Youths’ Understandings and Judgments of Teachers’ Responses to Addressing Peer Harms in Schools

• In Event: The Developmental Intertwining of Aggression and Morality: Actions, Judgments, and Responses

Abstract

In everyday exchanges with classmates at school, students both hurt their peers and are hurt by them. While teachers can intervene in varied ways to address peer harm, little is known about students’ moral evaluations of different approaches. In previous research, adolescents have described strategies that encouraged empathy and perspective-taking as fairer than imposing punishments (Rote et al., 2020). Similarly, some youths have reported disciplinary responses were unfair when punishments were excessive and their perspectives were not considered (Bell, 2020). Capturing youths’ own perspectives is crucial, since students’ moral judgments of responses to harm will likely influence their support of these approaches, and their reflections on peer conflict provide a context for them to consider how harms can be equitably addressed.
This qualitative phenomenological study examined how Colombian youth interpret and evaluate different approaches to addressing peer harm in schools. The sample was comprised of 33 adolescents in an urban low-SES high school in Bogotá, Colombia (M age = 14.96 years; 18 girls, 14 boys, 1 other gender). In semi-structured interviews, adolescents narrated two experiences of peer harm in schools: specifically, they recounted events that they judged were handled (a) fairly and (b) unfairly by teachers (in counterbalanced order). Then, youth participated in focus group dialogues (7 to 8 students per group) where they discussed what they considered to be fair responses to peer harm in school. Adolescents summarized their discussion in a visual display to be shared with their classmates. Thematic analysis was used to code youths’ responses and then contrast and cluster these codes together into meaningful themes. We triangulated participants’ data across different portions of the study to understand their moral judgments of teachers’ responses to peer harm.
Youth noted concerns with moral accountability for harm (e.g., taking time to clarify the roots of the conflict), students’ agency and autonomy, preventing future harms, and fostering positive relationships. For students, fair responses entailed speaking with all the involved parties to acknowledge everyone’s role and listen to all those involved. In addition, students thought responses were fair when teachers tried to understand their behavior, and when all involved students learned from the conflict and understood the impact of their actions. Youth also underlined the limits of dialogue and suggested that fair responses should also involve apologies or other concrete consequences depending on students’ actions. Students further described how responses were unfair when their perspectives or privacy were not considered. Finally, participants emphasized how peer harm was deeply hurtful and, thus, to them, responses were unfair when teachers minimized harms, contributed to their pain, or responded with superficial solutions. Overall, our findings highlight the nuanced and varied reasoning underlying youths’ moral judgments of different responses to harm, such as concerns with overlooking their agency or the impacts of harms. In addition to informing scholarship on moral development, the findings on youths’ perspectives can directly inform programs aiming to address peer harm in ways that fit students’ needs.

Authors

• Laura Pareja Conto, Concordia University
  Presenting Author

• Ana Maria Velasquez

• Vilma Escorcia Vera

• Holly E Recchia, Concordia University

• Gabriel Velez, Marquette University

• CECILIA WAINRYB, University of Utah