Encyclopaideia – Journal of Phenomenology and Education. Vol.24 n.58 (2020)
ISSN 1825-8670

Essays – peer-reviewed

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1825-8670/10815

Mood, Being-with-others and Disruptive Behavior in the Classroom: A Psychological Perspective Encounters Phenomenology

Magnar Ødegård — University of Oslo (Norway) — Contact: magnar.odegard@isp.uio.no

Magnar Ødegård is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Special Needs Education, University of Oslo. Dr. Ødegård has previously been a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests are within the fields of phenomenology, special needs, and general education.

Published: 2020-12-21

This article is part of the project “Teachers’ Skillful Coping with Disruptive Behavior in Norwegian and American Classrooms”. Questions raised are how disruptive behavior could affect teachers’ being-with-students and how moods could influence how they cope with such behavior. I argue that classroom practices are characterized by “shared attunement” and that there is an interdependence between teachers and students. Another argument is that disruptive behavior could influence teachers’ moods negatively. I also explore how teachers could navigate these moods when they encounter student-behavior they perceive as challenging. The analysis in the article has its roots within the field of psychology. It is interested in crossing this with phenomenology in the context of how teachers cope with disruptive behavior in classrooms.

L’articolo illustra alcuni risultati del progetto “Teachers’ Skillful Coping with Disruptive Behavior in Norwegian and American Classrooms”. Si riflette sia sul modo in cui un comportamento dirompente potrebbe influenzare il con-essere degli insegnanti rispetto agli studenti, sia sulla forma in cui le tonalità emotive potrebbero influenzare il modo di affrontare tali comportamenti da parte degli insegnanti. Si ritiene che le pratiche in classe siano caratterizzate da una “sintonizzazione condivisa” e che vi sia un’interdipendenza tra insegnanti e studenti. Si ritiene altresì che un comportamento dirompente potrebbe influenzare negativamente le tonalità emotive degli insegnanti. Si indaga come gli insegnanti potrebbero gestire le proprie tonalità emotive quando incontrano comportamenti degli studenti che percepiscono come problematici. L’analisi condotta affonda le proprie radici nel campo della psicologia, ma tenta di stabilire un dialogo con la fenomenologia per comprendere il contesto in cui gli insegnanti affrontano il comportamento dirompente in classe.

Keywords: Phenomenology; Moods; Being-with-Others; Disruptive Behavior; Education.

1 Introduction

Disruptive behavior is documented as one of the main challenges in classrooms (Duesund & Ødegård, 2018a, 2018b; Nash, Schlösser & Scarr, 2016). Teachers struggle to cope with such behavior, and the frustration and exhaustion arising from disruptive behavior could be a stressor for them to leave their jobs relatively early in their careers (Clunies‐Ross, Little & Kienhuis, 2008; Ødegård, 2017).

This article addresses the following research questions:

In which ways could disruptive behavior affect teachers’ being-with-students?
In which ways could moods influence how teachers cope with disruptive behavior?

1.1 Disruptive behavior

Some forms of disruptive behavior are displayed by nearly all students at some point during their schooling. Examples are talking out of turn about things not related to the subject matter or avoiding working on assigned tasks. Nearly 60% of Norwegian students report that disruptive behavior distracts them from their work. These kinds of “everyday” disruptive behaviors are what teachers find most distracting and frustrating towards their work, and the kinds of behavior they struggle the most to cope with (Duesund & Ødegård, 2018a). Disruptive behavior is defined as: “Any behavior that is perceived as sufficiently off-task in the classroom, as to distract the teachers and/or class-peers from learning activities”.

2 Theoretical framework

The theoretical framework in this article is based on the concept of skillful coping and the phenomenology of moods, drawing respectively upon the philosophers Hubert Dreyfus and Martin Heidegger, with Gloria Flores’ psychological perspectives on how moods could block or promote learning being the main source of insight.

2.1 Skillful coping

Skillful coping involves that people always utilize skills when interacting with the world (H. L. Dreyfus, 2004). Skillful coping illustrates an everyday understanding of finding one’s way in the world (H. L. Dreyfus, 1991). H. L. Dreyfus (2004) describes skillful coping as the fundamental characteristic of “the human way of being”. This entails an active and interdependent relationship with the world around us as well as people having “ownership” over how they perceive situations (Ødegård, 2014). For example, some students and teachers are disturbed by disruptive behavior when others are not, even though the behavior displayed is seemingly identical. In this perspective, human beings are not described as totally self-sufficient subjects. H. L. Dreyfus (1991) argues that we are absorbed in the world and that the physical and social context are interdependent. Things like emotions, moods, thoughts, actions, behavior, and relationships are not context-free.

