The Undesirable Behaviors of Students in Academic Classrooms , and the Discipline Strategies Used by Faculty Members to Control Such Behaviors from the Perspective of the College of Education Students in King Saud University

This study aimed to identify the undesirable students’ behaviors in academic classrooms, and the disciplinary, preventive and therapeutic strategies that will be used by faculty members to control those behaviors from the perspective of the College of Education’s students in King Saud University. The results of the study has shown that the undesirable behavior in academic classrooms that strongly apply to the sample are: cheating and plagiarism regarding homework and research, replying with a rude manners, using cell phones, side talking, and arriving late to lectures. And in regards to the discipline strategies that are used by faculty members, which strongly apply to the sample, and are related to co-educational assets, are: submitting a detailed plan at the beginning of the semester, establishing clear and concise discipline rules in the classroom and strictly follow them, explaining the consequences of not following the classroom discipline rules, treating students with respect and without mockery or embarrassment, and maintaining eye contact. In addition, the therapeutic disciplinary strategies are: giving a first notice to the student to remind him or her of the discipline rules, asking the student calmly but strictly to stop the undesirable behavior. The study has come up with a number of recommendations and suggestions.


Introduction
Academic classroom discipline is considered as a crucial part of the educational process.It plays an important role in the success of the educational strategies.Without rules to prevent undesirable behaviors that interrupt the educational process in academic classroom, even the best modern curriculum would be useless (Kitishat & Al-Friehat, 2013, p. 37).
Students' undesirable behaviors have become an international problem in higher education (Linda & Nancy, 2004, p. 3), and a hard and an unavoidable task to both new and experienced teachers.In fact, dealing with these undesirable behaviors takes up a lot of the teachers' time and harms teaching and education.This indeed affects the quality of the educational process (Xinrui & Ling, 2012, p. 15;Adem & James, 2015, p. 38).Therefore, teachers of all educational levels should take this problem, of undesirable behaviors in academic classrooms, extremely seriously, and they must consider finding suitable strategies to deal with those behaviors and control them (Duangjit, 2013, p. 69).
The academic classrooms' discipline strategies are considered to be important factors in providing effective teaching because they include: operations that govern the educational system, discipline to the learners' behaviors.In addition, they determine organization patterns of classroom development (Al Ajez & Atwan, 2008, p. 1).

Statement of the Problem
Creating a suitable environment, by teachers, in academic classrooms that helps maintaining the highest standards of teaching and education, achieving the highest amount of participation and knowledge building and Based on the current situation of the academic classrooms in colleges and universities, the motivation was strong for the researcher to touch upon the reality of the academic classrooms from the perspective of the college of education students in King Saud University.This is because of the undesirable behaviors that take place in these classrooms, the variety of discipline strategies that are used, and the rarity of Arabic studies, at the higher education level.This research focuses on the students' undesirable behaviors and the discipline strategies used by faculty members to control these behaviors.The problem can be identified as follows: the undesirable behaviors of students in academic classrooms and the discipline strategies used by faculty members to control them from the perspective of the college of education's students in King Saud University.

Purpose of the Study
The study seeks to achieve the following goals:

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Identifying students' undesirable behaviors in academic classrooms from the perspective of the college of education students in King Saud University.

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Identifying the preventive discipline strategies that are used by faculty members to control the students' undesirable behaviors in academic classrooms from the perspective of the college of education students in King Saud University.
• Identifying the therapeutic discipline strategies that are used by faculty members to control the students' undesirable behaviors in academic classrooms from the perspective of the college of education students in King Saud University.

Theoretical Importance
The theoretical importance of the study comes from the importance of discipline in both academic classrooms and the educational process, which is the first step in creating a learning environment.This requires the teacher to be able to control the behavior of his or her students in order to teach them.Thus, achieving academic classroom discipline and maintaining it is an important determinant of the success of the educational process.
On the other hand, and based on the knowledge of the researcher, there is a lack of Arabic studies that focus on college students' undesirable behaviors in academic classrooms and the discipline strategies that accompany these behaviors.As a result, this current study comes as an extension of knowledge in this field and a modest addition to the knowledge previously achieved by others.

