The management style of discipline teachers in Hong Kong secondary schools

In schools in Hong Kong, a team of teachers are assigned the specific responsibilities of enforcing school rules and regulations and handling individual students' serious conduct problems. They are called discipline teachers. Government statistics show that there is an increasing rate of students' unruly and delinquent behaviour in the recent years. This study aimed at examining the management style of a group of discipline teachers as a means of exploring effective intervention strategies for schools to cope with problem situations. The subjects (27 males and 15 females) were administered the Pupil Control Ideology Form, They were also asked about their perceived roles as discipline teachers and to evaluate the usefulness of some commonly used discipline measures. Findings indicated that majority of the subjects were custodial in their management style and they evaluated those discipline measures which had immediate effects to deter students' disruptive behaviour as most useful. Implications for effective intervention strategies were discussed.