2.2 Moods

By being “thrown” into a pre-existing world, entities and activities are disclosed to human beings through their interrelatedness with the world. Human beings are thrown into a “There”, which are the situations where one exists and acts (Heidegger, 1949). Our moods (German: Stimmungen) reveal our way of being in the “There” (Heidegger, 1949, 2008). Moods influence our entire existence (H. L. Dreyfus & Kelly, 2011; Heidegger, 1949; Ødegård, 2017). What characterizes moods are that they are always total (they affect all areas of being-in-the-world) and that we cannot avoid “falling into” them (Flores, 2016; Heidegger, 1949). The moods we have fallen into influence our perception and coping with the world, and what matters to us (H. L. Dreyfus & Wakefield, 2014). As Heidegger (1962, p. 136) says: “mood has already disclosed, in every case, being-in-the-world as a whole, and makes it possible first of all to direct oneself towards something”. Moods disclose the entirety of “being-in-the-world”. This allows Dasein (human beings) to direct its attention towards specific things, events, other people, and/or itself within the “There” it finds itself (Heidegger, 1949). In the words of Bollnow (2017, p. 1413) “How I face a thing and how it appears to me, is from the outset, determined by the Stimmung I am in”. The totality of moods could be illustrated by the fact that a generally depressed person could perceive the world as drab and uninteresting, while an elated person encounters the world positively and sees possibilities in his or her coping with the world (H. L. Dreyfus & Wakefield, 2014; Ratcliffe, 2013). Mood affects how challenges in learning present themselves. For example, a productive mood is characterized by optimism and seeing possibilities in the face of adversity. On the other hand, an unproductive mood is characterized by “closing the world” and blocking our ability to see possibilities or solutions towards the problems we encounter. As human beings are “thrown” into a “There”, manifestations of moods are pre-reflectively determined. Moods “assail” us, and it is “not wholly up to us how we will be affected by the situations we find ourselves in” (H. L. Dreyfus & Wrathall, 2007, p. 5). This illustrates that we are delivered to, or “thrown” into, a world not (only) of our own making (H. L. Dreyfus, 2013). While emotions are understood as directed towards something in the “There” we find ourselves in (such as being angry at another person), mood (has no determined object and) is a fundamental existentiale (Heidegger, 2008), which is prior to psychological issues like emotions or reflections (S. E. Dreyfus, Dreyfus, & Rousse, 2016; Flores, 2016). An example of how moods could be relevant in educational settings is found in the mood of distrust. Displayed or hidden distrust from teachers towards students could impair students’ learning and development. If students pick up on the distrust teachers could have towards them, they could regress in their development. Distrust could have what Bollnow (1989) refers to as “disastrous consequences”. To avoid these “disastrous consequences”, teachers need to have confidence both in themselves and in their students. This is a prerequisite for any interaction with students and highlights the importance of not only focusing on curricula, principles, and methods of teaching but also the implicit and explicit dynamics in the relationship between teachers and students (Bollnow, 1989; Wolf, 2019).

Moods also relate to learning and developing skills. One could ask how this relates to teaching practice. H. L. Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1986) emphasized that learning skills depend on an instructor. This article looks at the role of the instructor (teacher). It could be difficult to imagine that a teacher would be highly skilled at teaching if he or she is not simultaneously learning. It is advocated as important that one of the skills teachers need in their vocation is to cope with disruptive behavior (Bear, 2010; Leflot, Lier, Onghena & Colpin, 2010; Martella, Nelson, Marchand-Martella & O'Reilly, 2012). Disruptive behavior could lead to several unproductive moods, such as frustration. When a person has fallen into the mood of frustration, the world “closes down”. Disruptive behavior then presents itself as the main point of focus as it blocks the intended teaching activity (Ødegård, 2014). When disruptive behavior occurs, it could obstruct learning and developing skills in teaching practice, and learning about students and oneself as a teacher (Ødegård, 2017). To develop as an educator, teachers need to reflect upon their practice and learn new strategies to cope with diverse groups of students and situations (Farrell, 2016; Zwozdiak-Myers, 2012). This could highlight that teaching is also learning and that the two are intertwined as opposed to a perspective where teachers’ main objective is to “fill the students with knowledge”. If one considers that humans are not self-sufficient subjects (H. L. Dreyfus, 2013), perhaps students also could “fill teachers with knowledge” as they are interdependent of each other. With no students, there is no teacher, and with no teacher, there are no students.

