Effects of student teachers’ coping behaviour

Background. When teachers employ ineffective ways of coping with stressful encounters with pupils, this may result in feelings of distress and diminished learning opportunities for pupils. In the case of beginning teachers, in particular, problematic classroom interactions cause feelings of distress and may result in dysfunctional teaching. Aim. This study examined the functional relationship between student teachers’ coping behaviour and the immediate outcomes resulting from stressful encounters in the classroom. Sample. About 300 responses related to problematic events were studied in a sample of 27 student teachers enrolled in a graduate teacher education programme. Method. We assessed the daily difficulties which the participants experienced in the classroom, the ways they coped with these events, and two immediate outcomes (the pupils’ time‐on‐task and the student teachers’ satisfaction with the outcome). Results. In situations where pupil misbehaviour had been appraised as problematic, student teachers demonstrated effective coping behaviour when they consistently raised tension in the interaction with their pupils, and varied the intensity of activities. As expected, the relation between coping behaviour and pupils’ time‐on‐task was less strong in other classroom events (e.g., instruction or classroom organisation). Conclusions. Student teachers have to be intrusive in order to change pupils’ misbehaviour and get them working. Inactive behaviour on the part of student teachers was found to be ineffective in changing pupil misbehaviour. However, we cannot conclude that a particular coping behaviour employed by student teachers is effective or dysfunctional in changing pupils’ time‐on‐task without examining long‐term outcomes as well.