International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling21: 279–300, 1999.© 2000Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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How French counsellors treat school violence: An adult-centeredapproach

PASCAL MALLET1 & BENJAMIN PATY2

1Institut National d’Etude du Travail, et d’Orientation Professionnelle, Paris, France2Laboratoire de Psychologie Appliquée, Université de Reims, France

Abstract. This article explores characteristics of school violence in France and the privilegedmeans by which school counsellors can address this increasingly widespread problem. In thefirst section, the status of counsellors in the French schools is outlined, and it is shown thatcounselling activities are really only undertaken for students in junior high or high school. Twoimportant characteristics of the French view of school violence are: The experts in psychologytake little interest in problems of school violence; and adults, rather than students, are seenas the primary victims. In this context, counsellors try to reduce school violence primarilythrough training and reflecting with school staff. Several empirical arguments suggest, ineffect, that the adults’ perceptions of the students is a determining factor in the social regu-lation of school violence. This violence consists mostly of incivilities that are only slightlyreprehensible but often unbearable for certain teachers. Depending on whether the schoolstaff try to understand the incivilities or can only see them as pure savagery, they either tryto control them through education or they lose confidence in their professional mission. Thegoal of counsellors is both to help the personnel develop their capacities and motivate them toanalyze the students’ behavior, and to engender a sense of team spirit.

Keywords: school violence, France, adult-centered approach, school staff

Introduction

In recent years, simultaneously in many western countries, school violencehas emerged as a growing problem involving increasingly younger children.This phenomenon is especially worrisome because it occurs in the courseof childhood and adolescence, when individuals are presumed to learn tocontrol their violent impulses. It is also troublesome because schools havelong been considered to be exempt from problems of delinquency. Everysociety responds to the increase in school violence with the means it hasavailable and, more generally, in relation to its cultural characteristics. Thestrategies that school counsellors deploy to address school violence dependupon their institutional status, that is, their professional responsibilities andthe training they have received. The goal of the present article is to presentthe particularities of the way in which school violence is treated by Frenchschool counsellors.

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In the first part of this paper, we will present the position of counsellingin the context of the French school system, and the way in which expertshave analyzed school violence in France. We will show how cultural charac-teristics of the school lead the French to emphasize the adult, rather thanthe child, as the victim of school violence. In the second part of this paper,we will show how counsellors have adapted to this situation by treating theproblems of school violence in terms of its effects on the adults. The attitudesand analytic capacities of adults (in particular, teachers) with respect to theviolent behavior of students are considered to be central to the treatment ofschool violence. It is the reason that counsellors concentrate on reflection andtraining with the school staff. An example of such a situation is presentedand, in conclusion, the limitations of this approach are discussed.

Particularities of the French approach to school violence

Are there counsellors in French schools?

There are two types of psychologists who work in French schools: “schoolpsychologists” in elementary school, and “career counsellors-psychologists”in the upper grades. Up until the middle of the Twentieth Century, teachersserved as school psychologists in elementary schools. They were trained tothis end in the course of their studies (see, for example, the work of Foucault(1923), which was geared to future teachers). The idea of school psychol-ogy as a new profession was initially introduced in France by Henri Wallon(1879–1962), the founder of child psychology in our country. One of thearguments advanced by Wallon was that “the functions of teaching are tooabsorbing and leave the teachers without the free time to study and applythe methods of investigation that will permit them to eventually determine,for each child, the intellectual, personal or social causes of his behavior inschool” (Wallon, 1952, pp. 374–375). The concern for improving the socialand psychological life of the students became the purview of the psychologist.

The first work of school psychology was conducted by Zazzo (1954) whoworked with several elementary schools just after World War II. The reso-lutely optimistic work of the first school psychologists was based as much onthe goal of adapting the school to the child as that of adapting the child to theschool. If the causes of the problems were in the family or in the organizationof the class, the psychologist was supposed to intervene at those levels. Thepsychologists who participated in these pioneer experiences worked withinthe schools and thus cooperated closely with the teachers. Their goal was notto select and orient deficient students toward specialized institutions, but toidentify students’ individual differences in order to facilitate remediation of

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each student’s problems before they became too great. (For more informationabout the experiences of French post-war school psychologists, see UNESCO(1948) and Zazzo (1954).) At that time, school psychologists were integratedinto the school, where they did all their work. This situation existed in only afew schools.

In the middle of the 1950’s, there was a change in professional orientationfor the school psychologist which became generalized and institutional-ized. The job became one of identifying and orienting mentally deficientor maladapted students. In this way, the French school psychologist, whobecame responsible for an inordinate number of schools, began to relay“the image, which was not at all imaginary, of the travelling psychologistwho goes from place to place with his suitcase of tests and his stopwatch”(Guillemard, 1982, p. 13). To the present day, school psychologists haveno particular physical place within the schools where they can receive thestudents, their parents, or the teachers. Their practice varies according totheir individual personality and the particularities of the schools where theywork. In general, the school psychologist tries to be a real counsellor for thestudents, parents, and teachers. In any case, while the role of certain schoolpsychologists is purely one of identification and orientation, others delivera kind of improvised psychotherapy. The practice of counselling receivesvery little institutional support in France. Unlike schools in the majority ofcountries in the European Community, the French elementary schools haveno psychological services offering a place where students and their familiescan be received (Guillemard, 1982).

