Pupils' perceptions of effective disciplinarians'

This paper reports the perceptions of 543 pupils about the strategies used by their teachers which get the class to work well. The pupils were in four secondary schools and aged between 12 and 16. Twenty-one categories of effective strategies were derived from pupil comments. However, no single category dominated the data. Examining what we have called 'pupils' constructs of effective strategies' revealed that a wide range of strategies were perceived as effective. Not only was a variety of strategies seen as effective, pupils in each school identified over 75% of the staff as being best at getting the class to work well.