Practical Importance
The practical importance of the current study is stemmed from the reality that the results of this study may be displayed to the stakeholders in the Students' Affairs Deanship in the university helping in drawing a policy to prevent undesirable behaviors in academic classrooms.Moreover, this truthful reality of the students' undesirable behaviors in academic classrooms and the discipline strategy that used by faculty members to deal with such behaviors and prevent them may lead to a series of actions could be taken based on the recommendations of this study.
In addition, the results of this study may draw the students' attention to the undesirable behaviors in academic classrooms to avoid them.Similarly, they may draw the attention of the faculty members, especially the new ones in the college of education and other colleges, to the discipline strategies that accompany these undesirable behaviors in academic classrooms.

Limitations of the Study
-Subjective Limits: The subjective limits are presented in the non-violent undesirable behaviors in academic classrooms; thus, the researcher excludes the violent behaviors such as fighting, bullying, sexual assault, verbal aggression, and the use of foul language.The study, also, focuses solely on preventive and therapeutic discipline strategies.
-Human Limits: The study is limited to a sample of bachelor students in the following departments within the college of education: Educational policies, Psychology, Special Education, and Islamic Studies.
-Time Limits: The study has been done during the second semester of the Academic year 2014/2015.
-Spatial Limits: Academic classrooms of the departments within the college of education in King Saud University located in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Terms of the Study
Classroom discipline: Classroom discipline is idiomatically defined as: The teacher's use of educational strategies that ease the teaching process in an academic classroom (Kitishat & Al Friehat, 2013, p. 37).The study adopts this idiomatic definition for discipline in academic classrooms as a procedural definition for the study itself.
Discipline strategies in academic classrooms: Polat et al. (2013, p. 4) has defined the discipline strategies in academic classrooms as "specific and effective methods, techniques, and procedures that a teacher uses to stop the student's undesirable behavior in an academic classroom".The study adopts this idiomatic definition for discipline in academic classrooms as a procedural definition for the study itself.
The undesirable behavior in an academic classroom: It is defined as "actions of some of the students or a group in academic classrooms that violate the clear rules, the implied rules, and the expectations of the classroom.These actions destabilize the system, disturb or disrupt the education and the learning processes" (Rachel & Daniel, 2012, p. 61).The study adopts this idiomatic definition for discipline in academic classrooms as a procedural definition for the study itself.
Classroom Discipline: The active application of academic classrooms' discipline is a condition for the proper functioning of the educational process.It's an art that requires, from the teacher, knowledge, skills, sensitivity, and confidence like any other type of art that needs training, experience, and practice (Erin, 2012, p. 12).This will be reflected on their future performance (Halas & Sheldon, 2010, pp. 4-5).
The undesirable behavior in an academic classroom: Nordahl (1998, p. 54) has identified four behaviors that will affect the learning environment in academic classrooms: 1) Behavior that affects students' learning process.This includes absent-mindedness, loss of focus, side talking, disturbing other students or teachers.
2) Social isolation, which includes loneliness, secession, depression, and loss of social bonds.
3) Behavior of attention seeking, which includes starting fights, violence, objection and disobedience, breaching the rules and the regulations of the classroom, challenging the authorities, and leaving the classroom.
4) Criminal behavior of breaching rules, which includes sever oppression, theft, violence, and evading responsibility.

Classroom's discipline types
There are three types of discipline within academic classrooms (Dial, 2012, p. 43): 1) Preventative discipline: tries to prevent chances of bad behavior in a classroom.
2) Supportive discipline: helps students to get back to work when they start misbehaving.

