Investigating Teachers' Attitude and Beliefs about Classroom Management through Their Perceptions of the Quality of the School Life


Zenciroglu S., SADIK F.

CUKUROVA UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF EDUCATION JOURNAL, vol.47, no.1, pp.126-150, 2018 (ESCI) identifier

Abstract

This research investigating teachers' attitude and beliefs about classroom management through their perceptions of the quality of school life is a descriptive survey study. A total of 198 teachers (32 from primary schools, 98 from secondary schools and 68 from high schools) working in the Tercan District of Erzincan participated in the study. The data was collected through the "The Quality of School Life Scale (QSLS)" developed by Sari (2007) and "Attitudes and Beliefs on Classroom Control (ABCC) Inventory" developed by Martin, Yin and Baldwin (1998), adopted into Turkish by Ekici (2008). Besides descriptive statistics, the Mann Whitney U-Test and the Kruskal Wallis Test were used for the data analysis. At the end of the study, it was found that the teachers' perceptions about the quality of the school life range in the mid-level. The teachers' perceptions about "Status" and "School Administration" were found to be more positive while their perceptions about students were more negative. With regard to different study cycles, primary school and high school teachers' perceptions and, with regard to different subjects, social science teachers' perceptions about the quality of school life were found to be more positive. The variables of gender and years of experience did not make a significant difference in the teachers' perceptions about the quality of school life. The teachers' attitudes about instructional management were found to be interventionist, while attitudes about people and behavior management were found to be interactionist; with gender, years of experience, study cycles and subjects not causing significant differences in these behaviors. The perception of the quality of school life did not make a significant difference for their attitudes about instruction and behavior management while teachers were detected to be more interactionist towards people management at schools where the quality of life was perceived to be better.