GROUP 1

Leader: LJ N. Famatigan

Members:
Ronalyn Castillo
Nino Angelo Mendoza
Sophia Paoline Abraham
Angeline Joy Abrenica

Topic: The Effects of School Discipline to the Senior High School Students of the Mabini Academy

Support:
Research shows that strict discipline can pay off in the classroom, despite calls by many groups, policy
makers and academics for teachers to steer away from the severe classroom guidelines of the past.
School discipline means a system consisting code of conduct, punishment and behavioural strategies
to regulate students and keep school and classroom in order. The aim of classroom management and discipline
is controlling students' actions, habits, attitude and behaviour in the classroom. Students are key stakeholders
and the most essential resources in education. It is absolutely necessary to direct students to exhibit acceptable
attitude and behaviour within and outside the school. In an attempt to achieve an organized and peaceful school
environment and maintain law and order, school management specifies rules and regulations to guide the
activities of members of the educational institution.
Along with academic performance, school discipline ranks as one of the major concerns voiced by the
public about schools and the school system in countries worldwide. These concerns are echoed in frequent and
often dramatic media reports of disruptive students, student riots, bullying and violence in classrooms and
playgrounds across Kenya. There is a continuing and growing perception that behaviour problems are endemic
in schools, that teachers are struggling to maintain order, and that school authorities are unable to guarantee
the safety of students (Mutua, 2004).
Because of its relationship with student academic performance and moral maturity, school discipline is
often viewed as a national concern that is becoming more serious by the day for all societies (Mwangi, 2003).
Practicing teachers, educationists, parents and students across the globe must increasingly get concerned with
discipline-related problems in schools. In its management efforts, many educationists and researchers have
sought to identify the most efficacious methods of enhancing school discipline. The use of rewards and
punishments, stemming especially from the psychological research works of Shawcross (2009), have been
used by many school educators, although in varying degrees, in managing students‟ behaviour. Of these
methods, the use of corporal punishment has gained much debate, especially on its efficacy and its
consequences to students (Adams, 2003).

POSITIVE SIDES:

1. A 2016 study, published in the International Journal of Educational Management, which said classrooms
should return to the more strict discipline approach that was pushed out by “permissive” education in the
1970s.
2. In the study, ‘School discipline, school uniforms and academic performance’, researchers crunched
OECD data on classroom discipline, finding that strict, high-discipline countries were the highest
performing countries academically.
3. New research says stricter learning environments can help young people thrive in the classroom, calling
into question the value of models that insist going easy on students is the best way to teach.
 4. The findings, published in an online toolkit devised by Australian organization, Evidence for Learning,
show students perform better in exams when teachers implement severe guidelines.While the study
doesn’t refer to methods of punishment, the toolkit – which helps educators learn about and implement
evidence-based teaching – reveals a link between student behaviour, classroom discipline and academic
outcomes.

NEGATIVE SIDES:
1. Dr Anna Sullivan, a senior lecturer in Education at the University of South Australia, says that when it
comes to disciplinary practices in the classroom, many of the commonly used methods for mending
broken teacher-student relationships and addressing students’ misbehaviour are not working. She told
The Educator that rather than having a heavy-handed approach, schools should instead focus on
relational aspects and take a more educational – rather than managerial approach – to discipline in the
classroom.
2. “The harsh reactions to student behaviour tend to come from the taken-for-granted notions of what is
understood to be common sense,” she said.
3. “Schools are intended to be ‘safe’ and some people think that safety comes from close monitoring and
swift responses to restore ‘order’. Such responses are intended to demonstrate that schools are in control
and can ensure safety.”
4. Punishment can aggravate behaviour instead of curbing it (Rigby, 2000).
5. The problem of indiscipline in schools is a global issue of great concern, traversing political, economic,
geographical, racial and even gender boundaries (Kajubi, 2007)
6. The concern was not only on the risk of destruction of property and injury to persons but also the poor
academic performance associated with the growing trend of indiscipline.
7. “One of the arguments in favor of suspensions is that if a student is removed from the classroom, they’re
no longer causing disruptions, and so removing disruptive students could have positive benefits on those
who remain in the classroom,” says Bacher-Hicks, a Ph.D. candidate in public policy at Harvard. “But we
found for all students, there are large negative impacts on later-life outcomes, related to attending a
school with a high suspension rate. That suggests there are not overwhelmingly positive benefits of
removing disruptive peers from the classroom.”