2023/10/04 by Camilla Forsberg, Eva Hammar Chiriac, Robert Thornberg · 1 voice
Psychology · #Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development #Bullying, Victimization, and Aggression #Behavioral and Psychological Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/02643944.2023.2265388
openalex publication_date 2023/10/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
The aim of this study is to explore pupils' perspectives on school climate, with a focus on help-seeking from teachers when experiencing unsafe incidents. Fifty-nine focus group interviews were conducted with pupils from two public schools in grades 1-9 (i.e. ages 7-15 years) in Sweden and analyzed with constructivist grounded theory. The findings address how the organizational support structure was crucial and three main categories were conceptualized from pupils' perspectives: (1) teachers as sources of support; (2) availability of support; and (3) consistent and responsive support. The way in which pupils perceived these three dimensions, and thus the organizational support structure, were crucial to whether they considered help-seeking from teachers when they experienced unsafe incidents such as violence, bullying or conflicts. To conceptualize the pupils' perspectives on the organizational support structure and help-seeking we adopted a social-ecological perspective as a theoretical framework. Social-ecological factors such as scheduling, and information provided (exosystem) and the pupil-teacher relationships (microsystem) were found to be especially important in relation to the organizational support structure and pupils' help-seeking. Our findings suggests that it is imperative for schools to pay attention to the organizational support structure and especially consider the teacher-pupil relationship quality and how scheduling, information about support sources, and a consistent and responsive approach from all teachers affects pupils' help-seeking and the building of a supportive school climate and safety for all pupils at school.