In the secondary schools, where students are over 11 years old, the workof guidance counsellor-psychologists was more quickly recognized as neces-sary. This profession was created in 1922 and institutionalized in 1938. Thejob of these professionals was initially to select and orient students accordingto their abilities. In this way, guidance counsellor-psychologists were the firstpracticing psychologists in France. They have, explicitly, the title of coun-sellor, and their training makes them well-prepared for the actual practice ofcounselling. With time, they have become increasingly less involved with theselection of students solely on the basis of their aptitude, and spend muchmore time doing career counselling. Their job consists mainly of vocationalguidance, which takes into account the personality, abilities, and interests ofthe adolescent, as well as the realities of the job and educational market. Inorder to achieve this, the counsellor helps the student to develop a picturethat is as accurate as possible of potential professions and training that mighthelp him or her to achieve goals. Nevertheless, secondary school counsellorsare increasingly forced to resist institutional pressures that they serve other

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functions; in particular, the adaptation of the flow of students to the demandsof the job market.

Before posing the question of the role of the counsellor in the fight againstschool violence and its negative effects on others, it is necessary to identifythe experts in the field of school violence in France and to outline theiranalyses of the problem.

Who are the French experts on school violence?

In French universities, psychologists who study the development and educa-tion of children and adolescents are less interested in the problems ofschool violence than their Anglo-Saxon colleagues. In general, there is littlescientific scholarship in France concerning the social and emotional develop-ment of adolescents. Most often, social aspects are treated from a sociologicalpoint of view by specialists from that discipline. In terms of the emotionalaspects, it is the psychiatrists and psychologists/psychopathologists who dothe work. The latter do not bother with quantitative evaluation or restrictthemselves to physiological dimensions of the problem.

In speaking of school psychologists (in elementary schools), educated inthe university system, Guillemard (1997) pointed out the complete absenceof the psychosocial dimension in their training. He claimed that “this absencemakes them often ineffective because they lack understanding of the contex-tual and cultural background foundation of all behavior (school behavior ornot)” (p. 3). Because of this gap in their training, school psychologists aretraditionally ill-prepared to intervene institutionally in order to treat the prob-lems of school violence. It is not what is expected of them. In addition, theycan always alert psychiatrists in the public sector, outside of the school, whenthe student becomes particularly aggressive.

In contrast, secondary-school counselling psychologists are much betterprepared to confront the problems of school violence in part because theinstitutions where they are trained are independent of the university system.It is true that these counsellors are expected to give the students informationregarding academic opportunities, that they help adapt teaching strategies tostudent characteristics, and that they favor the vocational maturity. But it isequally expected of the French secondary-school counsellor that he or sheevaluate the students and the classes, and this evaluation rests notably on thesystemic analysis of institutional functioning and its relation to the individual.In this way, “the job of counselling. . . can also concern . . . all the aspects ofpersonal life or the educational practices of parents and teachers” (Zerwetz,1997, p. 33). In addition, the counselling psychologist can also serve ateaching function, notably in the area of knowledge about individuals andschool environments. These teaching functions sometimes consist of running

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workshops with teachers and other educators. It is precisely in working fromthis job profile that the secondary-school counsellors fight against schoolviolence, even if they still receive little social recognition of their right tointervene in this domain. It is the role of this second category of practitioners,who work with adolescents, which will be examined here. The choice ofthis mode of intervention against school violence is in keeping with certainFrench cultural characteristics, and, in particular, with the expert analyses ofthe problem. Let us now look at these analyses.

Among French scholars, sociologists are the experts who are sociallyrecognized in France as qualified to treat the problem of school violence.Their analyses tend to rectify the point of view that is propagated by themedia. In fact, as in other societies, the question of school violence hasbecome one of the favorite themes of French print and audiovisual mediaover the last decade. The media generally presents the most spectacular facts,that is to say the most serious offences committed by the students (murder orrape of one of their peers, physical aggression against a teacher by a studentor parent, etc.). In the face of this emphasis, sociologists suggest that it is thesociety and the school (the first contributing to the state of the second) thatgenerate school violence. It is not a problem that will be identified and treatedin terms of the behavior of violent students. These last are only reactingto a “symbolic violence” (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1970) to which they aresubjected, and which places them on an educational track that will lead tosocial marginalization or even exclusion. The teachers, their courses and theadolescents who follow them, as well as the institutions that promote such asystem, are all rejected by these students. They are in a position of inferiorityand do not see any means of social promotion within this system. Sociologistsrightly insist on two things:

1. The behaviors in question are not completely new: every man, no matterhis age, can remember a fight between students that he witnessed or inwhich he participated in the course of his school years.

2. If the theme of school violence has become more socially visible in thecourse of the last years, it is not uniquely a reflection of an evolutionin school behavior toward increasing aggressiveness. For the sociologistDubet (1998), the growing need to find a response to school violencehas another source. It is the result of union pressures to increase theinvestment in personnel in the school. It also springs from the lassitudeof teachers, who are always more concerned with “education”1 and lessconcerned with teaching.

