Student Behaviour and Use of Class Time in Brazil, Chile and Mexico

Teachers in Brazil, Chile and Mexico report having high percentages of students with behavioural problems in their classes. Especially in Brazil, teachers report spending large amounts of time keeping order in the classroom. Besides potentially significantly reducing instructional time and students’ opportunities to lean, student misbehaviour can also influence attracting and retaining teachers. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate factors associated with time that lower secondary teachers report spending keeping order in the classroom and factors associated with these teachers’ reports of student behavioural problems in their class. It is based on in-depth analyses from the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS 2013) data from Brazil, Chile and Mexico. Some of the major findings show that aspects of initial teacher education, professional development and teacher professional collaboration are associated with the time that lower secondary teachers report spending keeping order in the classroom, while participation among stakeholders in schools is negatively associated with student behavioural problems in the classroom.