SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR
Classroom peers can reduce aggression
Peer groups can have a big influence on young people displaying antisocial behaviour. This fact can be turned to their advantage.
Bystanders are jointly responsible for determining how a brawl will end. | Image: Screenshot from ‘Krass Schule – Schlägerei auf dem Pausenhof #009 – RTL II’
The school environment can mitigate aggressive and delinquent tendencies among young people, says a study by the University of Fribourg. The special-needs teachers Verena Hofmann and Christoph Müller carried out numerous anonymous interviews of 792 boys and girls aged 13 in their first year of high school about their past aggressive behaviour. They found that young people who demonstrate antisocial behaviour develop more positively overall if they are placed in classes with lower aggression potential.
Müller believes that this fact should be borne in mind when allocating children to classes. Teachers could also leverage this positive peer influence by carefully organising classroom seating arrangements, or by drafting class rules together with their students. “Such measures naturally cannot replace individual support for young people with antisocial tendencies, but they could complement them meaningfully”, he says. And ultimately, the whole class can benefit.
