Does school confronts the problem of school violence as a problem of citizenship and which are the attitudes of the educational actors towards it? The social and scientific debate in Portugal about school violence has grown dramatically during the last decade, with multiple political confrontations and turnarounds in public policies, namely those associated to the Student Regulation Law. This long and harsh ideological confrontation around this particular dimension of school life is an integrant part of the debate about childhood socialization and the future orientation of schooling in Portugal. Conceptions advocating a reorientation towards greater selectivity and elitism, nowadays represented by the incumbent government, adopt as keystones an authoritarian approach in the behavioural dimension associated to an educational selective strategy. This change of trend is consistent with the following end of the curricular time for civic education, which implied the disappearance of the single educational module about school violence for students. Based on a two years research with a cluster of schools with heavy discipline and violence problems, we sought to understand how policies oriented to regulate behaviour are understood by school actors and, in that context, what kind of conceptions and perceptions they build upon them. School strategies to deal with violent behaviours were basically centred at the beginning of the school year in the discussion between teachers and students of school’s rules of procedure, and on teachers’ talks during classes. When conflicts become more severe the main disciplinary strategy is essentially based on classroom eviction, in general to a specific place inside school, in general without any link to classroom dynamics or civic education. Students conceptions generally condemn violence, although also largely consider that violence can be a legitimate way of action as defence (personal or friends/colleagues). Blocked from any participation in school forums capable of promoting institutional integration, students relate themselves with school system of rules based in the informal negotiation with teachers of the “acceptable” behaviours, developing in the interim their own perception of justice.

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Education; Citizenship; Violence