Violence in secondary schools as perceived by business and marketing educators

The purpose of the study was to examine the perceptions of Tennessee’s business and marketing education teachers as to whether violence had increased within the past three years, and what were the underlying causes of any increased violence in secondary schools. The population for the study consisted of business and marketing education teachers in Tennessee’s secondary schools. The response rate from randomly selected teachers was 72 percent, which included 125 females and 45 males. Fifty-three percent of the respondents had 15 or more years of teaching experience. Significant differences were found in responses on some questions based on gender. No significance difference was found based on the years of teaching experience, years of education, or population of the school districts. However, significant differences were found between school districts. Central tendencies and multivariate procedures were used to examine the distribution of the data, and the relationship between two or more variables. A significance differences level of .05 was applied to all statistical test. The major conclusion of this research was that teachers perceive an increase in violence within the past three years. Perceptions of increased violence were the same across gender, years of experience, and the location and population of school districts. The main perceptions as to the underlying causes of violence were related to the family.