2.2.1 Being-with-others

In this case, being-with-others is understood as a concept illustrating that moods could be shared between people. This means that whatever mood one person is in could affect the mood of others. Ratcliffe (2013) puts forth the following quote from Heidegger:

A human who … is in a good humor brings a lively atmosphere with them … Or another … puts a damper on everything … What does this tell us? Attunements … in advance determine our being with one another (Ratcliffe, 2013, p. 147).

Human beings are always “tuned in” to the world, meaning that they are never totally independent (Ratcliffe, 2013; Ødegård, 2014). There is always “shared attunement” in the contexts people operate. “Shared attunement” involves that through being-with-others, moods can be shared. For example, it is possible to talk about the “mood of the school” (Tschanen-Moran, 2014) or “mood of the classroom” (Ødegård, 2014). Tschanen-Moran (2014) claims that a school that is in a bad mood is characterized by widespread resignation amongst the faculty due to not being able to cope with things like disruptive behavior.

Regarding “the mood of the classroom”, Ødegård (2014) argues that disruptive behavior could be infectious. When one student is displaying disruptive behavior, others will likely do the same. If the disruptive behavior spreads from student to student and becomes the dominant kind of behavior in the classroom, we are no longer talking about individually disruptive students but rather a disruptive group, or disruptive atmosphere. If we assume that disruptive behavior could be triggered by the mood of one (or several students), the classroom could then fall into a disruptive mood, obstructive towards teaching and learning. When the classroom falls into a disruptive mood, it is more difficult for teachers to cope with the behavior as it manifests amongst many individuals as supposed to a few (Duesund & Ødegård, 2018b; Ødegård, 2014). The concept of how moods can be contagious could be illustrated by the following quote: “Do [moods] bring about an emotional experience which is then transmitted to others, in the matter [of] infectious germs? … We do, indeed, say that attunement or mood is infectious” (Ratcliffe, 2013, p. 147).

Heidegger does not fully describe how moods get to be contagious. To understand this phenomenon, it might be fruitful to look at the relationship between “mood” and “atmosphere”, which are both included in “Stimmungen” (Bollnow, 1989, 2017). In this case, an atmosphere refers to time, places, or people. For example, one could feel wrapped up in a friendly or tense atmosphere when entering a room (Böhme, 1993). Like moods, we exist in atmospheres. They are not inner, private states of being and cannot be seen separately (Elpidorou & Freeman, 2015; Krebs, 2017). Some “collective” moods that could illustrate the interrelatedness between moods and atmospheric conditions are solemnity and festiveness. Solemnity can be raised by the special significance of an event (such as a graduation ceremony). Festiveness includes joyful togetherness and could happen at celebrations or parties. Solemnity and festiveness do not come from individuals. They are dependent on incorporation in an “overall context”, giving “meaning to what happens in a moment” and are “only possible in a community” (Bollnow, 2017, p. 1411). Solemnity and festiveness can bring about a sense of togetherness (Bollnow, 1989).

Ødegård (2019) argues that promoting (and experiencing) togetherness and community is part of a classroom environment that promotes learning. This includes a sense that what goes on in the classroom is a collective responsibility amongst those sharing the context. Searle (1990, p. 414) could shed some light on this when he discusses “collective” or “social” intentionality. “What you must suppose is that others are agents like yourself, that they have similar awarenesses of you as an agent like themselves, and that these awarenesses coalesce into a sense of us as possible or actual collective agents”. When interacting with other people, we sometimes have a sense of us, and a shared point of view, constituting a plural (pre-reflective) self-awareness (Schmid, 2014). However, solemnity (and perhaps other moods like it) could easily be destroyed by “all carelessness in external behavior, even the uninhibited expression of emotion” (Bollnow, 2017, p. 1411). If we transfer this to the classroom context, it could be the case that the collective mood and a sense of togetherness could be changed or “destroyed” by disruptive behavior. Just as in other contexts, teachers and students are interdependent. They affect and are affected by, each other’s ways of being, experiences, emotions, actions, moods, and the atmospheric conditions of the classroom.

3 Methods

This study examined teachers’ descriptions of how they perceive and cope with disruptive behavior. The study utilized a phenomenological research design (Creswell, 1998, 2013). Phenomenology as a research method tries to examine things as they are “in themselves” (Befring, 2015). There is a preconception that through being human, one is always perceiving, experiencing, feeling, and thinking when interacting with the world (Kvale & Brinkman, 2009). Semi-structured qualitative interviews with teachers working in lower and upper secondary schools were the mode of inquiry. This is an appropriate method of examining how teachers perceive their vocation and their experiences of interacting with students. The following section will address the study procedures, including sampling, instrument development, data collection, and analysis.

