Students fidgeting, sneaking a peek at smartphones, chatting with one another and disrupting others \u2014 this all contributes to making today\u2019s classrooms unsettling places. Yet excessive classroom noise and disruptions remain largely undiagnosed and understudied in Canadian kindergarten-to-grade-12 education. Now, fresh evidence demonstrates that this background noise is interfering with student learning and achievement, particularly for those who are struggling readers.<\/p>\n
According to a\u00a0global student survey<\/a>\u00a0conducted in spring 2018 and recently released,\u00a0one in five 15-year-old Canadian students reported that learning time was lost to noise, distractions and disorder \u2014 so much so that they detracted from learning in class. This problem has worsened since the previous survey in 2015.<\/p>\n Canada\u2019s record in this regard is poor: the country\u00a0ranked\u00a060th out of 77 participating nations and educational districts\u00a0in the\u00a0OECD 2018\u00a0index of disciplinary climate.\u00a0The index is based on\u00a0an international survey of 600,000 15-year-old students<\/a> to capture their views\u00a0about the state of student discipline in their classes. A relatively high proportion of Canadian students say the teacher is not listened to and it takes a long time for the class to settle down. In addition, students regularly skip school and report late to class.<\/p>\n While most\u00a0mainstream media<\/a>\u00a0and education commentators focus on the\u00a0Programme for International Student Assessment\u00a0(PISA)\u00a02018 student achievement rankings<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0reading, mathematics and science,\u00a0critically important survey data on the lived experience of students tend to be overlooked. Deteriorating class climate is a blind spot\u00a0<\/a>because so much of the prevailing philosophy of positive progressive discipline focuses far more on student engagement than on curbing misbehaviour. For that reason, few Canadian policy-makers take the time to make the connection between worsening disciplinary climate and its adverse effect on student achievement.<\/p>\n Noise and disruptions are relatively common in Canadian classrooms, and well above the average among the 77 jurisdictions completing the survey.\u00a0This is significant because\u00a0students who report being unable to work well because of such distractions scored 25 points lower in reading<\/a>\u00a0on the 2018\u00a0PISA\u00a0test.<\/p>\n For most countries, classroom discipline improved between 2009 and 2018, the OECD report said.\u00a0Comparing student behaviour in 2015 in Canadian science classes with 2018 behaviour in English classes, student discipline has deteriorated, with more students reporting that the teacher has to wait a long time for students to settle down, that students cannot work well and that they don\u2019t start learning until long after the beginning of the lesson. Students are best behaved in school systems focused more on providing orderly, purposeful teaching, such as\u00a0those of Korea, Japan\u00a0and\u00a0China,\u00a0and of other authoritarian countries. Classroom unruliness is\u00a0far worse<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0Argentina, Brazil, France,\u00a0Greece, Spain, the Philippines, Belgium\u00a0and\u00a0Australia than in Canada.\u00a0Concerns run so high in\u00a0Australia\u00a0that discipline has been\u00a0publicly described<\/a>\u00a0as an\u00a0\u201centrenched behaviour crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n A total of 38.9 percent of Canadian students reported there was noise or disorder in most or all of their classes, compared with 31.5 percent across the participating OECD states. That\u2019s far higher than in\u00a0Korea\u00a0(7.9 percent),\u00a0Japan\u00a0(9.7 percent) and the top European performer, Estonia (23.6 percent). It\u2019s also more prevalent here than in the\u00a0United Kingdom\u00a0(33.7 percent) and the\u00a0United States\u00a0(28.2 percent).<\/p>\n Deteriorating classroom climate is also reflected in other key indicators such as student bullying, absenteeism, lateness and psychological harassment. One out of five Canadian students (19.2 percent) reported \u201cbeing hit or pushed around by other students.\u201d In the two weeks prior to the PISA test, according to the report, some 23 percent of Canadian students said they skipped one to five or more school days, and over half reported being late to classes at least once.<\/p>\n Student feedback on the PISA 2018 survey drawing attention to noisy classrooms is consistent with recent academic research outside Canada. A 2019 Belgian study, conducted by Marc Vander Ghinst,<\/a> found that children ages six to nine learning to read have a much tougher time concentrating as classroom noise levels rise. Two University of Wisconsin researchers who tracked 122 high school students confirmed that high background noise<\/a> can significantly distract students, lowering their mathematics test scores.