Disengaged Students in the Classroom

The classroom setting comprises students from different backgrounds and with different behaviors. Teachers are faced with need to manage student behaviors in the classroom environment to help enhance their effectiveness in achieving the desired learning outcomes. The management of student behavior in the classroom can sometimes be a complex process because of the differences in students’ behaviors. In some cases, classrooms have disengaged students whose attitudes and behaviors can affect the learning process and outcomes of other students as well. Disengaged students exhibit various kinds of behaviors such as evading, dissembling, or rejecting. These behaviors hinder the students’ abilities to master the learning content and achieve the desired learning outcomes and goals.

According to Sun & Shek (2012), disengaged students can be a source of stress to teachers since they tend to engage in problematic behaviors that disrupt the classroom. Some of these problematic/disruptive behaviors include clowning, disruptive talking, verbal insults, hostility, disrupting teaching activities, defiance, harassing classmates, and chronic avoidance to participate in learning activities. As a teacher, some of the behaviors I have observed in my classes include laziness, distraction of electronic devices, and students working below their ability. I have also observed that group work can also be a distraction to disengaged students in my classes.

The management of students’ behaviors in the classroom requires differentiating these behaviors and identifying suitable strategies for addressing/overcoming disruptive behaviors. Differentiating the problematic behaviors of disengaged students can sometimes be a relatively difficult process because these students can challenge teachers without being disruptive. The complexity associated with this process is also attributable to the likelihood of these students to be unmotivated in some subjects and motivated in others. One of the strategies utilize to differentiate behaviors of disengaged students from the rest is evaluating their level of motivation across all subjects. While these students can be quiet in the class, they are inattentive and demotivated. Therefore, their concentration in the classroom helps to determine their level of motivation and engagement in learning activities.

Secondly, the behaviors of these students can be differentiated through examining what they do when the teacher is teaching. Good students tend to be attentive and engage in positive behaviors throughout the lesson. However, disengaged students tend to interrupt others and the teacher and are noisy and restless during class sessions. These tendencies help in differentiating the behaviors of disengaged students from the rest. The other strategy employed in differentiating these behaviors is by examining interactions between students. In most cases, disengaged students interfere with the learning of others in the classroom or seek to harm/hurt their classmates.

There are various strategies that teachers can employ to deal with or overcome problematic behaviors from disengaged students. The first strategy for overcoming these behaviors is seeking to understand their root causes and addressing them. A teacher is unable to overcome problematic behaviors in the classroom without understanding their reasons (Kuhlenschmidt & Layne, n.d.). Secondly, these behaviors can be overcome through defining expectations at the outset of the lesson. Expectations help in guiding students’ behaviors and avoiding incivilities in the classroom through enabling them to understand what’s required of them. Third, encouraging active learning in the classroom helps to guide student behavior through engaging them in learning activities that are not only attractive, but also utilizes their energy towards achieving learning goals and outcomes.