3.1 Sample

Subjects in the study were recruited through convenience sampling (Creswell, 2013). The sample consists of 10 teachers working in Norwegian lower and upper secondary schools. These teachers were chosen as this study builds on the earlier project “A Comparative Study of Disruptive Behavior between Schools in Norway and the United States” (Duesund, 2017; Duesund & Ødegård, 2018a, 2018b; Skårderud & Duesund, 2014; Ødegård, 2011, 2014, 2017). That study surveyed students aged 15-17. To elaborate on this, we wanted a sample of teachers who were working with similar students.

3.2 Instrument development

An interview guide was developed. The interview guide consisted of 14 questions, divided into four themes (teachers’ experience of disruptive behavior, teachers’ coping with disruptive behavior, the teaching profession, and classroom management). Before conducting the interviews, we did trial-interviews with teachers not included in the final sample. Based on the feedback from the trial-interviews, the questions were said to be highly relevant to teaching practice and experiences with disruptive behavior.

3.3 Data collection

All interviews took place at the schools where the teachers worked. This setting could be characterized as “natural”, meaning that the subjects in the study are familiar with the surroundings and are likely to feel comfortable in the research setting. This could have proven valuable for the truthfulness of the answers (Befring, 2015). Interviews were audio-recorded.

3.4 Ethical considerations

The study was approved by the Norwegian Centre for Research Data (NSD) and the Department of Special Needs Education at the University of Oslo.

3.5 Analysis

After transcribing the interviews, I conducted thematic coding, searching to shed light on underlying meanings embodied in lived experiences (van Manen, 2014). Although I had some themes developed from the theoretical framework, I was open to new categories arising from the material. In the analytical procedure, I followed three steps. (1) Reading the entire transcripts from each interview, (2) searching for themes, and (3) organizing the themes into a meaningful whole. I ended up with the following thematic categories and dimensions:

**Table 1** – Thematic categories
Category	Dimension
Being-with-others	Self-sufficiency Absorption in the classroom
Moods	Unproductive moods Productive moods

4 Discussion

In this section, I will discuss the data, applying “moods” and “being-with-others”.

4.1 Being-with-others

Two dimensions within being-with-others will be discussed (self-sufficiency and absorption in the classroom).

4.1.1 Self-sufficiency

Heidegger advocated that human beings are absorbed in the world and seem to reject the Cartesian notion that people are self-sufficient subjects (H. L. Dreyfus, 2013). Teachers could be absorbed in the classroom in the sense that the physical and the social context are interdependent. T3 addressed such interdependency by saying: “I have to accept that perhaps plan-a for my teaching is not working and that this is not the fault of the students. It is me who has to adjust”.

Breakdown of teaching is often attributed to students’ disruptive behavior (Ødegård, 2014). Teachers need to manage and prevent such behavior by correcting or re-directing it (Ødegård, 2017). What is perhaps lacking in this discourse is the teachers’ ability to adjust themselves and their teaching to the disruptive behavior interfering with teaching practice. T3 seems to consider that she is being-with-students in the classroom. A pre-existing understanding of how students’ behavior could affect her teaching, could be present. She might (implicitly) consider that disruptive behavior is likely to occur at some point during her lessons and that when it does, it is her job to adjust her teaching to meet the needs of the students. Perhaps she is considering disruptive behavior, not as efforts from students to “sabotage” the teaching, but as a signal that the teaching is not sufficiently adapted to the needs of the students who are displaying disruptive behavior. It is not unlikely that disruptive behavior displayed by students could be an expression of them not accepting the situation that they are in or what is going on in the context they find themselves in (Ødegård, 2019). T3 elaborated: “[…] it is me who must adjust it (the teaching), that I can adjust also during the teaching. To stop and say: I understand that this was too boring or above your heads. Let’s land and restart”.

T3 highlights that it is her responsibility to do adjustments during her teaching if something is not going according to plan. This could mean that she is trying to change her teaching in the session itself based on her understanding of the mood of the room. Another perspective is presented by T1 and T4. They both highlighted that adjustments to the teaching were made through reflection after lessons had ended.

[…] you can evaluate in retrospect. ‘How did I cope with this situation?’ And you do this in your head. ‘Yes, it would have been better to solve it that way.’ And perhaps one tries that the next time if it (disruptive behavior) occurs again.