Thus, the complaints about the rise in school violence, expressed by theteachers and reiterated in the media, could also be an indication of a growingdifficulty with teaching, itself. Yet this difficulty is less the result of the exist-

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ence of extreme violence (luckily rare) as reported in the press, and more ageneral modification in the daily social environment of the school. In keepingwith this idea, Charlot (1997) notes that “if physical aggression or extremepsychological pressure (such as bribery or bullying) are more spectacular anddistressing than rudeness or incivility, it is these last that seem to be spreadinglike the plague and constitute the major threat to the school universe” (p. 5).For Coslin (1997), if incivilities are experienced by the teachers as a menace,it is precisely because they are being repeated with an elevated frequency.But is it in fact true that the principal victims of rudeness and incivilities areteachers and educators?

It is more the adult than the student who is considered the victim

A distorted media vision.If one accepts the media’s vision of school violencein France, the primary victims are the adults. The analysis of a major corpusof 503 articles concerning school violence that appeared in the French news-papers between 1993 and 1998 gives an idea of the typical situation. In72% of the cases, the aggressor is either a student or parent, and in 65%of the cases, the victim is a member of the national education system (ateacher or principal). In other words, the primary characteristic of schoolviolence emphasized in the media is deliberate physical violence againstschool personnel.

An investigation by the Ministry of National Education (MEN, 1998) onviolence in junior high schools and high schools over the course of the 1996–1997 school year indicates that 92.5% of the perpetrators of school violenceare students (of the remaining 7.5%, 6% are unidentified originators, 1%are parents of students, and 0.5% are employees of the National Educationsystem). But the same investigation reveals that personnel from the NationalEducation system are the victims in only 17% of the cases, while studentsare the victims in 67% of the cases (the remaining 16% of cases consist ofproperty damage). Even if this large difference is mostly due to the fact thatthere are more students than teachers, it is still true that, in general, the mostfrequent victims of violence are neither the teachers nor the educators (as thepress suggests), but rather the students.

Other studies confirm the fact that many students claim to be victims ofschool violence. For example, in a questionnaire-based study conducted byCarra and Sicot (1997) using over 4000 students between the ages of 12 and15, 47.8% claimed themselves to be victims of a lack of respect, 27.7% ofdestruction of their personal property, 23.7% of stealing, 15.8% of blackmail,15.6% of being hit or kicked, 9.7% of racism, 4.3% of bullying, and 2.8% ofaggression or sexual harassment.

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Whether based on the investigation conducted by the Ministry of NationalEducation (drawn from complaints lodged with the heads of establishments)or on the questionnaires (directly completed by the students), in both casesstudents appear, indeed, to be victims of school violence.

A school centered on academic learning.In privileging violence againstadults over that experienced by students, the French media perpetuates aclassic French position. Cousinet (1908), a French pioneer in the socialpsychology of children, envisioned the group of students as a “horde”, drivenby primitive alliances, that the teachers had to combat because they threatenedscholarly learning and moral development. If, in his eyes, the social func-tioning of student groups merited attention, it was not because the interactiveexperiences between peers constituted a positive preparation for life in society– as it is considered in the Anglo-Saxon tradition throughout the TwentiethCentury (Cooley, 1909; Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood & Sherif, 1961). ForCousinet, the study of student groups was aimed to give teachers an under-standing of the way these groups function so that they would not becomeoverwhelmed by them. For this author, student solidarity constituted, for eachstudent, “a slavery”, “a servile imitation” (p. 299).

This French vision of school violence portrays the teacher as a victim ofthe students and relegates violence between students to the background. Thisapproach is in keeping with the minimal interest of French psychologists inthe role played by peer relations in the development of social personality. Butthis vision of school violence, and the lack of interest of French psychologistsin peer relationships, are both reflections of a widely noted French character-istic: school is conceived to be, above all, a means of academic learning and,secondarily and far less importantly, a place where one learns how to live insociety. Admittedly, certain advocates of school psychology have long recog-nized the importance of school as the site of developmentally favorable peerrelationships. Thus, Gilly (1972) could write that “a child in a school situationis not only a child who comes into contact with pedagogic methods and abody of knowledge. It is a child who is involved in a network of interpersonalrelationships within the class-group or academic institution” (p. 139). But theideas of this former student of Zazzo are atypical of the majority of Frenchschool specialists, who take into account the peer relations only as a meansof facilitating certain kinds of academic learning. Thus, in the recent reportfor the Ministry of National Education entitled “Ameliorate the efficiency ofprimary school” (Ferrier, 1998), when the author briefly mentions peer rela-tionships it is essentially to evoke their utility in providing help, especiallyacademic tutoring. The instauration and development of solidarity are onlysecondary positive effects.

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Some specialists even consider it worrisome that the school could beconsidered to be primarily a place where one learns to live in society. Lecourt(1992/1998), a university professor who recently served as an adviser to theNational Education Minister, severely judged the North American schoolsystem: “The concept of equality for all and the primacy of social valuesand morals over the value of knowledge is, today, still at the heart of theAmerican educational system. . . . That philosophy . . . has led to a situationthat is socially disastrous and financially ruinous. . . in which schools havebeen transformed into simple youth centers where students are bored to deathfrom learning nothing” (pp. 146–147).

