INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, with the rapid pace of development of society, more and more socio-pathological phenomena are emerging. According to Ondrejkovič (In Kraus, Hroncová, 2007, p. 9) "social pathology is a collective term for the designation of sick, abnormal and generally undesirable social phenomena. This also includes sanctioned forms of deviant behavior (violating generally accepted norms), as well as the study of the causes of their origin and existence". According to Koniecznej (2008), in the school environment we encounter an increasingly wide range of problems not only in education, but also in the education of pupils. Among the most serious manifestations, we could include violence between classmates, lowering the age of children who try to consume alcohol and drugs, which may be due to family problems. Such situations require experienced professionals who can deal with the youth and eliminate the pitfalls of the time. In the following sub-chapters, we will take a closer look at the socio-pathological phenomena that occur in elementary schools in the Nitra Region. We obtained the selected phenomena based on the evaluation of our questionnaire.
Aggressiveness
According to Bajtoš (2008), aggressiveness is perceived as a personality trait, which is characterized not only as a manifestation of hostility with a tendency to aggression, but also as an effort to assert oneself, to assert one's interests and goals, even if mercilessly and ruthlessly. He describes an aggressive person as trying to assert his views at the expense of others, he does not respect the demands and rights of other people, he is often a manipulator and he does not manage to control his emotions. Aggression can also manifest itself in the form of physical and psychological harm to persons and damage to property. According to Matúšková (2006), aggression is most often associated with negative manifestations. It can arise as a weak hatred and penetrate into various forms of harm, or into verbal or physical aggression. Martínek (2015) divides aggression, which can be unleashed on an animal or on an inanimate object. In the school environment, aggression often manifests itself on inanimate objects, such as a notebook or a ruler, the object itself becomes a means of releasing the aggressor. However, it often happens that the student wants to show off his physical strength in such behavior. In the vast majority, students with reduced self-confidence manifest themselves in this way. A special case of aggression is bullying, which we will talk about in the next subsection.
Bullying
Bullying is defined as aggressive behavior that is usually characterized by repetition and an imbalance of power. It can be considered normative in many groups, but socially unacceptable within a part of a democratic society (Smith, 2000). Kolář (2005) describes bullying in the school environment as a social disease where one student or a group of students consciously and repeatedly humiliates and enslaves a weaker classmate or classmates and uses aggression and manipulation to do so. Regarding the prevention of bullying, teaching staff should guide students to the fact that they should definitely not support the aggressive behavior of their classmates, condemn weaker children and, on the contrary, show unnatural sympathy for popular classmates. The teacher should explain to the students not to be influenced by aggressive classmates. However, they should not remain indifferent to behavior that is not pleasant to them, they should not ridicule a student who differs from others in any way, expresses opinions that are different from theirs, or has different hobbies (Bendl, 2003). Sometimes pupils may think that bullying is harmless and fun, but from the point of view of Act no. 372/1990 Coll. on misdemeanors as amended, bullying of pupils can fulfill the factual essence of misdemeanors, even from the point of view of the criminal law (No. 300/2005 Coll. Penal Code), bullying pupils can also fulfill the factual essence of criminal acts.
Truancy
"Tarancy is a widespread behavior disorder and is manifested by the intentional missing of school lessons, when a student of his own volition, mostly without the knowledge of his parents (sometimes even with their knowledge), does not go to school (avoids school duties). These missed classes are not excused by parents or doctors. It is a traditional and one of the most common problems that appears in elementary and secondary schools." (Oľšavská, 2014, p. 43). Truancy is a very serious socio-pathological phenomenon that is not easily detected. Most of the time, the parent learns about this problem only after being prompted by the school, and until then he may not notice anything (Čiburková, 2009). Čiburková (2009) further mentions how a parent should behave if such behavior is discovered. The parent should reveal what led the child to such behavior, if he himself does not know how to proceed, he should ask for the advice of an expert who will tell the parent how to proceed in the given situation. Furthermore, the author advises that parents should definitely not wait for the situation to resolve itself, the child's motivation to return to school is essential. In Slovakia, school attendance is regulated by Act No. 245/2008 Coll. about upbringing and education. Where it is specified that compulsory school attendance lasts 10 years. Truancy can have adverse effects not only on the student himself, but also on his family, in the form of access to social benefits, in the worst case, a criminal complaint may be filed against the student's legal representatives on suspicion of committing a crime of endangering the moral education of youth.
