A qualitative study of Swedish pupils’ perspectives on supportive school climates and help-seeking

Abstract

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.