The evaluation of the violence towards teachers in terms of school climate: Niğde sample

The purpose of this study is to examine teacher victimization and the factors related to the teachers and school demographics that may trigger violence towards them and thus offer solutions. The population of this study is composed of high school teachers working in the province of Niğde in 2015-2016 education year. In this study quantitative model has been adopted. The data for this study was collected through two data collection instruments. One is teacher victimization survey which is developed by the researcher and the other is school climate scale which is adapted to Turkish. According to the results, male teachers, teachers who have been working between 6-10 years, and those who hold Master's or PhD degree seem to face violence more. In terms of school demographics, teachers working at type C high schools, suburban high schools, vocational high schools and crowded high schools seem to experience violence more. As for the school climate, achievement pressure and organizational vulnerability seem to play an important role to protect teachers from violence whereas collegial leadership and professional teacher behavior seem to be more important for the healing process after violence. However, it can be argued that the problem of teacher victimization should be examined in terms of students' academic achievement, their sociocultural and socioeconomic levels rather than teachers and school demographics. Keywords: School violence, Teacher victimization, School climate