STUDENT-TEACHER EXPERIENCE WITH DISRUPTIVE BEHAVIOR IN THE ALBANIAN SCHOOLS, 7th TO 9th GRADE

Abstract

The emblem of a well organized classroom where the teaching process smoothly goes through quiet transitions without encountering disruption seems to have dimmed in teachers’ memories over the past years. 7th to 9th grade students are spending more and more off task time which consequently leads to behavior troubles not easily managed by the teachers, sometimes even deviating to unpleasant situations inside the classroom environment. This research paper aims at focusing on student-teachers’ experiences in managing disruptive behaviors caused by the pupils in the classroom. Observations have been carried out in different classes, 7th to 9th grade, considered to be the most troublesome ones. There have been identified a variety of problematic outbursts of disruption corresponding to this students’ age such as: lack of attention during the lesson, bullying versus student-teachers and their classmates often reflected in the vocabulary used during communicating, lack of respect towards the student-teachers often generating from the students’ pre teenage years,student teachers’ difficulty in organizing the lesson as a result of not being fully aware of the students’ learning styles and their personalities, etc. Beyond a mere identification of such difficulties of the student-teachers, suggestions need to be made in order to help this novice category teachers in their early teaching experience overcome the difficulties. Providing more weeks of teaching practice to the student teachers, establishing a closer relationship to their mentors, organizing mini round tables among students-teachers in order to discuss and negotiate solutions to problems they encounter during the teaching process, offering more classroom management information at university courses, etc. could be effective suggestions in order to reduce the problems student teachers encounter during their early teaching experience. Key words: student teachers, disruption, behavior, age, management.