Students, teachers, school climate, and school violence: A multiple perspective examination of victimization in Israeli schools.

Much of the research literature on school violence has focused narrowly on individual characteristics of troubled youth, without careful examination of contextual factors that might influence violence and victimization in school settings. This dissertation examines issues of school climate and school violence in a nationally representative sample of 10,254 students and 1056 teachers in 164 junior high and high schools in Israel. The research questions are addressed in a multiple manuscript format. The first study examined the associations between Student Participation in Decision-Making in their schools, Teacher Support, and Student Victimization (by students and staff members). Structural equations modeling (Bentler, 1995) was used as the primary method of data analysis for complete dataset analyses, and for group comparisons of patterns between junior high, high school, male, female, and Jewish and Arab students. The analyses revealed strong negative associations between Teacher Support and Student Victimization for all analyses and varying patterns of positive associations between Participation in Decision-Making and Victimization, depending on students' gender and ethnicity. The model explained more variance in the victimization outcomes for boys than for girls and for Arab Students than for Jewish Students. The second empirical study examined teachers' perceptions of the school-wide emphasis on violence prevention, the degree to which teachers/staff ignore violent events that occur at school, and reports of student victimization. The analyses revealed similar findings across all group comparisons. While no direct relation emerged between the Violence Prevention Emphasis at School and Student Victimization, there was an indirect effect through teachers' reports of avoidance of violence. The findings suggest that staff responses to violence play a critical role in prevention efforts. The third manuscript extends the research on student and teacher perceptions of school climate and student victimization by integrating the findings of the two empirical studies and providing an analysis of theoretical and conceptual issues and suggestions for future research. School climate is considered from many different perspectives, with attention to micro- and macro-level influences as well as consideration of the processes and dynamics that relate to violence within the complexity of the school system.