Teachers’ Personal Aggressiveness and Its Correlation with Attitudes Toward School Conflict

The school environment is a complex phenomenon, which is not immune to conflict and aggression. Teachers’ attitudes toward aggression largely depend on their psychological profile. These attitudes were assessed based on teachers' responses to conflicts between students, their methods of signaling their attitudes, and their personal levels of aggression. The study sample consisted of 5,086 school teachers (94% female). Clustering was followed by a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and post-hoc multiple comparisons (Tukey or Games–Howell method). The resulting six clusters represented distinct attitudes toward student aggression and conflict mediation: undefined, emotionally undefined, passive, actively responsive, actively restrained, and indifferent. These attitudes correlated differently with such indicators of aggression as a propensity for physical aggression, anger, and hostility. The findings may be used to improve professional training programs for preventing destructive behavior in schools.