Previous Studies
Gifford et al. (2002) identifies the knowledge of 108 before service teachers in one of the American public universities, regarding effective and ineffective strategies to manage academic classrooms.Results showed that students prefer teachers that treat them with respect who don't mock them in class and don't make them feel stupid.In addition, they prefer those teachers who use direct orders as an effective discipline strategy, teach about relevant and interesting topics.The strategies that are considered to be ineffective include: challenging the student in front of the class, embarrassing the student, and using punishments.Meyers et al. (2008) focus on the response of 226 faculty members to conflicts with students in academic classrooms.The study differentiates between two different types of conflicts: ignoring vs. challenging.The results showed that the level of conflicts does not relate to the demographic characteristics of faculty members.However, they are related to the faculty members' choices of teaching methods and how responsive they are to the challenges.The results of the study have also shown that the teacher's use of engaging teaching techniques such as discussions and active teaching instead of lecturing, in addition to respecting students' feeling and establishing meaningful goals without embarrassing the students, reduce the ignoring type of conflicts.
Pass ( 2007) implemented a study with two goals.The first one is to provide an example to the disciplinary plan as a part of classroom management that teaches democracy.The second goal is to test the effect of this model on 60 college seniors who are going to teach social studies in high school.The researcher developed a three-year's classroom management program, and she discovered that the students' grades in these high schools were higher because the levels of bad behaviors have decreased.The study came up to these conclusions, first; this program has an effective impact on teaching democracy for the participating classes.Second; this program has a positive impact on the graduating seniors form the college of education.
Carter et al. ( 2009) conducted another study that aims to identify the different therapeutic methods to stop bad behaviors in academic classrooms in a public American university.The results showed that students prefer direct instructions given to them individually at the end of lecture.
Duangjit ( 2013) implemented a study which aimed to analyze the undesirable student behavior and the reasons behind it.The study also seeks to explore different strategies teachers use to deal with such a behavior in Gloria University in Thailand.The results showed that the undesirable behaviors are identified as: use of electronic devices, side talking during lectures, sleeping, arriving late.On the other side, the discipline strategies are: ignoring the behavior, use of non-verbal methods such as long-period eye contact to stop or control the behavior, and directly asking to stop the undesirable behavior if it continues.
Kitishat and Al-Freihat's ( 2013) study aimed to discuss the reasons behind students' undesirable behaviors, and providing solutions for such behaviors, which are considered as discipline strategies to control the undesirable behaviors in academic classrooms.The study has shown that examples of undesirable behaviors are: carelessness, absent-mindedness, use of foul language, and violence (the researcher will focus on what's relevant to her study).
The solutions and discipline strategies to control the undesirable behaviors are: being a role model, ignoring the behavior, and punishment.
Since the undesirable behaviors, which the current study focuses on, exclude violence and physical assault, the researcher has found that most of students' undesirable behaviors that are practiced in college classrooms are similar to the ones practiced in schools of different educational levels.The researcher previewed those previous modern studies that focus on the undesirable behaviors in academic classrooms in all different educational levels before college.Rachel and Daniel (2012) conducted a study which aims to identify the definition of bad behavior, the most common, frustrating, and undesired.The results showed that teachers view a bad behavior as the activity that causes depression for them and interrupts the educational process which causes teachers to continuously comment on the behavior.Most common, frustrating, and unacceptable of the undesirable behaviors in academic classrooms are: behaving in a rude manner, rejecting instruction, challenging authorities, failing in submitting homework on time, sleeping , arriving late, eating and drinking, violence, mockery, plagiarism, and use of electronic devices for purposes such as texting, surfing the web, playing games, or listening to music.
Dada and Okunade's (2014) study seeks to identify the common undesirable behaviors in elementary schools and the strategies used by teachers to control them in Ado EKiti metropolis.The results of the study showed that the common undesirable behaviors in academic classrooms are: bullying, sever disturbance, use of foul language, skipping school and disobedience, acting rude, and being late.On the other side, the strategies used by teachers to control those behaviors are: physical punishment, extensions, and positive and negative enhancements.
Adam and James' ( 2015) study tries to identify the undesirable behaviors in academic classrooms, the reasons behind them, and strategy types that could be used to overcome these behaviors.The process has been done through semi-formal meetings on a sample of 12 physics teachers (6 males and 6 females) in different high schools in Amasya, Turkey.One of the results is the definition of the undesirable behavior in academic classrooms.It is the behavior that prevents students from learning, distracts them, kills their motivations, and decreases their desire to learn.

