School psychologist and clinical psychologist for 20 years working with students with severe behavioral problems and their families, in 2003 Claire Beaumont obtained a doctorate in psychopedagogy and is currently a full professor in the Faculty of Education at Université Laval. She was a member of the European Observatory on School Violence from 2001 to 2008, and co-founder and director of the Canadian Observatory on Violence in Schools from 2003 to 2012. From 2008 to 2018, she was Secretary General of the International Observatory on Violence in Schools, and now sits on the Scientific Committee of the Observatory for School Climate and Violence Prevention. From 2012 to June 2023, she held the School Well-Being and Violence Prevention Research Chair funded by the Quebec government. For the past thirty years, she has worked with schools on a variety of projects aimed at preventing and reducing violence in schools. Her areas of research, expertise and teaching are school violence prevention (intervention and training), socio-emotional skills at school, collaboration and mutual aid practices in the school environment, improving school climates and intervention with students presenting psychosocial difficulties.
She has written hundreds of articles on these issues, and has lectured and trained in several countries around the world. Her primary concern is to ensure that the results of her research are used in practice to improve the quality of life of students and school staff.
Abstract
Abstract Title
The continuous improvement of school climate: A positive and global approach to individual and collective well-being at school
Over the past forty years or so, school violence has been the subject of a multitude of studies aimed at portraying its manifestations and explaining its causes and consequences. Many have also evaluated various approaches and practices aimed at reducing school violence. Among these approaches, continuous improvement of the school climate seems to offer the best chances of success. Following the current state of research, this presentation will discuss how continuous school climate improvement, this so-called positive and global approach, is dependent on interventions focused on the well-being and good mental health of students and adults in the school. We’ll be looking at school climate from the angle of ongoing work to achieve this collective well-being. In this approach, students and school staff develop social and emotional skills to learn how to maintain harmonious relationships and thus reduce manifestations of violence, whether between students, between students and school staff, between colleagues or even with parents. Working towards collective well-being means working together, students and adults alike, on an ongoing basis, to create the positive school climate necessary for children’s personal, social and academic development, while also contributing to the well-being and job satisfaction of school staff.