Teacher, peer, and self-assessment of aggression and perceptions of school attachment among elementary and secondary, regular education and learning-disabled students

Childhood aggression has attracted much attention due to the recent increase in violence committed by children. What were once isolated incidences have now become more commonplace and the educational community is attempting to address these problems within the school setting.;This study examined three types of aggression, physical, verbal, and indirect using three raters, peer, teacher, and self-ratings. The sample consisted of 230 suburban public school 4th, 7th , and 10th grade students who were either in regular education or were students with learning disabilities.;The differences in the three types of aggression between the three grade levels was not significant and consequently the null hypothesis was retained.;The current research did find support for differences in self and peer reported indirect aggression between males and females with females having significantly higher scores than male students. For physical and verbal aggression, only self-reports were significant indicating that for physical aggression males had significantly higher scores than females and for verbal aggression, females had significantly higher scores than males. These findings were not supported by teacher or peer reports and therefore the null hypothesis of no difference in levels of physical and verbal aggression between males and females was retained.;For students with learning disabilities, only self reports indicated higher scores on indirect and verbal aggression than the self-reports of regular education students. Examination of the differences between type of aggression and rater or the interaction between rater and grade level produced no significant results with regard to physical aggression. For verbal aggression, teachers reported the highest levels of verbal aggression and peers the lowest. There was no rater by grade interaction. Finally, for indirect aggression peer reports indicated the lowest scores while teachers reported the highest levels of indirect aggression. Again there was no interaction between grade and type of rater.;Lastly, school attachment scores were related to the educational status of the students. Regular education students had higher school attachment scores than students with learning disabilities.