School violence in the context of political violence

• Main Author: Kuzmanović Dobrinka
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philosophy, Institute of Psychology 2013-01-01
• Series: Psihološka Istraživanja
• Subjects: school-age children and youth; school violence; political violence
• Online Access: http://scindeks-clanci.ceon.rs/data/pdf/0352-7379/2013/0352-73791301057K.pdf
• ISSN: 0352-7379; 2560-306X

School violence is a widely spread phenomenon. All researchers of school violence agree that this is a socio-cultural phenomenon which is affected by numerous factors, including the presence of political violence in a society. The paper discusses the influence of political violence, still present in different regions of the world nowadays, on exhibiting violent behaviour in school children. Browsing through relevant literature on the subject one comes to the conclusion that this is a problem that has not been sufficiently explored. The available empirical data can generally be classified into two groups: the findings that confirm the hypothesis that political violence influences an increase in school violence and the findings that not only call into question this hypothesis but point out quite the contrary - under certain conditions (e.g. if the school takes over a protective role, i.e. the role of the mediator of external influences), political violence can contribute to the decrease in school violence. The explanation of the inconsistencies in the obtained findings can be found in the complexity of the studied phenomena and the differences in their conceptualization (and hence both operationalization and measuring), then in the absence of research studies conducted properly in terms of methodology, and especially in limitations during the process of merging the findings obtained in individual studies. The issue of the extent to which school violence is conditioned by out-of-school influences, such as political violence, has indisputable social significance and deserves to be the subject of future research and an extensive scientific analysis.