School violence negative effect on student academic performance: a multilevel analysis

Abstract

The relative roles of school context and individual student factors are of special interest to educators in measuring academic performance. Little is known about the effect of school violence on a student’s academic performance and well-being. The aims of this study were to examine the effects of three types of school violence (direct violence, discrimination, and cyberbullying) on students’ academic performance in standardized tests of mathematics, reading and history, and to identify individual student factors that contribute to reducing the negative effect of exposure to violence at school. We used 10th grade Chilean student data from the representative cross-sectional test of the Education Quality Measurement System (SIMCE in Spanish) from 2015. Multilevel linear models, adjusted for gender, incorporated other school and environmental contextual factors, as well as individual student factors. The results show that school violence in its three forms had a negative effect on academic performance. Student self-efficacy, educational expectations and satisfaction with interpersonal relations with their teachers, were important in reducing the negative effect of exposure to violence. The implications for the school are discussed.

Keywords:

• Academic performance
• school violence
• student self-efficacy
• educational expectations
• student-teacher relationship satisfaction

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the Education Quality Agency of Chile and the Education Quality Measurement System (SIMCE) for granting access to the databases.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.