An internationally atypical institutional approach to school violence.In thiscultural context, it is easy to understand that the problem of violence betweenstudents would not be considered primordial, and it is not certain that themeasures taken in most other occidental countries would be applicable toFrance. In occidental countries, the research and practical measures appliedto these problems tend to be focussed on violence between students. Therapid increase in the research of “bullying” is representative of this focus.Olweus (1997), the author who has studied this question most profoundly,defines bullying according to the following three criteria: “(a) it is aggressivebehaviour or intentional ‘harmdoing’; (b) which is carried out ’repeatedly andover time’; and (c) in an interpersonal relationship characterized by an imbal-ance of power” (p. 496). This problem can seriously reduce the possibilitiesavailable to a student to progress in both his academic knowledge and hissocial development.

According to most studies, the efficient treatment of bullying necessitatesthe active joint participation of children or adolescents, parents, and schoolpersonnel together. Thus, for Olweus (1997), it is necessary to create “aschool (and, ideally, also a home) environment characterized by (a) warmth,positive interest, and involvement from adults, on the one hand, and (b)firm limits to unacceptable behaviour, on the other. Third (c), in cases ofviolations of limits and rules, non-hostile, non-physical sanctions should beconsistently applied . . . Finally (d), adults, both at school and at home, shouldact as authorities, at least in some respects” (p. 504). Olweus (1997) insistson the role of teachers, who must “take responsibility for the children’s totalsituation,not only their learning, but also their social relationships” (Olweus,1997, p. 505; underline ours). This is one condition for efficient interventionprograms.

In France, the application of such a program can hardly be envisioned.As stated above, the French cultural context leads to a vision of the schoolas a place of academic learning and not “education” (Zazzo, 1977). Because

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of this, while many other countries have adopted programs aimed to restoreharmony and sociability between peers in order to treat the problem ofviolence between students, some French specialists have gone so far as toenvision reducing the time for recess (Ferrier, 1998). In accordance with thisconception of the role of the school, most teachers are reluctant to play therole of social workers. In addition, the intervention of a counsellor in thefamily, as suggested by the Norwegian researcher, is considered to be perilousin France because of the “wall of privacy” that surrounds and encloses thenuclear family, a national particularity that has long been recognized (Zeldin,1973).

All of this explains why, at the time of the “European conference oninitiatives to combat school bullying” which took place in London in May,1998, the presentation of the French representative contrasted with thoseof the other representatives. For these last, the question of school violencewas posed, primarily, from the point of view of relations between peers. Inkeeping with the title of the conference, their presentations were preciselyconcerned with the fight against bullying. The French representative (Pain,1998) indicated that the fight against violence between students begins witha more global fight against institutional violence. This presentation was agood illustration of the atypical position of French experts with regard to thequestion of school violence, a position that seems to be seriously lacking inpragmatism.

However, practically speaking, French secondary-school counsellors havenot renounced the fight against school violence. They have adapted theirapproach to cultural particularities. They have aimed their interventions atteachers and educators, given the fact that these are the reputed victims. Theirinterventions are intended not only to lend support to the teachers themselves,but also to have a positive impact on the problems of violence by restoring theposition of teachers in the school. Teachers who take a more adapted approachto student violence are better positioned to cope with it successfully. It seemsthat a better adaptation can be obtained by reinforcing the teachers’ confi-dence in their position as teachers and role models, and the recognition thatthey are all part of the same team, regardless of whether they are specializedin teaching or “educating”. This approach to school violence is based on therecognition that teachers are little inclined to fight against violence betweenstudents because they see themselves as the victims.

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Combating school violence through adult counselling

Incivility: continued violence with frightening psychological effects

Not only is the analysis of school violence offered by specialists and themedia focused on adults as victims, but adults perceived themselves to bethe most exposed and the first to suffer. This is particularly apparent in theinvestigations of Boumard and Marchat (1993) and Lassarre (1996) whointerviewed secondary school teachers. But, contrary to the vision offered bythe media and in keeping with sociologists’ interpretations, the most sensa-tional violence is not the most worrisome for staff. The school violence thatmost preoccupies them is that which is the most ordinary, the least spec-tacular. And it is also the most common. For example, for the service staff,chewing gum in the locks and graffiti tags on the walls are perceived to bereal aggressions in the face of which they are defenseless victims. By thesame count, a teacher can end up feeling personally attacked and ridiculedwhen one or several classes misbehave or act rowdy throughout the schoolyear.

Indeed, these attacks are not as socially visible as intentional physicalaggression. In the case of the latter, the impact of school violence on thestaff is recognized as overtly traumatic. In this area, Horenstein and Voyron-Lemaire (1997), two psychiatrists who treated teachers who had mentalproblems following school aggression (for the most part deliberate attacksand physical aggression, with or without arms), observed that the mostfrequent symptom is socially evasive behavior, which is far more commonthan emotional instability, other mood problems, or insomnia. It is nonethe-less true that verbal and psychological assaults committed against the staffby a student in a more or less intentional and gratuitous manner can alsohave identifiable lasting psychological effects. The interviews conducted byBoumard and Marchat (1993) reveal that a perpetually rowdy class provokestwo types of reactions in the teacher: a minority consider themselves victimsof a particularly mediocre public that does not appreciate them, and amajority are overwhelmed with feelings of guilt and failure; also, the violenceappearing to be directed at them is perceived as proof of their professionalincompetence.

