Violence in Schools

The Response in Europe

Peter K Smith, Peter K Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781134470365
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Violence in schools is a pervasive, highly emotive and, above all, global problem. Bullying and its negative social consequences are of perennial concern, while the media regularly highlights incidences of violent assault - and even murder - occurring within schools. This unique and fascinating text offers a comprehensive overview and analysis of how European nations are tackling this serious issue.
Violence in Schools: The Response in Europe, brings together contributions from all EU member states and two associated states. Each chapter begins by clearly outlining the nature of the school violence situation in that country. It then goes on to describe those social policy initiatives and methods of intervention being used to address violence in schools and evaluates the effectiveness of these different strategies. Commentaries from Australia, Israel and the USA and an overview of the book's main themes by eminent psychologist Peter K. Smith complete a truly international and authoritative look at this important - and frequently controversial - subject.
This book constitutes an invaluable resource for educational administrators, policymakers and researchers concerned with investigating, and ultimately addressing, the social and psychological causes, manifestations and effects of school violence.

Chapter 1

Violence in schools

An overview

Peter K. Smith

‘School violence, having been dubbed a crisis, permeates the national consciousness and media outlets’ (Mulvey and Cauffman, 2001, p.797). This perspective is from the USA; in Europe, violence in school and the concern about violence may not be at similar levels, but it is undoubtedly a topic of major concern. This book seeks to document what is known about school violence, and what can be done about it. It does so on the basis of experiences of the countries within the European Union. The comments of colleagues in Australia, Israel and the USA are included.

Schooling is a vital part of modern society. Intellectually, schools aim to educate pupils, to develop knowledge and skills that will help them achieve employment, further their adult career, and contribute to their society. Schools are also an immensely important social forum for children and young people. Over a period of some ten to twelve years, they will spend many thousands of hours at school with same-age and similar-age peers, as well as with teachers and other school personnel.

Each child brings their own personality and individuality to their school, no doubt influenced by their family environment. The peer groups they find themselves in start to introduce them to a somewhat autonomous ‘peer culture’ (Harris, 1995). The adults in the school try to inculcate certain ways of behaving in school. Everyone in the school community and in the families of the children, is influenced by the wider environment – the community which the school is in, the society which the community is in, even the global environment of international co-operation, international conflict, scientific and technological progress, and environmental degradation.

It is in these multiple contexts that we need to place the issue of violence in schools. There is no doubt that school violence is a topic of concern; those who doubt this need only read further in this book. This is not necessarily to sensationalize the issue. Despite some recent horrific incidents – such as the killing of head teacher Philip Lawrence outside his school gates in London as he intervened to break up a fight between pupils (and see also commentary from the US) – violence has always been with us, and it is not at all clear that violence in schools is actually getting worse. But many people perceive it as getting worse; and certainly it happens, in all of the countries represented in this book.

There are multiple reasons for concern about violence in schools. Most obviously and directly, it is damaging to the recipients of violence (or to the school environment, in cases of vandalism). More profoundly, it can create a climate of insecurity and fear which damages the whole purpose of the school – the case study of the Gran school in Norway describes what was one such example, now fortunately changed for the better. A climate of violence in school has repercussions for what is meant by ‘education for citizenship’, and for the rights of any individual to live a life free from fear and intimidation. This broader perspective also reminds us that violence in school is not a ‘walled-in’ problem (Lawson, 2001). In the wider society, violence is sometimes approved of, by many people and often a majority of populations, in certain circumstances – for example retributional violence resulting in people being forcibly imprisoned, or when retaliatory action is taken against political opponents or groups perceived as engaging in terrorist activities. Our concern for violence in school needs to be tempered by such awareness.

The background for this book

The opportunity for this book arose from an initiative of the European Commission under its Fifth Framework programme of research activities. This and related programmes aim to assist the cause of European integration by funding co-ordinated research which links different European partner groups. The Connect initiative was one programme within the Fifth Framework, aiming to enhance the nature of education and cultural opportunities in states in the European Union (EU). Over the period 1998–2002 some 60 educational projects were chosen for funding; six of these were on the topic of school violence, and this book results in large part from one of these [UK-001]. (For details of the five other projects on school violence, and the Connect initiative generally, see the website http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/connect/selection.html; see also the Connect fi 006 Proposal for an Action Plan to Tackle Violence at School in Europe, www.health.fi/connect; and the European Observatory of School Violence, www.obsviolence.pratique.fr.)