Prevention
We consider the school environment, in which we spend time since childhood, to be the "first station" of socio-pathological phenomena. Since it is necessary to prevent the situations that have arisen and it is too late to solve a problem that has already arisen, we should devote our primary efforts to prevention and point out the emergence and consequences of social pathology. A modern phenomenon of the 21st century is the emergence of socio-pathological phenomena already in primary schools, as pupils do not have a strong will, are easily influenced and are therefore considered a high-risk group (Látalová, Kopťárová, 2008). For many years, elementary schools have been working on issues of prevention in preventive activity plans. Preventive activities are appropriately formed according to the target groups in terms of age, mental abilities and particularities of the given elementary school (Oľšavská, 2014). "A condition for achieving the goal of prevention is a professionally prepared pedagogical employee in the field of applying the competence approach in the educational process and in the social-psychological field so that he can positively influence the cognitive, personal and social development of the student. Last but not least, it is also the joint responsibility of the family, the social and legal protection of children, counseling facilities and the institution of school policy" (Oľšavská, 2014, p. 20). Act 245/2008 on Education and Training (School Act) §132 Center for Pedagogical-Psychological Counseling and Prevention also talks about prevention: "The Center for Pedagogical-Psychological Counseling and Prevention, in cooperation with family, school and school facilities, provides preventive educational and psychological care to children according to paragraph 1 and their legal representatives, especially in cases of occurrence of disorders of psychological development and behavioral disorders and occurrence of socio-pathological phenomena in the population of children in its territorial jurisdiction." In our opinion, it is important that the prevention of aggressive bullying and bullying is included in the school's preventive program.
METHODS
Selection File
The selection of the research sample was deliberate. The target group consisted of teaching staff of primary schools. We managed to carry out the research in 4 primary schools in the Nitra region and 52 teachers filled out the questionnaires, of which 32 were classroom teachers and the average teaching experience was 15.8 years. Of the total number of classroom teachers, 17 were in the first grade and 15 in the second grade of primary schools.
Research Techniques
The questionnaire is the main means of collecting quantitative primary data. It allows collecting information in a way that is suitable and understandable for analysis (Questionnaire Designing for a Survey, 2012). According to Gavor, a questionnaire is a way of asking written questions and collecting answers en masse. Therefore, he considers the questionnaire to be an economic research tool - we can use it to obtain a lot of information in a short period of time (Gavora, 2008). We chose the method of data collection using a questionnaire precisely because we wanted to get to know the honest opinions of teachers about social work in the education sector and to reveal the socio-pathological phenomena that occur in these schools. We used closed questions with possible answers. Closed questions offer respondents a choice of answers. Since we needed to find out the opinion of pedagogues on the importance of social workers in education, we also used open questions. Respondents have to answer the open questions themselves, they are not offered any options. The advantage is capturing the opinion and attitude to the given topic (Almášiová, Kohútová, 2014).
Data Analysis
The questionnaire was filled out by the teachers of selected elementary schools in the Nitra region after the approval of the principals. We compared the answers in the questionnaires, we found out in which the opinions of the respondents agree or, on the contrary, differ. We evaluated the questions that had the largest number of identical answers, and we also evaluated the success of our questionnaire and thus of the quantitative research as a whole. We evaluated the open questions according to the content analysis. Content analysis is a research method where the study and connection of contexts, meanings, subtexts and intentions contained in a report takes place (Content Analysis, 2017).
RESULTS
Preventing socio-pathological manifestations of behavior is not easy. Here comes a place for a helping profession such as the position of a school social worker. It is the school social worker with acquired knowledge and practical experience who is able to work with students who show signs of socio-pathological behavior. We asked the respondents what socio-pathological phenomena they had already encountered. We have selected the most frequently mentioned in professional sources: truancy, bullying, alcohol, drugs, disorderly conduct, aggression and gambling.
Chart No. 1 Which of the mentioned socio-pathological phenomena have you encountered in your practice?
Source: Own processing
Most respondents encountered bullying 35 (31%), followed by truancy 29 (26%), aggression 28 (25%), rioting 9 (8%), alcohol 8 (7%), drugs 4 (3%) and gambling 1. Since some of our respondents chose more than one option at the same time, we can assume that one socio-pathological phenomenon is accompanied by another, and thus there may be a connection between them. The Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Family also speaks about the fact that bullying really occurs in Slovak elementary schools, which every year publishes reports on the implementation of measures for the social protection of children and social guardianship. However, these are officially recorded cases of violence against children. In 2018, the Slovak National Center for Human Rights began researching bullying and cyberbullying in Slovak schools.
