Violence Against Teachers in Sweden: The hidden side of School Violence

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Malmö University FACULTY OF HEALTH

AND SOCIETY

VIOLENCE AGAINST TEACHERS

IN SWEDEN:

THE HIDDEN SIDE OF

SCHOOL VIOLENCE

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VIOLENCE AGAINST TEACHERS

IN SWEDEN: THE HIDDEN SIDE OF

SCHOOL VIOLENCE

THEODORA TERZOUDI

Terzoudi, T. Violence Against Teachers in Sweden: The hidden side of School Violence. Degree project in Criminology 30 Credits. Malmö University: Faculty of Health and Society, Department of Criminology, 2020.

During the latest years, the phenomenon of violence against teachers has been a growing concern for contemporary schools all over the world (Bounds & Jenkins, 2018). Existing studies propose increasing prevalence estimates (McMahon et al., 2017) and various harmful consequences for victims and schools (Wilson et al., 2011; Huang et al., 2017). Yet, this phenomenon is still severely understudied. Therefore, this study attempts to address some of the existing literature gaps by providing in-depth qualitative information on educators’ thoughts and experiences on the subject. More specifically, this study aims to investigate the different forms and consequences of violence against teachers as well as the teachers’ perceptions about the factors that motivate students to engage in violent behaviours against them. Information relevant to the purpose of this study was comprehend through semi-structured interviews and analysed by using the method of conventional context analysis. Findings from the interviews suggested that violence against teachers is commonly experienced in both indirect (e.g. rumour spreading, property crime) and direct forms (e.g. verbal and physical violence), whereas consequences were found to impact teachers’ psychological wellbeing, their personal lives, the students and consequently several aspects of the school climate itself (e.g. teaching and learning experience). Additional findings suggested that students’ violent behaviour can be motivated by several factors who are either of personal nature to a student (e.g. receiving an unexpected grade) or a result of the preestablished student culture (e.g. normalisation of violence among peers and generalisation of behaviour). Directions for future research, policy implications and targeted interventions are considered in the context of these findings

Keywords: adolescent delinquency, school violence, direct violence, indirect

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INTRODUCTION

During the past decades, studies have stressed that school violence occurs in multiple socio-ecological levels and affects numerous shareholders on the way (Espelage et al., 2013; Longobardi et al., 2018). This fact could explain the significant increase of interest on school violence across many countries and fields of study. However, the majority of research has been mainly focused on bullying or student-to-student violence, whereas the impact of violence against teachers has been relatively neglected (Espelage et al., 2013; Wilson, Douglas, & Lyon, 2011).

Since teachers are consistently in contact with students and influence their lives in a significant degree, a better understanding of educators’ experiences with

violence is critical. Nowadays, popular and political discourses empathise on placing greater accountability on educators and schools by characterising them as essentially ‘dangerous places’ that are failing to properly educate today’s youth. Hence, the focus on improving the school environment for students and teachers has been overshadowed. Achieving a more comprehensive understanding of how teachers experience violence in their working environment could help on re-establishing the focus of this discourse towards the promotion of teachers’ wellbeing and increase students’ academic achievements.

Defining Violence and School Violence

Giving one sole definition to school violence is a very complex task since the term itself comes with various definitional and boundary issues. To overcome some of these issues, it is necessary to distinguish between the terms of violence and aggression that are often used as synonyms in numerous relevant publications. The main difference between these two terms goes back to their very origin. More specifically, aggression is a behaviour that is guided by instincts, thus a trait observed in most animal species, whereas violence results from the interaction between biology and culture, therefore it requires a conscious intentionality to manifest (Estévez, Jiménez, & Musitu, 2008).

Among others, Anderson and Bushman (2002) highlighted that violent behaviour has two main dimensions: the intentional and behavioural dimensions. The intentional dimension or else known as instrumental violence refers to a planned violent behaviour that does not require any prior provocation and its’ only purpose is to fulfil the perpetrator’s own interests (Anderson & Bushman, 2002; Estévez et al., 2008). On the other hand, the behavioural dimension or else known as hostile violence refers to an impulsive behaviour that is based on rage and usually occurs after provocation. The main purpose of hostile violence is to cause damage (Anderson & Bushman, 2002; Estévez et al., 2008).

In addition, further classifications of violent behaviour make a distinction among different forms and functions of violence (Little, Brauner, Jones, Nock & Hawley, 2003; Little, Henrich, Jones & Hawley, 2003). The forms of violence are

separated between direct and indirect violence. Direct forms of violence manifest when the perpetrator directly confronts the victim with the intention to cause them harm, thus such behaviours can be expressed through acts like pushing,

threatening, beating and insulting (Little, Brauner et al., 2003; Little, Henrich et al., 2003). Whereas indirect forms of violence aim to provoke damage to the victim’s identity within a social group or their own perception of belonging to that

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group, hence this form of violence occurs without direct confrontation between the victim and the perpetrator. Instead the perpetrator will attempt to cause harm by spreading rumours that will result in social exclusion and rejection for the victim (Little, Brauner et al., 2003; Little, Henrich et al., 2003). Furthermore, the functions of violence have been separated between reactive and proactive

violence. In reactive violence the perpetrator reacts violently to other people’s behaviour because they perceive it as threatening or provocative (defensive violence; Merk, Orobio de Castro, Koops, & Matthys, 2005). This function of violence usually associates with low self-control, anger and impulsivity problems, while perpetrators experience difficulties with creating or staying in social

relations due to their tendency of being violent after perceiving a behaviour as threatening (Little, Brauner et al., 2003; Little, Henrich et al., 2003). Proactive violence is a reinforcement-shaped function of violence, and thus an intentional behaviour that aims to intimidate, dominate or result to the possession of rights or things (Merk et al., 2005; Little, Brauner et al., 2003; Little, Henrich et al., 2003). People that present this type of behaviour perceive violence as a suitable manner to achieve their goals and therefore it is often related with antisocial behaviour, criminal problems, leadership skills and high levels of social competence (Merk et al., 2005; Little, Brauner et al., 2003; Little, Henrich et al., 2003).

