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School Violence Prevention☆
School Violence Preventionq J Larson, University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, WI, United States Ó 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1 1 2 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 6
Introduction Definition of School Violence Historical Perspective The Effects of School Violence Organizing Structures for School Violence Prevention Community-Level School District-Level School Building Level An Integrated Approach to School Violence Prevention Universal Prevention Measures Selected Prevention Measures Indicated Prevention Measures Conclusions References Further Reading
Glossary Bullying Continual infliction of harm or threat of harm, physical or psychological, within the context of a clear imbalance of power. Hostile excluding A form of non-physical aggression, more common in females, that involves efforts to cause psychological distress through directed exclusion from a social group or desirable social activities. Protective factor Characteristics in the individual or environment that serve to moderate the impact or improve people’s resistance to human dysfunction.
Risk factor Characteristics in the individual or the environment that serve to increase the probability of onset, degree of severity, or duration of human dysfunction. Zero tolerance A school discipline policy intended primarily as a method of sending a message that certain violence-related behaviors will not be tolerated by punishing both major and minor offenses severely.
Introduction Efforts to prevent school shootings such as those that occurred at Columbine High School and elsewhere are only one facet of a much larger continuum of school violence prevention. The statistical probability of being shot by a fellow student is extraordinarily remote, but the day-to-day likelihood of being threatened by a bully, punched by a classmate, or victimized by mean-spirited teasing is not. Understanding and appreciating the myriad contextual, intrapersonal, developmental, and educative aspects of maintaining a safe and supportive learning climate for both students and adults is the focus of this section.
Definition of School Violence School violence involves all of the behaviors along the full continuum of interpersonal physical, verbal, and psychological aggression that interfere with the rights of all children to learn and the rights of all adults to work in a safe educational environment. School violence is much more than just the rare headline-grabbing multiple homicides, but involves the quality of the day-to-day interpersonal relationships in the context of the school setting: relationships that contribute to or detract from everyone’s sense of personal safety and well-being. Teasing, bullying, threatening, hostile excluding, drug dealing, and fighting are example behaviors of concern. This definition also recognizes that the continua of physical, verbal, and psychological aggression have intensity,
q
Change History: August 2015. J. Larson updated the entire text and Further Reading section to this article.
Reference Module in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Psychology
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-809324-5.05707-2
1
2
School Violence Prevention
frequency, and emotional and physical injury plot points. For example, mean-spirited teasing or bullying directed at a target student can be examined along the intensity of the interaction, the frequency of occurrence, and the emotional and physical consequences to the victim. Additionally, it is important to understand that school violence may also be viewed from a skills deficit perspective. A child who is resorting to physical aggression to resolve a concern may be demonstrating a lack of skill in social problem-solving and anger management. From this viewpoint, school violence also can be defined as an index measuring the deficiency of prosocial skills and non-violent conflict resolution strategies among individuals in the context of a school setting. Framing the definition in this fashion has useful implications for prevention and intervention policies and procedures.
Historical Perspective For many educators who had responsibility for student safety before the 1970’s, preventing school violence meant little more than administratively ridding the school of the most potentially violent students. When efforts to intervene failed, children and youth with chronic aggressive anger problems, gang affiliations, or other problematic characteristics were summarily dismissed from school. Subsequent federal legislation such as Public Law 94–142, The Education of All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (now Public Law 105–17, the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act Amendments of 1997, known as IDEA) and Supreme Court decisions such as Goss v. Lopez, for example, changed the way students with challenging behaviors needed to be addressed. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution holds that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Ruling in the 1975 Goss v. Lopez case, the Supreme Court held that to deprive an individual of an education is to deprive that individual of a property right. Barring or otherwise excluding any individual from a free and appropriate public education without due process was determined to be unconstitutional. The effect of Public Law 94–142 and the Goss decision was to place the obligation on the schools to address the needs of everyone who desired a public education, including those with challenging behaviors. The days of simply excluding aggressive students without due process were over. In 1978, the federal government released the first large scale report on school safety, Violent Schools-Safe Schools: The Safe School Study Report to Congress, and the nation’s eyes were opened to a new and disquieting feature of public education. Among the findings were that in a given month at school, approximately 282,000 (1.3%) students were physically attacked in America’s secondary schools, almost 8% of urban junior and senior high school students missed at least 1 day of classes because they were afraid to go to school, and nearly 5200 of the nation’s million secondary school teachers were physically attacked. For most middle class Americans, however, the issues of violence in school the remained pretty much an urban concern: the Blackboard Jungle was a long way from the comparative safety of suburbia. The major urban school districts spent the 1970’s and 1980’s fighting the escalating street crime that spilled