NCJ Number
115984
Journal
Violence and Victims Volume: 4 Issue: 1 Dated: (Spring 1989) Pages: 27-44
Date Published
1989
Length
18 pages
Annotation
The current study examines the self-reported victimizations of 90 public school teachers, over one-third of whom reported school-based theft of personal property or threats of violence.
Abstract
The study addressed two basic questions. First, what was the relationship between these school-based victimization experiences and the level of fear expressed by teachers? Second, what was the relationship between both the victimizations and fear and teacher satisfaction with their jobs and their employers? In order to provide a thorough examination of these relationships, several recognized correlates of teacher satisfaction, including respondent's sex, age, work assignments, and racial attitudes and orientations, were included in the analysis. It was found that teacher satisfaction was influenced not only by factors normally associated with teaching, but also by perceptions of and experience with youthful misbehavior at school. For its part, fear of crime exhibited a strong direct link to both types of satisfaction, and it apparently mitigated the influences of racism on satisfaction with one's job and employer. These observations were consistent with an emerging perspective in victimization studies, which views the link between victimizations and fear of crime as part of the more general social climate, including perceptions of one's work environment, a perspective that frees the researcher from the confines of more traditional conceptualizations about crime. 6 footnotes; 62 references. (Author abstract)