This proposal emerged from the meetings of the Inclusive Educational Support Working Group, which had highlighted novel teachers’ lack of knowledge and expertise in behaviour management. Several previous studies have noted the deficiencies in the training and resources available to teachers for managing disruptive behaviours (Cejudo & López-Delgado, 2017).

We define students with behaviour-regulation difficulties as “students who present inappropriate behaviours in the sociocultural context which substantially interfere in their social development and learning” (Alsina & Gard, 2014). According to these authors, behaviour regulation requires the development of personal resources such as the ability to adjust emotions and gestures and the skills to negotiate and dialogue openly about feelings. Individuals who have not developed these skills tend to respond explosively to adversity.

Despite the influence that educational practices have on behaviour regulation, for many years the issue has been assigned to the mental health field and has not been treated as an educational problem. However, the importance of addressing the issue of the development of personal resources in the behaviour regulation from an educational point of view, through the establishment of quality learning environments and environments of emotional containment and support, that allow the acquisition of self-regulation skills in students (Broekhuizen, Slot, Van Aken, & Dubas, 2017), has been repeatedly stressed.

Research also highlights teachers’ self-efficacy as a determining factor for the management of classroom behaviour problems (Toran, 2019). Self-efficacy is defined as the person’s belief (positive or negative) in their ability to successfully tackle a task (Bandura, 1997), which is decisive for achieving a proposed goal and overcoming obstacles. According to Toran (2019), teacher’s self-efficacy influences classroom management competencies and the acquisition of strategies to manage students’ behaviour and the promotion of self-discipline.

Furthermore, Meister & Jenks (2000) found that the management of disruptive behaviours is an area in which teachers do not feel comfortable. These authors stressed the need to focus teacher-training programs specifically in this area.

An additional problem is the lack of training for teachers to develop skills for regulating their students’ behaviour (Evertson & Weinstein, 2006; Jones, 2006). However, there is a common agreement regarding the general importance of classroom management skills. Several international studies have demonstrated a perception among pre-service teachers that they lack training in managing classroom behaviour (Dicke, Elling, Schmeck, & Leutner, 2015; Zinsser, Denham, Curby, & Shewark, 2015); as a result, their responses to students’ misbehaviour are based on their beliefs and experiences rather than on evidence-based practices (Gotzens, Castelló, Genovard & Badia, 2003) and present a tendency towards reactive and punitive actions, which can worsen the situation (Thompson, 2012).

This study is part of a state-funded Project ARMIF-2017, whose main objective is to analyse teacher training programmes and novel teachers’ needs regarding the promotion of  self-regulation of behaviour among their students. The study is being conducted at four Catalan universities (Spain): University of Barcelona (UB), University of Lleida (UdL), Rovira i Virgili University (URV), and University of Girona (UdG). This research is carried out within the framework of the Inclusive Educational Support Working Group, comprising researchers from the UB, UdL, and UdG, and teachers and principals from inclusive schools in Catalonia.

Moving beyond the local implications of this study, its methodological rigor and the features of the sample validate our findings as a relevant and important contribution whose evidences may serve to guide both national and international universities interested in know the effectiveness for fostering  the skills required in initial training teachers about behaviour self-regulation among students.

The research applies a mixed method approach (Greene, 2007). Here we present only a part of it, corresponding to a quantitative study. To obtain the data, we designed an online questionnaire and administered it to the students enrolled in the final year of Early and Primary Education degrees. Answers were received from 1049 respondents at the four participating universities. The final sample (after checking validity and reliability) comprised 929 students (83.4% women, age range between 20 and 59 years old, M=23.20, SD=3.39). Questionnaire characteristics The objective of the questionnaire was to record the perceptions of student teachers in relation to their competences for promoting their students’ self-regulation behaviour, and their assessment of the initial training received in this area. The instrument has 21 questions, with answers of various kinds: alternatives, Likert scale and open questions. The themes contained are: Knowledge about competences for promoting students’ self-regulation; attributions of responsibility for promoting students’ behavioural self-regulation; the target population; training in competences for promoting students’ behavioural self-regulation and perceived self-efficacy to manage conflicts of behaviour regulation. The validity study of the instrument The instrument underwent several validation procedures to evaluate technical aspects such as the length and clarity of the instructions and the content of the questions (representativeness and relevance) through: 1) The assessments of last-year teacher students: six students evaluated the extension, clarity, vocabulary, format and online application used, through a focus group (Krueger & Casey, 1991). 2) The assessments of experienced teachers: eight teachers with proven working experience in inclusive schools, currently working as coordinators or promoters of diversity. 3) Expert judgment: five national experts were consulted in a brief Delphi study (Couper, 1984). The Kappa coefficients of agreement were obtained (Cohen, 1960) among the participants of the Delphi study, medians of representativeness and relevance obtained ranged between 6.75 and 10 points for all items. The level of agreement between experts ranged from moderate (K = 48) to excellent (K = 100). Some repetitive items were removed and those with lower scores were reconsidered. Data Analysis The data were analysed with Statistical Package for the Social Sciences 24.0 software (IBM, SPSS). Frequencies and descriptive statistics were run for all variables. Open questions were analysed with NVivo pro 12 version. In this analysis, we also considered ethical aspects (European Union, 2010), maintaining confidentiality by anonymizing the participants.

The findings provided a first insight into student teachers’ perceptions of the effectiveness of their training at university for fostering behaviour self-regulation among their students. The areas in which student teachers felt they were least prepared were (1) guiding non-teaching staff such as teaching assistants (M= 1.96, SD= 0.9), (2) reducing off-task time (M= 1.99, SD= 0.9) and (3) agreeing on how to act in case of conflict at the school level (M= 2, SD= 0.82), on a 1-4 Likert scale. Universities should stress competence in collaboration in order to improve working relations between colleagues, especially in relation to the areas just mentioned. In addition, to learn skills for minimising off-task time, student teachers must develop their planning and classroom management competencies. In this area, there were three tasks in which students perceived that they had received a significant level of training: (23) combining group and individual work (M= 2.91, SD= 0.86), (21) designing appropriate lessons (according to interests, needs, with changes of pace and different degrees of difficulty) (M= 2.77, SD= 0.87) and (20) telling students promptly what they are to do (M= 2.73, SD= 0.89). Moreover, student teachers were asked to value the extent to which they had acquired the ability to properly manage students’ behaviour during the Early or/and Primary Education university degrees on a 10-point Likert scale. The scores they awarded were low (M= 4.71, SD=2). These results are very informative, since the study samples came from four out of the five public universities in Catalonia (Spain). We aim to carry out a wider comparative analysis of the results, in order to identify the aspects of the training provided to student teachers that provide the best preparation and to highlight the competences that should be promoted in their evidence-based training.

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