Competitive classes 'cause disruption'

Fighting pupils: Is too much competition to blame?

A culture of competition in schools may be to blame for rising incidence of disruption in the classroom, researchers say.

A study of high school pupils in the United States suggests levels of disruption are higher in classrooms where teachers encourage pupils to outperform their peers.

In contrast, teachers who put an emphasis on improving pupils' performance and learning from their mistakes are more likely to maintain discipline in class.

The research - published in the British Journal of Psychology - questions the effectiveness of encouraging competitiveness and suggest unruly behaviour should not be blamed on pupils.

Researchers questioned more than 380 14-year-old pupils to see whether they behaved poorly in class and to assess which teaching methods were used to motivate them.

Boys

They found boys and low-achieving pupils were more likely to report that they had played up in class.

But those pupils who felt they were in school to focus on learning and improving their achievement were much less likely to get involved in disruptive behaviour.

"Too often, the blame for high levels of disruption in classrooms is put on individual students or on teacher discipline that is too permissive," said Dr Avi Kaplan from Ben Gurion University in Israel.

"These findings suggest that we should also, perhaps primarily, pay attention to the contribution of educational practices at the classroom, school and even national levels to this phenomenon," said Dr Kaplan.