into their hallways with every method at their disposal, including locker searches, armed guards, and metal detectors. In 1984, a presidential directive established the National School Safety Center to serve as an information clearinghouse and resource center for beleaguered schools. In 1986, a Boston public health physician named Deborah Prothrow-Stith introduced the nation’s first dedicated violence prevention curriculum, Violence Prevention Curriculum for Adolescents, into the Boston school system. In 1987, the Seattle-based company, Committee for Children, followed suit with their program for younger students, Second Step: A Violence Prevention Curriculum. In 1988, the Milwaukee Public Schools initiated the “Violence Reduction Program,” the nation’s first district-wide, multi-systemic effort to address the mounting problem of student violence through curricular, counseling, and parent training efforts. In suburban, small town, and rural school districts outside of the larger cities, however, schools had not yet even begun to lock their doors. The relative complacency of the non-urban American public school was changed forever on January 17, 1989 when Patrick Purdy, 26, armed with an AK-47 assault rifle, opened fire on a playground at Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, CA. Five children died and 29 children and 1 teacher were wounded before Purdy killed himself. Whereas this assailant was an adult, it was the homicides perpetrated in the school setting by students in communities such as Jonesboro, Arkansas, Springfield, Oregon, and Littleton, Colorado that provided the greatest impetus to the development of school violence prevention programs. From early in the 1990’s and into the 21st century, concerns both real and imagined about school shootings fueled both research and product development in the area of school violence prevention. However, it was not until the 2012 shooting deaths of 20 young students and 6 teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut that widespread calls for reforming state and federal gun control laws became the dominant response. Somewhat lost in all of the media coverage of these high profile homicides were the historical facts regarding school violence. National surveys by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Center for Educational Statistics (http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/ pubsinfo.asp?pubid¼2015072) indicated that there has been a steady decline in the violent victimization rate (simple assault, plus more violent crimes including rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) in schools between 1992 and 2013 among students ages 12 through 18. In all categories of crime victimization except theft, young people were safer at school than away from it. The number of teachers who were threatened with violence has also seen a decline over the past decade, although the figure of teachers who were actually assaulted has remained steady at about 3%–4%. Whereas the number of homicides and serious criminal victimization in schools continues to decline, the same cannot be said for other forms of school violence. For instance, student reports of bullying are on the increase. It is estimated that over their school careers, one in three students will be involved in school bullying incidents, as a victim, perpetrator, or both; a robust statistic that has seen little change over the years (National Center for Education Statistics, 2010). Conversely, the odds of being killed in a school
School Violence Prevention
3
shooting have been estimated to be about 1 in 2 million or about the same as being struck by lightning. This has implications for designers of violence prevention programs who must account for base rates along the continuum of school violence if the effort is to be meaningful in the lives of most students. Planning effectively for violence prevention takes to account that time and money spent preparing for a monumentally unlikely event at the expense of real day-to-day violence and victimization is both scientifically and fiscally indefensible.
The Effects of School Violence How can a student be expected to concentrate on academic learning when the potential for physical assault or the next round of mean-spirited teasing is just around the corner? What is it like to dread the coming of recess or suppress the urge to drink water all day for fear of the need to later have to venture into a dangerous restroom? How can a teacher possibly provide his or her full measure of skill when there is good reason to be frightened of some of the students? Violence in the school setting has multiple physical, psychological, and educational effects on individuals and has a deleterious effect on the learning climate for everyone. Sociobiological theories of motivation posit that humans have four basic needs: drives to acquire, to bond, to learn, and to defend themselves from harm (Nohria et al., 2001). Students and teachers who must occupy time and cognitive energy with concerns for their own safety cannot simultaneously devote their motivation and attention to the educational process in the most productive manner. Safe school environments allow students the freedom to attend to learning tasks with greater creativity, academic risk-taking, and peer affiliation. Research from the Effective Schools movement of the 1970’s and more recently with Positive Behavior Interventions and Support (PBIS), a federally-endorsed school program for teaching behavioral expectations, has empirically demonstrated the positive effects on academic climate and student achievement through broad scale measures to create safe, disciplined learning environments.
Organizing Structures for School Violence Prevention Effective school violence prevention programs are multi-systemic endeavors that are integrated into the fabric of the educational process, not simply added on as time or budget permit. Planning and implementing procedures for the safety and emotional well-being of students are no less thoughtfully or rigorously studied than any other critical aspect of the educational process. Current prevention research developed over the past three decades has emphasized the development of stakeholder partnerships. Individual classrooms exist in buildings, which exist in school systems located in communities. Consequently, the violence prevention process should have an identifiable presence and linkage across community, school district, and school building levels of policy and organization. The following list offers of some of the basic roles and functions in school violence prevention at these levels.