The presence of teachers who are discouraged and underconfident in theface of particularly turbulent students can only render an academic institutionmore fragile. The institution runs the risk of no longer meeting its role as asocial structure that guides the ontogenesis of sociability, particularly soci-ability between peers. In order for the school to fulfill its formative function,the teachers must at least be in a state of mental health that allows themto meet the expectations traditionally required of them of France – to teach

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their speciality. But the fulfillment of this specific role can require the teacherto engage in activities that go above and beyond the simple transmission ofknowledge.

However, mental health and, more generally, the psychological state ofthe teachers are directly related to their work environment. Since the workinitiated by Kyriacou and Sutcliff (1978), several studies have confirmed thatteachers in general have a particularly elevated level of stress. These studieshave specified that teacher stress is indeed related to the work environmentand not to the personalities of individuals who choose the field of teaching(for a review, see Cox & Griffiths, 1995). Several studies concerning teacherstress indicate that, among potential stress factors, conflicted relationshipswith pupils and colleagues contribute significantly to perceived stress (forexamples, see Byrne, 1991; McCormic, 1997).

But the same conflict ridden situations are not interpreted and exper-ienced in the same way by everyone and, subsequently, do not have thesame consequences for eventual adaptation. For example, McCormick (1997)showed that the teachers that tend to attribute their own stress to deviantstudent behavior rather than to internal factors have immature and ineffectivecoping capacities when faced with stressful classroom situations. These find-ings suggest that the tendency to see violence where it is not translates, forthe teacher, into an inability to contain student violence. Such facts underlinehow important it is for teachers and other staff to be able to distinguish trulyviolent behavior from behavior that is not intrinsically violent.

Along these lines, Boulton (1993) observed that adults commit errorsin interpreting student behavior as either play or aggression, depending onthe individual perceiver; for example, in many cases, women see aggressivebehavior where men see playful behavior. This problem of erroneous inter-pretation exists in teachers, from whom one might expect a certain expertisein this domain, as well as in the general population of adults (Schafer &Smith, 1996). With respect to bullying, Boulton (1997) showed that teachersdo not define this phenomenon in the same way as students. A significantlygreater proportion of teachers than pupils viewed specific behaviors such ashitting, pushing, and kicking as bullying.

We thus see that, for the majority of violent behaviors (those that straddlethe line between the acceptable and the unacceptable), interpretation dependslargely on the personality of the beholder and the variations in his or hermood. It is only in the case of extreme violence that no ambiguity exists (forexample, when a teacher is physically attacked by students armed with ironpipes). The role of the adult’s interpretive system is thus determinant in hisperception of the school environment as more or less violent.

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The perception of student violence as purely savage: A discouraging factorfor staff

The theory of social representation (Moscovici, 1961) explains why, in asocial environment characterized by a certain degree of violence, differentteachers react in different ways. Abric and Kahan (1972) showed that, whena person acts in relation to a given object, his or her action is more likelyto be based on his or her representation of that object than on its objectivecharacteristics. Viewed within this theoretical framework, when a teacherreacts to violent behavior, it is assumed that his or her reaction is basedmore on his or her conception of the violence than on the reality of thesituation. Social representations simultaneously integrate knowledge, naivetheories and action schemes, and are shared and transmitted by membersof the same social group – in this case the entire staff of the same school.Working in other fields of interest, Moscovici (1961) and Jodelet (1989) havealso shown that shared social representations of a given object are based, withdistortions and simplifications, on scientific knowledge regarding that object.These representations are disseminated to the general public, who use themto interpret the environment. In these conditions, one can suppose that theschool staff’s naive conceptions of violence are in part tied to the theories ofexperts.

In the scientific field, two conceptions are classically opposed whenspeaking of violence between people. The first has to do with expressiveaggression as initially proposed by Berkovitz (1965). According to thistheory, aggressive behaviors are considered to result from a dischargeof accumulated energy in response to frustration. The second conceptionconcerns instrumental aggression. It is principally based on the theory ofsocial learning (Bandura, 1973), according to which the tendency to resortto aggressive behavior stems from a succession of positive reinforcementswhich constitute the material benefits obtained by these behaviors. Thisprovides an explanation for why a person, given the fact that he or she hasalready benefited from this behavior, will snatch the purse of an old lady onthe street; the aggression is the working instrument used to procure money.Here, the aggression appears to be deliberate and planned, whereas when itis perceived as expressive aggression it seems to result from the inevitablerelease of accumulated energy.

When aggression is perceived to be instrumental, one can imagineteaching the student other means to achieve the same material satisfactions. Incontrast, when it is perceived as expressive, one sees it to be the manifestationof a vital need over which rational thought has much less control. Expressiveaggression is disinterested, destructive and unforeseeable. One can supposethat school violence risks to induce feelings of acquired powerlessness and

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discouragement as long as it is perceived as more expressive than instru-mental. In effect, if students manifest completely irrational violent behavior,is it not useless to try to get them to be reasonable?

