School Violence Towards Teachers: Victimization Behaviors in Elementary-School Teachers

Research on school violence has mainly focused on describing and understanding students' aggresive behaviors in order to modify them. However, focus on violence received by teachers is scarce. The purpose of this study was to characterize victimization behaviors reported by public elementary-school teachers. 319 teachers (229 of them women) from 44 schools answered a questionnaire on levels of victimization received by their students, other teachers, school management team and parents, both as self-report as well as hetero-report. Findings show that teachers perceive higher levels of victimization by students and parents, with heteroperceptions being higher than self-perceptions in both cases. These findings are discussed in light of the literature on teacher malaise, as well as concerning punitive and client-based educational policies.