Need Help With Session Long Assignment

Title

Students’ Behaviors and Attitudes

SLP1: Executive Summary

There have been increasing numbers of reported cases in which students have behaved aggressively towards their colleagues, and the data concerning unruly student behaviors has also been on the rise (Coll et al., 2018). The unruly student behavior has to be fixed because it is among the biggest factors that contribute to school drop outs and poor performance. Students have been reporting to the administration that they have been bullied by their colleagues, dispossessed of their properties, beaten or abused. Although these behaviors can be linked to anomalous adolescent conduct, there are also a number of possibilities that can induce aggressive behaviors in K-12 students. They include: negative attitude towards education, drug abuse, bad influence from adults, poor parental upbringing, or negative early life experiences (Dariotis et al., 2016). Therefore, it is necessary to introduce programs and lessons that can solve the issue of student misconduct and negative attitude towards education so as to improve the quality of education in K-12 schools.

In order to solve the issue of unruly student behavior and negative attitude towards education, guidance and counseling programs will be introduced in schools. Guidance and counseling will be necessary for all students, but those who exhibit unruly behaviors will undergo more counseling sessions that the rest of the students. The program is aimed at reducing stress, depression, and anxiety, which are the biggest contributing factors to student unruly and antisocial behaviors (Coll et al., 2018). Other mental health programs such as yoga will be introduced in order to improve the mental and emotional health of the students, which will boost their motivation so that they will like school and appreciate education. A research and an experimental program will have to be done in a few classes to evaluate the effectiveness of the programs before their full implementation. Main stakeholders in the education sector will also be consulted so as to incorporate their views.

SLP 2: Context of Scope of Problem

Students’ unruly behaviors are some of the leading causes of poor academic performance and high dropout rates in the United States and other developed countries. As such, concerns have been raised by policymakers and researchers on the need to reduce students’ deviant behaviors in school (Kremer et al. 2016). Students exhibit deviant behaviors in two major ways: externalization and externalization of unruly behaviors. Externalizing behaviors are characterized by defiance to school rules, disruptiveness, impulsivity, and antisocial behaviors. In some cases, externalizing behaviors may take the form of the student being overactive (Kremer et al. 2016). On the other hand, internalizing behaviors include withdrawal, dysphoria, as well as anxiety. A significant number of students who exhibit high levels of deviant behaviors suffer from deficient levels of capabilities in reading, mathematics, and written language (Kremer et al. 2016). Deviant behaviors are caused by many factors, which encourage the student to engage in universally unacceptable activities. For instance parents may lack the necessary parental skills that are required to instill discipline on their children. When some parents are faced extremely assertive and goal-oriented child, those who lack firmness and sufficient level of discipline strategies may oscillate between yielding to a child’s unreasonable demands and demanding compliance.

Peers and community members play a major role in encouraging students’ deviant behaviors. For instance, students who associate with large networks of antisocial friends, neighbors and acquaintances are most likely to develop deviant behaviors over time. Approximately half of the American teenage population do not have enough productive activities to participate in after school. As a consequence, they run the risk of falling prey to gang groups, drugs, violence, sex, and other activities that have the potential to limit their intellectual and professional development during adulthood (Pauwels & Svensson, 2015). These problems are further compounded by the paucity in policies that encourage students to engage in productive activities after schooling hours. Examples of these activities may include participation in church, community services, and minimized interactions with their deviant peers and friends. Although students’ antisocial behaviors are commonly manifested in school in terms of low performance, bullying, and open defiance to instructions, determinants of these behaviors in schooling environments have attracted less research attention (Pauwels & Svensson, 2015). However, some of the most widely mentioned causes of deviant behavior in learning environments are related to setting events, which are sequence of events that may take place within the same setting and closely precede the deviant behavior. These tendencies include noisemaking in class, and school ground events.

Deviant behaviors in school have far-reaching consequences that go beyond low academic achievements in school to include depression, anxiety, and bullying. Lack of sufficient policies to address student delinquency can increase cases of bullying in school (Shetgiri, 2013). Bullying includes direct and indirect forms of aggression. Physical and verbal aggressions are direct forms of bullying, which are comprised of open expression of authority and dominance over the victim. Physical aggression may take the form of infliction of physical harm on the victims, such as hitting, pushing, chocking, and dispossessing victims of their property (Shetgiri, 2013). On the other hand, verbal bullying may include verbal harassment and intimidation in terms of name calling, sending threat messages, and hurling insults to the victims. When these deviant behaviors are not addressed, students’ level of depression may increase, thereby resulting in high rates of school dropouts and low academic performance. The No Child Left Behind policy was passed and implemented with the purpose of promoting access to educational cross different student groups, ranging from high- to low-income learners. However, deviant behaviors are some of the factors that deter the full realization of the benefits of these policies since student deviant behaviors increase dropout rates. In light of the above, American schools should develop policies, procedures and guidelines that are effective in reducing unruly behavior of students.