School violence is composed of the general characteristics of violence as they

were referred above, but with the difference that it occurs in primary or secondary schools and the perpetrators are most usually children or adolescents (Estévez et al., 2008). Yet, when the violence is directed towards teachers, parents and co-workers have been also referred as perpetrators of violence but that is not as common (Lokmić, Opić, & Bilić, 2013). However, when referring to school violence, one must also distinguish between perceiving ‘school’ as a physical location where violence occurs and has roots in the community and ‘school’ as a system that causes or worsens problems for individuals during their school experience. The first happens when students or others bring problems (e.g. negative feelings or attitude because of a fight with a friend or family member) into the school premises that were created outside school and are irrelevant to their school experience (Furlong, & Morrison, 2000). This is usually observed in upper secondary education, where the influence of the community tends to be greater when it comes to violence. On the other hand, the second is most commonly observed in middle school (lower secondary education), where violence is more influenced by the school environment and especially when it comes to violence perpetrated by students to teachers (Furlong, & Morrison, 2000).

Having said this, violence at schools is usually expressed by students who fail to comply with the school’s rules and more specifically with the ones responsible for monitoring the interactions (e.g. by using punitive behaviours towards reactive or proactive violence) within the classroom and the school environment (Fagan, & Wilkinson, 1998). In such situations, the school settings may unintentionally create informal social norms for violence where hostile behaviour is used by students in order to maintain or gain social status (e.g. by standing out because of their behaviour), correct perceived injustices (e.g. by forcing their own rules and social norms), control other students, experiment with risky behaviours and challenge the authority (e.g. by opposing to the established rules; Fagan, & Wilkinson, 1998). Additionally, schools in this case may also provide

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opportunities to develop violent behaviours due to interactions with delinquent peers (Dishion, Patterson, & Griesler, 1994).

Teacher-directed Violence and Victimisation

Theoretically, every worker can become a target of violent actions and every organisation can be a place where victimisation manifests. However, there are some high-risk groups that have been identified within the literature on workplace violence. Among these high-risk groups, are people who work in healthcare facilities, industrial police penitentiary and educational settings (Steffgen, & Ewen, 2007). When narrowing down to teacher victimisation the prevalence of victimisation can vary from country to country, between country regions or city neighbourhoods. The same is true for the types of violence experienced by the victims. For example, verbal violence (i.e. use of inappropriate words to cause harm) against teachers has been found to be significantly higher than physical violence (i.e. deliberate rough infliction of pain and/or body injury, both are forms of direct violence; Lokmić et al., 2013). Also, in another study, regional

differences were observed between East (Saxony) and West (Hesse) Germany, where the prevalence of verbal violence was higher in Saxony when compared to Hesse (Steffgen, & Ewen, 2007). A national survey that was conducted in the United States to estimate the prevalence of teacher victimisation regardless the forms of violence (verbal, physical and property violence were among them) experienced, suggested that approximately 80% of teachers have been victims of violence during only one year (McMahon et al., 2017). On the other hand, a study on workplace violence in Sweden, for the same year as the US survey, resulted in a much lower prevalence of reported violence by teachers with an estimate of 22.5% (Vaez, Josephson, Vingård & Voss, 2014). More recently, a research made exclusively on the subject of teacher-directed violence referred a significant percentage-wise difference (80%), suggesting that every 8 out of 10 teachers in their sample (n=148) have been subjected to at least one incident of violence (including verbal violence) in the past year (Forsberg, Fredriksson, & Svärdström,

2019). However, it is believed that the difference between these estimates may not be exclusively because of the rising cases of violence against educators in

Sweden, but mostly due to the increasing awareness towards the significance of reporting such incidents, which may result to a higher propensity to report.

Regardless the high prevalence of the problem reported around the world, violence against teachers has attracted much less interest than violence against students and therefore little is known about the characteristics of those victimised (McMahon et al., 2017; Steffgen, & Ewen, 2007). Prior research suggest that teachers are not victimised at random, yet detailed information about the characteristics of the victims are limited (Steffgen, & Ewen, 2007). Although, when drawn from the literature on workplace violence it is suggested that employee’s way of responding to a conflict may influence the risk of being victimised (Steffgen, & Ewen, 2007). The same goes for some individual-level factors that include gender and age. Younger workers usually have shorter work experience and lower levels of training and education, thus are more prone to victimisation than their older, more experienced co-workers (Milczarek, 2010). Gender, however, still presents contradictory results. Some argued that women are overrepresented in high risk jobs, and therefore in higher risk to be exposed to violence (Di Martino, Hoel, & Cooper, 2003), whereas studies in healthcare settings have found that men are in higher risk of victimisation than women even if men are overrepresented in this setting (Hahn et al., 2008).

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Additionally, teacher victimisation has been linked with negative teaching-related outcomes, increased fear, physical and psychological consequences to the victim, students’ lower achievement rates and increased overall costs for school districts (Wilson et al., 2011; Huang, Eddy, & Camp, 2017). More specifically, in a personal level, victimised teachers may experience posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms (PTSD), avoidance behaviours towards situations and students as well as fear and stress for their safety (Espelage et al., 2013; Wilson et al., 2011). Gender differences were also found considering teacher’s responses to trauma (Wilson et al., 2011). On institutional level, research shows that teachers who feel unsafe within the school environment were unmotivated and less committed to their job or left the profession completely (Wilson et al., 2011).