Community-Level l l l l l l l l
Address community risk factors associated with youth violence Enact and enforce juvenile criminal codes Enact and enforce strong anti-drug and firearm laws Establish and coordinate community emergency response procedures Provide emergency training expertise to school staff Provide expertise and coordinate school security assessments Provide safe after school activities for all students Provide expertise in research-supported prevention measures
School District-Level l l l l l l
Provide school board mandate for safe schools Secure funding through budgetary process Facilitate coordination with community resources Ensure appropriate school mental health services Develop policies for school security and emergency response Facilitate staff training in: classroom discipline and problem-solving methods anti-bullying procedures instructional design and curricular modification emergency/security procedures l l l l
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School Violence Prevention
School Building Level l l l l l l
Establish representative school safety planning team Conduct broadly-based needs assessments Establish primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention plans Enact collaboratively-developed school discipline plan Practice emergency response procedures Facilitate on-going staff development
An Integrated Approach to School Violence Prevention School violence prevention measures aim to: (1) prevent the onset of violent behavior in the general school population; (2) identify and intervene with those students who are at risk for violent behavior, and; (3) reduce frequency or intensity of violence in those students who are currently engaging in violent behavior (Larson and Mark’s, 2014; Walker et al., 1996). Compared to more reactive approaches such as “zero tolerance” with its sanctions-based emphasis on suspension and expulsion, a prevention approach is primarily skills-based and education oriented. Prevention approaches do not completely eschew the use of exclusionary procedures, but they are viewed more as a last line of response and typically as a protective rather than intervention measure. Prevention approaches draw from numerous literature bases, including those from risk and protective factors, social context behavior, child development, and learning theory (e.g., Aber et al., 2003; Hawkins et al., 1998; Pepler and Slaby, 1994; Shaw et al., 2003) to create a school ecology conducive to healthy interactions and non-violent conflict resolution. Because students learn and interact in several social contexts and with numerous individuals, these procedures are often multiply-targeted. For instance, a single child with anger control problems may receive anger management skills training, and simultaneously his parents may be engaged in parent training while his teacher is learning more effective classroom discipline strategies. Targets for school violence prevention may include: l l l l l l l l l l
Student Teacher Family Classroom School School District Neighborhood Community State National Policy
Fully integrated prevention programs target risk factors and skill development in multiple contexts and among multiple populations. In doing so, programs use universal, selected, and indicated prevention procedures.
Universal Prevention Measures When school violence prevention targets an entire populationdsuch as a whole classroom or schooldthe endeavor is known as primary prevention and the measures used are referred to as universal prevention measures. Universal prevention measures are designed for all of the individuals in the targeted populationdwhether students, teachers, or parentsdregardless of each individual’s risk status. At the classroom level, a teacher may provide the students with curricular instruction on the subjects of conflict resolution strategies, ways to manage anger, or safe handling of firearms. Because of its broad reach, universal classroom prevention curricula place primary emphasis on teaching the students about risk and prevention at a basic knowledge level, rather than actually training them in complex behavioral skills. At the preschool to early primary levels, students may acquire problem-solving language and learn to name and identify feeling states in themselves and others. In the later elementary years, students may be taught to understand procedures for social problem-solving, conflict resolution, and anger control. With the whole school as a target for primary prevention, a school administration may offer inservice workshops to its teaching staff to bring them up to date on the latest techniques in classroom discipline skills or to help them learn to diversify instruction for behaviorally challenging students. A universal prevention measure that targets use of the physical environment might brighten the common areas with new décor and additional lighting, modify class changing times to reduce hallway crowding, or lock entranceways after the start of school.
Selected Prevention Measures Within school populations are individuals or groups that, because of personal characteristics or environmental factors, have elevated risk. Efforts to meet the needs of these individuals are known as secondary prevention, and the procedures used are referred
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to as selected prevention measures. One of the goals of secondary prevention in the school setting is to identify those individuals within a population who may be engaging in precursor behaviors that have predictive value for the onset of later, more serious concerns. Physically aggressive or bullying behavior, oppositional behavior, lying, or stealing, when observed in kindergarten or early primary level children, are known to have a measure of predictive validity for later, more serious violent or antisocial behavior. In addition to receiving universal prevention measures, these children select themselves out for more intensive skill development. Central to the successful application of selective prevention measures is the valid and reliable identification of students who will most likely benefit from the intervention. This is particularly important in situations where there is significant environmentally-based risk (e.g., a large population of low socio-economic status children) and limited human resources to facilitate intervention. Multiple-gating methods allow classroom teachers and parents to use instruments such as risk-behavior checklists to narrow the population to those students or groups of students most likely to benefit from a particular selected measure. Once identified, students receiving selected prevention measures focus on behavioral skill development, typically in an individual or small group setting under the direction of a school psychologist or school counselor. In these sessions, students learn to apply behavioral skills such as social problem-solving, anger control, consequential thinking, or non-violent conflict resolution to simulated scenarios in the training setting. In contrast to universal prevention, selected prevention measures go beyond merely knowing about violence prevention to actually learning and practicing critical behavioral skills, both in and out of the training setting. Bullying prevention programs are examples of a selected measure applied at the whole school level. Longitudinal research indicates that students who engage in bullying behavior in the elementary school are at high risk for continuing antisocial behavior into later life. In order to address the needs of both the bully and the victims of bullying, empirically-supported bullying prevention programs train teachers, administrators, and students in role-appropriate identification, resistance, and effective intervention strategies.
