A holistic approach to punishment

Abstract

The study aims to find what are the factors that lead to misbehaviour and in what ways punishment is being used to deal with misbehaviour. The sample was made up of 6 students aged 14 and 4 teachers in a church together with the Commissioner for Children. The author used interviews as a research method. A number of approaches to deal with misbehaviour came out from the teachers' interviews from trying to convince students misbehaving that what they are doing is wrong to the use of punishment as a deterrent. On the other hand the approach advocated by students was more based on reasoning things out with the teacher when he /she expects them to behave better. Finally issues like how could punishment be ethically correct were discussed with the commissioner for children. She said that for punishment to be ethically correct, it needed to be fair, in proportion with misbehaviour and the teacher needs to give students reasons for punishment. Aside from this the Commissioner for Children said that there were no laws or documents targeting teachers who used unethical punishment. However she said that there is a document which serves as guidelines for teachers when giving punishment. The main conclusions that came out of this study were that the students need to be consulted further by teachers when it came to rule making for the classroom and after the teacher and that punishment is fair.