Teens’ Sense of Safety in the Classroom Environment and in a Class WhatsApp Group Environment
Poster by: Noam Lapidot-Lefler
Sessions B/D | 9:45 – 10:00/10:45 – 11:00 | Room Main Corridor, 2nd Floor
Abstract:
Teens’ Sense of Safety in the Classroom Environment and in a Class WhatsApp Group Environment
Noam Lapidot-Lefler, Oranim Academic College for Education, The Max Stern Academic College of Yezreel Valley, Israel, and a visiting scholar at the at the Department of Educational & Counseling Psychology, and Special Education, Faculty of Education, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
And Michal Dolev-Cohen, Oranim, Academic College of Education, Israel
Many studies look into the feelings and experiences of adolescents in the online arena from different aspects, but there does not seem to be a study that examines the students’ sense of safety when they are part of an informal group in the instant messaging application. This study examined the sense of safety of 550 students (152 boys and 398 girls), between the ages of 9 and 18 years, which filled in an online survey, and were active in the class WhatsApp group in which the homeroom teacher also participates. The study relates to the classroom climate in the physical space and the manner in which the students experience both environments they share with the homeroom teacher: the physical one in the classroom and the online one in the WhatsApp group. Such communication via instant messages is very common in Israel and customary already from elementary school. The study’s findings reveal that the higher the FtF (face to face) class climate, the higher the WhatsApp group climate is; and that students experience the FtF class climate to be higher than the class WhatsApp group in which the homeroom teacher is present. In addition, a sense of nonviolence among the participants was found to be the highest when both class and WhatsApp group were climates were high. These findings shed light on the unique phenomena of homeroom teachers who participate with the class students in informal instant messaging groups.
Keywords: Adolescence; Class climate; Instant Messaging Groups; Communication platform, teacher-student relationship
