Victims or Bullies - Students or Teachers

The problem of violence in schools has been considered globally through teachers' assessments of violence in schools-dsometimes of the actual state of violence in the schools where they work; of the representation of the form of violent behavior and the reactions of students in the situations where they find themselves in the spectator role of a violent scene. This work is the result of research which serves to empirically confirm the representation of violent behavior of both students and teachers in verified, controlled (part of the School without violence network) and unverified elementary schools of the Rasina District in Serbia, as well as the attitudes of teachers on violence and on personal competence to suppress the aforementioned phenomenon. The beginning results of the research on the problem of violence-in the past and at present have shown a tendency for the increase in violence in educational institutions. Through a longitudinal consideration of subjective assessments of teachers on violence in the previous and current period, we come to a conclusion that the greatest percentage of teachers points out that the problem of violence today is the same or greater in relation to earlier periods. Further analysis of the results has contributed to the conclusion that the teachers' awareness of the presence of violence is greater in schools which are a part of the School without violence network, which caused the display of a greater degree of violence in these schools. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.