Perception of School Violence: Indicators of Normalization in Mapuche and Non-Mapuche Students

Abstract

The current social and political scenario in Chile has opened up the debate on two centuries of usurpation and discrimination towards the Mapuche people. Educational centers are not oblivious to the social exclusion faced by indigenous children and young people, and this forms part of the phenomenon of school violence. This study explores the differences in perception between Mapuche and non-Mapuche students regarding school violence. The issue is the lack of knowledge regarding cultural variations in the perception of school violence in spaces of social and cultural diversity in the Mapuche context. This study describes the characteristics of school violence perceived by students in relation to differences based on ancestry and characterizes the variations in perception. A total of 1404 students participated from urban schools in the city of Temuco, Chile, aged 10 to 13 (M = 11.4; SD = 1.1) who completed the CENVI questionnaire. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of the total sample and categories provides indexes that fit the proposed model. The omega coefficients provide internal reliability guarantees. This study tests configural, metric and scalar invariance for all the categories explored, and statistically significant differences are found between Mapuche and non-Mapuche students in the perception of physical and verbal violence, where the Mapuche student perceives more violence. Results are discussed based on existing research on education in spaces of social and cultural diversity in the Mapuche context, with research into elements that can help explain the findings. © 2022 by the authors.