The interaction of public-school teachers with student users of psychoactive substances
Heading: Pedagogics and Education Article type: Original article
Authors: De Castro Rossi L.C., Dalben I., Mangini Bocchi S.C.
Organization: Brazil, Botucatu
The increasing and early use of psychoactive substances by children and adolescents represents a challenge to public-health practice. To understand teachers' interactions with student users of drugs and develop a representative theoretical model of such experience this study was conducted. Qualitative study conducted in Sro Paulo, Brazil, with 32 teachers from public schools by means of focal groups and based on the Grounded Theory as its methodological framework. Progressively comprehensive categories converged to three phenomena: Identifying student's users; Feeling powerless in face the challenges of drugs use; Silencing to preserve oneself from a threatening scenario. These phenomena constructed the core category of the experience: Silencing to preserve oneself from a threatening scenario in face of the fragility of rescuing student's users of drugs. The clash between inducing and protective factors in the concrete situations of drugs use was revealed, thus pointing out that the lack of State and social support associated with the user's relation with drug trafficking and violence leads teachers to silence as they feel unprotected in face of a situation surrounded by stigma and prejudice. Coping strategies should include the educators, relatives, health care professionals and government institutions, thus providing ways to prevent and treat use, orientate and reconstruct lives in a process of active participation for all students
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