Coping with Destructive Behaviour of Learners: Teachers’ Reaction to Learners’ Aggression and Aggressiveness of Teachers

Abstract

Introduction. The article presents the analysis of the ways teachers cope with situations of conflict at secondary school and destructive behavior of learners. Highly functional coping teachers’ behavior is the main problem of the study. The purpose of the article is to present the results of a study of the relationship between various parameters of teachers’ aggressiveness and priority ways of responding to situations of conflicts between learners, as well as to test the assumption that there is a relationship between the chosen method of coping with adolescents’ aggressive behavior and teachersʼ idea about the permissibility of aggression. Materials and Methods. 5 086 teachers from seven regions of the Russian Federation (five federal districts) took part in this study. The study was implemented in the form of an anonymous online questionnaire. The following statistical analysis methods were used: Student and Mann-Whitney criteria, correlation analysis (Spearman coefficient). Data processing was carried out in R Studio (R version 4.0.0) and SPSS. Results. Respondents with a high level of physical aggression, anger and hostility (compared to respondents with a low level) are significantly less likely to choose an active form of reaction and significantly more often – passive and emotional forms. Teachers who actively react to the aggression of adolescents do not consider aggression an acceptable form of behavior. Teachers who prefer a passive and emotional way of responding to aggression are more likely to consider aggressive behavior at school acceptable. Discussion and Conclusion. The results conceptualize various aspects of the teacher's attitude to adolescent aggression and, in many respects, directly indicate the risks of “normalizationˮ of adolescent aggression as a form of behavior in the minds of teachers with high rates of various aspects of aggressiveness.