Poster #86 - Using school climate to predict peer victimization among Brazilian students

• In Event: 3-206 - Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Section - Education, Schooling

Integrative Statement

Positive relations in schools are associated to improvements in outcomes such as school engagement and academic performance and the quality of those relationships can also lead to violent behaviors, like peer victimization. Assessing protection factors for violence, the school climate has been favorable and many components can lead to high quality school environments, such as teacher-student relations, overall student engagement, peer relations, school safety and fairness. However, these associations have been less studied in the context of Brazilian schools, which face unique challenges including the low student scores in international assessments.Ther efore, this investigation aimed to understand how factors of school climate affected Brazilian adolescents reports of being victimized at school. The main hypothesis was that self-reported victimization would be negatively associated to dimensions of a positive school climate. Participated in the current study 22080 students from 122 elementary public schools in Southern Brazil. The students were between 7 and 25 years old (mean=13.21; sd=2.99); 50.3% of the participants were male, 48.0% girls, .8% were transgender students and .9% os students declared other gender identifications. In this sample, 50.0% of students were white; 37.7% were from mixed ethnicity; 7.5% black; 2.4% Indigenous and 2.4% were Asian. Measures were obtained through a self-report questionnaire with sociodemographic data; school climate; peer victimization and socioemotional development, part of a larger investigation about Brazilian school dynamics. This analysis evaluated victimization (α(item=5)=.76) (for example “I was pushed, punched and/or kicked by colleagues”) and aggression(α(item=5)=.71) to understand peer victimization both dimensions were from “Peer Aggression Scale” - Escala de Agressão e Vitimização Entre Pares” (Cunha, Weber & Steiner, 2009). School climate dimensions were measured by Delaware School Climate Survey Student (Bear & Yang, 2011) and the variables in this study were: teacher-student relations (α(item=8)=.84); peer relations (α=(item=6).83); overall student engagement (α(item=5)=.74); school safety (α(item=3)=.84); and school fairness (α=(item=9).79, 9 items). Table 1 presents correlations between all the variables of the study. All variables were significantly correlated. A multiple regression was conducted to predict victimization. The predictors were aggression, teacher-student relations, peer relations, student engagement, school safety and fairness. Table 2 presents results. The full model was significantly greater than zero, F(6, 19953) = 969.41, p<.001, R²=22.50%, 95% CI [-.56,-.31]. As shown in table 2, aggression was a positive predictor for victimization, and overall student engagement. Peer relation was a negative significant predictor; indicating that for Brazilian students, the practice of aggressive behaviors seems linked to behave in aggressive ways with colleagues and worst peer relations. No other significant associations were found. Points out that overall student engagement has been a negative predictor of victimization and this result may indicate that students who feel more engaged in school activities might suffer more aggression from colleagues. Given these results it is necessary to keep the research and expand the understanding the dynamics of aggressive behaviors in Brazilian school environments.

Authors

• HELLEN TSURUDA AMARAL, Universidade Federal do Paraná
  Presenting Author

• Josafa Da Cunha, Universidade Federal do Paraná
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jonathan Santo, University of Nebraska Omaha
  Non-Presenting Author

• Vitor Yano, Universidade Federal do Paraná
  Non-Presenting Author