Aim and research questions

As suggested, violence against teachers can be expressed in a variety of ways and can have harmful consequences for both the victim’s health and subsequently the school climate.Thus, it is important to increase knowledge about violence as educators experience it, to be able to work preventively. Up to date, there is only a small number of studies on teachers’ victimization and its’ consequences that go beyond the prevalence estimates of the phenomenon or give a more

comprehensive view of teacher’s personalized experiences with violence (McMahon et al., 2017). Therefore, the present study aims to address this

literature gap on teacher-directed violence and its’ consequences, by providing in-depth qualitative information on educators’ thoughts and experiences on the subject.

To better address the aim, the following research questions have been generated: 1. According to educators’ experiences, in which forms and how often does

the phenomenon of violence against teachers occur during secondary education in Sweden?

2. How does violence influence educators and what are the consequences experienced?

3. Based on the educators’ perceptions, what are the factors that motivate students to engage in violent behaviors against them?

METHODOLOGY

Design

Qualitative research through interviews “attempts to understand the world from the subjects’ point of view, to unfold the meaning of peoples’ experiences, to uncover their lived world prior to scientific explanations” (Kvale, 1996; p 1).

Whereas, semi-structured interviews are used to provide rich open-ended data on the topic of interest due to their flexible interview protocol which allows the researcher to explore participants’ feelings, thoughts and beliefs. Thus, present the interviewer with the opportunity to deeply delve into sensitive topics which are not as accessible by other types of method (Corbin & Strauss, 2008).Therefore, a qualitative research design based on semi-structured interviews is considered to be more appropriate for addressing the exploratory and descriptive nature of the aforesaid aim and research questions. Based on these points, the choice of this research design and data-collection approach is considered to be motivated.

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Interview guide

To follow the protocols of semi-structured interviewing, the author generated an interview guide (see Appendix D) to serve as a checklist of questions that need to be covered during the interviews (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009). The interview guide was separated into 5 categories of questions, which were created to promote a logical thematic transition between subjects, and thus establish good interview interactions between the interviewer and the interviewee (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009). There were cases however, where the wording and order of the questions were often modified according to the flow of the interview to help the participants reflect to their experiences and thoughts around the subject naturally and with more freedom (Robson, 2011). As to the nature of the categories included, the first category was created to obtain background information considering the responders’ experience as educators. The second, to acquire information around the incidents of violence experienced and their characteristics. The third consisted of questions considering the responders’ reasoning around students’ violent behaviour, target choices and their own victimisation, whereas the fourth was focused around the consequences of violence to the victims. Finally, the fifth and last category included questions on the participants’ views about the role of the school in situations of violence, thus including subjects such as relationship dynamics between colleagues, common school practices and reporting. Participants and Sampling Method

Participants were selected through the known as ‘snowball’ sampling method. In this method, the researcher identifies the first key-individuals who match the participant profile and later asks them to encourage others with similar

characteristics to conduct the researcher in case of interest (Kolb, 2008). Snowball sampling is based on the perception that the first participant is more likely to know someone with similar characteristics than the researcher and it is therefore recommended to researchers who are not familiar with the sample of interest (Kolb, 2008). Accordingly, a key individual working as a teacher was identified within the author’s social network and was conducted with information about the study aim, participation criteria and procedures. Eight additional individuals expressed their interest but only six eventually joined the study. The two remaining individuals who initially expressed interest but did not participate, withdrew from the study due to health-related issues and work overload during that period of time.

As part of this study’s protocol, inclusion and exclusion criteria were created to help narrow the participant profile. More specifically, participants that were willing to take part in this study were required to have experience of at least two years in lower or upper secondary education in Sweden, be fluent in English and currently live in Southern Sweden. Additionally, exclusions from participation were to be made in case of existing or prior mental diagnosis (e.g. stress disorder) that was presented after experiencing victimisation within the school environment. This criterion was made to avoid any further harm to the person as they would be expected to describe these victimisation experiences. Therefore, the final sample was consisted from male (n=4) and female (n=3) educators in different teaching subjects, all currently working as full-time teachers in lower secondary education in southern Sweden. Participants working experience as teachers varied from 2 to 40 years of experience with an average number of 13 years, while some reported having also additional experience in primary education (n=1), upper secondary education (n=1) and adult education (i.e. komvux; n=1).

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Procedure

Participants were given the researcher’s conduct information at the beginning of March 2020, those who conducted the researcher, were emailed with the

information sheet (see appendix B). Face-to-face interviews were conducted with each participant within the period of two weeks after they received the

informative email. The interviews were conducted at the convenience of the participants to ensure that they feel as comfortable and safe as possible. Therefore, each person was free to choose the place, date and time of their interview. Before the interviews, participants were verbally informed once again about the study and the interview procedure, while they were encouraged to ask questions in order to avoid any possible misunderstandings. Additionally, participants received the consent form (see appendix C) and were asked for permission to record the interviews with an Olympus digital voice recorder (model DM-720) for the later transcription purposes. Each interview took between 45 minutes to 1 hour to complete.