The UK-001 project aimed to get a report on the situation regarding violence in schools, in all fifteen member states, and two associated states. These form the basis of the subsequent seventeen chapters. Inevitably there are omissions: Liechtenstein, although an associated state, was omitted due to its very small size (population 27,000); Switzerland is the main central European state that is not an EU member; Malta has carried out substantial work on school bullying (Ministeru ta’ l-Edukazzjoni,1999); the eastern European countries are at present candidate members and they too are not represented here. Nevertheless there is complete coverage of the EU member states (at the time of writing), and a clear panorama of activities across countries in the north, west, south and centre of Europe.

Each of the seventeen states had two partner teams in the project; usually one representing an academic department or research institute with ready access to research findings, and the other representing practitioner bodies such as teachers, parent–teacher organizations, government departments, with expertise in areas of practical action. The major aim of the project was to obtain a report on Violence in Schools from each state. Another aim of the UK-001 project was to select three existing intervention projects in different states for some modest enhanced support and independent evaluation; those selected were peer support schemes in Italy, the broad approach exemplified in the Gran school work in Norway, and the Checkpoints for Schools initiative in the UK. These were evaluated by partners from Finland, Ireland, and France, respectively; evaluation reports can be found at the project website (www.gold.ac.uk/connect).

The project held a symposium at Goldsmiths College in London, in April 2001. At this meeting, draft reports were circulated, and critiqued in small groups. This proved an invaluable way of both promoting and exchanging ideas, and also helping get the reports into reasonably similar and complete formats. These reports were finalized in summer 2001, and posted on the project website in largely unedited form, in English, with summaries (and a few full reports) in French, German and Spanish.

For the purposes of this book, we went further; some revised guidelines were used to streamline each report (for example, omitting very detailed accounts of school systems), to update accounts up to the end of 2001 or early 2002, and to go through a rigorous editing procedure to ensure similar coverage and to clarify any ambiguities. In addition, three sets of commentators – from Australia, Israel, and the USA – were invited to set down their responses to these European reports, in the light of the situation in their own countries.

The reports from each state

Vettenburg (1999) had previously compiled a report for the Council of Europe on the topic of school violence, and other documents were available; the country reports took account of such prior work, either at a European level or in that country. A standard format for these reports was agreed.

In a first, background section, the context is set with a brief description of the country (population, major regional areas, major languages, major ethnic groups and minorities); the school system (age of compulsory and optional schooling; organization of schooling by age and by type of school; length and organization of school day; special schools and ways of coping with children with behavioural disturbance at the school organizational level; relevant curricular information); any linguistic/definitional issues (the words used to describe, define or delimit ‘violence’ in schools, for example in statistics or in school regulations); and the relevant historical background (recent developments relevant to current understanding of, action about and policies concerning violence in schools).

The second section concerns knowledge about school violence. This aims to cover any recent statistics at a national or large regional level on the incidence of violence in schools; information on different types of violence, and involving different dyads (pupil to pupil, pupil to teacher, teacher to pupil etc); age trends; sex differences; effects of factors such as ethnic group, socio-economic status, disability, special needs; and information relating to variations by school type, and school ethos.

The third section details action taken. This is intended to cover any policies at national (or large regional) level regarding violence, and bullying, in school; and any specific initiatives, taken at a regional or local level, to tackle violence in schools. Details of the nature of the initiative or programme, and of any evaluation carried out of its effectiveness, were asked for. Also included in some reports are case studies of particular schools, or small-scale initiatives, which are of particular interest or have had particular success, and which therefore may be applicable on a wider scale.

Definitional issues

What is ‘violence’? Even the English word is open to different interpretations – and in this project we were coping with at least twelve other languages, each with their own terms, sometimes apparently similar, as in Italian violenza, sometimes quite different linguistically at least, as Greek βíα or Icelandic ofbeldi. It was obviously important to try to reach some level of agreement about what should be covered, in our reports and discussions.

Initially, I proposed a definition that may be seen as a ‘narrow’ one – that proposed by Olweus (e.g. 1999, p.12). This states that violence or violent behaviour is ‘aggressive behaviour where the actor or perpetrator uses his or her own body or an object (including a weapon) to inflict (relatively serious) injury or discomfort upon another individual’. Thus, violence refers to the use of physical force or power. It does not include verbal aggression, or relational/indirect aggression (such as rumour telling, social exclusion: Underwood, 2002). It does include physical bullying (in which the aggression is repeated, against a less powerful individual); and also for example fights between equals, which are not bullying. Some report authors (e.g. Denmark, Germany) were quite satisfied using this definition.

