Violence, bullying and academic achievement: A study of 15-year-old adolescents and their school environment

Abstract

Factors on both levels can contribute to reduced grades. This stresses the need to investigate individual and contextual factors simultaneously when examining academic achievement. Our results indicated that students attending schools with higher levels of bullying may show poorer school performance. This was true for all students regardless of previous exposure to violence and sexual abuse. This emphasizes the need for preventive efforts that focus not only on vulnerable groups, but on all students and the school context.

Hierarchy, Violence and Bullying Among Students of Public Middle Schools

“…Students at the base of the official hierarchy tend to be either perpetrators or victims of school violence, but especially perpetrators. The studies conducted by Juvonen et al (2011), Mehta et al (2013), and Strøm et al (2013) confirm this study's results, that academic performance is inversely related to school violence. As these students are considered unpopular, they perhaps perceive aggression directed to their equals and to those with a poor performance in physical education to be an opportunity to stand out and become popular.…”

“…The performance of students involved with school violence can be harmed, as some studies reveal (Juvonen et al, 2011;Mehta et al, 2013;Strøm et al, 2013). This study's contributions include the discussion of school violence in light of school hierarchies as described by Adorno (1965Adorno ( /1995a, Ahn et al (2010), Garandeau et al (2014a), Levandoski and Cardoso (2013), Li and Wright (2014), and Zwaan et al (2013).…”

“…Salmivalli, Kärnä and Poskiparta (2011) assert that studies addressing school violence, especially bullying, should not ignore the context in which relationships are established among peers. In this sense, Strøm et al (2013) argue that further studies investigating bullying as a group phenomenon are needed, given that the unsafe atmosphere caused by it affects all students. Nonetheless, as put by Garandeau, Lee and Salmivalli (2014a), few studies address the relationship between hierarchical status and bullying.…”

“…This last result reveals that, if there is school hierarchy and a relevant criterion is popularity, it may be related to physical performance and attractiveness, but students are also distinguished by their performance in academic subjects, and according to the results, good students tend to be targets of violence. Strøm et al (2013) state that few studies in the field address the relationship between school violence and academic performance and, as Juvonen et al (2011) and Mehta et al (2013), Strøm et al (2013) also report, there is an inverse relationship between these two variables: the greater the violence, the worse the academic performance of students. Adorno (1965Adorno ( /1995b asserts that this distinction between students' performance in academic subjects is part of an official hierarchy.…”

“…Thoresen, Wentzel-Larsen and Dyb (2013) show that school violence decreases the engagement of students in schools and is an obstacle to good academic performance. Salmivalli, Kärnä and Poskiparta (2011) assert that studies addressing school violence, especially bullying, should not ignore the context in which relationships are established among peers.…”