The goal was to map the rate of occurrence and prevailing forms of bullying in schools, in which students and teachers become victims. The research was carried out on a sample of 2,895 pupils of primary schools, eight-year grammar schools and secondary schools and 145 teachers from all over Slovakia. The research found that the presence of bullying at school is real, 51.8% of the students testified to it. We assume that in practice the number of cases of bullying of children is higher. It is possible that the school did not want to deal with him publicly or the bullying was not even detected at school. In our research, we asked respondents whether socio-pathological phenomena currently occur in their primary school. 29 (56%) respondents answered yes and 23 (44%) answered no. We think that the results are real, since the questionnaire was anonymous, we expect that the respondents responded truthfully. A survey on the current state of solving pupils' social problems and the need to establish the profession of a school social worker in schools, carried out by the civic association Persona, found that there is a lack of solutions to social problems by a multidisciplinary team of experts. Solutions to students' problems are often narrowed down to repressive measures, reprimands or "intimidations" from the authorities (police, school principal). With regard to the prevention of socio-pathological phenomena and risky behavior of students, they found that prevention is indeed present in schools, but the results of their survey show that it is mostly not given enough space. Preventive programs are often implemented on a small scale, unsystematically, while inefficient (and sometimes inappropriate) forms are used. Likewise, their survey showed that the respondents would welcome an expert in the school to solve the social problems of students.
We would like to mention the research of Jurišová (2015), who examined the opinions of teachers, whether there are fewer socio-pathological phenomena at school after the introduction of the position of a social worker at school. Where 106 teachers out of 250 answered "rather yes". Teachers indicate an improvement in the overall atmosphere in the school after the introduction of the position of school social worker. He also talks about the fact that there are fewer serious socio-pathological phenomena at school. It is said that the students see that someone is interested in them, that someone wants to help them, and there is more and more trust, not only between the student and the social worker, but also between the teacher and the social worker, and thus the acceptance of this profession.
Graph no. 2 Who should organize preventive activities aimed at preventing socio-pathological phenomena at school?
Source: Own processing
The answer options were the same as in the previous question, and respondents again chose more answers. 32 (43%) of the interviewed teachers answered that such a person should be a social worker. According to the teachers, the least suitable for this position would be a special educator, who was indicated 10 times (3%). Since the schools where we did our research do not have a social worker, we were interested in who is currently solving the aforementioned socio-pathological phenomena that occurred at the school. Respondents had seven options to choose from. Some teachers chose more than one answer. The majority of respondents (37) chose the option principal, class teacher 34 and educational advisor 27. We assume that the principal was selected mainly because he is the highest authority at the school.
DISCUSSION
We consider the most significant finding of our research to be that the vast majority of our respondents have a positive attitude to this topic, which we consider a potential for education to start accepting this profession and use the services of a social worker. A school can employ a social worker, but school social work is not officially enshrined in the Social Work Act. Our work only brings arguments for the introduction of the position of a school social worker, as we believe that it significantly contributes to the improvement and efficiency of the school system. In the research, we found that teachers would really welcome an expert such as a social worker. Who would have experience with socio-pathological phenomena, who would know how to communicate with children and guide them in solving individual situations and thereby relieve the work of educators who are already quite busy with education and administrative activities to attend to each student individually. It should be remembered that the school only completes and shapes the educational process, which must first of all be created in the home environment. The school social worker should be in contact with the students and their parents in the schools in order to be able to really help them when a problem occurs.
RESEARCH LIMITS
During the research, we realized the most important limit and the fact that there is a lack of a social worker position in education in Slovakia, which also results in a lack of resources to create a job for a social worker in schools. Likewise, the implementation of research in the given area. We would therefore recommend more research focused on the opinion of educators on social workers in the education department. The majority of research carried out in Slovakia on the topic of social work in the education department has students as respondents, but we worked with teaching staff, which made it difficult for us to compare. Most of the research was carried out on socio-pathological phenomena, where they did not develop the essence of introducing a social worker into practice. In our research part of the work, we also consider the fact that most of the approached schools did not participate in the research to be a limitation.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Currently, social workers in education work in approximately 50 countries around the world, the closest country to us is neighboring Austria. In our opinion, more attention should be paid to this issue. In the issue we are dealing with, research focused not only on teachers, but also on the students themselves, ideally also on their parents, how they perceive the position of a social worker in education would be beneficial. They are the people who are in contact with the pupils/children the most. We think that we could find out a lot about the issue of socio-pathological phenomena in elementary schools with the help of an anonymous questionnaire.
CONCLUSION
In the research, we found that teachers would really welcome an expert such as a social worker. Who would have experience with socio-pathological phenomena, who would know how to communicate with children in such a way as to guide those involved in solving the situation and thereby relieve the work of educators, who are already too busy with education and administrative activities to attend to each student individually. We think that they do not even have sufficient knowledge in the prevention of socio-pathological phenomena. It should be remembered that the school only completes and shapes the educational process, which must first of all be created in the home environment. And here again we see a place where a social worker could apply - working with a student's family. The school social worker should be in contact with the students and their parents in the schools in order to be able to really help them when a problem occurs.
Authors: Mgr. Nina Jašeková Department of Social Work and Social Sciences, University of Constantine the Philosopher in Nitra
B.Sc. Dominika Šmíkalová Faculty of Social Sciences and Health Sciences, University of Konstantin Filozof in Nitra
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