Comments on Previous Studies
The current study agreed with some of the previous studies in terms of focusing on the undesirable behaviors in college and university classrooms, and the strategies used to overcome those behaviors.However, this study has disagreed with others in terms of the method of the study, sample size, and educational level.In addition, this current study differs from other studies such as (Meyers, et.al, 2006) on the focus on fighting and physical assault, which is excluded here.Actually; the benefits gained from the previous studies were great.They added a lot to the theoretical frame of this study, helped build the tool of this study, and helped in analyzing its data.

Method
This current study has used the descriptive method.It depends on detecting, describing, and analyzing data that is related to participant's opinion.

Community and Sample
The original community of the study consists of all Bachelor students that are enrolled in the second semester of the year 2014/2015 in the following departments: Educational Policies, Psychology, Special Education, and Islamic Studies, which are part of the College of Education in King Saud University.The whole number of the students was 1900.They was divided as follows: 560 students from the department of Educational Policies, 552 from the Psychology Department, 542 from the department of Special Education, and 246 from the Islamic Studies department.These statistics are based on the information the researcher received from the office of academic affairs in the college of education: Administration Unit (Academic Affairs, 2015).
Table 1 shows the distribution of the original community individuals based on their departments.

Sample
The researcher has chosen to draw a sample of 10% from the total number of each department so that the total sample size would be 190 students.Table 2 shows the sample distribution based on the department.

Procedures
The researcher prepared a questionnaire to identify undesirable behaviors in the academic classrooms, and discipline strategies that are commonly used by faculty members from the perspective of the College of Education's students in King Saud University.The sections of the questionnaire were measured based on Likert scale (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, and strongly disagree).

Precision of the Method
-Apparent Precision: The apparent precision has been insured through presenting the study in its initial phase to a group of educational specialists in order to comment on the: suitability of the suggested arguments, suitability of each statement to the argument it belongs to, and clarity of each statement.
Changes have been made based on the suggestions given; including editing, adding, or deleting a group of sections.After these changes, the questionnaire was finalized.
-Precision of Internal Consistency: To ensure the questionnaire's internal consistency, it was applied to 31 individuals chosen from the study community.After that the precision of internal consistency of the questionnaire was calculated using Pearson correlation coefficients to measure the relationship between the terms of the study tool and the arguments that are related to them as shown in the Table 3 shows that all the sections that are specific to all three arguments, statistically, indicate the level of ∞ = 0.01 except section 3 in the first argument (students' undesirable behaviors in academic classrooms) and section 1 in the third argument (therapeutic discipline strategies that are used by faculty members to control the undesirable behaviors), where the indication is statistically at ∞= 0.05 level.This proves the precision of all questionnaire sections.

Method Consistency
According to the consistency coefficients that are based on internal consistency (Cronbach Alpha) for the arguments of the study, Table 4 shows these coefficients:  4 above shows that the consistency coefficient for each argument is high and ranges between 0.84-0.94.In a practical sense, if Cronbach Alpha coefficient is less than 0.60 then it's considered reasonable for researches involving humanities.Therefore, this is a proof that the method used in this research is consistence.This increases the credibility of the method and allows it to be practically applicable.

Statistical Treatment
Data was gathered and then analyzed using the statistical program SPSS.The following statistical methods have been used based on the nature of the current study: -Modes and percentages to describe the sample.
-Averages and standard deviations to order the responsiveness of the sample.
-Pearson correlation coefficient to measure the precision of the method.
-Cronbach Alpha coefficient to measure the consistency of the method.

