Best Practice or Most Practiced? Pre-service Teachers’ Beliefs about Effective Behaviour Management Strategies and Reported Self-efficacy

Abstract

Managing student behaviour remains one of the most daunting aspects of teaching for educators and this is particularly so when children with disabilities are included in the regular classroom. Self-efficacy has been identified as having a significant impact on a teacher’s behaviour, and pre-service training can play an important role in preparing teachers to be effective classroom managers. The purpose of this study was to identify if pre-service teachers in an Australian university held high or low self-efficacy beliefs and whether the type of strategies they identified as most effective correlated with those highlighted in the research as best practice. In addition, pre-service teachers were surveyed before and after their practicum in order to determine if actual classroom experience impacted on their self-efficacy and their knowledge of behaviour management strategies. Findings indicated that self-efficacy beliefs among this cohort of pre-service teachers were generally high and were even higher after the practicum. There were concerns, however, that the range of behaviour management strategies identified by pre-service teachers was limited and did not incorporate strategies to deal with more challenging and persistent behaviour problems.