Understanding Teachers' Attributions and Responses to Student Misbehavior: The Roles of Explanatory Rationale and Personal Beliefs

In this mixed-methods experiment, we examined the impacts of an externally provided rationale and teachers’ own beliefs on cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses to student misbehavior. Teachers (N = 120) viewed a video describing three instances of a student’s misbehavior, then were randomly assigned to receive one of three explanatory rationales for the misbehaviors, including intentionality, cognitive deficits, adverse childhood experiences, or a comparison condition that offered no new information. Teachers reported causal attributions, emotional responses, perceived self-efficacy, and disciplinary strategy. Results suggest that teachers’ attributions are independently predicted by their own beliefs about the student’s misbehavior and the provided rationale. Further, both sources of information predicted teachers’ feelings, self-efficacy, and disciplinary strategies. We discuss implications for changing teachers’ attributions of misbehavior and increasing the use of positive behavior management strategies.