Results and Discussion
To ease the process of interpreting the results, the researcher used the following method to identify the answer's degree on each section of the questionnaire, and then she gave a number weight for the answers: (strongly agree = 5, agree = 4, neutral = 3, disagree = 2, and strongly disagree = 1).Then these answers where classified to five equal levels using the following equation: This is to obtain the following Table: Table 5 shows that the overall average of the students' answers regarding students' undesirable behaviors in academic classrooms is 4.09.The table also shows that the most undesirable behavior students strongly agree with is "plagiarism", and it has the highest average of 4.46.The second highest is for section "replying in a rude manner" with an average 4.45, then "using cell phones (texting/browsing) with an average of 4.44, then "side-talking" with an average of 4.33, and then "arriving late to lecture/exam" with an average of 4.26.These results matched the results of the studies: (Rachel & Daniel, 2012;Daugjit, 2013;Linda & Nancy, 2004;Dada & Okunade, 2014).Regarding students' undesirable behavior in academic classrooms that received the lowest acceptance level with the lowest average is "refusal to participate or ignoring discussions."The average is 3.51, which agrees with the results of the studies: Linda and Nancy (2004), and Dada and Okunade (2014).The second lowest is "eating during lecture" with an average of 3.59, which agreed with the results of (Rachel & Daniel, 2012) study.The next two are: "monopolizing the discussions" and "interrupting professors while talking" with averages of 3.82 and 3.94 respectively.These results agreed with the majority of what (Seaman, 2009) and (Linda & Nancy, 2004) came up with regarding students' undesirable behaviors in college level academic classrooms.The researcher explains that the majority of the undesirable behaviors that received "agree" or "strongly agree" from the students' sample are due to fundamental reasons that allowed these behaviors to appear in academic classrooms.This causes the educational process to be interrupted and distracts the students.
The Second Question: what are the preventive discipline strategies that are used by faculty members to control the students' undesirable behaviors in academic classrooms from the perspective of the College of Education's students in King Saud University?
To answer this question, the researcher extracted modes, percentages, averages, and standard deviations, and then ordered the answers of the student sample taking in consideration the preventive discipline strategies that are used by faculty members in academic classrooms as shown in the following table: The averages calculated in Table 6 show that the college of education's students has strongly agreed on two preventive discipline strategies that are included within the second argument of the study's method.The average of the overall students' answers is 4.26.The results have also shown that the highest acceptance was for "submitting a detailed plan at the beginning of the semester" with an average of 4.73, which agrees with (Findley & Varbal, 2006) study.This indicates that it's the method that is used the most by faculty members.The second highest strategy is "establishing disciplinary rules that are clear and brief and maintaining them" with an average of 4.54, which agrees with both studies for Deborah and Stephen (2006) and Gifford et al. (2002).The next is the strategy of "explaining the consequences of breaching the discipline rules in the classroom" with an average of 4.44, which agrees with (Deborah & Stephen, 2006) and the direction of the George Lucas Educational Foundation guide about improving student participation and creating a positive environment for education and discipline (George Lucas Education Foundation, 2011).Moreover, the strategy of "treating students with respect and without embarrassment of mockery" has the fourth highest average of 4.42, which agrees with the results of Meyers et al. (2006) and Gifford et al. (2002).The fifth is the strategy of "maintaining eye contact" with an average of 4.39, which agrees with the results of Rodrigues (2010) study.
Preventive strategies are considered to be very important, for it cultivates the essential pillars of classroom management.When faculty members explain the students' expectations and establish rules and regulations from the beginning, time and effort will be saved.This will reduce students' anxiety and allow them to know the class requirements better, which will eventually help to increase their sense of self-discipline.
Regarding the discipline strategy that is used the least by faculty members from the perspective of the student sample; it is the use of a reward system with an average of 3.78.Even though a reward system is crucial and effective in enhancing the desirable behavior and suppressing the undesirable one, the researcher sees that faculty members use this strategy the least as a supportive strategy towards positive attitudes with students, and they don't use it as a preventive strategy to prevent undesirable behaviors in academic classrooms.From the point of view of the researcher, this strategy may not be suitable for college and university students or adults in general.Although it's been proven that children and adults repeat the behavior that's followed by a reward, and college and university faculty before has used the reward strategy to enhance the desirable behaviors.Rewards for the worthy work produce good feelings (Robert, 2012).
The third question: what are the therapeutic discipline strategies that are used by faculty members to control the students' undesirable behaviors in academic classrooms from the perspective of the College of Education's students in King Saud University?
To answer this question, the researcher extracted modes, percentages, averages, and standard deviations, and then ordered the answers of the student sample taking in consideration the therapeutic discipline strategies that are used by faculty members in academic classrooms as shown in the following table: Table 7 shows that the average of the third argument reflects the agreement of the student sample with the majority of the strategies that are used by faculty members to control the students' undesirable behaviors in the college academic classrooms.The strategy of "giving the student a first notice to remind her of the rules of breaching the classroom's discipline" received the highest approval from the student sample with an average of 4.45, which agrees with the results of the studies of (Dada & Okunade, 2014) and (Adem & James,2015).The second strategy following this one with the same student sample approval is "asking the student calmly but strictly to stop the undesirable behavior" with an average of 4.24, which agrees with (Duagjit, 2013) study but disagrees with (Gifford et al., 2002) study has shown that, from the teachers' perspective, the strategy of challenging the student in the middle of the classroom and embarrassing him or her in front of others is indeed ineffective.As for the strategies that received a slightly lower student sample approval is "directing the student to the disciplinary committees upon cheating or plagiarizing" with an average of 4.12, which agrees with (Deborah & Stephen, 2006); the results of the (Deborah & Stephen, 2006) study suggest to direct student who cheat or plagiarize to the school's consultant as part of the therapeutic discipline strategies.The next highest is "talking to the student individually at the end of lecture", with an average of 4.03, which agrees with (Deborah & Stephen, 2006) and (Carter, et.al, 2009) studies."Holding the student who is absent or arrives late accountable" strategy comes fifth with an average of 3.96, which agrees with the results of (Deborah & Stephen, 2006) study.Regarding the three therapeutic discipline strategies that came last in accordance to their averages are: "walking towards the student and getting physically close to her" with an average of 3.20, "ignoring the undesirable behavior and not paying attention to it" with an average of 3.19, and finally "moving the student from one seat to another" with an average of 3.03.These averages fall within the neutral answer range (2.61-3.4),and maybe this goes back to the fact that the student sample is very confident that these methods are not used by faculty members to control students' undesirable behaviors in academic classrooms, or it could be that faculty members rarely use these three strategies as initial solutions to resolve such behaviors.

