The relationship between school climate and violence perception of 6th, 7th and 8th grade students

The aim of this research is to analyze the relationship between school climate and violence perception of 6th, 7th and 8th grade students interms of sex, class level, certificate of achievement, number of person of family, monthly income level of families? and parent?s education level in primary schools.The research is a descriptive study based on the relational search model. The population was consisted of 4339 6th, 7th and 8th grade students in public primary schools of Ministry of National Education in Çubuk in Ankara. The sample set of the research was consisted of 734 second grade students from 14 primary schools who had been chosen randomly from the population.In the statistical analysis of the data frequency, percentage, arithmetical mean, t-test, One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Tukey-HSD tests have been used. The level of significance was accepted as ?=.05.In the study, ?Aggression Questionnaire? which has been developed by Buss and Perry in 1992 and has been updated by Buss and Warren in 2000 has been used to determine the violence perceptions students in primary schools. After the translation of the questionnaire into Turkish by the researcher, a 5-Likert ?Aggression Questionnaire? which has 29 items and 4 dimensions has found out. In order to determine the school climate perceptions of students of primary schools, ?Comprehensive Assesment of School Enviroment (CASE)? questionnaire which has been performed research of linguistic equivalence, reliability and validity by Faika Yelda Acarbay in 2006 has been used. CASE consist of 71 items and 15 dimentions. But in this study 5-Likert CASE questionnaire which has 33 items and 6 dimentions has been used.The findings obtained through the research about violence and school climate perceptions can be summarized as following: The factors such as sex, class level, families? income level and mother?s education level caused significant differences among 6th, 7th and 8th grade students? violence perceptions. However, it has been found that the certificates of achievement, the number of family members and father?s education level don?t have any remarkable effect upon the violence perception of 6th, 7th and 8th grade students? of primary schools. The factors such as sex, class level, certificates of achievement and mother?s education level caused significant differences among 6th, 7th and 8th grade students? school climate perceptions. However, it has been found that the number of person of family, income level and father?s education level don?t have any remarkable effect upon the school climate perception of 6th, 7th and 8th grade students? of primary schools.The findings of the research have showed that there is a significant and negative relationship between teacher-student relationship dimension of school climate and physical and anger dimensions of violence, and a significant and negative relationship between administration dimension of school climate and physical dimension of violence, and a significant and positive relationship between administration dimension of school climate and verbal violence dimension of violence, and a significant and negative relationship between behavioral assessment of the students dimension of school climate and physical and anger dimension of violence. Moreover, there is a significant and negative relationship between safety and order dimension of school climate and physical and anger dimension of violence.Key Words: School climate, violence