Practices used in schools in bogotá to prevent the consumption of psychoactive substances and aggression in middle and high school students

Abstract

This article presents results from a research about the practices used by schools in Bogotá to deal with the risks of aggression (physical and verbal) and substance use (alcohol, cigarettes and drugs). The research used quantitative data from a representative survey of schools in the city and qualitative data from focus groups with teachers and school principals. We consider four types of strategies: punitive, normative, pedagogical, and spatial. It is found that, in the case of aggression, all four types of strategies are used. According to school principals, pedagogical and normative strategies are more common than punitive and spatial ones; according to teachers all four strategies are equally used. The qualitative results are used to discuss policy alternatives, the classification of strategies and how, in many cases, this classification has nuances.