Student misbehavior and teacher coping strategies in EFL classes in Iranian High Schools

Foreign language teaching faces numerous pedagogical challenges, with student misbehavior being a major concern. Considering its effects on teaching and learning, teachers need effective strategies to manage student misbehavior. Thus, this study explored the most common student misbehaviors experienced by Iranian high school English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers and probed the types of and differences in their coping strategies based on demographic and organizational characteristics. To this aim, data was collected from 144 high school EFL teachers through an adapted questionnaire. The results of the study revealed talking with friends and making noise as the most frequent student misbehaviors in classrooms . Additionally, addressing misbehaving students by name to gain attention, staring, and moving closer to students to manage behavior were the most frequently used coping strategies among EFL teachers. The study also indicated that while EFL teachers’ experience of student misbehavior differed with differences in demographic (educational degree) and organizational characteristics (school type), their coping strategies differed just with changes in their demographic characteristics (marital status, age, experience). This study also provides valuable insights into the student misbehavior-coping strategies used by different groups of EFL teachers to address student misbehavior, and offers practical implications for EFL teachers, teacher educators, teacher trainers, and administrators.