Abstract
According to the Authoritative School Climate theory, a school environment perceived with high levels of support and disciplinary structure can be a protective factor against violence. Therefore, the current study aimed to understand how support and disciplinary structure affected peer victimization among Brazilian students. Participants were 420 students from Brazil, between 7 and 14 years old (mean=10.02; S.D. = .91); 51.5% of the participants were boys. Measures were obtained from a self-report questionnaire with measures of victimization, authoritative school climate and sociodemographic data. Using multilevel modeling between individual and same-sex peer group analyses, 89.86% of the victimization variability was at the individual level. Results indicated a negative association between the student’s perception of support and reports of victimization, but no gender differences as predictors of victimization. Younger students who reported lowers perceptions of support also could be more victimized.
Highlights
The school context, alongside families, is one the main environmental influences on children and adolescents
Because it seems to be a negative association between an authoritative school environment and violent behaviors, and gender differences into peer victimization involvement (Sentse, Kretschmer & Salmivalli, 2015; Morelen, Southam-Gerowm & Zeman, 2016); the purpose of this study was to assess how victimization in Brazilian schools was affected by the authoritative school climate dimensions – measured by support and disciplinary structure
Measures were obtained through a self-report questionnaire including questions of personal/sociodemographic data and scales of peer victimization and authoritative school climate
Summary
The school context, alongside families, is one the main environmental influences on children and adolescents. The relation between those concepts are bidirectional and dynamic: environments with more aggression can reflect lower perception on the authoritative school climate dimensions In this way students will be encouraged to report situations in which they perceive a threat and facilitate timely interventions to solve these conflicts. Thereby, it’s still necessary to understand how the school climate in an authoritative approach is related to specific aspects of school social relations, such as involvement in peer victimization, especially in Brazilian schools Because it seems to be a negative association between an authoritative school environment and violent behaviors, and gender differences into peer victimization involvement (Sentse, Kretschmer & Salmivalli, 2015; Morelen, Southam-Gerowm & Zeman, 2016); the purpose of this study was to assess how victimization in Brazilian schools was affected by the authoritative school climate dimensions – measured by support and disciplinary structure.
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