Retrospective reflection has been documented to be a necessity for developing skills in teaching practice (Farrell, 2016; Kauffman, Mostert, Trent & Pullen, 2010; Zwozdiak-Myers, 2012). One could raise the question if retrospective reflection is sufficient. Shulman (1987) mentions “wisdom of practice”. This includes reflective rationalizations and maxims for teaching practice. It could seem like when practitioners know many such maxims, this account for their degree of skillfulness in their practice. Meanwhile, Shulman (1987) warns us that fixed rules or maxims that are transferable between situations (and teachers) will be sufficient for excellent teaching. To illustrate this point, Gottlieb (2015, p. 74) writes: “Either the rules themselves do not provide adequate guidance, or else the situation seems to bear features that call for the following of different or even contradictory rules”. Skillful teaching cannot solely be based on retrospective reflection. Solutions to past situations may not always be successful in new situations. Classrooms are unpredictable and there are many possibilities for actions when interacting with students. These possibilities are not always covered by maxims, rules, or previous rationalization for behavior. One measure against disruptive behavior will not necessarily work on another kind of disruptive behavior. Measures towards disruptive behavior are not only directed to the behavior itself. It is also directed towards the student displaying such behavior. This could make it even more challenging as the teacher cannot only know the measure itself, he or she also needs to know (and adapt to) the person displaying the behavior. Managing disruptive behavior involves a degree of risk-taking, as one cannot always be sure of the outcome. This is an integral part of being-with-others, as well as in getting better at skillfully coping with our surroundings (H. L. Dreyfus, 2013; S. E. Dreyfus, 2004). Another argument for adjusting one’s approach at the moment disruptive behavior occurs is that it tends to spread (Duesund & Ødegård, 2018a, 2018b; Ødegård, 2014). If teachers do not take measures against it immediately, disruptive behavior could be increasingly difficult to stop when it spreads across the room and creates a “disruptive mood” in the classroom.

4.1.2 Absorption in the classroom

T3, addressing that she must adjust herself and her approach when disruptive behavior occurs could underline being “absorbed” in the classroom. While she may or may not have a backup plan to her plan-a, her willingness to change course and adjust could be related to what H. L. Dreyfus (2014) calls an “attitude of expertise”. This attitude entails responding to the world in a way that opens new forms of intelligibility. This includes feeling drawn towards new experiences and understandings (Ødegård, 2019). Part of this “opening up the world” could involve retrospective reflection but also coping with challenges when they occur. A dominant focus on retrospective reflection and drawing up future maxims for action could be a way of “closing the world” by not having an openness towards immediateness, the unexpected, and to change one’s approach in one’s “everyday being”.

Some teachers addressed causes for disruptive behavior. One example could be found in a quote from T8: “I do not think it could be attributed to only one cause. It could probably have something to do with challenges in the individual student”. Another example of how behavior could be attributed to other factors than the teachers themselves comes from T5, talking about what causes disruptive behavior: “[…] either the teaching or something earlier […] how the day has been, how the class before mine was”. Teachers have different abilities in coping with disruptive behavior. In some cases, their statements about disruptive behavior are mainly about causes outside of themselves, such as difficulties within the individual student (Ødegård, 2017). Perhaps attributing causes for disruptive behavior to only the students is a way of “closing the world” by ignoring how one affects and is affected by students.

Several teachers in the sample addressed how they affect disruptive behavior. This could be interpreted as them recognizing their connectedness to the world and their students. Looking for risk-factors and causality outside of oneself could be useful but letting such approaches dominate coping with disruptive behavior could close possibilities and leave the interrelatedness between teachers and students unexplored. T5 addressed a necessity for good teaching:

I think that, as a good educator and a thoughtful teacher, the disruptive behavior comes from somewhere. And that I must adjust […] If disruptive behavior occurs when I am teaching, I think that it is related to the teaching and that I must adjust.

One could say that T5 has an open approach in the sense that she is willing to recognize how the quality of her teaching could affect disruptive behavior. T5 also illustrates introspection by placing herself in the center of potential triggers for disruptive behavior. Colvin (2010) argues for the importance of teachers being aware of their roles when disruptive behavior occurs in class. Teachers’ way of being and response to disruptive behavior could enforce students’ behavior and set the occasion for their subsequent behavior. Considering what it entails to be-with-students could be influenced by the attitude of expertise addressed by Dreyfus (2014). Causes for disruptive behavior is not necessarily found in the students. The teacher’s being-with-students could influence the occurrence, manifestation, and intensity of disruptive behavior.

Teachers and students are the ones who cope with disruptive behavior when it occurs in classrooms. Greene (2014) suggests a model where students and teachers collaborate towards establishing a learning environment that decreases disruptive behavior. Although this model has proven successful, there is also documentation that students are unlikely to intervene when someone is acting disruptively (Duesund & Ødegård, 2018b). Perhaps it is the case that teachers are expected to be the ones who should manage disruptive behavior more effectively. However, Duesund (2017) argues that teachers are left to their own devices to a too great extent, advocating that they need more assistance in coping with disruptive behavior. While that would be useful, raising awareness of one’s way of being could be a fruitful avenue to explore how one affects, and is affected by, the relational processes in the classroom as well as identifying areas where there is a need for assistance.