An exploratory study using this theoretical approach was conducted with58 male and 68 female French teachers (Paty, 1998). It was designed to study,in part, how scientific conceptions of aggression are reflected in the ideas ofsecondary school personnel regarding school violence. The study also aimedto test the hypothesis that teachers’ feelings of acquired helplessness and self-depreciation with respect to their professional roles are linked to the adoptionof an expressive, rather than instrumental, theory of aggression.

Teachers’ conceptions of aggressive student behavior were evaluatedalong the two dimensions of instrumental and expressive representations ofviolence, with the help of a French adaptation of Archer’s (1992) EXPAGGquestionnaire. This questionnaire was initially developed by Campbell,Muncer and Coyle (1992). The instrumental dimension of the representationof violence is measured with items such as, “Resorting to physical aggres-sion is sometimes necessary in order to make certain people understand”,or “Someone who is never aggressive will be walked on by others”. Theexpressive dimension is evaluated with items such as “Resorting to aggres-sion is always a bad thing”, or “When someone is violent, it is because heor she has lost control of him or herself”. The degree of professional stress(burnout) was measured using the MBI (Maslach Burnout Inventory, 1981).This scale is composed of 22 items that are divided into three sub-dimensionsof burnout: emotional exhaustion (measured with nine items such as “Atthe end of the day, I feel totally exhausted”), depersonalization (measuredwith five items like “I have the impression of treating certain students as ifthey were impersonal ‘objects’ ”), and personal accomplishment (which ismeasured by eight items such as “I believe that, in my professional life, Ihave a positive influence on the lives of my students”).

Each of the two dimensions of the conception of aggressive studentbehavior (instrumental and expressive) was shown to have good internalconsistency, suggesting that they do indeed exist in teachers’ minds. As inearlier studies, the instrumental and expressive dimensions of aggressionappeared to be only weakly negatively intercorrelated (r = −0.15). It thusseems that even if these concepts are not opposed, they are at least completelyindependent in the minds of the teachers.

The classic inter-sex difference, according to which the social behaviorof men is more instrumental and less expressive than that of women, wasfound in their different conceptions of aggressive behavior. Men had a muchless expressive and slightly more instrumental conception of aggression thanwomen. This sex difference in the social representation of aggression is in

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keeping with that found by Campbell, Muncer and Coyle (1992) using thesame instrument on children. But most instructive is the fact that the percep-tion of student violence as instrumental is associated with a good adjustmentof the adult to school situations: the vision of student violence is less deper-sonalized, and the adult has a greater sense of achievement and is less burnedout. In contrast, the perception of violence as expressive has the inverse effecton these three dimensions.

These findings suggest that the perception of student violence asexpressive, and not instrumental, could reinforce a teacher’s tendency forsocial avoidance of both students (who are no longer seen as people), andother teachers (in comparison with whom they have the feeling of worth-lessness). This social avoidance is one aspect of burnout. Such a perceptioncan feed into the teacher’s feeling of being unable to control the behaviorof violent students, and even add to their impression of not being able to domuch in the face of natural phenomena (for example, a hurricane), over whichone has no control. There is nothing left but to protect oneself and wait forthe bad times to pass. In the end, such feelings are likely to invoke a trueacquired powerlessness in the teacher, first in their conduct with students,and, ultimately, in their overall adaptive capacities. In sum, teachers whotend to see student school violence as deliberate behavior are more likely tofight against it effectively. Their instrumental conception of violence makesthem feel less stressed in the school environment and allows them a morecomprehensive understanding of the appearance of student violence. This isa positive factor in the development of appropriate coping strategies.

If one considers aggressive student behavior in itself, both instrumentaland expressive aspects are generally implicated, and the weight of eachaspect varies according to the individual and the context. From a psycho-educational point of view, in the face of a violent behavior that is moreexpressive than instrumental (for example, vandalism, jeering, or rowdiness),it seems constructive to question what is being expressed rather than to see theviolence as purely inept or “stupid”. Asking what these acts are expressingmeans questioning of what displaced intentions they are the “instrument”.

In spite of findings such as this, French politicians concerned withschool violence generally emphasize its expressive aspects without consid-ering motives. For example, according to the Minister of Education, it isnecessary to “transform the violence into something positive, creative” (tele-vised presentation of a governmental project, November 5, 1997). In schoolviolence, he sees an energy that needs to be channeled, exploited, rather thanintentionally harmful and antisocial behavior that has meaning. Recently, theFrench minister charged with maintaining public order stated that adolescentswho resort to school violence are “savages” (Le Monde, January 24–25, 1999,

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p. 13). He thus revisited the ideas of Cousinet (1908), for whom studentswere savages who needed to be controlled by teachers. This political valoriz-ation of the expressive conception of school violence is often associated witha demand that teachers police the students. The question of the origins ofviolence is completely avoided by the politicians and left to the sociologists.But these last have no political power and propose nothing short of a profoundchange in society.

