School Teachers’ Perception of Problematic Parent Behaviour

Abstract

This paper is part of the Doctoral work of the first author completed under the supervision of the second. The study’s sample comprised 252 male and female primary and secondary level school teachers of private and public schools of Patna (Bihar). Though the purpose of the Doctoral work was to study the relationship between the ‘difficult parent behavior’ and the ‘school teachers’ stress,’ this presentation shall address the school teacher’s perception of the problematic parent behaviour. The difficult parent behavior was studied with the help of descriptions of behaviours likely to be shown by the problematic parents developed by the Hoge school of the Educational Faculty of Utrecht, Netherlands (2007). Analysis of the data included extracting factors from the school teachers’ ratings for the ‘frequency of occurrence’ of the behaviours displayed by the problematic parent. Additionally, qualitative data was collected from the school teachers with the help of three open ended questions. Factor analysis helped extract five factors of the problematic parent behavior that were named, Domineering Parent, concerned without Action Parent, Excessively Concerned Parent, Indifferent Parent and Imposing Parent. Further, thematic analysis of the descriptive content of the open-ended questions, helped arrive at six themes of difficult parent behaviours namely, Imposing/Blaming Parent, Concerned without Action Parent, Uncooperative Parent, Irresponsible Parent Rude/Disrespectful Parent and High Expectation Parent.