Teachers' and students' perceptions of the effective enforcement of school's discipline policies. (c2010)

Abstract

The study purpose is to evaluate the consistency between written and enforced discipline policies in a private school in Beirut, Lebanon, and to explore the middle school teachers ' and students perceptions of such enforcement. Based on the assumption that the early adolescents tend to have many discipline problems, the research questions were: How were written discipline policies enforced at school? And what were the perceptions of the Intermediate teachers and students of the effectiveness of such enforcement? As a non-participant observer, triangulation of data was achieved by using analysis of school's written codes, observations, students' and teachers' questionnaires and review of personnel’s discipline records. A purposive sample of 131 participants were surveyed; 112 students (53 boys, 59 girls) and 19 teachers (8 males, II females). The case study with mixed methodologies lasted for six weeks at the beginning of the school year 2009-20 10. During classroom observation, frequencies and percentages of the students' discipline violations was compared to the teachers' reactions, students' referrals and administrative reactions. Alignment between written codes and enforcement were found on codes of jewelry, smoking, absenteeism, homework, physical bullying and tardiness while cheating, hair style, uniform and verbal bullying had partial alignment. No alignment was found on codes of disruption, chewing gum, cell-phone, eating in class, forgetting materials, bad language, vandalism and emotional bullying. The male Intermediate students tended to violate rules more than females except for the policy against eating in class. The findings were that teachers slightly enforced discipline codes whereas administrators moderately enforced them. Many students got away with breaking rules due to shortage of reporting on their infractions in playground while in classes; teachers tend to report less frequently if they had management problems, their philosophy was not in harmony with that of the school and if the students had relatives of power positions in the school. Unfair enforcement resulted in altering the school’s philosophy from authoritarian to erratic. Some students' perceived that strict discipline enforcement was applied by teachers and the school needed no modification in the discipline policies whereas others believed that teachers were lenient and some changes are needed in the written codes. As for teachers, the majority believed that inconsistent enforcement was applied and the school was in need of minor changes in codes.