However, there are ‘broader’ definitions of violence. The World Health Organization defines it as ‘The intentional use of physical and psychological force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, mal-development, or deprivation’ (see fi-006: www.health.fi/connect). The emphasis here on threatened as well as actual violence can justify the inclusion of measures such as feelings of insecurity (see report from France). Further, some definitions embrace institutional violence, and violence due to inequalities, in which case school violence might be justified as retaliation (see e.g. reports from France and Greece, and discussion of disagio scolastico in Italy). Also, although both the Olweus definition and the WHO definition implicate violence as leading to relatively serious harmful consequences, the reports from Belgium and France make a strong case for including incidents of ‘micro-violence’ or ‘incivilities’, relatively minor impolitenesses and infringements of rules that might not count as ‘violent acts’ by the prior definitions, but which may be vital in understanding the origins and nature of school violence.

These differences were discussed at the symposium in April 2001, but could not be resolved. No consensus could be achieved. It was recognized that there are disciplinary and country differences in how violence is defined. However, each team was asked to make clear in their report what definition was used, or what kinds of definitions and methods were used in gathering any data that is reported on violence. Interestingly, the report from Spain highlights a concept that is an opposite of violence – that of convivencia, or living together in harmony.

Knowledge about violence in schools

There is great variation in the extent of our knowledge base on school violence. Although a range of statistics is available, many country reports deplore the lack of systematic data gathered on a large scale over time. This is only partly an issue of definition, important though that aspect is. Some reports struggle to find data on violence, and have to resort to other data beyond any usual definition; for example, to physical kinds of bullying (when surveys of bullying provide a main data source, e.g. reports from Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy); to official statistics on accidents caused by violence (Denmark report), and criminal statistics based on ‘legal’ definitions such as antisocial behaviour, juvenile delinquency, vandalism (which will also include damage to property, drug taking, other activities not necessarily ‘violent’) (as in the Belgium, Iceland, Italy and Norway reports); and even to school exclusion data (as in the UK report).

Statistics of school violence per se are based on a variety of instruments. A common type, perhaps most common, is pupil questionnaire self-reports. A prominent example is the Olweus bully/victim questionnaire, by now used in many European countries. However, other data sources include victim surveys, structured interviews, teacher reports (e.g. of pupil violence) and, much more rarely, observations of violent behaviour.

Most countries provide some data on pupil to pupil violence. Other dyads are more rarely reported. This probably reflects a reality of available data, and of perceptions of the problem in these societies, since the report guidelines explicitly mentioned teacher–pupil and pupil–teacher violence. There is some data on pupil to teacher violence (reports from Austria, Germany, Ireland, Norway, UK), little on teacher to pupil (Ireland; the Germany report points out difficulty in even trying to get such data); adult to adult violence is also seldom reported, though some available data may come from research into workplace violence (reports from Ireland, UK).

The sections on knowledge also discuss (to varying degrees) the influence on frequencies of violence of factors such as the region of the country, and socio-economic circumstances; the type of school; and pupil characteristics such as age, sex, ethnicity, social class, family background, and special educational needs. Many findings here reflect rather well-established findings. For example, being a victim of violence often decreases with age, perhaps as potential victims become relatively stronger and more skilled at avoiding it; whereas being a perpetrator of violence shows some increase into mid- or late adolescence, perhaps as norm-breaking and risk-taking behaviours generally become more common and more sanctioned by the peer group (Arnett, 1992). Sex differences are evident, of course; especially when statistics are restricted to physical forms of violence, boys are much more in evidence than girls. Some statistics are available on sexual harassment, though (as remarked on in the Australia and US commentaries) this does not get the coverage it might be thought to deserve.

Noticeable here – and picked up in the opening background sections of most reports – is the increase in young people in school from immigrant groups to the European Union countries, which has accelerated since the early 1990s. Racial tensions are prominent in many countries, and these can be reflected in schools. Ethnic minority and immigrant children can experience racial harassment; and the young people themselves may bring different expectations, and experiences of deprivation and frustration, into the school (see, for example, reports from France, Norway; commentaries from Israel, USA).

Is violence on the increase?

Several teams are able to report some evidence on whether there have been changes over time, and thus address the common perception that violence is increasing (e.g. report from Germany). Perceptions do not always match reality. Often, older people look back to a supposed ‘golden age’ when things were better, one or two generations previously – even though, looking at perceptions held one or two generations earlier, just the same mantra was being reported (Pearson, 1983)! Some countries report little change, or only a slight increase (Germany, Norway); others a curvilinear increase then decrease (Italy); others mixed findings depending on type of violence (Austria).

Actions to reduce violence in schools

As noted in the Australian commentary, many European countries do not provide much information on, or do not have, legal requirements on schools to prevent violence, or bullying, in the school premises. Most national education ministries do have some sort of req...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• 1 Violence in schools: an overview
• Part I: Central Europe
• Part II: Mediterranean countries
• Part III: Scandinavia
• Part IV: United Kingdom and Ireland
• Part V: Commentaries
• Name index
• Subject index