4.2 Moods

This section addresses three unproductive moods (distrust and resignation, frustration, and arrogance), and three productive moods (resolution, confidence, and wonder).

4.2.1 Unproductive moods

Unproductive moods close opportunities to learn (in this case also to teach). Examples of such moods are arrogance, distrust, and frustration (Bollnow, 1989; Flores, 2016).

Distrust and resignation

Flores (2016) addresses that moods affect our assessments of the world. T3 addressed having expectations of students: “We tend to set the bar to low. We do not use compassion; we use pity for those we count as poor. If they struggle academically or socially […], we feel sorry for them and make them underachievers”. T3 could seem to be in an “unproductive mood”. She is describing a sense of pity and feeling sorry for students that struggle at school. Perhaps an underlying issue is that the teacher describes a situation where realistic demands are not put forth to students. This could be linked to a low expectation of what students can achieve. Expecting not to be competent enough to do a task could be connected to a mood of resignation, meaning that one sees no possibilities for resolving a situation. At the same time, “setting the bar too low” and using “pity” could be linked to a mood of distrust. Distrust involves perceiving others as incompetent, and that they lack important skills for accomplishing the tasks they are given (Bollnow, 1989). Teachers perceiving students as not sufficiently competent to perform certain tasks could be interpreted as they go through moods of resignation and distrust on behalf of the students, “downgrading” the students’ abilities.

Teachers’ resignation on behalf of the students could affect their approach to teaching and their adaptation of the students’ education. It could be the case that teachers’ low expectations of students translate into students also not expecting much of themselves. There is also documentation that teachers often expect too much from their students (Ødegård, 2014). When teachers’ expectations of students are too low (or too high), it could impair their relationship and the students’ sense of being acknowledged by their teacher as well as the students becoming at-risk for falling into a mood of resignation.

Frustration and impatience

Amongst the things characterizing frustration are a sense of what one is doing is not working, and frequently failing (Flores, 2016). The data in this study seems to support that disruptive behavior could be a source of frustration when it occurs in classrooms. Three teachers mentioned that disruptive behavior could affect their professionalism, here illustrated by T1:

I feel that it is hard to keep being professional. Especially when you have put a lot of time and effort into what I spoke about earlier: to make things (the subject) connect to the real world. Then you think: “Damn it, I have done everything I can to make this good, and still you disturb!” […] Then it is hard to keep professional, so I feel that it does something with me. I get angry and perhaps more brief and cross. And a bit unfair towards the others who have not disturbed.

T1 had made a concrete plan to make the teaching understandable for students (connecting it to the real world). When this plan fails due to someone being disruptive, she experiences frustration. Strong emotions could lead teachers to act unprofessionally (Skårderud & Duesund, 2014). Examples of “unprofessional” teacher reactions towards disruptive behavior are yelling and singling out students in front of their peers. Such reactions could enforce the intensity of the disruptive behavior displayed by students (Greene, 2014; Nash et al., 2016). Expressions of frustration or anger could also have negative influences on teachers. Jeon, Hur, and Buettner (2016) claim that classrooms characterized by chaotic incidents and low teacher self-regulation could lead to teachers experiencing burnout and increased levels of stress.

Another mood illustrated is impatience (H. L. Dreyfus & Kelly, 2011; Flores, 2016). Impatience involves a sense of someone wasting one’s time, not being able to complete what one sets out to do, and an urge to move on from distractions. When disruptive behavior continued despite her directives to stop it, T8 said to her students: “I can’t focus if you keep interrupting me. So honestly, if you are not interested in being here, […] you can just leave”. T8 seems to not take the time to enquire about why students are displaying disruptive behavior, indicating impatience. She seems to show a desire to continue the intended activity by removing disruptive students from the classroom. Excluding actions such as removing students from the classroom could enforce disruptive behavior rather than preventing it (Greene, 2014; Nash et al., 2016).

Arrogance

The mood of arrogance is characterized by attitudes like “there is nothing left for me to learn here”, or “I already know what I need to know” (Flores, 2016). T3, who earlier said that “we are setting the bar too low” was asked whether she adapted her teaching to the students: “No, I don’t. I barely adapt anything […] I care very little about adapted a-plans”¹

Perhaps this statement signals arrogance (or ignorance). The Norwegian Education Act states that education should be adapted to students’ abilities and aptitudes. To do so, differentiated teaching is a key component (Bjørnsrud & Nilsen, 2012). It could be hard to imagine that this teacher will be successful in reaching and motivating all her students with no adaptation of her teaching. Another aspect is that the teacher seems unwilling to learn about the needs of her students. To accommodate students and adapt their education, it is necessary to know something about their abilities and aptitudes (Buli-Holmberg, Nilsen & Skogen, 2015).

