Thai Adolescents and Social Responsibility: Overcoming Violence in Schools and Creating Peace

Abstract

There is a need to understand the nature of adolescent violent behavior across cultures as well as to learn more about adolescent’s social responsibility toward violence.

Purpose: To describe social responsibility of adolescents toward violence and explain the aspects of adolescent’s social responsibility in Thailand.

Design and Methods: Focus group and qualitative individual interviews (N=18) were conducted with 18 participants, including 10 adolescent students, 4 teachers, and 4 parents, to assess their perceptions and behavior on social responsibility and violent behavior. Thematic analysis was conducted in three phases to code transcribed interview data and identify themes of social responsibility toward violence.

Findings: Violence has become recognized globally as a critical social problem that requires vital attention. The present study found that it is valuable that adolescent students could cultivate social responsibility toward violence. In this research, the social responsibility was categorized into 4 aspects: 1) Being influenced by others and feeling out of control; 2) Being frustrated with diffusion of responsibility for promoting non-violence; 3) Not accepting responsibility for escalating behavior; and 4) Seeing the larger picture and developing trust.

Conclusions: Adolescents’ social responsibility should be promoted through collaborative social support between home and school. This was accepted among the participants as the way to reach the culturally-valued superior moral rank of social responsibility. The concerted collaboration to attain the highest value of social responsibility has the potential to solve issues of violence and latent violence as well as contribute towards a peaceful society.

Key words: adolescence, violence, social responsibility, school mental health promotion