In this paper, the major focus is on managing the problems that are experienced in a classroom in the course of learning and teaching. As we can all agree, the classroom is one of the places that brings many people from different backgrounds, behaviours and upbringing among many other things. Due to the diverse issues, it is hard to have all the students in the classroom behave in the same way leave alone the stipulated ways. It is for this reason that the teachers and school management set rules and regulations to govern the code of conduct and behaviour in the classroom and school in general. Apart from the rules and regulations, there are the set ways to manage the students in case of veering from the rules and regulations and also the punishment methods for any violation of the rules.
In a classroom, there are very many things that arise, like aggressive behaviours, disorder, disorganization, bullying and even issues like attention seeking just to mention a few. The discussion in this paper will be on attention seeking as a problem in the classroom and how to deal with it as the instructor, lecturer or the teacher. Attention seeking is a situation whereby an individual acts in a way which is meant to draw attention and focus from other people around them. Once they have the attention on them, they have a feeling of self-satisfaction, and this helps boost their morale, self- worth and self-esteem (Mellor, 2013). This behaviour is also known as drawing attention. A child can seek attention through different ways ranging from faking illness to harming others in order to be seen as a hero. The children result to these actions because they have a feeling that they are not valued, respected, supported, loved, heard or they don’t have a feeling of belonging.
In most of the cases in Australia, students result to seeking attention when the parents, teachers and the peers seem not to appreciate their presence and actions whenever they are interacting. At this stage, the individuals will do anything they think will make fellow students and people around notice and focus on them. As people say, there is no publicity. Likewise, for the children don’t care whether what they do is good or bad but all they know is that both and positive and negative attention seeking will work for them. If left to go on for a long time, attention seeking develops to a big problem and makes the person involved to be insecure and have a low self-esteem. So as to boost it, they will then always turn to having drama following them so as to have people focus on them. In the long run this behaviour leads to strained relationships with peers and to avoid conflicts with the individual they find a way to stay away from them. If not controlled at a certain stage the affected person may find themselves living in a lonely and isolated life, and this can go even worse and lead to depression. It is also notable that too much attention on children can also result in attention seeking (Porter, 2015). For example, if a parent or a teacher has a very close relationship with children, the kid develops the idea that for them to feel appreciated they have to get attention all the time.
Students do not misbehave in the classroom just for the sake of doing it or because they are bad, but they act in this way because there is a reason that pushes them to do so (Edwards, 2014). Basing the argument on the Dreikurs’ model of mistaken goals, we have a clue on why children misbehave. In the theory, we also understand why it is important for teachers and parents to be keen on the children as they grow so that they may take note of anything that may be troubling them and lead to misbehaving. In the theory, he gives four mistaken goals which include, attention seeking, power seeking, revenge seeking and display of inadequacy or urge to give up on issues. These mistaken goals if not well dealt with lead to the students or children indulging in misguided or misplaced priorities which in the end bring about undesired results. For example, in our case of attention seeking, if a student is helped early enough the behaviour will develop into a problem. Eventually, this will affect the relationship between the individual and fellow students and also due to much focus on attention drawing the performance in the academic field goes south as well (Dreikurs, Grunwal, & Pepper, 2013).
Attention seeking involves irritating behaviours exhibited by children so as to capture the attention of adults over a long period of time. A good example is given by Dreikur’s when he gives an analogy of a dethroned child. In his description, he explained that once a second-born baby is welcomed into a family, the first born develops insecurity and due to the divided attention he or she feels neglected and unloved. So as to regain the attention, they result to attention seeking mission, first through positive deeds and if not fruitful they turn to disruptive ones. Likewise, this might happen for a student in a classroom who feels that the others are much recognized than them. This will push them to do things that can draw focus to themselves, and in most cases the attention catching deeds are negative. This continues until the students feel satisfied and in some case, it grows into a habit which becomes hard to shed off.
According to most of the previous studies on the issue of attention seeking, there is no definite description or definition of the term ‘attention seeking’ but instead the scholars and researchers provide a wide range of behaviours that are seen as a deed of drawing attention. In 2005, Mellor explained that the research on attention seeking becomes harder when one cannot distinguish between normal acts and what he calls desirable deeds of children to attract attention. Unlike the disruptive deeds where a parent or a teacher easily notices the children, the desirable actions go unnoticed because I most cases they are viewed as normal growth. So, this makes people and researchers to only focus on the negative actions as the only method used by children to catch the eye of adults and peers. While trying to come to a clear conclusion on why people behave differently, Taylor and Carr found that the best way to get a good answer was through behaviour analysis. Using the Motivation Assessment Scale, they could determine what led children to misbehave. In the study, they came up with different motives that result in disruptive behaviour in children. From this, they concluded that most of the children behaviours are dictated by reception by adults, their social interaction, especially with their parents and their feedback by their peers.
In another study to determine the relationship between perceived parental rejection and classroom attention seeking by children found that students who felt that their parents were neglecting them, turned to disruptive behaviours in order to get noticed by the people around. The research carried out by Perretti, Clark and Johnson in 2001 concluded that parent rejection makes children feel insecure, helpless, and inferior. This, in turn, distorts and diminishes self-concept in children. In the study it was found that students who feel rejected by their parents and then exhibit negative behaviours, can reduce the feeling of helplessness by cultivating other positive social interactions with other children and people. There many other presumed causes of attention seeking but the above mentioned are the common ones.