Not adapting the teaching to the needs of students could be a trigger for disruptive behaviors in classrooms (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009; Shin & Ryan, 2017). A mood of arrogance could be a stumbling block towards adequate coping with disruptive behavior. To finalize this section, I wish to draw forth one citation from T4: “I think the teacher is the reason for most of the disruptive behavior”. Although disruptive behavior is not solely caused by teachers, a teacher with a mood of arrogance could be a source of disruptions and an unproductive classroom environment.

4.2.2 Navigation of unproductive moods

“If teachers are more capable of remaining calm, regulating their own emotions, and coping with difficulties, they are more likely to provide positive guidance for children” (Jeon et al., 2016, p. 84). Navigation of moods could be a crucial skill in learning and teaching. Productive moods are characterized by a higher degree of openness to the world and a greater willingness to learn and develop in a profession (Flores, 2016). When navigating a mood, one identifies what gets in the way of teaching and adequate coping with disruptive behavior. The following addresses the productive moods of resolution, confidence, and wonder. Worth pointing out is that the work from Flores (2016) on navigating moods has psychological properties in the sense that she seems to presuppose that to navigate a mood, we must know about the mood that we are in. One could ask the question if her rationale considers the argument that moods are pre-reflective. However, it explicitly builds on Dreyfus’ phenomenology of skill acquisition and Heidegger’s concept of mood. One might call Flores’ work phenomenological-psychological. Heidegger did not reject the idea that things could be “present-at-hand”, or “occurrent”, meaning things constituted by properties they possess in themselves, rather than through their relations to uses (H. L. Dreyfus & Wrathall, 2007; Heidegger, 1949). Especially in “breakdown situations” (i.e. when disruptive behavior interrupts teaching and learning) the “occurrentness of an available object will obtrude” (H. L. Dreyfus & Wrathall, 2007, p. 4; Ødegård, 2014). Perhaps then the moods that have previously been concealed become deconcealed and available to consciousness (Heidegger, 1988). Addressing navigation of moods could have practical significance in this context as it could be seen as crucial that teaching practice builds on both knowing-that and know-how, although knowing-that (theoretical knowledge) is not sufficient in itself to be considered a highly skillful practitioner (H. L. Dreyfus, 1991). Perhaps one could say that knowing-that could be useful in the sense that it could develop (or strengthen) teachers’ “know-how”.

Resolution

T5 highlighted the importance of adjusting one’s practice when disruptive behavior occurred in classrooms: “I have to start again; I need to regulate myself”. What T5 could be insinuating is that disruptive behavior affects her and that she must practice some form of self-regulation to continue teaching adequately. Disruptive behavior could be regarded as a potential trigger towards creating unproductive moods and a source of conflict in the classroom (Ødegård, 2014). Managing conflicts, decreasing disruptive behavior and self-regulation are important social skills that teachers need to positively enforce the influence they have on the classroom environment (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). T5 might be in a mood of resolution, involving a strong determination to make something happen and to solve a problem when it occurs (Flores, 2016; Tschanen-Moran, 2014). As T5’s teaching is interrupted, she self-regulates to regain control over herself before addressing the disruptive behavior and continue teaching. This could be a fruitful avenue to explore as introspection and self-regulation are tools that could be important to decrease the levels of disruptive behavior in classrooms (Capa-Aydin, Sungur & Uzuntiryaki, 2009; Jennings & Greenberg, 2009; Jeon et al., 2016). T5 elaborated: “When I am talking and there is a lot of other stuff happening that disturbs me, I have to assume that everyone else is getting disturbed as well”.

T5 notices the occurrence of disruptive behavior and that she needs to find a resolution to the problem before going on with the planned activity. She also points out that if she is disrupted, the students are disrupted as well. Perhaps this is an indication that the teacher is addressing the issue of “shared attunement”, meaning that she presupposes that her perception of being disturbed is also the case for her students as they share what is going on in the classroom.