In our view, it would be useful to try to transform this vision of schoolviolence as a completely irrational phenomenon, and help those workingin schools to recognize the feelings and motivations that lie behind violentbehavior. Even if the instrumental aspects – the probable benefits of theviolent behavior – are not obvious, one could try to understand this behaviormore precisely as a brute reaction to accumulated frustrations that must bechanneled and exploited. One pedagogic approach involves the recognitionthat these reactions are inflicted, in part, by the school itself, and that onemust tackle the difficult job of developing teaching strategies which gratifythe students without deluding them. A more psychological step involvesworking with those who are more accustomed to working alone, especiallythe teachers, to build a sense of group solidarity. A final step is to developa common group understanding of violence in order to be able to confrontit in a coherent manner. The counsellor is directly implicated in this task,and it constitutes the most frequently adopted response by secondary schoolcounsellors to school violence in France. In the last section of this article, wewill give a practical example of such an approach to counselling.

Training aimed to ameliorate adjustment of teachers to school violence

The work of counselling that we will present concerns eight groups of adultsfrom eight secondary schools. This work was chosen as a paradigm becauseits effects were subjected to a minimum of quantitative evaluation, whichis seldom the case. The eight different groups were comprised of between 10and 25 participants (a total of 139 participants), which represented only 10-to-20 % of the personnel of each establishment (Lassarre, Rosnet, Wawrzyniak& Paty, 1997).

In their training, adults were provided with specific knowledge aboutworking with adolescents. They were encouraged to reflect together ontheir professional experience and jointly develop an educational approachto better confront school violence. In general, this kind of training is aimedto ameliorate the coordination between different kinds of staff. It also tendsto increase the participation of each staff member in educational activities,even those whose job descriptions involve other kinds of work (teaching,maintenance, accounting, direction, etc.). This training also aims to change

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the teachers’ social representations of violence. At this level, the goal is forthe participants to progressively develop a more accurate interpretation ofthe most common violent behavior (i.e., incivilities). The work facilitates theestablishment of a single rating of the gravity of violent acts, used by all ofthe adults in the institution, so that the adolescents will be faced with a uniqueset of rules and can know which behaviors will lead to which sanctions. Mostimportantly, the staff’s improved interpretive capacities help them to betterunderstand the psychosocial function of a student’s violent behavior in termsof his or her place in the peer group.

Practically speaking, the training lasted two days and took place onthe school grounds. The first day was dedicated to a series of conferenceson the psychosociology of aggression and adolescent psychology and wasdirected by psychologists specialized in these areas. These conferences werefollowed by workshops in which participants questioned the experts and,more importantly, talked about their difficulties and exchanged viewpointsand impressions. These exchanges are generally a completely new experiencefor the participants, because their different professional categories often leadthem to ignore each other (especially for hierarchical reasons).

The second session, less centered on theory, consisted of:− A case study documented by Olweus (1996, p. 29): “Over the course of

two years, X, a boy of 13, calm, relatively unobtrusive in class, was thescapegoat for some of his classmates. The adolescents hit him, forcedhim to eat grass and drink milk laced with detergent. When asked aboutthis harassment, X’s torturers said they persecuted their victim because itwas fun”. The trainees were asked to verbally react to this situation and,eventually, to propose a solution to the problem. This work made theparticipants conscious of their different ways of reaching and underlinedthe necessity of working as a group in order to resolve such a difficultsituation.

− Role play: After having asked the participants to list violent or difficultsituations that were particularly problematic for them, they chose thescene that they wanted to act out or have acted out by others. In each ofthe 12 seminars considered in Lasarre’s (1996) study, the trainees’ choseto portray a rowdy class. Role playing this situation allowed the parti-cipants to become conscious of different aspects of the same situation byvirtue of the position they occupied (student, teacher, service staff, etc.).

Three major quantitative evaluations were made at two different points intime: once at the beginning of the training and once two months after it ended.These evaluations, conducted using individual questionnaires, examined thefollowing three dimensions:

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(a) The stress perceived in different situations: Cohen’s (1986) PerceivedStress Scale was used to assess to what degree life situations were exper-ienced as stressful. As remarked above, the level of stress is determinedmore by the way that individuals perceive the situation than by the situ-ations themselves. The psychometric qualities of this scale have beenproved in previous research. The scale is notably used to predict thedevelopment of emotional and somatic problems (Cohen & Williamson,1988).

(b) The state of anxiety, evaluated using Spielberger’s (1971) State-TraitAnxiety Inventory. This questionnaire consists of 20 propositionsconcerning the subject’s impressions and reactions in different situations(for example, taking an exam, or the day before a sport competition, etc.It focuses on situational anxiety and anxiety proneness (e.g., when onemust cope with a difficult class).

(c) The behavioral adaptation to stress, evaluated using a scale inspired bythat of Bornter (1969). This last, based on 14 items, has three sub-dimensions: the feeling of being pressed for time (e.g., “My speech ispressed, and sometimes even rushed”), the need for social recognition,to gain others’ approval, which indicates low self-confidence (e.g., “Ialways look to others for signs that they appreciate my work”), and theambition (e.g., “I genuinely have a competitive spirit”).

Along these dimensions, comparisons of responses before and aftertraining showed several statistically significant differences (p< 0.05). All ofthe differences were in the direction of the positive effect of the training. Twomonths after the workshops, participants proclaimed themselves to be lessstressed and less anxious in the face of difficult situations. They were alsomore moderate in their demands for social recognition, thus indicating betterself-confidence. These initial empirical findings, although quite limited, areencouraging and invite further study using this kind of analysis.

