School violence is depicted as a serious social problem, but still the concept and scope of violence in schools is unclear. This study aimed to provide a definitive depiction of the actual situation of school violence by analyzing students and teacher...
School violence is depicted as a serious social problem, but still the concept and scope of violence in schools is unclear. This study aimed to provide a definitive depiction of the actual situation of school violence by analyzing students and teachers’ perceptions of the violence index with 10 levels of violence, and help have sensitivity to school violence. Depending on the purpose of this study, the following research questions were set.
First, from which level of violence do teachers and students perceive as violence?
Second, from which level of violence do they think needs teachers’ intervention?
Third, which level of violence occurs most frequently in schools?
Fourth, How would they reconstruct(rearrange) 10 levels of violence?
These questions were explored in a survey of 110 teachers and 250 students of secondary schools in the west Gyeongnam province. Their perceptions of school violence using the survey questions were analyzed and the results are as follows.
First, for levels of violence they perceive as violence, it is advisable to provide a single perspective for teachers and students because of disparity in evaluating levels of violence between teachers and students.
Second, for teachers’ intervention, teachers found it necessary to intervene from the early stage of violence but students needed it from more serious levels of violence, which calls for the professional development of teachers to strengthen students’ trust in teachers.
Third, the most frequent violence in schools was mental (psychological) violence below level 5. Considering that students did not perceive lower levels of violence as violence, more active guidance is needed for developing students’ awareness.
Fourth, there was a disparity in the responses of teachers and students about serious levels of mental (psychological) violence, and it requires guidance for students’ perspective of mental violence. For reconstruction of levels of physical violence, there was no significant difference between students and teachers.
In order to discover and prevent violence from the early stages, it is necessary to perceive all the levels of violence from level 1 to 10 as violence and to take a careful look at students.
Based on the findings of this study, the main proposals are as follows.
First, to create uniformity in perceiving violence, more active consensus is needed for developing awareness of 10 levels of violence and perceiving lower levels of violence as violence.
Second, teachers’ credible intervention should be performed with the support of the institutional device to strengthen teachers’capability.
Third, it is advisable to create an atmosphere of embracing both the victims and perpetrators of school violence by strengthening the education that builds students' character as well as the ongoing prevention education.
Finally, in follow-up studies, rearranging 10 levels of violence in accordance with frequent types of violence in schools is needed, and recreating a school violence index is also needed because verbal and psychological violence in the early stages is not necessarily lower level of violence than physical violence.