Data Analysis

To analyse the transcribed data that were generated, a conventional approach to content analysis was used. Conventional content analysis is widely used in qualitative research with interviews when prior research or theory on a subject is limited (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005), which seems to be the case for the phenomenon under study in this paper. Following the protocol of this approach as presented in

Hsieh and Shannon (2005), all data were first read by the author multiple times in order to achieve a sense of them as a whole. Then, data were read word by word, highlighting all thoughts and concepts shared by the participants to identify the existing codes. In addition, at this point the author noted down her thoughts and first impressions on the concepts that emerged. Labels were assigned to the codes that were found and they were later sorted into categories. The emerged categories were then organised into meaningful clusters who were later combined into

subthemes based on their relationship. Last, subthemes were included into themes and definitions were developed for the ones in need of further clarification. Ethical considerations

Ethical approval for the study design, procedures, information and consent forms was first acquired before any actions towards the participants of this study were taken (reference number, HS2020 löp nr 18; see appendix A). The Ethics Council at Malmö University had no objections as to the implementation of this study as long as the author could assure that participants were properly informed and protected. To meet these requirements, an informative document in an easy to understand language was created and then distributed to the participants. This was to ensure that they are fully informed about the study before giving informed consent to the author. The document contained detailed information as to the voluntary nature of the study, the aim and processes that were to be followed, participants right to withdraw themselves and their data at any time, and the ways in which confidentiality would be achieved. Briefly, to assured confidentiality, participants’ names were replaced with nicknames in all transcriptions and in-text quotations. Information as to schools and districts of their employment were withheld, while other personal information or names were to be excluded or replaced if relevant. In addition, confidentiality during interview transcription was ensured by setting off internet-access to all electronic devices that were used, whereas audio data were transcribed only in the author’s home-office, when alone

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and by using headphones to avoid any possible external access to the information. All recordings and transcriptions were destroyed upon completion of the study. Credibility, transferability and trustworthiness

In short, credibility, transferability and trustworthiness are interrelated concepts used to evaluate the quality of a qualitative study (Golafshani, 2003). Since this type of research does not produce quantitative data through stricter methods which one can easier replicate, credibility and transferability depend heavily on the care and consistency of the applied research practices (Golafshani, 2003;

Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009). Therefore, this requires from a researcher to be “thorough, careful and honest in carrying out the research, but also being able to show others that you have been” (Robson, 2011; p.159). This suggests that the above concepts can be achieved through a detailed description of the entire research process, practices, analysis and conclusion which are meant to reflect transparency, intersubjectivity as well as mindfulness as to the limitations of the research findings (Cypress, 2017; Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009; Robson, 2011). Therefore, following these suggestions, all phases in this study have been clearly accounted for, whereas great effort has been made by the author to minimise any vagueness or possible experimenter bias regarding the processes presented. Experimenter bias during interviews was also minimised by limiting

interpretations and by asking probing questions when responses were unclear or vague (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009).

FINDINGS

The nature of violence against teachers

The first theme was simply defined as ‘the forms of violence experienced by teachers’ and it was created based on three subthemes. The first two subthemes refer to incidents of direct and indirect violence, whereas the third one to the combination of both. The forms of violence reported during interviews were categorized into subthemes based on the explanations and definitions given by Little and colleagues (2003). Information on these definitions is presented in the introductory part of this paper, however some additional descriptions to each subtheme will be given below for further clarifications.

Direct Violence

This subtheme was defined as ‘the forms of violence which cause harm to the victims through direct confrontation’ and it includes the categories of verbal and physical violence. Each teacher who participated in this study reported several incidents of verbal, physical or combined victimisation. However, they all agreed that verbal violence was the most common form of in-school violence they have experienced. In fact, most participants suggested being exposed to verbal violence almost every day, stressing that they are not surprised by the frequency of the phenomenon anymore, but from the variety of ‘curse-words’ students are aware of and use to insult them.

They are calling as different things quite often. You can’t even keep track of it […] they start calling us at least idiots or even worst like for example vagina teacher or dickheads (Robert)

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They call me for some reason something like fucking gay […] a lot of mother things and idiots you know, and different versions of being an idiot […] it’s impressive that they know so many words that mean idiot (Erik)

Furthermore, five teachers reported having experienced at least one incident of physical violence during their careers. However, they suggest that still it is not nearly as common as verbal violence. In fact, they describe that most of the times students ‘only’ push their teachers away as a result of a verbal argument. Such assaults were perceived to be not worth mentioning when asked during the

interviews as they rarely result to physical consequences for the victim. Although, some of those sharing similar beliefs, reported that they often think about how some of these incidents could turn out if the students were older or had a bit more strength. For example, as stated in an interview:

They hit me in the stomach when I was pregnant […] It isn’t much to say, two boys fighting, and I tried to stop it, but it wasn't, it wasn't violence, violence […] I accidentally had, I think a fist in my stomach. So, I was a little afraid because they could have hurt my baby, but my husband was really angry and upset (Anna)

In another case, Eva, reported being assaulted after she tried to take a ball from some students who against the school regulations were playing inside the school building. She felt that it was her responsibility to take the ball back since the students refused to follow her prior instructions and play outside. Consequently, one of the students was irritated by her action and attempted to retrieve the ball from her. She described that this was not hard for a ‘young guy’ to do as she is so much older and has light body build. After the student took the ball from her, he refused to return it and threatened to hit her with it. As she continues:

I though he was joking […] So, I didn’t even move and he took the ball and he hit me here in my face and then I was quite blue […] then I told him now you have to stop because now I’m going to call the police […] and then he got angrier, and then he came back and hit me again (Eva) Indirect Violence

The second subtheme, indirect violence, refers to the forms of violence that aim to harm the victims but do not require direct confrontation with them. Therefore, forms such as spreading rumours and property damage were included. In this study, more than half of the participants reported having experienced at least one type of indirect violence. Especially one teacher made reference to several repeated incidents including a student who used to spread rumours about her, another who destroyed her property and a case where a student tried to

‘manipulate’ her colleagues on doubting her and her judgment on work-related matters. These matters included her ability to handle her classes ‘properly’ as well as the grades she assigned to them and if they were justified. As she reported:

