
student completes the reflection sheet, then, he/she is allowed to join back his/her group. During recess,
teacher will discuss with students what is his/her improvement plan to encourage conducive learning
environment.
The data were collected through teachers observation and students reflection sheet

FINDINGS

After three weeks of intervention, participants showed significant improvement......

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Table 1
Time Sampling

Behaviours Frequency

DISCUSSION AND REFLECTION

The findings showed that........................................................

CONCLUSION

To sum
up, ............................................................................................................................... ..................................
........................................................................................................................................................................
.................................

REFERENCE

Bibou-Nakou, I., Stogiannidou, A., & Kiosseoglou, G. (1999). The relation between teacher burnout and
teachers attributions and practices regarding school behavioral problems. School Psychology
International, 20, 209-217.

Dreikurs, R., B. B. Grunwald, and F. C. Pepper. 1998. Maintaining san-

ity in the classroom: Classroom management techniques. 2nd ed. Wash- ington, DC: Taylor and Francis

Marzano, R J , Marzano, J S , & Pickering, D J (2003) Classroom management that works: Research-
based strategies for every teacher. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum
Development

.
Albert,L. 1995 Discipline:Is it a dirty word?Leanttng,24, 43-46.

Skinner, B. F. (1974). About Behaviorism. New York: Knopf.

Eby, J W , Herrell, A L , & Jordan, M L (2005) Teaching in K12 schools: A re ective action
approach (4th ed ) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall

Wong, H K , & Wong, R T (1998) How to be an effective teacher: The rst days of school. Mountain
View, CA: Harry K Wong Publications
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