A qualitative study of Swedish pupils’ perspectives on supportive school climates and help-seeking

The aim of this study is to explore pupils perspectives on school climate, with a focus on help-seeking from teachers when experiencing unsafe incidents. Fifty-nine focus group interviews were conducted with pupils from two public schools in grades 1-9 (i.e. ages 7-15 years) in Sweden and analyzed with constructivist grounded theory. The findings address how the organizational support structure was crucial and three main categories were conceptualized from pupils perspectives: (1) teachers as sources of support; (2) availability of support; and (3) consistent and responsive support. The way in which pupils perceived these three dimensions, and thus the organizational support structure, were crucial to whether they considered help-seeking from teachers when they experienced unsafe incidents such as violence, bullying or conflicts. To conceptualize the pupils perspectives on the organizational support structure and help-seeking we adopted a social-ecological perspective as a theoretical framework. Social-ecological factors such as scheduling, and information provided (exosystem) and the pupil-teacher relationships (microsystem) were found to be especially important in relation to the organizational support structure and pupils help-seeking. Our findings suggests that it is imperative for schools to pay attention to the organizational support structure and especially consider the teacher-pupil relationship quality and how scheduling, information about support sources, and a consistent and responsive approach from all teachers affects pupils help-seeking and the building of a supportive school climate and safety for all pupils at school.