Indicated Prevention Measures The mission of the public schools includes providing an education to all students, regardless of their individual risk characteristics. Tertiary prevention services are designed to address the needs of students who display persistent, severely aggressive behaviors that have been unresponsive to universal or selected prevention procedures. These students are candidates for indicated prevention measures. Indicated measures are designed to reduce the frequency or severity of aggressive behaviors in the school setting; in effect, to keep the problem from worsening and protect the student and those around him or her. A tertiary prevention plan is typically formulated by a team of school and community professionals (e.g., school psychologists, mental health professionals, agency representatives) working collaboratively with the student’s parents. The student frequently receives a variety of services in and out of the school setting in what has come to be called a “wraparound” organizational structure. Multiple supports and services are “wrapped around” the student and, in many cases, the family in an effort to prevent problems from advancing to a more serious level. Indicated measures may involve skills training and individualized academic programming in the general or alternative school setting paired with family and community interventions.
Conclusions Preventing school violence is a critical endeavor that requires training, organization, and ongoing commitment on the parts of those individuals responsible for its implementation. A fully integrated approach to school violence prevention brings together an understanding of childhood risk factors, skilled school and community professionals, and evidence-supported universal, selected, and indicted procedures to create a safe learning environment for students and staff members.
References Aber, J.L., Brown, J.L., Jones, S.M., 2003. Developmental trajectories toward violence in middle childhood: course, demographics, differences, and response to school-based intervention. Dev. Psychol. 39, 324–348. Hawkins, D.J., Herrenkohl, T., Farrington, D.P., Brewer, D., Catalano, R.F., Harachi, T.W., 1998. A review of the predictors of youth violence. In: Loeber, R., Farington, D.P. (Eds.), Serious and Violent Juvenile Offenders: Risk Factors and Successful Interventions. Sage Publishers, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 106–146. Larson, J., Mark, S., 2014. Best practices in school violence prevention. In: Thomas, A., Harrison, P. (Eds.), Best Practices in School Psychology. National Association of School Psychologists, Silver Spring, MD, pp. 231–234. Nohria, N., Lawrence, P., Wilson, E., 2001. Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco. Pepler, D.J., Slaby, R.G., 1994. Theoretical and developmental perspectives on youth and violence. In: Eron, L.D., Gentry, J.H., Schlegel, P. (Eds.), Reason to Hope: A Psychosocial Perspective on Violence & Youth. American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, pp. 27–58. Shaw, D.S., Gilliom, M., Ingoldsby, E.M., Nagin, D.S., 2003. Trajectories leading to school-age conduct problems. Dev. Psychol. 39, 189–200. Walker, H.M., Horner, R.H., Sugai, G., Bullis, M., Sprague, J.R., Bricker, D., Kaufman, M.J., 1996. Integrated approaches to preventing antisocial behavior patterns in among school-age children and youth. J. Emot. Behav. Disord. 4, 194–209.
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Further Reading Brock, S.E., Jimerson, S.R., 2012. Best Practices in School Crisis Prevention and Intervention, second ed. National Association of School Psychologists, Bethesda, MD. Eber, L., 2003. The Art and Science of Wraparound: Completing the Continuum of Schoolwide Behavioral Support. The Forum on Education at Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. Fast, J., 2008. Ceremonial Violence: A Psychological Explanation of School Shootings. The Overlook Press, New York. Garbarino, J., 2008. See Jane Hit: Why Girls are Growing More Violent and What We Can Do About It. The Penguin Press, New York. Hinduja, S., Patchin, J.W., 2015. Bullying Beyond the Schoolyard: Preventing and Responding to Cyberbullying, second ed. Corwin, Thousand Oaks, CA. Jimerson, S.R., Swearer, S.M., Espelage, D.L., 2010. Handbook of Bullying in Schools: An International Perspective. Routledge, New York. Jimerson, S.R., Nickerson, A.B., Mayer, M.J., Furlong, M.J., 2012. Handbook of School Violence and School Safety: International Research and Practice, second ed. Routledge, New York. Larson, J., Lochman, J.E., 2011. Helping Schoolchildren Cope with Anger: A Cognitive-behavioral Intervention, second ed. Guilford Press, New York.
