CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.0 Background To The Study

Students’ misbehavior is a problem affecting schools across the nation and around the world. Students’ conduct in the classroom not only interferes with teaching and learning but is also thought to be a leading contributor to teachers’ stress and a precursor to later school dropouts. Many districts and schools are aggressively searching for programs to remediate and reform problematic behaviors in students.

However, to develop successful programs, it is important to understand first what constitutes a student’s misbehavior and second why students behave the way they do. All students in a school benefit when behavior is good. High standards of behavior are important in helping students to feel safe and learn well, and parents and careers play a key part in this.

The government advises schools to focus on promoting positive behavior, helping to build self-discipline, and encouraging respect for others. But schools also need sanctions to deter students from misbehaving.

Educational planners, school managers, school administrators, teachers, and parents are seriously looking for such programs which will assist them in remedying students’ poor behavior in schools which include the use of sanctions (school sanctions). This is because students who possess some threats of misbehavior in schools call for sanctions upon them.

The forms of indiscipline in schools include fighting, stealing, absenteeism, dodging, late coming to school, students insulting other students or teachers, etc. (encyclopedia of educational research, 1992).

To minimize students’ disruptive behavior in schools, school rules and regulations have been provided and made stronger, and some sanctionary measures applied to defaulters. Besides school policies and practices, measures have been taken to increase students’ attachment to their teachers and their commitment to educational matters.

Students who show positive behaviors to educational matters are rewarded (positive reinforcement) while students who show negative attitudes towards the educational enterprise are penalized (negative reinforcement). The encyclopedia of educational research (1992), stipulates that “in order to minimize the disruptive behavior of students in schools, parents, guardians, etc, should be invited to participate in school matters that concern their children.

Indiscipline in schools usually leads to various forms of sanctions ranging from less severe to more severe ones. This ranges from verbal warning, student removed to another seat, punishment exercise, student removed to another class, exclusion from classes, student kneeling down, time-out, working on suspension, etc.

1.1.1 Historical Background

Historically, courts (and parents) bestowed significant independent discretion on officials in institutions of higher and secondary education regarding students’ indiscipline. As early as Gott v. Berea (1913), college and university administrators were seen as standing in loco parentis to students. Their authority was considered similar to that of educators.

From the early 1900s to late 1960s, administrators in higher education and colleges had autocratic authority over students.

During this time, courts rarely, if ever, examined the propriety of administrative decision-making, institutional policies, or the fairness of disciplinary actions. The broad discretionary authority exerted over students by higher education and college administrators have diminished significantly since the 1960s.

Sanctions have become an increasingly popular instrument for coercing governments to change behavior and/or policies. A growing body of experience indicates that sanctions frequently fall far short of achieving their political goals but have devastating consequences for large numbers of people in the sanctioned countries. This experience has recently stimulated a re-assessment of sanctions, including thinking about how sanctions might be restructured to avoid some of their more serious humanitarian consequences.

In the past, academic performance was often measured more by ear than today. Teachers’ observation made up the bulk of the assessment, and today’s summation or numerical method of determining how well a student is performing is a fairly recent invention. Grading systems came into existence in America in the late Victorian period, and were initially criticized due to high subjectivity.

Different teachers valued different aspects of learning more highly than others, and although some standardization was attempted in order to make the system fairer, the problem continued. Today, changes have been made to incorporate differentiation for individual students’ abilities, and exploration of alternate methods of measuring performance is ongoing.

1.1.2  Conceptual Background

According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia,” sanctions” are penalties and other means of enforcement that are used to provide an incentive for obedience with the law or rules and regulations.

School sanctions are penalties that school officials use to penalize students for poor behavior. Legally, school officials have the right to use school sanctions when students misbehave. Some examples of school sanctions include suspension, repulsion, exclusion, etc.

When students show negative behaviors, school sanctions are put in place to deal with such behaviors by the school authorities that implement these sanctions. In our schools today, school authorities deal with students from different backgrounds, different mentalities, different notions about the school and become problematic to teachers and school authorities who in turn implement school sanctions.

Courts uphold school sanctions, even though they recognize that when officials implement school sanctions, there may be negative consequences for students’ futures: the sanctions may impact the students’ academic records, affect their school standing, and/or limit their access to future military or government jobs. Students who possess some threats of misbehavior in schools are penalized by imposing school sanctions on them.

Misbehavior is often observed by a teacher in class or in the school and sanctions are being used to penalize such students which may include sending the student out of the class when teaching is going on, a student working out on suspension, student kneeling down, systematic exclusion (time-out), that is removing a student from a source of reinforcement for a period of time.

The purpose of penalizing students is to change behavior and increase obedience. State legislatures and courts have thus acknowledged school sanctions as being within the educational management and control authority of the state and local school boards. The courts ordinarily uphold reasonable school sanctions applied by school officials.

These sanctions include the use of suspension, time-out, kneeling down, or other forms of academic status to punish students for unacceptable behavior in violation of school rules. To this end, there is general agreement that suspension, time-out among others be accepted as a form of discipline for poor behavior in the school.

Other types of poor behavior for which school sanctions have been accepted include misbehaviors related to cheating and misuse of school property. In fact, most school policies include statements of academic rules of conduct and the range of consequences for breaking these rules.

