Abstract

A study was conducted on ‘hard-core’ students’ in one of the school in Malaysia. A hard-core student is a student with repeated cases of misbehavior problems in school. The purpose of the study was to investigate the factors contributing towards misbehavior among hard core students in a school. The study was done in one of the schools in the city of Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. The school studied had implemented a Penalty System Program (PSP) to monitor disciplinary problems among the 2034 students. Unfortunately there was a handful of hard core students who were not affected with the implementation of the program. Some were expelled from the school for their disobedience towards the school rules. Ten hard core students were selected as the sample of the study. They were put in a special program known as Islamic Approach. Islamic approach was used because all the hard-core students were muslim. They were monitored and their disciplinary problems were recorded. They were interviewed on the factors contributing to their misbehaviors. Feedbacks from the parents were included to give ample evident about their behaviors at home. From the interviews, it was found that the factors that contributed towards their disciplinary problems in school can be categorized into four major elements such as school, teachers, parents and peers. The findings will be discussed later in the paper.