1 1 2 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 6
Introduction Definition of School Violence Historical Perspective The Effects of School Violence Organizing Structures for School Violence Prevention Community-Level School District-Level School Building Level An Integrated Approach to School Violence Prevention Universal Prevention Measures Selected Prevention Measures Indicated Prevention Measures Conclusions References Further Reading
Glossary Bullying Continual infliction of harm or threat of harm, physical or psychological, within the context of a clear imbalance of power. Hostile excluding A form of non-physical aggression, more common in females, that involves efforts to cause psychological distress through directed exclusion from a social group or desirable social activities. Protective factor Characteristics in the individual or environment that serve to moderate the impact or improve people’s resistance to human dysfunction.
Risk factor Characteristics in the individual or the environment that serve to increase the probability of onset, degree of severity, or duration of human dysfunction. Zero tolerance A school discipline policy intended primarily as a method of sending a message that certain violence-related behaviors will not be tolerated by punishing both major and minor offenses severely.
Introduction Efforts to prevent school shootings such as those that occurred at Columbine High School and elsewhere are only one facet of a much larger continuum of school violence prevention. The statistical probability of being shot by a fellow student is extraordinarily remote, but the day-to-day likelihood of being threatened by a bully, punched by a classmate, or victimized by mean-spirited teasing is not. Understanding and appreciating the myriad contextual, intrapersonal, developmental, and educative aspects of maintaining a safe and supportive learning climate for both students and adults is the focus of this section.
Definition of School Violence School violence involves all of the behaviors along the full continuum of interpersonal physical, verbal, and psychological aggression that interfere with the rights of all children to learn and the rights of all adults to work in a safe educational environment. School violence is much more than just the rare headline-grabbing multiple homicides, but involves the quality of the day-to-day interpersonal relationships in the context of the school setting: relationships that contribute to or detract from everyone’s sense of personal safety and well-being. Teasing, bullying, threatening, hostile excluding, drug dealing, and fighting are example behaviors of concern. This definition also recognizes that the continua of physical, verbal, and psychological aggression have intensity,
q
Change History: August 2015. J. Larson updated the entire text and Further Reading section to this article.
Reference Module in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Psychology
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-809324-5.05707-2
1
2
School Violence Prevention
frequency, and emotional and physical injury plot points. For example, mean-spirited teasing or bullying directed at a target student can be examined along the intensity of the interaction, the frequency of occurrence, and the emotional and physical consequences to the victim. Additionally, it is important to understand that school violence may also be viewed from a skills deficit perspective. A child who is resorting to physical aggression to resolve a concern may be demonstrating a lack of skill in social problem-solving and anger management. From this viewpoint, school violence also can be defined as an index measuring the deficiency of prosocial skills and non-violent conflict resolution strategies among individuals in the context of a school setting. Framing the definition in this fashion has useful implications for prevention and intervention policies and procedures.
Historical Perspective For many educators who had responsibility for student safety before the 1970’s, preventing school violence meant little more than administratively ridding the school of the most potentially violent students. When efforts to intervene failed, children and youth with chronic aggressive anger problems, gang affiliations, or other problematic characteristics were summarily dismissed from school. Subsequent federal legislation such as Public Law 94–142, The Education of All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (now Public Law 105–17, the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act Amendments of 1997, known as IDEA) and Supreme Court decisions such as Goss v. Lopez, for example, changed the way students with challenging behaviors needed to be addressed. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution holds that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Ruling in the 1975 Goss v. Lopez case, the Supreme Court held that to deprive an individual of an education is to deprive that individual of a property right. Barring or otherwise excluding any individual from a free and appropriate public education without due process was determined to be unconstitutional. The effect of Public Law 94–142 and the Goss decision was to place the obligation on the schools to address the needs of everyone who desired a public education, including those with challenging behaviors. The days of simply excluding aggressive students without due process were over. In 1978, the federal government released the first large scale report on school safety, Violent Schools-Safe Schools: The Safe School Study Report to Congress, and the nation’s eyes were opened to a new and disquieting feature of public education. Among the findings were that in a given month at school, approximately 282,000 (1.3%) students were physically attacked in America’s secondary schools, almost 8% of urban junior and senior high school students missed at least 1 day of classes because they were afraid to go to school, and nearly 5200 of the nation’s million secondary school teachers were physically attacked. For most middle class Americans, however, the issues of violence in school the remained pretty much an urban concern: the Blackboard Jungle was a long way from the comparative safety of suburbia. The major urban school districts spent the 1970’s and 1980’s fighting the escalating street crime that spilled into their hallways with every method at their disposal, including locker searches, armed guards, and metal detectors. In 1984, a