Moreover, these policies are often incorporated into students’ handbooks provided to the entire student body. When school boards and their teachers use school sanctions for poor behavior, they are reluctant to substitute their own judgments for those of educators in assessing student performance.

Consequently, school officials have broad discretionary powers in establishing academic standards, promulgating school sanctions, and imposing these rules. Furthermore, school officials maintain that students cannot perform academic tasks satisfactorily if they are absent and that performance reflects not only classwork but also class participation, which is affected by absences.

As a result, many school systems have promulgated school sanctions for excessive school absences. As school officials continue to grapple with the serious problem of absences, it is likely that boards will consider implementing school sanctions related to serious absences.

In all instances, schools must promulgate the school sanctions in advance and notify students and their parents before implementing rules. School boards have also applied school sanctions for students’ misconduct. These sanctions often impact course credit, participation in after-school activities, or sports to deter students from misbehaving.

Concerning behavioral policies, schools should constantly review their behavior policies regularly and publicize them to parents, staff, and pupils. Behavior policies should include a code of conduct for students. Rules on conduct can apply before and after school as well as during the school day.

Schools have a legal right to impose reasonable sanctions if a student misbehaves. Sanctions a school might use include:

• a reprimand
• a letter to parents or careers
• removal from a class or group
• loss of privileges
• confiscating something belonging to your child if it’s inappropriate for school (for example, a mobile phone or music player)
• Detention, etc.

In educational institutions, success is measured by academic performance, or how well a student meets standards set out by the local government and the institution itself. As career competition grows in the working world, the importance of students doing well in school has caught the attention of parents, legislators, and government education departments alike.

Academic performance refers to how students deal with their studies and how they cope with or accomplish different tasks given to them by their teachers. Again, academic performance is the ability to study and remember facts and being able to communicate their knowledge verbally or down on paper. Much effort is made to identify, evaluate, track and encourage the progress of students in schools.

Parents care about their children’s academic performance because they believe good academic performance will provide more career choices and job security. Schools, though invested in fostering good academic habits for the same reason, are also often influenced by concerns about the school’s reputation and the possibility of monetary aid from government institutions, which can hinge on the overall academic performance of the school. State and regional departments of education are charged with improving students’ performance, and so devise methods of measuring success in order to create plans for improvement.

1.1.3 Contextual Background

In their efforts to deal with deviant and devious behavior, schools increasingly have adopted social control measures or practices. These include some disciplinary measures that model behavior and foster rather than counter development of negative values.

In some selected secondary schools in the Tiko Municipality crimes committed by students are often defined alongside their sanctions. For example, cheating, fighting, going home before time (dodging) has sanctions which include appearing before the disciplinary council (D.C.) where student or students involved are tried before the councilors who include the principal, vice-principal, senior discipline masters/mistresses, other school administrators, and heads of department.

After judging the student and if found guilty, then a sanction is given to such a defaulter which can be a verbal warning, a suspension which may range from 1 to 8 days, and for extreme cases, it can lead to dismissal of such a student from the institution. For crimes such as late coming to school, students refusing to attend morning assembly, stealing, and insubordination to teachers and/or school administration they are asked to work on the school farm or other similar work for a certain number of periods or for the whole of that day. In the same light, schools have varied sanctions which they impose on their students if they go against them. Lay private and denominational schools sometimes have their own sanctions which are completely different from those of public schools.

This may include refusal from taking part in school activities such as trips (excursion), games (FENASCO), using school properties such as the library, loss of school privileges such as prefectship, scholarships or it may even take the form of sending the student back to the house temporarily for a period of time for his/her parent to talk to him/her. Some minor offenses may include sanctions like keeping the school compound clean and keeping the hostel rooms clean for private and mission schools.

When students misbehave, their academic performances are retarded. School authorities, through various officials, impose school sanctions in order to keep students and the school’s academic performances and their flag-bearing up. The school management of students’ behavior in the school to maintain safe and orderly environments that are conducive for effective teaching and learning so as to record good performances.

Research has identified a relationship between school disciplinary actions and poor academic and psychosocial functioning of students subjected to them.

1.3 Statement Of The Problem

Recently, it has been observed that school sanctions face a lot of challenges when it comes to implementing it. The intended investigation here is to study the various challenges faced by school sanctions when they are implemented in schools. Sanctions act as a medium through which school and students’ academic performance are enhanced.

Through this medium, academic performance is achieved and students’ misbehaviours checked. Sanctions in most schools today have caused more harm than good and are still at an alarming rate. Parents, teachers, school administrators are still ignorant of the effects of sanctions but keep on wondering about the increased rate of school dropouts of students and their children due to heavy sanctions levied on them such as suspension, detention, or exclusions from the school.

In this way, the students become frustrated and become involved in smoking, theft, alcoholics, etc. In fact, the improvement of school sanctions is a very crucial element in the enhancement of academic performance in most secondary schools in Cameroon.

1.4 Purpose Of The Study

The purpose of this study is to investigate how students’ academic performance can be affected when they are sanctioned in schools. Specifically, this study will investigate the following points:

1. The effects of sanctioning by sending students out of class on students’ academic performance
2. The effects of suspension on students’ academic performance
3. The effects of students kneeling down while teachers teach on their academic performance
4. The effects of systematic exclusive (time-out) on students’ academic performance