SLP 3- Policy Alternatives

Alternative 1: Introducing Honor Codes and Classroom Justice

Introducing honor code and classroom justice systems has the potential to reduce deviant behavior in schools. Honor codes are sets of rules and regulations through which students are governed (Kura, Shamsudin & Chauhan, 2014). Numerous studies have suggested that the perception of formal control reduces students’ predispositions to engage ion deviant behaviors. In the same way, classroom justice helps to reduce deviant and aggressive behaviors in school (Kura, Shamsudin & Chauhan, 2014). Classroom justice can be defined as the perception of fairness regarding the outcomes or processes that take place in the instructional contexts. In particular, increasing the perception of fairness in the manner in which disciplinary policies and procedures that are affected across all student groups, races, and socioeconomic status, helps to minimize deviant behavior

Alternative 2: Embracing Psychosocial models of Prevention

Policymakers should encourage schools to collaborate with parents to prevent and manage deviant behaviors. The psychosocial model is premised on the cluster theory, which places emphasis on preventing deviant behaviors in multiple contexts. According to this theory, deviant attitudes have a psychosocial origin, which is a product of the interaction of psychological, social, and cultural characteristics (Oetting, 2010). Furthermore, the theory asserts that adolescence is the crucial time in evolution and development of deviant behaviors, Therefore, policymakers should focus on youths. In addition, since deviant behaviors are outcomes of socialization, learning norms through social interactions, then the primary forces in students’ lives should be comprised of the family, the school, community members, and their peers (Oetting, 2010). This multidimensional and collaborative approach to prevention of deviant behavior can be effective.

Alternative 3: Moral Literacy and Emotional Learning

Students should undergo moral literacy programs in order to minimize deviant or aggressive behaviors in school. Moral literacy programs should incorporate emotional intelligence learning (Knowler, & Frederickson, 2013). For instance, policies should be enacted that requires all students to learn moral concepts such as sensitivity to ethics, ethical reasoning skills, and moral imagination. These programs should encourage emotional intelligence, which promote sensitivity to other people’s levels of emotions.

SLP 4: Recommendations

There is no one-size-fits-al approach to ending deviant and anti-social behavior of students in school. Therefore, each of these three aforementioned policy alternatives cannot be applied in isolation. In light of the above, policies that encourage moral literacy programs and initiatives should be accompanied by honor codes and psychological models of behavioral modification. After implementing these policy alternatives, school leaders, educators, and policymakers should collaborate with psychology professionals to understand different dimensions of human behavior. For instance, these three policies should be implemented using reinforcement in order to help in curbing undesired behavior among school children. Reinforcement can be defined as the strategy of providing a stimulus with the purpose of strengthening one’s positive response, which in turn deters the emergence of a undesirable behavior. There are different forms of reinforcement. That can be employed to reduce deviant behaviors. They include: intrinsic and extrinsic reinforcement. Intrinsic reinforcement promotes student’s behavior by ensuring that a behavior strengthens itself. On the other hand, extrinsic reinforcement occurs when a behavior is strengthened by external consequences.

Policies that seek to reduce deviant and antisocial student behavior should also focus on providing counseling programs. To this end, policymakers should push for the hiring of school counselors in order to boost students’ behaviors by utilizing some form of verbal reinforcement principles and concepts. Disruptive and deviant behaviors can continue if only mere verbal reinforcements are used by the professionals such as educators on the management of deviant behaviors. Therefore, the teacher should use a mixture of both reinforcements and punishment when reducing deviant behaviors in the American schools. Student deviant behaviors might be brought by the behavioral characteristics and inclinations of the teacher. For instance, when the teacher reminds the learner about his or her deficiencies, they may try to compensate such deficiencies by engaging in violent and aggressive behaviors. As such, educators should be careful with how they relate with learners.

References

Coll, K., Niles, S. G., Coll, K. F., Ruch, C. P., & Stewart, R. A. (2018). Education deans: challenges and stress. Journal of Organizational and Educational Leadership, 4(1), 2-16.

Dariotis, J. K., Cluxton-Keller, F., Mirabal-Beltran, R., Gould, L. F., Greenberg, M. T., & Mendelson, T. (2016). “The program affects me’cause it gives away stress”: urban students’ qualitative perspectives on stress and a school-based mindful yoga Intervention. Explore, 12(6), 443-450.

Knowler, C., & Frederickson, N. (2013). Effects of an emotional literacy intervention for

students identified with bullying behaviour. Educational psychology, 33(7), 862-883.

Kremer, K. P., Flower, A., Huang, J., & Vaughn, M. G. (2016). Behavior problems and

children's academic achievement: A test of growth-curve models with gender and racial

differences. Children and youth services review, 67, 95-104.

Kura, K. M., Shamsudin, F., & Chauhan, A. (2014). Effects of honor codes and classroom justice

on students’ deviant behavior. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 112, 77-86.

Oetting, E. R. (2010). Planning programs for prevention of deviant behavior: A psychosocial

model. Drugs & Society, 6(3-4), 313-344.

Pauwels, L. J., & Svensson, R. (2015). Schools and child antisocial behavior: in search for

mediator effects of school-level disadvantage. SAGE Open, 5(2), 2158244015592936.

Shetgiri, R. (2013). Bullying and victimization among children. Advances in pediatrics, 60(1),

33.