Change Disruptive Behavior by Changing Teaching: Improve Class Management by Adding a Variety of Teaching Strategies

Abstract

An important issue in the Albanian schools is the disruptive behaviour and the impact that teaching can have on it. This empirical study explores the relationship between interactive teaching in pairs and the pupils’ disruptive behaviour. It basically aims to find out if interactive teaching in pairs is accompanied by a greater or smaller number of disruptive behaviour occurrences than direct teaching. The participants are the pupils of a third grade class of the “Naim Frashëri” school in Elbasan, Albania. The school and the class where the study was conducted were chosen by randomisation. The study consisted in measuring a disruptive behaviour during direct teaching, performing an intervention, and then measuring the behaviour during interactive teaching in pairs. The data on the disruptive behaviour were collected through direct observation and were analysed using SPSS. The results of the data analysis showed that interactive teaching in pairs (mean difference 2.26, sig .000; two-tailed) is accompanied by less occurrences of disruptive behaviour than direct teaching. To have less disruptive behaviour teachers should change the teaching - they should use a variety of teaching strategies to involve all pupils and organise the class time in intervals of different activities to help pupils stay focused on the tasks.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n19p449