Definitions, prevalence and sources of violence in Portugal

João Amado & Isabel Freire

Definition

• Violence presents a specific kind of disciplinary problem to school.
• Violence in school can be defined as being a considerable amount of antisocial behaviour carried out by a pupil or a teacher, and includes any kind of aggressive behaviour, vandalism, deft or bullying.
• Bullying (maltrato entre iguais) is seen as a subset of violence; we agree with Olweus (2000) (Smith e Sharp, 1998) definitions of bullying; the phenomena involves systematic abuse of power between pupils, delayed intimidations and victimization.

Prevalence

• In Portugal violent school situations are still rare. However, it is still of great concern because of the potential negative impact on both the perpetrator and the victim.
• The most typical form of violence in schools is verbal aggression and it occurs occasionally - it's not systematic.

Sources

• In general, the violence in schools is associated with social economic problems, lack of structured families, poverty, racism and social discrimination.
• The main source of bullying seem to be psychological (low self-steam)
• The research shows us that violence in school, whether it is systematic or not, is a multi-factor phenomena, with different expressions and a multiplicity of sources, but that the school has a powerful impact on its prevention