Further investigation might consist of more precisely identifying whichparts of the training have an effect on which particular aspects of thetrainees’ psychological functioning in the subsequent school situation. Suchan evaluation could help organizers to perfect the training procedures. In theirspontaneous (unquantified) comments collected during the second evaluation,the trainees unanimously indicated that what affected them most, and helpedthem to see their problems differently, was the realization that the other parti-cipants, whether of the same profession or not, were also in difficulty. It didnot matter if the problems of these others were the same as their own or not. Itseems that their recognition of the daily problems of other people helped themto put their own incapacity in perspective, and allowed them to realisticallyattribute their problems to the difficulty of the situations they confronted.

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Although we were unable to quantitatively evaluate the specific effectsof various elements of the training, these could be inferred. It seems, forexample, that one could see the diminution of the state of anxiety andperceived stress as a consequence of the decreased need for social recog-nition. This corresponds, in fact, to the individual’s greater confidence in hisor her professional role and a better resistance to student attempts to psycho-logically destabilize him. One could also attribute the decrease in anxiety andperceived stress to the sharing of experiences in the group, which gives eachparticipant the sense of not being the only one in difficulty and being part ofa team. As for the increased ability to cope, in addition to its relation to theprogress just mentioned, it could also be due to an improvement in the parti-cipants’ ability to analyze difficult situations. This was the objective of theconferences and workshops: to help the participants develop their knowledgeof the social and psychological dimensions of violent adolescent behavior,and to arouse their interest in these aspects of the problem.

It would also be helpful to evaluate the effects which this kind of traininghas on both the behavior of teachers in the presence of their students, and,more importantly, the violent behavior of the students. But this would requirea higher level of staff participation than is generally the case. As stated earlier,participation in these groups is voluntary and only a minority of staff enrolls.The optimal use of this procedure as a means of fighting school violencewould require the active participation of the entire school staff, with noexceptions. But in order to undertake such a project, it must first be recog-nized that every adult in the school is a participant in collective educationalwork, whether the maintenance man, the math teacher, the librarian or thelunchroom worker.

Conclusion

In the fight against school violence, French secondary-school counsellors aremost often utilized to train the staff and help them to reflect on their exper-iences. In this way, they help the staff to work better as a team, and to bothinterpret violent behavior more accurately and adjust their own behavior torespond more appropriately to the students. This approach to the problem isadapted to the French context. It can also be useful in other cultures, includingthose in which the violence problem is treated directly with the students.

Here we arrive at one of the limits of this perspective. In order to actwith the personnel so that they, themselves, can act more effectively withthe students, one must have a maximum of staff participation. The potentialsuccess of this training is directly proportionate to the number of adults fromthe same school who participate. It is important that the staff be willing to

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undertake this kind of work. This is especially true of the teachers, because oftheir greater number and prolonged contact with the students. Unfortunately,many teachers continue to think that their sole responsibility is teachingclasses. Witness the math teacher who recently wrote in the newspaperLeMonde: “As is true for everyone in this work, I don’t like to deal withdiscipline problems: I prefer teaching!” (January 17–18, 1999, p. 11). Thisteacher then describes his life at school, which has become unbearable sincehe slapped a student who annoyed him. The fact that he lost his temper wassilently disapproved of by his colleagues, who started to avoid him. Actionssuch as this slap, performed by a teacher more interested in mathematics thanadolescent psychology, as well as the lack of solidarity between colleagues,are two factors that contribute to the development of school violence.

It seems that the socio-emotional environment of the school must beextremely degraded before a school staff will enroll en masse in furthertraining and better assume their broader social responsibilities. When such aproject is undertaken, the school counsellor can play a role that goes beyondteacher training. They can direct and guide the school staff, already workingas a team, in order to teach adolescents how to prevent the escalation ofviolence once it starts (for example, learning to react by separating twobelligerent people as soon as the encounter becomes too heated). But suchexperiences are extremely rare.

Debarbieux (1999), who directed a four-year investigation of schoolviolence in 100 different kinds of schools, expressed regret, in the end, at nothaving found the same things in France that have been found in other coun-tries: “Our big problem (in France) is linked to a conception of the teachingprofession which is too narrow: to appoint special disciplinary officers towork alongside teachers. . . and do the “dirty work” can only result in strip-ping the teachers of all responsibility. Mobilization is a question of teamwork:along with family involvement, it is, in my eyes, one of the keys to change.But one doesn’t change a profession and culture by decree. . . ” (p. 16). It isprecisely this motivation that the school counsellor tries to stimulate.

In confronting school violence, National Education professionals havediscovered that the development of sociability is a major factor in adaptingto school, not only in nursery school but throughout the school years. Thedevelopment of school violence has at least had the benefit of making thistraditionally neglected aspect of school experience more visible in France.At any rate, it would be helpful if all schools begin to confront thesematters before problems with violence arise. Toward this end, the job of thesecondary-school counsellor could evolve to include responsibilities that areless exclusively centered on career development and more focussed on the

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psychology of the school milieu, especially the milieu of peer relationships,where all children and adolescents are socialized.

Note

1. In the French culture, the distinction between “education” and “teaching” is moreimportant than in many other cultures. “Teaching” refers exclusively to courses andacademic matters, whereas “education” refers to a broader range of learnings, includinglearning to live in society.

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