Due to the consequences and the unpredictable outcomes of attention seeking in children, it is paramount that parents and teachers find effective ways to deal with the problem (Wiseman &Hunt, 2014). The most common way of dealing with attention-seeking in classroom and school is the application of the assertive discipline model. Under this model as a teacher you know what is best for the students and once you determine and set the rules to be followed, you should expect full compliance by the students. This is an authoritative model that believes that the teacher is always right and that the students should follow what is set without any compromise. An assertive teacher is expected to act quickly and in a confident way in situations that call for management of student behaviour. This is attributed to the fact that they have already given the students clear, concise and firm directions on how to behave and also explained what consequences follow if the directions are not followed to the latter.
The Canters, the developers of the assertive discipline theory, believe that teachers should not be misguided that firm discipline measures leads to psychological trauma to the students. Also the upholders of this model, confidently believe that teachers are mistaken to believe that the students’ bad behaviour is a result of deep-seated causes that are out of control of the teacher. Instead, the teacher is expected to draft down what is expected of the students and then pass the information to them. Accompanying the set rules is the positive and negative consequences and also make sure that all that is written down and has approval of the principal or the board of managers of the school. This will help deal with any issue arising from actions from the model. The most effective part of this model is that the students are afraid of the negative consequences once they violate the set rules (Canter,2013). According to me, this is not the best way to deal with the affairs of students because it just frightens the children while in school, but once they are out of the classroom, they will depict the behaviours. It is for this reason that I think the following method is the best suited for duly dealing with the issue.
The second way of dealing with students showing attention-seeking traits is by getting down to the real cause of the behaviour and then cut it. In most cases the adults are quick to rush into disciplining or punishing the children. This should not be the case because the kids will take it that they are bad. In short, unknowingly parents react in a way that does not help the situation and instead worsens it. Behaviours like yelling, shouting and threatening the child can lead to escalation of the disruptive and undesired behaviours. Instead of going for the quick method of dealing with the problem behaviours, teachers should learn how to redirect the behaviours by teaching the students to use effective communication to deal with their problems. Take time to establish what is bothering the child and find a way of dealing with it so as to completely eradicate the root of the disruptive behaviours that are portrayed by the students.
When in school, a child is under the care and watch of the teacher, and it is his or her duty to make sure that all the students behave well and develop wholly. Close relationship and monitoring of the students will make it easy for the teacher to notice any strange acting by the kids. After noticing behaviour like attention seeking, it is important to have a chat with them and understand what makes them push to look for attention. If the reasons are school based, it is advisable to work in making sure that the student develop a sense of equality and belonging. Make the children feel loved appreciated, needed (Minahan, 2012). At the same time teaching them how to express their concerns by talking to the teachers around or parents instead of acting out in undesired ways. If the problem is brought about by issues from home, contact the parents and talk to them about the child. From here now it is becomes easier to address the needs that the child feels are neglected. With this slowly the attention seeking behaviour will vanish.
These two methods of curbing indiscipline in the classroom if well implemented can yield to the desired results with much ease. For the assertive discipline model, good guidelines on how to behave in a classroom setting will ensure that the students keep to the straight and the narrow. So, if a teacher decides to use this approach, he or she will refer to the code of conduct when dealing with an attention seeking student and the punishment used, or the consequences are well defined on the paper. In most of the cases, this approach works well because the students tend to ‘fear’ the teachers, and so they suppress their bad behaviours whenever they are under the watch of the teachers. This in the eyes of the teacher is a positive to take from the approach. On the other side, this does not help the student fully because they will still have the urge to seek attention in a different platform once they step out of the classroom. This is a negative side of the model because as a teacher, it is expected for you to give the children good base of development and threatening them is not the best way to deal with their issues. Children are delicate and if they are not fully assisted to fight the insecurities in them at a tender age, they will most likely come to haunt them later in life.
The second approach, works best for the student while at the same time improving the relationship between them and the teacher. This is due to the fact that the teacher gets close to the troubled kid in order to help work out the problem. The downside of this approach is that the student may decide to always act in a strange or disruptive manner because the teacher will have a listening hear and come closer to find the ‘problem.’ This eventually leads to wastage of time and sometime faking by the students.
Conclusion `
Attention seeking behaviour in students is an issue that has been avoided very much in Australia in olden and recent times. The problem is that the more teachers neglect addressing the issue, the more it becomes serious in our schools. So, for the well-being of the society in future we have to focus on bringing up the students we have in the best way we can. If we fail to address the issue at an early age, it will develop to a huge problem in future days when we will have adults who will want to capture people’s attention at all the costs. Just take an instance of a kid who goes to an extend of hurting fellow student in school to be noticed and then try to figure out what an adult can do to have all eyes on them. That said, it is very important to know that there is no sure way of dealing with attention seeking behaviour in students (Hue, & Li, 2013). The best way to deal with students showing acts of attention seeking is somewhat blending different approaches. This will ensure that all the aspects are catered for including emotional support and also behavioural adjustments.
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