The Impact of School Climate on Children’s Peer Victimization Experiences

• In Event: Contextual Influences on Youth Character Development: Evidence from Kenya, Brazil, and Canada

Abstract

Context-related factors such as school climate have been associated with reductions in an array of concerns including school violence, peer victimization and bullying. School climate is a complex multidimensional construct that globally refers to the quality of school life such as the normative beliefs, values, and ideals that prevail in a school community and that are manifested in the relationships among its members. The current study examines three important questions about how children’s perceptions of school climate impacts their experiences of peer victimization. Findings from the study were gathered from a national cluster-randomized control trial of the WITS peer victimization prevention programs (www.witsprogram.ca/). This study has four waves of data collected across two academic years (grades 1-3) and includes 75 classrooms in 21 schools across Canada, and data from 1,967 children, as well as their parents and teachers.
Specifically, the first aim of the study was to determine how varying aspects of school climate that tap domains related to interpersonal relationships (e.g., teachers, peers, parents, principals) and school values (e.g., fairness, equal access to resources) differentially predict peer victimization. Findings from structural equation path analyses indicated a reciprocal relationship between peer victimization and worsening perceptions of school climate in both the interpersonal and values dimensions. However, school climate dimensions that were related to parent perceptions of involvement in school activities and the schools’ connection with the community were unrelated to the children’s reports of peer victimization suggesting that these specific elements of school climate may not be particularly sensitive to the impact of peer victimization.
The second aim of the study was to determine whether the longitudinal patterns of children’s experiences of school climate differed depending on the severity of their peer victimization experiences. Findings from latent class analyses revealed four distinct victimization trajectories characterized by chronically high, increasing, decreasing, or low‐stable levels across time. Multilevel analyses showed that children in the chronically high peer victimization group had poorer experiences of school climate at baseline compared to children in the low‐stable group. Over time, children in the increasing victimization group had worsening experiences of school climate compared to children in the low‐stable peer victimization group. Findings suggests that enduring experiences of peer victimization can diminish children’s experiences of school climate over time.
The last aim of the study was to examine the impact of the WITS peer victimization prevention on children’s experiences of school climate and subsequent reports of peer victimization. Findings from the structural equation path analyses revealed that variability in program implementation factors (e.g., adherence and integration) and children’s use of program skills (child responsiveness) were related to increases in children’s perceptions of school climate which were related to subsequent declines in children’s reports of peer victimization. This finding suggests that the program may impact children’s rates of peer victimization through promoting contexts that reinforce positive school climates. Together these findings demonstrates how the school environment both affects and is shaped by perceptions of school climate. School intervention efforts may benefit from a better understanding of the key elements of school climate that affect bullying and victimization.

Authors

• Paweena Sukhawathanakul, University of Victoria
  Presenting Author

• Bonnie Jean Leadbeater, University of Victoria
  Non-Presenting Author