<\/p>\n Connecting changes in school disciplinary climate with students\u2019 academic achievement challenges is long overdue in Canadian K-12 education. Struggling students in noisy and regularly disrupted classes, according to the OECD, do\u00a0pay a price<\/a>\u00a0in terms of their scores in reading and presumably in other core subject areas.<\/p>\n The School-wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (SW-PBIS)\u00a0framework has\u00a0eclipsed other approaches<\/a>\u00a0to student behaviour management in Canada and in many of the countries where students report poor disciplinary climate.\u00a0It\u2019s now used by schools characterized by regular noise, distractions and disorder where students skip school and regularly miss classes. Whether you favour SW-PBIS programs or not, it\u2019s becoming increasingly clear that there has been a breakdown in effective classroom management. Far more attention must be paid to responding to \u201cbehavioural violations\u201d (where positive praise does not work) with\u00a0planned and systematic strategies<\/a>, including\u00a0\u201cbrief, concise\u201d correctives,<\/a>\u00a0\u00ab\u00a0planned ignoring\u00a0\u00bb<\/a>\u00a0and the appropriate use of\u00a0explicit reprimands.<\/a><\/p>\n School leadership is critical in instilling a positive and productive school climate and minimizing both class disruptions and student misbehaviour. That is clearly demonstrated in Tom Bennett\u2019s 2017 report for the UK government, Creating a Culture<\/em><\/a>. His UK-wide study of schools and classrooms found that most beginning teachers had little training in class management and that the topic was given minimal attention in initial teacher training. He recommended the introduction of teacher training modules focused on student behaviour and more emphasis on creating a school culture of improved student behaviour in educational leadership programs.<\/p>\n Some education researchers, such as Australian mathematics teacher and blogger Greg Ashman, see student misbehaviour as connected with the decline of explicit instruction<\/a> and the spread of constructivist approaches to teaching and learning. Educators have to be active and skilled at interventions \u2014 or noise levels and disruptions become a chronic problem in those classrooms.<\/p>\n One small indication of the change is the virtual disappearance of a particular pedagogical goal: to provide focused, purposeful learning in the classroom. The shift has definitely contributed to loss of teaching time, lags in class preparation and aimless group interactions.\u00a0\u201cProductive noise\u201d is desirable, to a point, but classes should have a purpose other than playing around with ideas at a general conceptual level.<\/p>\n It is time to seriously examine the disciplinary climate in Canadian schools and its impact on student performance \u2014 particularly on students who are struggling readers. That will likely lead us to consider alternatives to school-wide positive behaviour supports and associated class management programs.\u00a0Without turning schools into joyless little production factories, it should be possible to right the balance in favour of providing all students with more of the benefits of focused, engaged and productive learning environments.<\/p>\n Photo: Shutterstock, by Toey Toey.<\/span><\/p>\n Do you have something to say about the article you just read? Be part of the\u00a0<\/em>Policy Options\u00a0discussion, and send in your own submission.\u00a0Here is a\u00a0<\/em>link<\/em><\/a>\u00a0on how to do it.\u00a0<\/em>|\u00a0Souhaitez-vous r\u00e9agir \u00e0 cet article ?\u00a0<\/em>Joignez-vous aux d\u00e9bats d\u2019<\/em>Options politiques\u00a0et soumettez-nous votre texte en suivant ces\u00a0<\/em>directives<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Students fidgeting, sneaking a peek at smartphones, chatting with one another and disrupting others \u2014 this all contributes to making today\u2019s classrooms unsettling places. Yet excessive classroom noise and disruptions remain largely undiagnosed and understudied in Canadian kindergarten-to-grade-12 education. Now, fresh evidence demonstrates that this background noise is interfering with student learning and achievement, particularly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":86125,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false},"categories":[9381,9372],"tags":[8734],"article-status":[],"irpp-category":[4209,4352],"section":[],"irpp-tag":[],"class_list":["post-202434","issues","type-issues","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education-fr","category-recent-stories-fr","tag-gestion-scolaire","irpp-category-education"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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