He made other teachers think things about me that I’ve said or done, and he manipulated his closest friends […] He made his mentor think that I have been doing bad things, so I had both the class and their teacher against me […] A girl who wasn't happy about her grade […] She made her friend who was always doing bad things, so it didn’t matter for him, to cut the tires of my bicycle […] Another one scratched into the door, so the first thing you

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would see coming into the school was ‘Anna is a whore’ and because it was scratched you couldn’t take it away (Anna)

Direct and indirect violence combined

This subtheme was created to categorise incidents where more than one forms of violence are present or where one form is believed to have contributed to the experience of another. For example, one participant described being physically and verbally assaulted (direct violence) by two student and later experiencing “slandering” (indirect violence) by one of the student’s mother. As reported by the participant:

They called me a lot of things […] then one of the guys hit me with his fist in my chest (Erik)

After reporting the incident to the authorities, the student’s mother used one of her social-media accounts to later spread rumours that were created by the student to justify the violent actions against his teacher. As he describes:

She was saying that I was trying to strangle him by lifting him up in the air with one hand, which is physically impossible […] I’m not that strong […] She said that I threw chairs in the classroom and curse on their children and that the principle warned me, which she hasn’t, because I haven’t done any of those things (Erik)

Erik expressed that he was aware that people would not believe such claims as there were multiple witnesses around them, but he was still worried that there would be some few that would believe them, and thus harm his reputation in the community and among other parents.

Consequences of Violence Against Teachers

After describing these incidents of violence, participants were asked to reflect on the aftermath of these incidents and describe how they felt, acted or handled them. The analysis of the transcribed responses in these questions revealed that violence towards teachers did not only affect the participants on an individual level, but according to them, there was also an impact on their personal lives, those who witnessed the violence and consequently on the school as an institution itself. The following subthemes were created to offer a better understanding on the nature of the consequences identified.

Consequences on the individual

Findings emerged from the transcriptions revealed that most participants, regardless of which form of violence they experienced, presented similar symptoms of psychological distress. More specifically, they described that not long after the incidents occurred, they experienced feelings of guilt as to what they could have done differently to avoid the incident from happening, sleep deprivation, stress and burnouts.

I usually just become tired or stuff like that and I feel my energy dropping (George)

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I feel very sad and sometimes I have a hard time to sleep, because I’m like, this was unfair and why did that happen, and I just always blame it to myself (Diego)

Also, most of the participants reported being uncomfortable for them to have to act like these incidents never occurred when seeing the person who offended them as it is difficult for them to ignore everything that happened and be just

professionals without first being humans.

That was really scary for me and still to this day is kind of difficult to look at this student (Elena)

We are not superhumans, we can’t ignore everything (George)

It was still weird to walk past them and it was hard you know […] I had to be professional […] no matter what I felt for that incident (Erik)

Others reported experiencing feelings of anxiety every time they came across specific students as they anticipated negative things to happen to them or others every time this group of students was around.

It makes you sad of course or sometimes even anxious just to like meet those students, because you know that something is going to happen, you kinda already anticipate that something is going to happen (Robert)

Consequences on teachers’ personal lives

When asked about the impact of being victimised at school, some participants with family of their own, made a reference on how their victimisation at work affected their later interactions with their family. For example, Diego expressed that many times he experienced great difficulty to give the best version of himself to his family due to the emotional baggage left by incidents of violence at work. As he stated:

I give the best of myself to other people and when I go home, I give the shity version to my family […] I cannot play with my dotter because I’m holding her and I’m not there with her, I’m still at work (Diego)

On the other hand, others created different coping mechanisms that help them with being less emotionally charged before returning to their families. More commonly, they do so by staying at work after they finish for the day, which as they described helps them to give themselves some time to think or talk with someone who had similar experiences to theirs.

I try to stay behind and not just go home, because I have a family at home, and I don’t want to dump it all on them (Elena)

Consequences on the school climate

Results in the following subtheme suggest that violence against teachers does not only affect the victims and their personal lives, but also those who witness these acts and consequently the overall teaching and learning processes. For example, most participants reported that being subjected to violence makes them angry with

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their students and less enthusiastic towards their profession, whereas some incidents can even make them doubt their professional abilities.

I’m angry even with my best students, if they talk even a little bit, I’m like please be quite and they get the police officer version of me, they don’t get the passionate teacher anymore (Diego)

They said things all the time, that I was not good enough […] They kept saying things and finally I begun thinking so myself (Anna)

In addition, teachers reported that their victimisation often occurs during class. As described, teachers usually become target for a few students, who constantly attempt to humiliate them in order to disintegrate the process of teaching and learning for the entire class. In most cases, teachers had to request from the misbehaving students to leave, so the class could finish uninterrupted and without conflicts.

They are humiliating the teacher in front of 30 or 25 people […] They are disturbing the entire class, they are disturbing them all and you are basically throwing them out because you had enough (Robert)

Elena also referred to an incident were a student wanted to leave the classroom before the lecture was over. When his request was refused, the student tried to break one of the emergency doors. After being unsuccessful, he headed to the main door, but one of the assistant teachers was in his way. Therefore, as Elena described “he just took one of them and shoved her to the wall” in front of his classmates. Except the fact that it was a scary incident for her to witness, she was more concerned about the ways in which this could affect the rest of her students as it is not something they only have witnessed once.

We saw it, and how does that affect in the long-term the students that saw it, how are they gonna react the next time they’re around him (Elena)

In Eva’s interview, she also referred being concerned for the negative impact her victimisation had to the students. As she described, after she was hit by a student, a girl that witnessed the incident approached her with “tears in her eyes” to ask if she was okay. Eva expressed that she was not angry for what happened to her that day, instead she was upset about the feelings of those who must witness and live with this type of behaviour every day.

