Togetherness, coexistence or confrontation : the impact of school climate and culture on peer-to-peer social relations in Catalonia, Spain

Abstract

This paper presents some of the results of the study ‘Coexistence and Confrontation among Peers in Secondary Schools in Catalonia’ commissioned by the Ombudsman’s Office of the Catalan government and carried out at the Institute of Childhood and the Urban World (CIIMU) in Barcelona, Spain, in 2005-2006. It offers a description of the indicators of malaise and exclusion among students at nine public and private secondary schools serving varying social environments in Catalonia. Qualitative and quantitative techniques were applied, based on focus groups and in-depth interviews with students, teachers, parents associations and school management, and a questionnaire for students in Year 1 and Year 4 of secondary school (ages 12 and 16). Though the results obtained also reveal a certain amount of verbal, social and physical bullying in these schools, this study’s main interest was the factors consitituting each school’s climate as it affected student peer-to-peer relationships. Such factors included the type of ‘model’ student promoted by the school; the values governing social popularity and stigmatisation among the students; the sorts of academic expectations placed on students by the school; the perception of teaching methods and practices among students; the social relationship between teachers and students as perceived by the latter; the different models of governance through rules and the level of internal coherence in applying sanctions; the strategies used by the school to create groups; and the degree of recognition by the institution of the diversity of students’ origins.