presidential directive established the National School Safety Center to serve as an information clearinghouse and resource center for beleaguered schools. In 1986, a Boston public health physician named Deborah Prothrow-Stith introduced the nation’s first dedicated violence prevention curriculum, Violence Prevention Curriculum for Adolescents, into the Boston school system. In 1987, the Seattle-based company, Committee for Children, followed suit with their program for younger students, Second Step: A Violence Prevention Curriculum. In 1988, the Milwaukee Public Schools initiated the “Violence Reduction Program,” the nation’s first district-wide, multi-systemic effort to address the mounting problem of student violence through curricular, counseling, and parent training efforts. In suburban, small town, and rural school districts outside of the larger cities, however, schools had not yet even begun to lock their doors. The relative complacency of the non-urban American public school was changed forever on January 17, 1989 when Patrick Purdy, 26, armed with an AK-47 assault rifle, opened fire on a playground at Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, CA. Five children died and 29 children and 1 teacher were wounded before Purdy killed himself. Whereas this assailant was an adult, it was the homicides perpetrated in the school setting by students in communities such as Jonesboro, Arkansas, Springfield, Oregon, and Littleton, Colorado that provided the greatest impetus to the development of school violence prevention programs. From early in the 1990’s and into the 21st century, concerns both real and imagined about school shootings fueled both research and product development in the area of school violence prevention. However, it was not until the 2012 shooting deaths of 20 young students and 6 teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut that widespread calls for reforming state and federal gun control laws became the dominant response. Somewhat lost in all of the media coverage of these high profile homicides were the historical facts regarding school violence. National surveys by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Center for Educational Statistics (http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/ pubsinfo.asp?pubid¼2015072) indicated that there has been a steady decline in the violent victimization rate (simple assault, plus more violent crimes including rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) in schools between 1992 and 2013 among students ages 12 through 18. In all categories of crime victimization except theft, young people were safer at school than away from it. The number of teachers who were threatened with violence has also seen a decline over the past decade, although the figure of teachers who were actually assaulted has remained steady at about 3%–4%. Whereas the number of homicides and serious criminal victimization in schools continues to decline, the same cannot be said for other forms of school violence. For instance, student reports of bullying are on the increase. It is estimated that over their school careers, one in three students will be involved in school bullying incidents, as a victim, perpetrator, or both; a robust statistic that has seen little change over the years (National Center for Education Statistics, 2010). Conversely, the odds of being killed in a school
School Violence Prevention
3
shooting have been estimated to be about 1 in 2 million or about the same as being struck by lightning. This has implications for designers of violence prevention programs who must account for base rates along the continuum of school violence if the effort is to be meaningful in the lives of most students. Planning effectively for violence prevention takes to account that time and money spent preparing for a monumentally unlikely event at the expense of real day-to-day violence and victimization is both scientifically and fiscally indefensible.
The Effects of School Violence How can a student be expected to concentrate on academic learning when the potential for physical assault or the next round of mean-spirited teasing is just around the corner? What is it like to dread the coming of recess or suppress the urge to drink water all day for fear of the need to later have to venture into a dangerous restroom? How can a teacher possibly provide his or her full measure of skill when there is good reason to be frightened of some of the students? Violence in the school setting has multiple physical, psychological, and educational effects on individuals and has a deleterious effect on the learning climate for everyone. Sociobiological theories of motivation posit that humans have four basic needs: drives to acquire, to bond, to learn, and to defend themselves from harm (Nohria et al., 2001). Students and teachers who must occupy time and cognitive energy with concerns for their own safety cannot simultaneously devote their motivation and attention to the educational process in the most productive manner. Safe school environments allow students the freedom to attend to learning tasks with greater creativity, academic risk-taking, and peer affiliation. Research from the Effective Schools movement of the 1970’s and more recently with Positive Behavior Interventions and Support (PBIS), a federally-endorsed school program for teaching behavioral expectations, has empirically demonstrated the positive effects on academic climate and student achievement through broad scale measures to create safe, disciplined learning environments.
Organizing Structures for School Violence Prevention Effective school violence prevention programs are multi-systemic endeavors that are integrated into the fabric of the educational process, not simply added on as time or budget permit. Planning and implementing procedures for the safety and emotional well-being of students are no less thoughtfully or rigorously studied than any other critical aspect of the educational process. Current prevention research developed over the past three decades has emphasized the development of stakeholder partnerships. Individual classrooms exist in buildings, which exist in school systems located in communities. Consequently, the violence prevention process should have an identifiable presence and linkage across community, school district, and school building levels of policy and organization. The following list offers of some of the basic roles and functions in school violence prevention at these levels.