Why are those nice pupils, not only girls but boys too, why must they be in school every day and listen to this terrible language and see their

classmates doing things like that, and that made me so upset (Eva)

Finally, in Anna’s case, her victimisation appeared to influence the relationship-quality between her and her colleagues. As she referred the rumours that were spread about her by some students, harmed her reputation among the rest of her students, the principal and the students’ parents. She described that these conflicts made her reconsider her career, but she had to continue as she could not find something different at that time. As she stated:

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I think it was almost harder to take that my colleague turned against me like that […] The head-master and the parents, they just, they said things like, we are so surprised you seem like a nice person, we have heard so many things about you, now we are beginning to wonder if it is all true […] I looked for other jobs, but I didn’t get anything, so I kept going (Anna)

Perceived factors

The third theme was defined by the author as ‘participants’ beliefs on students’ reasoning when manifesting violent behaviours towards their teachers’. In other words, this theme captures the explanatory assumptions participants’ have created to make sense of their students’ behaviour. In this case, participants were asked to focus on students’ reasoning when they perpetrate a violent act towards a teacher. Participants’ responses varied, as some replied based on their own experiences of victimization by specific perpetrators. Therefore, these responses were more personalized on why these specific perpetrators may act violently towards a teacher, whereas others referred to the manifestation of violent behaviour by students in a more general manner. In addition, this theme is composed by three subthemes; Individual, Accidental and Student culture. All subtheme names attempt to reflect the nature of ‘the factors’ referred by participants and will be analysed within the three following sections.

Individual: ‘Conflicts of Interest’

This subtheme was created based on a category named as Conflicts of Interest and includes some of the most externalised beliefs that were found within the

interviews. This category reflects conflicts of personal nature and it contains three interrelated Factors called as Vision, Grades and Responsibility. The first, Vision was referred by one of the participants whose point of view suggests that most conflicts between teachers and students manifest because sometimes the student does not share the same vision for their future academic development as their teacher. As George stated:

I want them to reach as high as they can and reach their full potential. That does not mean always getting the highest grade […] My vision or goal for them might not be what their goal for them is, and since this is a conflict of interest, that leads to a discussion or to a conflict of course (George).

George described that these conflicts usually occur with students whose aim is to achieve only a passing grade, as they may be less interested on continuing to a university later. Therefore, for them archiving the highest grades may not be as important as for some other students.

Grades is the second ‘Factor’ under this category and the most frequently referred

by the participants. In fact, most of them reported that giving a ‘bad’ grade could easily result to them being victimised by either a student and/or a parent. An overall analysis of these interviews shows that victimisations who were initiated after an undesired grade was given to a student, were more frequently in the form of verbal assaults or some type of indirect violence. For example, as stated by Robert:

You hear that you have been called for something because the student didn't like what you were giving them for example as a grade or as an assignment (Robert, 283-285).

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In addition, two participants reported experiencing verbal violence which subsequently escalated to physical assault. One of them, Diego stated:

First, it started with the student, she got really violent because I gave her a grade that she didn’t like and then she called her mom […] She (the mother) wanted to talk to me and I said ‘yeah, but you have to wait a little bit since I’m really busy right now’ and she went like ‘you know you are a bastard right’ […]and she pushed me away ‘get the fuck out of here’ like this […] and she was a strong woman you know (Diego)

Later in the interview, Diego expressed that he believes that this incident occurred “because she got a C and she was an A/B student”. Suggesting that the grade he assigned failed to meet the expectations of both student and mother. Therefore, their feelings of disappointment and anger were directed towards him as he was the one who assigned the unwanted grade. Anna made a similar reference. She described taking over a class from another colleague who according to the

students was not grading them favourably. Anna expressed that her new class was happy to have a new teacher as they though that this would change their reported performance. However, students’ excitement over their new teacher lasted until they received their first grades. As she continues:

I still gave them the same grades […] They couldn't admit that it was themselves, so they had to make it somebody else’s fault (Anna).

Anna was soon after harassed by some of her students, as they started spreading rumours about her, which created conflicts between her, the students’ parents and her colleagues. Also, it is important to note that in this statement, Anna suggests, that the students who tried to hurt her reputation were unable to “take

responsibility” for the nature of their achievements, and therefore had to blame someone else.

Accidental: ‘wrong place, wrong time’

This subtheme reflects the sometimes-accidental nature of violence against teachers and was made apparent in four of the interviews. The term ‘accidental’ was chosen for this subtheme as some of the participants made a reference on experiencing verbal or physical violence because they ‘happened’ to be present in an area were students were either fighting with each other or with another teacher. Therefore, they suggested that their victimisation was not in any way personal to the student or a result of any other underlying factor but rather an accidental incident that occurred after they tried to help resolve an irrelevant to them situation. For example, Robert reported that he was physically assaulted by a student after he tried to help a colleague with an aggressive student. As he reported:

There was a female teacher and she was asking for help because she couldn’t manage it alone, so I was closest, and I went to help her […] If I wasn’t there and wouldn’t have helped cutting the arguing, it wouldn’t have happened to me, it would have happened to the person who would have been in the situation (Robert).

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Student Culture

This subtheme emerged from four categories; Extent of Natural Behaviour, Fun

Activity and Peer Pressure. These four categories represent the explanatory

reasons constructed by teachers as to the violent behaviour manifested by students but with a main focus to the students’ social interactions within school. Therefore,

Student Culture acts as an umbrella term to cover the categories that indicate a

link between students’ interpersonal relationships with each other, beliefs, attitudes, or unwritten rules to the expression of violent behaviour towards their teachers.

