ELLEN NICY R.

ROA
MASOC - 2
Inter group and Intragroup Conflict
Intergroup Conflict

Looc is a barangay in the municipality of Salay in the province of Misamis Oriental and has a total
population of 3,376 according to the 2020 census [1]. Barangay Looc has one public secondary
school (Looc National High School) where a newbie like me was stationed. A barangay which I
thought was peaceful at first glance. During the 80's and early 90's, stories were told that Looc was
one of the many homes of NPA's. According to the teacher's stories, there were numerous
occasions when encounters between rebels and soldiers could be heard nearby while they were
conducting their classes. I can't help but think that the unruly behavior of my students was
connected to the kind of environment their parents grew up in and has been passed on. They
seemed fearless, the kind of fearless that resorts to violence to solve conflict, so I noticed. This
group of boys are easily enraged, and they act as if someone has got their back. But really, there's
no one. They're just a bunch of teenagers dealing with their family problems. I have the
demographics of my students, and a considerable number of them belong to broken families,
broken marriages, and some are illegitimate children with socio-economic problems.

The day of reckoning finally came. After graduation, I took the time to bond with them. There was
no invitation for those unruly boys, but they managed to join us. To my astonishment, they even
brought liquor with them. I reminded them to behave. Later in the afternoon, while they were
already under the influence of alcohol, they hit it off with another group of students in the pool
area. It was a minute thing that offended my students. The student from St. Rita's College asked
my student, "What's your problem?" While the girls from St. Rita's were taking their shower, my
students were gayfully dancing while waiting for their turn to shower. My students just let the
incident pass. Little did I know that they were already planning to attack the boys from the other
school after the resort's curfew. And so, they did. But I was unable to restrain them from doing it
because they were under the influence of alcohol. Even though I tried talking in a way that served
their interests best, that what happened was just a simple misunderstanding of the situation, to no
avail. They indeed created a scene along the highway. The best thing for them was to punch their
fists at the students from St. Rita, as they were offended by the way they were treated. They were
seen as perverts when they were just dancing to the beat of the song. My students' way of releasing
their anger was through fist fights. It took me a while to convince them to stop harassing the other
groups of students. I asked them to just forget about it and go home peacefully. They were already
shouting, "Remember, we are from Looc." I don't really know what that meant, but according to
the stories, there were no peaceful fiesta celebrations in the area. The nonresidents of the area were
cautious about that.

I assisted the students from other schools with their transport so they would not be attacked. As I
served as a shield for them, I almost resorted to calling the police station until the other students
got their ride. I politely asked them to go home. Later in the evening, my students felt sorry for
what had happened. But they were not sorry for what they did. If only I was not there, the brawl
really did happen. I also learned that this was not the first time they got themselves involved in a
brawl.

Although the incident took place outside the school premise, this group of students were already
identified as having unruly behavior before they became my students. Because it is a public school,

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there aren't many experts in the area to deal with this type of behavior. The most fitting approach
the school could give was to engage unruly students in community service where there was no
intervention in the students’ behavioral patterns.

According to a recent study published in the November 2020 [2] issue of the Journal of Pediatrics
by experts at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, violence is a learned behavior, as
evidenced by the strong link between exposure to violence and its use by young adolescents.
Adolescents are less likely to participate in violence if social learning from exposure to violence
does not occur, even if they are exposed to an area with people identified as rebels carrying
weapons. Robert H. DuRant, vice chair of pediatrics at Wake Forest University School of Medicine
said that children learn violent behaviors from their core social groups, such as their families and
peers, as well as from what they see in their neighborhoods and the wider community. He added
that it’s not unexpected that children who have been subjected to severe corporal punishment or
verbal abuse, or who have been physically or sexually assaulted, act violently toward others.

As stated above, the students did not feel remorse for what they did. They were in fact blaming the
other group of students for the incident. In Gresham Sykes and David Matza’s Theory of
Neutralization [3], one of their observations was "Denial of Responsibility." "Offenders were part
of a subculture that has zero remorse upon committing a deviant act. The juvenile offenders
experienced notable guilt or shame after committing the act." This means many people will argue
that fighting is usually wrong, but that it is justifiable in certain circumstances, such as when you
have been insulted or mistreated in a certain way or see yourself as victims of circumstances.

Conceptual Framework

The author adopts Albert Bandura’s Social Learning theory to explain these behavioral
occurrences.

Social learning theory is proposed by Albert Bandura, and it emphasizes learning is by observation
and modeling of others. People learn through observing others' behavior, attitude, emotion
reaction, and outcomes of behaviors. In this theory, learning can be used to explain various types
of behaviors. Effective modeling teaches general rules and strategies for dealing with different
situation (Bandura, 1988).[5]

Based on his research, Bandura described social learning in four principles:

1. Attention: To learn, one needs to be focused and pay attention. Especially for children, if
they see something novel or different, they are more likely to engage.
2. Retention: Internalizing the information just learned and storing it as a memory.
3. Reproduction: Reproducing information that was previously retained and using it when
needed, such as on a test.
4. Motivation: Without motivation, there is no interest in doing anything. Motivation can arise
when one observes that another person is rewarded or blamed for doing or not doing
something, which motivates the observer to want to do the same thing or avoid it.

