2016 Volume 19 Issue 2 Pages 153-163
[Purpose]
School is a crucial setting venue in which to intervene to prevent self-injurious behavior, but Japanese studies on the subject have focused predominantly on responses by school nurses and school counselors. Thus, the current study analyzed how teachers currently deal with self-injurious behavior of students and it includes discussion of organized approaches to deal with that behavior.
[Methods]
Teachers from five public high schools in A Prefecture answed a questionnaire on responses to self-harming students and their attitudes towards those responses (164 teachers responded). Teachers' responses to self-harm by students were subjected to factor analysis, and the relationship between teachers' attitudes and their responses to self-harm was analyzed using regression analysis and covariance structure analysis. A cluster analysis of teachers' responses to self-harming students was performed, and an analysis of variance was performed with regard to differences in teachers' responses to self-harm at the five schools studied.
[Results]
Four teacher responses to self-injurious behavior by students were identified: Crisis Intervention, Counseling and Dialogue, Advising, and Coordinated Supervision. These responses were affected by teachers' attitudes toward education and student self-harm. Cluster analysis revealed that teachers were either in an active response cluster that implemented all four responses or a passive response cluster that implemented none of the responses. The most passive response was toward part-time high school students.
[Discussion]
The four responses to self-harm are mutually exclusive, but zealous teachers tended to implement several conflicting responses. Teachers as a whole and school faculties were divided into groups: one group implemented all four (potentially conflicting) responses to self-harm and another failed to respond because it lacked coordination and assigned roles. To ameliorate this situation, the four responses to self-harm need to be viewed as four different roles. Teachers need to respond to self-injurious behavior in a coordinated and organized manner.
