Respecting students: Abusive classroom teacher verbal behaviour

Abstract

This qualitative study examined classroom Teachers verbal abuse by reviewing a sample of the decisions of the discipline committee of the Ontario College of Teachers (OCT). Data were collected from the Canadian Legal Information Institute (CANLII) online database, which provided a record of all the OCT discipline committee decisions, with supplementary data from Professionally Speaking, the magazine of the OCT, as well as the OCT's website. Data revealed that verbal abuse is present in Ontario classrooms, and measured responses and related methods of dealing with teacher misconduct are derisory at best and slowly evolving. Investigated cases of verbal abuse in the classroom were reviewed and illuminated the progress that has been made in dealing with Teacher verbal abuse in schools, while providing suggestions for improvement. Male Teachers are often offenders and the impact on all stakeholders is both lifechanging and serious. In sum, any delay in effectively dealing with complaints and disciplinary matters is unacceptable as it stands and must be fixed to protect students from abuse.

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“…Studies show that in many parts of the world, regardless of the West or East, abuse occurs in the school environment-perpetrated by teachers or school staff; such abuse is widespread: African (Tafa, 2002), Australia (Delfabbro et al, 2006), Canada (Hogan, Ricci, & Ryan, 2019), the Caribbean (Baker-Henningham, Meeks-Gardner, Chang, & Walker, 2009), Cyprus (Theoklitou, Kabistis, & Kabitsi, 2012), Egypt (Wasef, 2011), Georgia (Kvachadze & Zakareishvili, 2009), Ghana (Agbenyega, 2006), India (Garg, 2017), Ireland (James et al, 2008, quoted by Allen, 2010, Israel (Benbenishty, Zeiar, & Astor, 2002a;2002b), Italy (Ferrara, Franceschini, Villani, & Corsello, 2019), Lebanon (El Bcheraoui, Kouriy, & Abid, 2012); Nigeria (Aluede, Ojugo, & Okoza, 2012), Nepal (Khanal & Park, 2016), Pakistan (Arif & Rafi, 2007), Saudi Arabia (Elarousy & Shaqiqi, 2017), Tanzania (Lema & Gwando, 2018), and in 19 U.S. states corporal punishment remains legal (Caron, 2018). Turkey is no exception; students here continue "experiencing physical and emotional abuse by their teachers at school" (UNICEF & SHCEK, 2010, p. 20).…”

Emotional Intelligence as a Mediator between Teachers’ Emotional Mistreatment and Long-Term Emotional Impact on Students

“…Thus, it is not easily detected by students (Aroas, 2018), and it is not uncommon to find students blaming themselves for being the cause of the teachers' behavior (Geiger, 2017). Teachers themselves are often unaware of their own inappropriate behaviors, and perceive them as harmless, or triggered as a response to students' misbehavior and aimed at re-directing them (Hogan et al, 2019;Longobardi et al, 2015). Lastly, this relatively limited scope of research can be also attributed to a more general existing erroneous assumption that since physical punishment is banned from Western schools, abusing disciplinary practices no longer exist (Geiger, 2017).…”