Community-Level l l l l l l l l
Address community risk factors associated with youth violence Enact and enforce juvenile criminal codes Enact and enforce strong anti-drug and firearm laws Establish and coordinate community emergency response procedures Provide emergency training expertise to school staff Provide expertise and coordinate school security assessments Provide safe after school activities for all students Provide expertise in research-supported prevention measures
School District-Level l l l l l l
Provide school board mandate for safe schools Secure funding through budgetary process Facilitate coordination with community resources Ensure appropriate school mental health services Develop policies for school security and emergency response Facilitate staff training in: classroom discipline and problem-solving methods anti-bullying procedures instructional design and curricular modification emergency/security procedures l l l l
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School Violence Prevention
School Building Level l l l l l l
Establish representative school safety planning team Conduct broadly-based needs assessments Establish primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention plans Enact collaboratively-developed school discipline plan Practice emergency response procedures Facilitate on-going staff development
An Integrated Approach to School Violence Prevention School violence prevention measures aim to: (1) prevent the onset of violent behavior in the general school population; (2) identify and intervene with those students who are at risk for violent behavior, and; (3) reduce frequency or intensity of violence in those students who are currently engaging in violent behavior (Larson and Mark’s, 2014; Walker et al., 1996). Compared to more reactive approaches such as “zero tolerance” with its sanctions-based emphasis on suspension and expulsion, a prevention approach is primarily skills-based and education oriented. Prevention approaches do not completely eschew the use of exclusionary procedures, but they are viewed more as a last line of response and typically as a protective rather than intervention measure. Prevention approaches draw from numerous literature bases, including those from risk and protective factors, social context behavior, child development, and learning theory (e.g., Aber et al., 2003; Hawkins et al., 1998; Pepler and Slaby, 1994; Shaw et al., 2003) to create a school ecology conducive to healthy interactions and non-violent conflict resolution. Because students learn and interact in several social contexts and with numerous individuals, these procedures are often multiply-targeted. For instance, a single child with anger control problems may receive anger management skills training, and simultaneously his parents may be engaged in parent training while his teacher is learning more effective classroom discipline strategies. Targets for school violence prevention may include: l l l l l l l l l l
Student Teacher Family Classroom School School District Neighborhood Community State National Policy
Fully integrated prevention programs target risk factors and skill development in multiple contexts and among multiple populations. In doing so, programs use universal, selected, and indicated prevention procedures.
Universal Prevention Measures When school violence prevention targets an entire populationdsuch as a whole classroom or schooldthe endeavor is known as primary prevention and the measures used are referred to as universal prevention measures. Universal prevention measures are designed for all of the individuals in the targeted populationdwhether students, teachers, or parentsdregardless of each individual’s risk status. At the classroom level, a teacher may provide the students with curricular instruction on the subjects of conflict resolution strategies, ways to manage anger, or safe handling of firearms. Because of its broad reach, universal classroom prevention curricula place primary emphasis on teaching the students about risk and prevention at a basic knowledge level, rather than actually training them in complex behavioral skills. At the preschool to early primary levels, students may acquire problem-solving language and learn to name and identify feeling states in themselves and others. In the later elementary years, students may be taught to understand procedures for social problem-solving, conflict resolution, and anger control. With the whole school as a target for primary prevention, a school administration may offer inservice workshops to its teaching staff to bring them up to date on the latest techniques in classroom discipline skills or to help them learn to diversify instruction for behaviorally challenging students. A universal prevention measure that targets use of the physical environment might brighten the common areas with new décor and additional lighting, modify class changing times to reduce hallway crowding, or lock entranceways after the start of school.
Selected Prevention Measures Within school populations are individuals or groups that, because of personal characteristics or environmental factors, have elevated risk. Efforts to meet the needs of these individuals are known as secondary prevention, and the procedures used are referred
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to as selected prevention measures. One of the goals of secondary prevention in the school setting is to identify those individuals within a population who may be engaging in precursor behaviors that have predictive value for the onset of later, more serious concerns. Physically aggressive or bullying behavior, oppositional behavior, lying, or stealing, when observed in kindergarten or early primary level children, are known to have a measure of predictive validity for later, more serious violent or antisocial behavior. In addition to receiving universal prevention measures, these children select themselves out for more intensive skill development. Central to the successful application of selective prevention measures is the valid and reliable identification of students who will most likely benefit from the intervention. This is particularly important in situations where there is significant environmentally-based risk (e.g., a large population of low socio-economic status children) and limited human resources to facilitate intervention. Multiple-gating methods allow classroom teachers and parents to use instruments such as risk-behavior checklists to narrow the population to those students or groups of students most likely to benefit from a particular selected measure. Once identified, students receiving selected prevention measures focus on behavioral skill development, typically in an individual or small group setting under the direction of a school psychologist or school counselor. In these sessions, students learn to apply behavioral skills such as social problem-solving, anger control, consequential thinking, or non-violent conflict resolution to simulated scenarios in the training setting. In contrast to universal prevention, selected prevention measures go beyond merely knowing about violence prevention to actually learning and practicing critical behavioral skills, both in and out of the training setting. Bullying prevention programs are examples of a selected measure applied at the whole school level. Longitudinal research indicates that students who engage in bullying behavior in the elementary school are at high risk for continuing antisocial behavior into later life. In order to address the needs of both the bully and the victims of bullying, empirically-supported bullying prevention programs train teachers, administrators, and students in role-appropriate identification, resistance, and effective intervention strategies.
