Browsing by Author "Räty, Cia"

Objectives. The goal of this thesis is to examine various positive methods in which a teacher can confront a challenging student in the classroom and redirect the student’s behaviour to fit the lessons agenda. This thesis will also aim to examine what kinds of challenging behaviour can be found from analysed drama lessons. Previous research has shown that teachers find interactions with challenging students to be often demanding. In the modern classroom teachers must be prepared to face challenging students and therefore there is a need to research teachers already working in the field to see how they confront challenging students in a positive way. Methods. The research for this thesis was done as a case-study based in video observations, where footage from the 2018 KEHU-project was utilized. The research footage contained five filmed lessons, which were taught by five various drama-specialized teachers across Finland. The teachers participating in this project taught grades one through third grade. The nature of this research was based on qualitative methods. The material was processed through content analysis and classification. Results and conclusions. Challenging behaviour was categorized into four distinct categories based off the filmed drama lessons, which were disruptive behaviour, wandering, disobedience and negative verbal or physical interaction. Challenging behaviour filmed during the lessons were often quite mild forms of challenging behaviour. Based on the results the teachers mostly conducted positive confrontations against challenging students and were able to redirect behaviour with efficient and practical methods. This thesis provided promising information in regards that teachers can redirect behaviour towards the lesson’s goals with positive interactions. Having a respective attitude towards students and striving towards dialogical interactions from the teacher appears to improve confronting the student, which has been proven in earlier research to be meaningful in regards to the students behaviour.