This paper aims to verify the relationships between school climate and students' perceptions of violence, with regard to witnessing and involvement in violent contexts. The theoretical framework is based on a relationship between two theories from distinct areas: school climate and collective efficacy. The first originated from studies on school effectiveness and school effect; the second was developed in the context of urban sociology. This association was considered because of convergences identified between those two theories. Concerning the methodology, quantitative data were analyzed from a survey conducted in Rio de Janeiro concerning youth and violence. This resulted from a partnership among researchers from three universities: Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), and Cândido Mendes University (UCAM). Preliminary results showed a negative association between indicators of school climate and perceptions of violence inside the school. These results suggest that in schools where students reported a greater number of violent occurrences, there also exists a school climate that students evaluate negatively. Besides the verification of this convergence by our study's results, other data suggest relationships between perceptions of violence within and outside the school and perceptions of the existence of drugs and violence at school.
School climate; Collective efficacy; Perceptions of violence
