Students’ Evaluations about Prosocial and Violent Behaviour and Attitudes

Abstract

This cross-sectional study addressed to measure two aspects of students' evaluations across three school contexts: (1) frequency of prosocial and violent behaviour in peer and student-teacher relationships, and (2) attitudes toward prosocial and violent behaviour in peer and student-teacher relationships. Questionnaire data were drawn from study involving overall 514 students from Estonia: Students in juvenile correctional educational institutions (N=82), students with special needs in special schools (N=151), and students in mainstream schools (N=281), whereby the age of all subjects was 14-17 year. Results of the study indicated that: (1) Prosocial attitude-behaviour consistency tended to exists among students in mainstream school and in special schools, but among juvenile delinquents inconsistency between prosocial attitudes and actions at relationships level was revealed-positive attitude with lowest frequency of action in student-teacher relations compared with student-student relations; and (2) violence attitude-behaviour consistency tended to exists in mainstream school and in special schools, whereby among juvenile delinquents inconsistency between violence attitudes and behaviour exists in relationship level-most negative attitudes with highest frequency of behaviour in student-teacher relations compared with student-student relations. Prosocial/violence attitude-behaviour relations may vary from school setting to school setting and from relationships levels-student-teacher, student-student, giving directions for prevention of and intervention in school violence.