Confidence

Confidence as a mood entails a belief in one’s abilities to cope with different challenges (Flores, 2016). According to Bollnow (1989), having confidence in students is also a prerequisite for any interaction with students. T9 said the following about how disruptive behavior affects her teaching: “It doesn’t (affect me) to any extensive degree”. T9 explains that disruptive behavior does not affect her when she has been teaching the class for several years. She illustrates the importance of “social planning”. In her first lessons with a new class, she spends time on the social environment in the class, trying to promote that students feel a sense of belonging and safety. She also focuses on getting to know students as individuals and building positive relationships with them. Several aspects could come to the forefront when discussing the issue of “social planning” in the first period of teaching a new class. The first days of meeting a new class could be dependent on the teacher’s efforts to establish a positive learning environment (Bohn, Roehrig & Pressley, 2004; Pressley, Croyle & Madison, 2020; Stronge, 2018). Early efforts towards establishing positive relationships with students could prevent and/or decrease the occurrence of disruptive behavior. However, spending a lot of time on the social environment comes at a cost, according to T10: “It affects my teaching, because academically […] I can’t take advantage of the total time of teaching to begin with, compared to what one does when one gets to know the group of students”.

T5 points out that investing in the social aspects of the classroom could negatively affect the academic domains. However, there could be a reason to believe that focusing on social aspects will be beneficial over time. Perhaps the investment in creating a positive social climate in the class could contribute to a positive mood in the classroom. A school can be in an unproductive mood, e.g. through having several teachers displaying resignation in their encounter with challenging tasks, or when the group of students has so many different needs and difficulties the teachers perceive that they are incapable of coping with (Solomon & Flores, 2001; Tschanen-Moran, 2014). A collective mood of negativity or resignation could also be the case in classrooms. Ødegård (2014) addresses moods that could impair teaching and learning and advocates that these could manifest in the classroom as disruptive behavior tend to spread amongst students. The classroom could be at risk for falling into a new norm where students are conforming to each other’s disruptive behavior, which could be challenging for teachers to decrease or stop. As the teachers are the leaders of the classroom, the “social planning” addressed here could be a step towards strengthening a collectively productive mood in the classroom, as supposed to be at-risk of falling into unproductive moods due to the social environment not getting addressed as early as possible.

A common challenge in schools is the issue of continuity (Juvonen, 2007). Although one teacher may emphasize the early establishment of a collectively productive mood in the classroom, others may not as they do not want it to negatively affect the academic aspects. Teachers also have different tolerance levels towards disruptive behavior and apply different strategies in their efforts to decrease or stop such behavior (Ødegård, 2017). Although teacher practices may vary, 8/10 of the teachers in the sample advocated that they established rules for appropriate behavior together with students as soon as they started in lower secondary school (8^th grade in Norway) and that these rules were supposed to last until 10^th grade (when they graduate and move on to upper secondary school). This could be positive, especially as the teachers emphasized that the students take part in establishing the rules. When students participate in the establishment of a positive social climate in the classroom, they are more likely to adhere to the rules and to display positive engagement and motivation during class (Duesund & Ødegård, 2018b).

Wonder

Wonder is characterized by not knowing something but still being curious about it and trying to understand what it entails (Flores, 2016). In wonder, there is an underlying inclination towards understanding the world (Friedlander, 2011; Kenaan, 2011). When disruptive behavior occurred in the form of students talking out of turn about things not related to the subject matter, T9 illustrated that he tried to: “[…] filter out what is usable (academically). What it is, I don’t know but they are engaged in something”. T9 actively tries to understand what students are engaged in based on what they are talking about, regardless if it is related to the subject matter or not. He described asking students about what they are talking about. It seems like T9 tries to use the students’ interests to adapt his teaching. According to Opdal (2001), children display wonder themselves, often enquiring about things adults take for granted. He further claims that kids display wonder that is independent of fixed rules, such as an “appropriate” way or structure towards solving a problem. Perhaps disruptive behavior could be understood as students showing a sense of wonder. T9 describes that he does not perform sanctions towards disruptive behavior but takes an inquisitive approach. Perhaps he opens up the world by “tuning into” his students’ conversation and share his mood of wonder with them. As such, this approach characterized by wonder seems in contrast to the earlier displays of arrogance or ignorance with the unwillingness to adapt the education to students or “setting the bar too low”.

5 Conclusion

In this article, I have explored how the concepts of moods and being-with-others could be connected to teaching practice and disruptive behavior in classrooms. Moods and being-with-others characterize the “human way of being”. Based on the arguments in this article, they could also characterize the teachers’ and students’ way of being. Raising awareness of the concepts of being-with-others and moods could be a fruitful avenue to explore further as it highlights “everyday” practices in the classroom. Applying teachers’ narratives to this could be of importance as to not only describing ways teachers should be coping with disruptive behavior but how they cope. Perhaps this could be a foundation for further research on teaching practice and disruptive behavior.

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An a-plan (activity plan) is a plan illustrating what students are to do during the year.↩︎