What Leads to Aggression / Victimization among Argentine Schoolchildren at State Primary Schools in Socially Vulnerable Contexts?

GRECO, CAROLINA; ISON, MIRTA SUSANA

Vilnius

Workshop; 24th Biennial Meeting of the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development; 2016

International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development

Bullying is not restricted to a simple interaction between victims and victimizers. Rather, it needs to be understood in the light of the group and sociocultural processes that originate it and that sustain situations of school violence. Most of the instruments that evaluate bullying do not record the causal explanations that schoolchildren offer for aggression / victimization. That is why the goals of this study were: (a) to identify the schoolchildren involved in the bullying victim / victimizer dynamics and (b) to explore the attributions reported by children as causes of victimization / aggression. Participants: 114 schoolchildren from 4th to 7th grade, of both genders, between 9 and 14 years of age (M = 10.67, SD = 1.70), belonging to a state primary school in a socially vulnerable context in Argentina. Both the parents' informed consent and the children's free consent were required for inclusion in the study. Design: transversal, mixed (qualitative, quantitative) approach. Research Tools: The Bull Questionnaire of Socio-Emotional Relationships in the Classroom (Méndez & Cerezo, 2010) and a focal interview to inquire into the causal attributions for aggression / victimization. Results: for the analysis of the content, prior theoretical contributions by Almeida, Lisboa & Caurcel (2007) and Barrio et at. (2003) were taken into account. These authors base their work on Hinde's perspective (1987), according to which, different levels of complexity may be identified in social behaviour, involving the individual, dyadic interactions, group relations and social structure. Hermeneutic analysis was carried out, as well. Fourth grade schoolchildren identified both individual (behavioural and psychological) and sociocultural features (family functioning) as sources of aggression / victimization. Fifth grade children referred to individual features (psychological, behavioural and emotional) and sixth and seventh grade children identified individual (psychological and emotional), group (group hedonism, dominance / submission) and sociocultural features (beliefs about violence). Conclusions: This study may contribute to a better understanding of the individual and group behaviours and sociocultural features that underpin the phenomenon of peer violence in school. This perspective includes schoolchildren's subjectivity and the meaning they assign to their everyday experience. The evaluation and intervention should be carried out from an environmental model of development that may allow the implementation of different approaches depending on the age, gender and sociocultural features, also bearing in mind the resources available and risks involved, and all of this with a view to child mental health promotion and prevention in socially vulnerable contexts.