Why do students misbehave? A quantitative study on the exploration of teachers’ demographics and their causal attributions of students’ challenging behaviour in an Indian context

This study examined the relationship between teachers’ demographic variables, their causal attributions of challenging behaviours and suggested strategies. Contextualised within the State of West Bengal, the study utilised a sample of 540 teachers from government and private schools, as its investigative population. Participants’ knowledge in behaviour management, experience, age, type of school they taught at and gender were found to be significant predictors of their causal attributions. It was also found that participants’ length of experience, qualification and age were significant predictors of the suggested strategies to address challenging behaviour. The study has implications for educational practitioners, researchers and policymakers, and presents recommendations for teacher educators about how best to prepare the teaching workforce to teach students with challenging behaviour effectively.