Pupils’ manifestations of destructive behaviour at junior secondary school

Destructive behaviour is recurrent intentional, unprovoked, rude behaviour, used by one child or a group of children in order to cause pain or torture to another child. It is common among school children and is a problem in today’s school. According to this research and some others, school must seek to protect children from destructive behaviour of their contemporaries, which may later grow into criminal nature and violence at home, and it may cause long term harm for its victims. The aim of this work is to reveal peculiarities of expression of children destructive behaviour at basic school and to foresee the guidelines of the solution to this kind of problem. Schoolchildren of fifth-eighth grades and their teachers from Utena basic schools took part in this research (n=249). Schoolchildren who took part in this research agree on the frequency of mockery at schools. The most common forms of destructive behaviour at schools is nicknaming, slandering, pushing one another and fighting. Threatening and ignoring is more common at school, which is situated in the area of private houses. Fighting, pushing one another and damaging things - at school, that is attended by children from poor families. The attitude of the eighth formers towards the frequency of destructive behaviour at school is more pessimistic than the attitude of the fifth formers. The eighth formers more often experience destructive behaviour (nicknaming, slandering and destroying their things) from their classmates. The fifth formers experience destructive behaviour from the schoolchildren of the higher classes. Mocking is very common among the eighth formers in the classrooms while the adults are away. They more often than the fifth formers nickname, slander and ignore. Girls more often than boys indicate that there is mockery, nicknaming, ignoring at school. They also more than boys suffer from destructive behaviour and more often slander. Boys more often than girls fight and destroy things. The opinions of schoolchildren and teachers about the frequency of different forms of destructive behaviour at school and the places of destructive behaviour coincide. The opinions of schoolchildren and teachers differ in frequency of children destructive behaviour. Destructive behaviour is common among schoolchildren irrespective of the size and the place of school. Only the forms of destructive behaviour differ. In conclusion, this research confirms that destructive behaviour among schoolchildren is likely to increase. The research shows that pedagogues lack knowledge of schoolchildren destructive behaviour and its prevention