Good classroom management and having students who pay attention and focus on the lessons help create a classroom environment conducive to student learning. Students were asked about the frequency of disorderly behavior during mathematics lessons, including whether students do not listen to what the teacher says, there is disruptive noise, it is too disorderly for students to work well, the teacher has to wait a long time for students to quiet down, students interrupt the teacher, and the teacher has to keep telling students to follow the classroom rules. These responses were combined into the Disorderly Behavior During Mathematics Lessons scale, described in Exhibit 12.11 (see About the Scale). Exhibits 12.12 and 12.13 present students’ reports about disorderly behavior for fourth and eighth grades, respectively. Countries are ordered by the percentage reporting disorderly behavior in “few or no lessons.”

In fourth and eighth grades, about two-third of students (68% in fourth grade and 65% in eighth grade) reported disorderly behavior in “some lessons,” on average, and about one-fifth (18% in fourth grade and 21% in eighth grade) reported it in “few or no lessons.” Fourteen percent of fourth grade students and 13 percent of eighth grade students reported disorderly behavior in “most lessons.” Internationally and in most countries, there was a clear negative association between the frequency of disorderly behavior and average student achievement, with average achievement decreasing with higher frequencies of disorderly behavior. For example, in eighth grade, students reporting disorderly behavior in “few or no lessons” had an average score of 502, followed by 485 for students reporting it in “some lessons,” and 466 for students reporting it in “most lessons.”