Recommendations
Based on the results of the study, the researcher recommends the following: -Looking at the students' undesirable behaviors in academic classrooms like "cheating and plagiarism" for further investigation to discover the reasons behind them.Moreover, the institution should seek to provide the necessary infrastructure that ensures the safety of the learning environment to decrease plagiarism practices.
-Creating policies, by faculty members, to control and organize the teaching process.It's also important to explain the expectations of desirable behaviors to be performed by students, undesirable behaviors that they should reject, and the consequential results of breaching the rules and the regulations.

Suggestions
The study suggests other researchers the following: -Conducting an empirical study to explore the reasons behind students' undesirable behaviors in classrooms from the perspective of the students enrolled in King Saud University.
-A prospective study regarding the reasons behind cheating and plagiarism from the perspective of the students enrolled in King Saud University.

Table 1 .
Distribution of the original community individuals based on their departments

Table 2 .
Sample distribution based on the department

Table 3 .
Table 3 below: Correlation coefficients of the terms of the study method and the arguments that are related to them (expeditionary sample: N = 31) *indication at ∞=0.01.

Table 4 .
Cronbach Alpha coefficients for the arguments of the questionnaire (expeditionary sample: n = 31)

Table 5 .
Modes, percentages, averages, and standard deviations, ordered from highest to lowest for the sample answers about undesirable student behaviors in academic classrooms

Table 6 .
Modes, percentages, averages, and standard deviations of the student answers regarding the preventive discipline strategies that are used by faculty members in academic classrooms; ordered from highest to lowest

Table 7 .
Modes, percentages, averages, and standard deviations of the student answers regarding the therapeutic discipline strategies that are used by faculty members in academic classrooms; ordered from highest to lowest