Teachers and School “Discipline†in Greece: A Case Study

“Discipline†is a notion which is related to military and police organization and structures and thus it is possible to cause negative predisposition to a number of people. We use the term discipline in quotes, because we could not find a more suitable, in order to describe the body of measures, acts and incidents we deal in the research we present here. “Discipline†in classroom and in school is an issue which concerns educators, parents and guardians, as well as politicians in many countries. Policies and practices of “discipline†in schools are associated with social and political factors and events. Massive, formal, education as it is structured since it has been established, premises a specific framework in order to be operative. A number of rules and routines are necessary to apply if a school and a classroom want to achieve their cognitive, emotional, and social goals. In this paper, we present data of a research relating to the exploration of teachers’ attitudes, beliefs and practices concerning issues of school “discipline†in Greek schools. Our research strategy is Case Study and its main technique is in-depth semi-structured interview. Our main findings display what teachers who participate in our research consider as causes of school discipline problems; how they relate these problems with wider social reality pupils face; how their positive and negative behaviors contribute to pupils behaviors; techniques they use to prevent and resolve “discipline†problems and how they evaluate their basic studies and retraining in order to manage their classrooms.