School climate, coping styles of support personnel and students’ perception of school violence

Abstract

Within the school community – students, teachers, support staff and directors – each element plays a specific role to generate an adequate coexistence. The aim of our research is to identify the relationship among the perception of the school climate, the ways of coping with violence of academic support personnel (prefects, social workers, and counselors) and the perception of school violence in public secondary schools in the state of Sonora, Mexico. 154 people who do support work for the directive management in 46 public secondary schools in Sonora (46.6% male and 53.4% female) took part in this study. The results indicate that dealing with violence directly is positively linked to commitment and bonding and avoidance is linked negatively, while the indirect effects indicate that dealing with violence directly is positively linked to a favorable school climate and evasive coping is linked negatively. Furthermore, we found that the school climate is positively linked to the perception of violence. Ourresults indicate that the role played by support personnel in the face of school violence is marked by their perception of the school climate and the way in which they deal with bullying situations among students.