Teacher-Student Conflicts: A Challenge to Teacher Training

Abstract

The school violence in our midst is a cause for serious concern. Teachers are expected to make a difference in overcoming it, given the role they play in the formative processes of their students. Data gathered and analysis of teacher student relations shows, however, that teachers are victims and authors of violence. Inadequately prepared educators adopt reactive measures that further jeopardize relations and reinforce violence as shown by the results of this qualitative-quantitative research conducted in 2008, under the aegis of the UNESCO Chair in Youth, Education and Society at the Catholic University of Brasília (UCB), in five peripheral schools in the Federal District. Immersed in conflictive situations, even the most vocationally motivated teachers are overwhelmed by feelings of impotence and seek to abandon the profession. The paper analyzes student-teacher relations in that context. It shows that, the complex nature forms of violence in schools calls for a set of basic measures to be taken that depend on training teachers in ways that avoid their loss of professional motivation, salvage the teacher image that has disappeared from the educational process, and teach them how to address the current reality. The paper stresses the important role reserved for teachers in the process of achieving success in overcoming violence as society wishes. However, teachers must not be blamed for the failures of schools and the educational system without first analyzing the conditions of their initial training courses, as researchers Ghedin, Almeida and Leite (2008) have aptly underscored.