Here are some of the best questions for a teacher survey about behavior management, plus tips to make yours stand out. If you want to build your own, Specific lets you generate a teacher survey about behavior management in seconds.
Best open-ended questions for teacher survey about behavior management
Open-ended questions dig deeper—they let teachers share stories and nuance you simply can't capture with yes/no checkboxes. They’re best when you want rich insights or need to surface unexpected challenges that closed responses might miss.
Still, open responses take more effort for teachers, and they're often skipped more often than closed-ended questions. Pew Research Center found that nonresponse rates for open-ended questions can reach 18%-50%, compared to just 1%-2% for closed questions [1].
Even so, these types of questions are powerful tools: more than half the responses to open-ended questions can point to issues not even listed in closed-ended formats [2]. Here are our favorites to include in a teacher survey about behavior management:
What strategies do you find most effective for handling challenging student behavior?
Can you share a recent situation where you successfully managed a difficult classroom behavior?
What behavior management techniques would you like more support with?
How does your school’s discipline policy help or hinder your classroom management?
What are your biggest challenges when it comes to student behavior?
Are there certain behaviors you feel less prepared to address? Which ones?
How do you communicate behavioral expectations to your students?
In your view, what role does school leadership play in supporting behavior management?
Is there a particular resource (training, guidance, peer support) you wish you had regarding classroom behavior?
How do you involve parents or guardians when addressing student behavior?
Remember, open-ended questions are best when you want context—just keep the count manageable, as too many can lead to skipped answers [5].
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for teacher survey about behavior management
Single-select multiple-choice questions help you quantify trends and quickly spot patterns. Teachers appreciate them when they’re short on time, and you can use them to set up follow-up probes. Sometimes, checking a box is easier than pausing to craft a full response—use these when you want the conversation to flow, or when you need hard numbers.
Here are some good ones for a behavior management survey:
Question: Which classroom behavior challenges do you face most often?
Disruptive talking
Lateness/tardiness
Refusal to follow instructions
Physical aggression
Other
Question: How confident do you feel in your behavior management strategies?
Very confident
Somewhat confident
Not confident
Question: Which support methods would make the biggest difference in your classroom management?
Practical training/workshops
Peer support/mentoring
Access to specialist staff
Written guides/toolkits
Other
When to follow up with "why?" The best moment for a "why" follow-up is when a teacher’s choice could mean vastly different things in context. For instance, if someone selects “Physical aggression” as the most common behavior challenge, ask: What makes this challenge particularly tough in your setting? Or: Why do you think this issue occurs more often in your classroom?
When and why to add the "Other" choice? Always add an "Other" option when you can’t exhaust every possibility. It nudges respondents to share unique situations, allowing your automated follow-ups to uncover insights you didn’t anticipate.
How NPS works for teacher surveys about behavior management
NPS (Net Promoter Score) isn’t just for companies—it’s a simple, powerful tool to measure how likely teachers are to recommend your school’s approach to behavior management to a colleague. Why does it work? It's a universal benchmark, and one number gives you “at a glance” feedback. Pairing it with a follow-up “Why did you choose that score?” reveals actionable insights.
To see how NPS fits into a behavior management survey for teachers, check out this NPS survey generator for teachers about behavior management.
The power of follow-up questions
The real magic happens after the first answer—automated follow-up questions dig deeper, surface details, and make every teacher feel genuinely heard. A study in Field Methods found that follow-up designs resulted in longer, more nuanced responses, capturing more themes than static, one-off surveys [4].
Specific’s conversational surveys ask smart follow-ups in real time, based on each reply—just like an expert interviewer would. This means you get the full picture right away, not a vague answer you have to chase by email later. The flow is natural, so teachers feel like they’re talking to someone, not filling a form.
Teacher: “Sometimes I have trouble with students not listening.”
AI follow-up: “Can you tell me about a recent situation when this happened? What strategies did you try, and what was the outcome?”
How many followups to ask? In general, 2-3 follow-up questions are just right—enough depth, not too much fatigue. Always give teachers the option to skip if they’ve already given all the info you need. Specific lets you set this up, so you don’t overwhelm your audience.
This makes it a conversational survey: responses flow like a real dialogue—so it feels engaging for respondents, and you avoid the robotic “just a survey” vibe.
AI survey analysis is easy: analyzing unstructured feedback used to be tough, but AI survey response analysis means you can sift, summarize, and extract themes from even huge qualitative datasets—saving you hours and surfacing what matters most.
Conversational follow-ups are a game-changer: Try generating your own survey and experience how richer insights come from these next-level features.
How to compose a prompt for ChatGPT or other AI to get great survey questions
The quality of your AI-generated questions depends on your prompt. Start simple:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for teacher survey about behavior management.
But it gets better as you give more detail—tell the AI who you are, your goal, and your exact context:
I’m an elementary school principal designing a survey for teachers. I want to understand the most common challenges with student behavior management, what support teachers need, and where current policies are effective or lacking. Please suggest 10 thoughtful open-ended questions—keep them practical and relatable for experienced teachers.
Once you have a list, organize it for clarity:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Identify the categories you find most useful, and dig deeper:
Generate 10 questions for the following categories: real-life classroom examples, training and support needs, policy feedback.
What is a conversational survey?
A conversational survey feels like a real conversation—not a static list of boxes. Specific’s AI survey builder creates these flows in seconds, where automated follow-ups adapt to each teacher’s answers. Instead of the “one size fits all” question set, each survey adapts on the fly, resolving confusion and prompting richer stories. AI-generated surveys bring several practical benefits over manual surveys:
Manual Survey Creation | AI Survey Generation |
|---|---|
Requires research & drafting | Auto-generates quality questions from prompts |
Difficulty adapting to responses | Dynamic, real-time follow-ups for clarification |
Time-consuming analysis of text feedback | AI-powered summaries and theme extraction |
Often boring and impersonal | Feels like a 1:1 conversation |
Why use AI for teacher surveys? Because you save hours creating, launching, and analyzing your survey—while unlocking richer, more actionable feedback. AI survey examples crafted in conversational formats capture nuances and emotions that forms or old-school tools miss entirely.
Specific offers the most user-friendly experience in conversational surveys, smoothing every step for both survey creators and teacher respondents. For a detailed guide, explore our article on how to create teacher survey about behavior management.
See this behavior management survey example now
Get instant access to questions proven to spark real insights—see how conversational, AI-powered surveys can level up your understanding of teacher behavior management needs. Try it today to unlock a new layer of feedback quality and survey ease.