Indicated Prevention Measures The mission of the public schools includes providing an education to all students, regardless of their individual risk characteristics. Tertiary prevention services are designed to address the needs of students who display persistent, severely aggressive behaviors that have been unresponsive to universal or selected prevention procedures. These students are candidates for indicated prevention measures. Indicated measures are designed to reduce the frequency or severity of aggressive behaviors in the school setting; in effect, to keep the problem from worsening and protect the student and those around him or her. A tertiary prevention plan is typically formulated by a team of school and community professionals (e.g., school psychologists, mental health professionals, agency representatives) working collaboratively with the student’s parents. The student frequently receives a variety of services in and out of the school setting in what has come to be called a “wraparound” organizational structure. Multiple supports and services are “wrapped around” the student and, in many cases, the family in an effort to prevent problems from advancing to a more serious level. Indicated measures may involve skills training and individualized academic programming in the general or alternative school setting paired with family and community interventions.
Conclusions Preventing school violence is a critical endeavor that requires training, organization, and ongoing commitment on the parts of those individuals responsible for its implementation. A fully integrated approach to school violence prevention brings together an understanding of childhood risk factors, skilled school and community professionals, and evidence-supported universal, selected, and indicted procedures to create a safe learning environment for students and staff members.
References Aber, J.L., Brown, J.L., Jones, S.M., 2003. Developmental trajectories toward violence in middle childhood: course, demographics, differences, and response to school-based intervention. Dev. Psychol. 39, 324–348. Hawkins, D.J., Herrenkohl, T., Farrington, D.P., Brewer, D., Catalano, R.F., Harachi, T.W., 1998. A review of the predictors of youth violence. In: Loeber, R., Farington, D.P. (Eds.), Serious and Violent Juvenile Offenders: Risk Factors and Successful Interventions. Sage Publishers, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 106–146. Larson, J., Mark, S., 2014. Best practices in school violence prevention. In: Thomas, A., Harrison, P. (Eds.), Best Practices in School Psychology. National Association of School Psychologists, Silver Spring, MD, pp. 231–234. Nohria, N., Lawrence, P., Wilson, E., 2001. Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco. Pepler, D.J., Slaby, R.G., 1994. Theoretical and developmental perspectives on youth and violence. In: Eron, L.D., Gentry, J.H., Schlegel, P. (Eds.), Reason to Hope: A Psychosocial Perspective on Violence & Youth. American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, pp. 27–58. Shaw, D.S., Gilliom, M., Ingoldsby, E.M., Nagin, D.S., 2003. Trajectories leading to school-age conduct problems. Dev. Psychol. 39, 189–200. Walker, H.M., Horner, R.H., Sugai, G., Bullis, M., Sprague, J.R., Bricker, D., Kaufman, M.J., 1996. Integrated approaches to preventing antisocial behavior patterns in among school-age children and youth. J. Emot. Behav. Disord. 4, 194–209.
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Further Reading Brock, S.E., Jimerson, S.R., 2012. Best Practices in School Crisis Prevention and Intervention, second ed. National Association of School Psychologists, Bethesda, MD. Eber, L., 2003. The Art and Science of Wraparound: Completing the Continuum of Schoolwide Behavioral Support. The Forum on Education at Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. Fast, J., 2008. Ceremonial Violence: A Psychological Explanation of School Shootings. The Overlook Press, New York. Garbarino, J., 2008. See Jane Hit: Why Girls are Growing More Violent and What We Can Do About It. The Penguin Press, New York. Hinduja, S., Patchin, J.W., 2015. Bullying Beyond the Schoolyard: Preventing and Responding to Cyberbullying, second ed. Corwin, Thousand Oaks, CA. Jimerson, S.R., Swearer, S.M., Espelage, D.L., 2010. Handbook of Bullying in Schools: An International Perspective. Routledge, New York. Jimerson, S.R., Nickerson, A.B., Mayer, M.J., Furlong, M.J., 2012. Handbook of School Violence and School Safety: International Research and Practice, second ed. Routledge, New York. Larson, J., Lochman, J.E., 2011. Helping Schoolchildren Cope with Anger: A Cognitive-behavioral Intervention, second ed. Guilford Press, New York.