The first, ‘extent of natural behaviour’ was referred by only a few participants, where it was suggested that verbal insults amongst students is an active and acceptable by them way of communication and socialisation with each other, which sometimes can be transferred to their communication with their teachers or other adults if continues without intervention. As stated by two participants:

They say to each other like oh ‘you fucking asshole’, ‘you’re gay or you’re pussy’ or they are using these words and for them is kinda normal to do it […] If you’re already in an environment everyday were this kind of

language is okay and accepted among the students, then the sooner or later they’re going to think it is okay to talk to you that way also, which is not (Elena)

I don't react anymore when people are saying this ‘bitch or fuck you’ or whatever, because its common language they talk like this (Eva)

In addition to the statement above, Elena suggested that testing and questioning boundaries set by others is part of students’ development, thus it is often present in the communication between teachers and students. Therefore, violent behaviour can sometimes result from this process, especially when it is directed to teachers, due to their active authoritarian (i.e. making sure rules are applied and followed) role within the school. As she described:

Teenagers are teenagers, they’re supposed to question things as a part of the natural development of a child […] The boundaries always shift, they always move and the more they puss them the more the further away they are. So, the same thing goes with any type of violent or violating behaviour towards us, teachers (Elena).

Furthermore, another participant suggested that some students perceive specific extents of violent behaviour as a harmless activity without considering how these may later affect the victim. Therefore, making their teachers’ life “like hell” (Robert) through verbal or indirect violence is a ‘fun’ activity for them and they may be consisted with their behaviour for all the years they spent in lower-secondary education. As it was stated:

There are students like specific people that can during all three years that they are in school, they can make it like hell for teachers […] Basically, three years just literally fucking with teachers, because that's what they think it’s fun to do’ (Robert)

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The next Factor was named as Peer Pressure and it reflects an external social influence on violent behaviour expressed by students. For example, peer pressure was apparent in a description of a conversation between a participant and one of her students. As described by the participant:

When I was doing all these things, I felt a pressure from peers to be violent to be threatening, you know, be the one that would gather up a bunch of guys to go and threaten someone else, you know that he felt the pressure to do it, and once he said ‘I don’t want to be this person

anymore’ the pressure became even harder on him to keep doing it because that was his role […] in order not to be excluded we have to abide by the rules (Elena)

Another participant was also referred to peer pressure as the main reason for her victimization by a student. As she stated:

And then it was his friends around him, and you know sometimes when you have friends around you and you want to have the ball, you have to do something, you have to be the king (Eva)

DISCUSSION

Forms of violence experienced by teachers and their consequences In the exploration of the first research question, the different forms of violence and their frequency based on the educators’ experiences were addressed. Findings from this exploration indicate that participants experienced direct or indirect forms of violence in either separate occasions or combined at least once in their careers. When it comes to direct forms of violence such as verbal and physical violence (Little, Brauner et al., 2003; Little, Henrich et al., 2003), it was found that verbal violence occurs almost daily, whereas physical violence is not nearly as common. Verbal violence occurred in the form of insults and it was experienced by all participants multiple times. Perpetrators of verbal violence were mostly students. Although, there were a few cases where parents acted as perpetrators as well. When it comes to indirect violence, incidents varied between rumour spreading, slandering, property damage or a combination of the above. Even though prevalence estimates for these different types of violence cannot be given due to the small sample size of this study, it is important to refer that participants claims do follow a pattern reported in previous quantitative research. For example, a study that was conducted in 48 federal states of America found that 94% of the violence reported by teachers was verbal violence through insults, 44% was a combination between verbal and physical violence, whereas 50% belonged to theft or property damage (Espelage et al., 2013). In addition, a Slovakian study with 364 educators also presented a similar pattern, where in a period of one month, 35,4% of teachers reported incidents of verbal violence, 4,9 reported physical violence and 12,4% reported property damage (Dzuka & Dalbert, 2007). These results suggest that even if estimates vary from country to country, the most common form of violence experienced by teachers is verbal violence, followed by property crime and physical violence. Physical violence seems to be rarer, as also suggested by the participants of this study, but still an existing and sometimes inevitable form.

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In the exploration of the second research question, finding showed that violence against educators whether it is verbal, physical, psychological, direct or indirect, comes with great consequences, not just for the individuals themselves, but for their personal lives and the school climate as well. As referred by the participants, individual-level consequences were sleep deprivation, feelings of guilt, stress, decreased energy levels and burnouts. Also, there were some who reported feeling uncomfortable when seeing those responsible for their victimisation, while others reported experiencing increased anxiety when being close to specific students as they were always anticipating general commotion, violence against them or other students to occur. These findings are in accordance with previous research. For example, Kokkinos (2007) investigated stressors that can lead to professional burnouts in teachers and found a significant positive correlation with students’ misbehaviour. In another study, it was suggested that burnouts usually result from teachers’ coping difficulties with stress, negative attitudes, physical and

psychological exhaustion as well as low productivity (Lokmić et al., 2013). Furthermore, when considering the consequences on participants’ personal lives, only participants who have family of their own did suggest being affected in that context as well. As they suggested, violence experienced at work impacted their closest family members by causing stress and worry for the victim’s well-being, and in one case a participant reported facing difficulties during his interactions with his own child, due to the intense emotional baggage left from conflicts at work.

Violence towards teachers was additionally found to affect three different aspects of school climate. More specifically, findings highlighted the aspects of students’ well-being, students’ learning experience and teachers’ relationships. Participants suggested that students’ well-being is often affected by their repeated exposure to violence, which occurs when they are either victimised themselves or when they witness violence towards their classmates and teachers. On this aspect, previous studies have shown that adolescents who have witnessed violence during secondary education are in higher risk of experiencing problems with their own adjustment in school and they are in subsequent risk of psychosocial and

academic impairments (Janosz et al., 2018). However, as suggested by the same study, consequences differ depending on the kind of violence witnessed by the students. More specifically, those who witnessed major incidents of violence were found more likely to later associate with drugs and delinquency, while witnessing minor violence increased students’ likelihood of experiencing social anxiety, depressive symptoms and disengagement from school (Janosz et al., 2018).

