STUDY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DISCIPLINARY DECISIONS FOR DEFIANT STUDENT BEHAVIORS AND SPECIFIED ATTITUDES AND CHARACTERISTICS OF HIGH SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS

Appropriate student discipline at the high school level is a subject on which varying opinions exist. Discipline is usually viewed from the perspective of student misbehavior. This study was designed to focus on the student discipline issue through an examination of the relationship between a set of specified administrator attitudes and characteristics and disciplinary decisions. The basic research design was a simulated field study. The subjects were practicing high school assistant administrators from twenty-two high schools located in a large urban school district. Independent variables selected for the study were (1) attitudes toward appropriate discipline for defiant student behaviors, (2) perceptions of and willingness to comply with the disciplinary expectations of the principal, teachers and other administrators, (3) years of experience as high school administrators, (4) personal experience rearing high school children and (5) sex of the administrators. The measure of the dependent variable was derived from the disciplinary decisions of the subjects to five hypothetical case studies portraying defiant and/or disobedient student behaviors. Multiple regression analysis was employed to test the primary hypothesis of the study. The major finding was that those subjects who most strongly perceived that teachers expected strict disciplinary action for defiant student behaviors were the same subjects who made the most severe disciplinary decisions. A finding that approached statistical significance was that those subjects who had children of their own who had graduated from high school tended to take less stringent disciplinary action than those who had not reared children through the high school years. The findings indicated that role behavior seems to be a more promising focus for the examination of influences on disciplinary decisions. The non-significant relationship between the attitude toward discipline scale responses and the disciplinary behavior of the subjects indicated that disciplinary actions tended to be independent of the disciplinary attitudes of the subjects included in the study. Among the recommendations for further research was a recognition of the need to examine differences in beliefs and behaviors of administrators in relation to the disciplinary process that takes place prior to the final disciplinary action.