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The assumption behind social learning theory is that children learn in social contexts by
watching and imitating what they observe. It also fosters the notion that others' influence has an
impact on the youngster. It is built on three essential concepts: a) that individuals can learn
through watching, b) that one's mental state influences this learning process, and c) that just
because something is learned doesn't guarantee one's behavior will change .[6]

People gain motivation and abilities to commit crime from the people with whom they associate,
according to Ronald L. Akers, an American criminologist.[7] People learn new habits, morals, and
dispositions through immediate experience and observation of others' conduct in response to
favorable or unfavorable stimuli.

Bandura's theory, on the other hand, indicates that just as violence can be learned, so can
peaceful ways of connecting with the world. A community may educate, socialize, and
encourage peaceful interactions and actions. Some of Bandura's social learning theory's premises
of learning behavior include internalizing newly learned conduct, replicating this newly held
information, and using it as needed. Social learning is described as learning through watching
and imitating others rather than through one's own unique experiences. Psychologists have lately
been employed to teach non-violence to young children in school. According to the findings of a
recent Baylor University case study in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Richmond, Virginia, a youth
violence-reduction mentoring program for trouble-plagued schools in urban centers has
contributed to improved student behavior and performance. The "Violence-Free Zone" (VFZ) is
a national model for mentoring adolescents in high-crime, high-violence neighborhoods. The
VFZ mentorship program is intended to address behaviors that result in truancy, suspensions,
violent encounters, drug and gang participation, and low academic achievement in public middle
and high schools. During their four-year study, they discovered a 44 percent decrease in the
average number of behavioral incidents.

Understanding the flow of Bandura’s theory will be a great help in handling conflict acted by the
students. The theory can also be utilized to investigate how positive role models can influence
social change by encouraging learners to do things they want to do.

Theory of Social Learning by Albert Bandura

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Conflict Map

Environmental
factors: social
norms, family,
community

Actors Position Interest Needs Gains Loss

Teacher Protects the Protects the Trainings in Student – Misbehave students
welfare of school’s handling misfit teacher
the students reputation students rapport
Students Offender To retaliate Harmonious
(LNHS) the insult Protection from Safer relationship with any
harming community members of society
themselves
Students Defender To keep Better education Safer
(SRCB) themselves on the community Prejudice toward
safe differences of those seen as deviants
individuals
SCHOOL Provider of Students’ Hires expert to Better Student carrying
Admin counseling social address students’ students psychosocial
services to welfare, psychosocial with better problems
learners students’ problems anger
with harmonious management
psychosocial social Provide
needs and interaction classroom-based
mental mentorship
health program to

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cultivate peace
loving behavior
LNHS Influential Intervention Safer and
Students’ to students’ To foster program from uplifting Communal conflict
Environment behavior safer LGU on community
community problems for students
identified in the
demographics

Means and solution

The weight of addressing students’ delinquency falls upon the school admin and the class
advisers, especially when inside the school premise. Public school students are full of students
with psychosocial needs due to their demographics. It is the school’s role to provide intervention
not just by punishing learners through community work but by understanding behavioral patterns
and guiding the children in departing from the learned behavior for them to become better social
interactors and contributing citizens of the country. Social Learning Theory could be used as an
interference method in the classroom to encourage beneficial new habits by changing the reward,
whether positive or negative, linked with the cause of the problem. The Department of Education
should also provide experts in the area, not just trained teachers, as teachers are consumed with
the many roles they perform.

Following Bandura’s theory that behavior can be learnt, as a classroom adviser, I would impart
my practice of mindfulness and integrate it into the classroom. Deep breathing is a simple, easy-
to-use, yet sometimes overlooked approach for anxiety reduction, dispute resolution, and self-
regulation. Several studies have been undertaken to see how mindfulness affects kids' mental
well-being. This is something novel that students can engage in. School-based action research
may be conducted to determine how mindfulness impacts the well-being of learners.

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References:
Looc Population:
https://www.philatlas.com/mindanao/r10/misamis-
oriental/salay/looc.html#:~:text=Looc%20Municipality%20of%20Salay%20Province%20of%20
Misamis%20Oriental&text=Looc%20is%20a%20barangay%20in,the%20total%20population%2
0of%20Salay.
DuRant, R. (2020). Violence Is A Learned Behavior. Wake Forest University Baptist Medical
Center Journal of Pediatrics https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/11/001106061128.htm
Mackenzie, S. The stories that criminals tell themselves to justify their actions.
https://www.futurelearn.com/info/courses/art-crime/0/steps/11867
Bandura, A. (1988). Organizational Application of Social Cognitive Theory. Australian Journal
of Management,13(2), 275-302.
Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: W.H. Freeman.
Delgado, P. (2019). Social Learning Theory: What Is It and How Did It Come About?
https://observatory.tec.mx/edu-news/social-learning-theory
Introduction to Social Learning Theory in Social Work (2020).
https://www.onlinemswprograms.com/social-work/theories/social-learning-theory/
Johnson, B. et al. (2009) The Center for Neighborhood Enterprise Violence – Free Zone
Initiative: A Milwaukee Case Study https://www.baylorisr.org
Image:
Bond, M. (2017). Criminology: Social Learning Theory Explained.
https://andragogytheory.com/2017/01/21/criminology-social-learning-theory-explained/
Bond, M. (2015). Criminology: Social Learning Theory Explained.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/criminology-social-learning-theory-explained-mark-bond

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