Moreover, consequences of violence on students’ learning experience, were found in two different areas. First, as reported, negative consequences on teacher’s psychological well-being (addressed above), can sometimes subsequently affect their’ positivity, enthusiasm, energy and sometimes overall performance during lectures. And second, students’ learning experience was apparently affected in cases where commotion during classes occurred, interrupting the teaching and learning experience for everyone in the class. Earlier reviews on the subject of school climate linked teachers’ lack of enthusiasm to lower performance and job dissatisfaction, whereas negative learning and teaching experience were found to associate with low academic achievements, low graduation rates and negative publicity for the schools (Kutsyuruba, Klinger & Hussain, 2015; Thapa, Cohen, Guffey & Higgins-D’Alessandro, 2013). Consequences on teacher relationships were experienced by only one participant, where her victimisation appeared to

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influence the relationship-quality between her and her colleagues, which consequently acted as a reason for her to reconsider her career as a teacher. Reasons contributing to violent behaviour against teachers

In this paper, teachers described mostly reasons of personal and accidental nature. However, there were some who suggested that violence perpetrated by

adolescents is sometimes due to the existing student culture. Reasons of personal nature indicated that violence can result when there is a conflict of interest between a teacher and a student. Thus, as explained by the participants, teachers and students do not always share the same vision for the student’s future, which will consequently lead to a conflict of interest that may escalate to violence. Further findings suggest that teachers can often be targets of violence when assigning an unexpected grade to some student. Previous research argues that conflicts resulting from an unexpected grade are usually cases of perceived injustice by the students (Čiuladienė & Račelytė, 2016). Such cases have been found to evoke destructive behaviours, deception and conflict escalation, while interviews with students suggest that they are more likely to be hostile or engage in indirect violence towards their educators if they are perceived to be unjust (Čiuladienė & Račelytė, 2016). However, in this study, participants suggested that it is more of a responsibility issue, indicating that students are not always capable of taking responsibility for their academic performance and thus they may redirect their negative feelings towards those they consider responsible, which in their eyes is the teacher.

Further findings from this study showed that participants sometimes perceive violence perpetrated by students as an extent of normal behaviour that is

influenced by the social norms constructed by the students. Therefore, supporting that since certain behaviours like verbal insults are part of students’ everyday communication, is only rational to expect that sooner or later this will be transferred to their communication with adults. Interestingly, international research argues that normalising violent behaviour is not just a reason explaining why violence may occur in specific contexts, but it is a consequence of violence as well. In fact, a research made for the European Commission (2011) found that children who were more exposed to violence were more likely to normalise violent behaviours, and children who normalised violent behaviour were more likely to behave violently themselves. Additionally, social norms created by students are known to also facilitate peer pressure (Kelly, Vuolo, & Marin, 2017). Peer pressure refers to the pressure individuals experience during vulnerable life stages from friends or others and it is recognised as an important determinant of violence during school years (Kelly, Vuolo, & Marin, 2017). As referred by educators in this study, peer pressure was an apparent reason underlying students’ motivation to be violent against their teachers and it is therefore in accordance with prior literature on the subject.

Limitations

Typical of the nature of qualitative research, this study could be criticized for its’ small sample size or predetermined geographical location. However, in this case, findings were not intended to be generalised in the wider population of teachers. Instead, they aimed to raise awareness on the teachers’ experiences with violence and on the problem-aspects that were identified through them. Therefore, findings intended to provide further in-depth knowledge that can benefit prevention

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author faced a few time-related difficulties due to a methodological limitation. More specifically, to better understand participants’ experiences, the author constructed a more comprehensive interview guide. This, in some cases is considered as a better approach to a question where there is limited research (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009), but in this case, it only acted as a limitation. In fact, the transcription and analysis of the interviews were more time consuming than expected, while useful information in some parts could be only explained in short or not included at all due to space and time restrictions. Therefore, it is believed that a more narrowed interview guide would better fit the methodology and purposes of this study. Regardless of these limitations, this study is a good endeavour to understand the issue of violence against teachers through their own perspectives, which helps to give a fuller picture of the phenomenon, particularly since it was conducted in a Swedish school context were research on the subject is still limited.

CONCLUSIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH

This study was an attempt of drawing attention to a common problem for many institutions around the world, which should not be neglected because neglecting it only encourages its escalation. The available research on the phenomenon of violence against teachers has only answered some of the important questions. Therefore, it is important to continue and expand. Communities should be informed about this type of violence because it not just a problem occurring somewhere else and we hear about by the media, but it is a nationwide problem with serious consequences. Additional research could address students’

perspectives on the phenomenon of violence against teachers which would

broaden our understandings on the subject and offer tremendous insight to schools and relevant organisations. Parents, educators and schools play a significant role in forming and educating the new generations, in which our future depends on, which is why this problem should not be taken slightly. Instead, it should be addressed further in order to work preventively and successfully alleviate it.

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Violence Against Teachers in Sweden: The hidden side of School Violence

VIOLENCE AGAINST TEACHERS

IN SWEDEN:

THE HIDDEN SIDE OF

SCHOOL VIOLENCE

VIOLENCE AGAINST TEACHERS

IN SWEDEN: THE HIDDEN SIDE OF

SCHOOL VIOLENCE

THEODORA TERZOUDI

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

METHODOLOGY

FINDINGS

DISCUSSION

CONCLUSIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH

REFFERENCES