A Socioecological Approach to Understanding Why Teachers Feel Unsafe at School

Despite the increased research on violence toward teachers and public policies aimed at protecting teachers from violence, knowledge of the factors contributing to teachers’ sense of safety at school remains limited. Drawing from socioecological theory, we examined the contributions of both teachers’, parents’, students’, and schools’ characteristics to teachers’ sense of feeling unsafe in school. Specifically, we examined teachers’ individual and work characteristics (sex, age, years of experience, and working in the regular classroom or not), their perceptions of school violence, and their relationships with students and their peers. At the school level, we examined the school size, poverty level, and school-level reports of parents’, students’, and teachers’ perception of the school climate and school violence. The sample consisted of 9625 teachers (73% female), 126,301 students, and 56,196 parents from 2116 schools with a low socioeconomic status in Chile. Descriptive statistics showed that most teachers do not feel afraid (72.9%) nor thought that their job was dangerous (74.6%). A hierarchical multivariate regression analysis and multilevel analyses showed that teachers with higher perceptions of feeling unsafe were females or reported being “other sex”, had fewer years of experience, worked mainly in the classroom, perceived a higher level of school violence, and had worse perceptions of peer relationships and teacher–student relationships. These teachers were mostly in schools with higher poverty levels, larger enrollment, and higher student-reported and parent-reported school violence compared to the rest of the sample of low-SES Chilean schools. We discuss the implications of these findings for preventive school interventions and programs regarding school violence and teacher turnover.