School violence

School violence is widely held to have become a serious problem in recent decades in many countries, especially where weapons such as guns or knives are involved. It includes violence between school students as well as physical attacks by students on school staff.

Risk factors

Internalizing and externalizing behaviors

A distinction is made between internalizing and externalizing behavior. Internalizing behaviors reflect withdrawal, inhibition, anxiety, and/or depression. Internalizing behavior has been found in some cases of youth violence although in some youth, depression is associated with substance abuse. Because they rarely act out, students with internalizing problems are often overlooked by school personnel.^[1] Externalizing behaviors refer to delinquent activities, aggression, and hyperactivity. Unlike internalizing behaviors, externalizing behaviors include, or are directly linked to, violent episodes. Violent behaviors such as punching and kicking are often learned from observing others.^[2][3] Just as externalizing behaviors are observed outside of school, such behaviors also observed in schools.^[1]

Other individual factors

A number of other individual factors are associated with higher levels of aggressiveness. Compared to children whose antisocial conduct begins in adolescence, early starters have a worse prognosis in terms of future aggression and other antisocial activities.^[4] Lower IQ is related to higher levels of aggression.^[5][6][7] Other findings indicate that in boys early problematic motor skills, attentional difficulties, and reading problems predict later persistent antisocial conduct.^[8]

Home environment

The home environment is thought to contribute to school violence. The Constitutional Rights Foundation suggests long-term exposure to gun violence, parental alcoholism, domestic violence, physical abuse of the child, and child sexual abuse teaches children that criminal and violent activities are acceptable.^[9] Harsh parental discipline is associated with higher levels of aggressiveness in youth.^[10] There is some evidence indicating that exposure to television violence^[11][12] and, to a lesser extent, violent video games^[13] is related to increased aggressiveness in children, which, in turn, may carry over into school.

Straus adduced evidence for the view that exposure to parental corporal punishment increases the risk of aggressive conduct in children and adolescents.^[14] Straus's findings have been contested by Larzelere^[15] and Baumrind.^[16][17] A meta-analysis of the vast literature on corporal punishment, however, indicates that corporal punishment is related to poorer outcomes in children and youth.^[18] The methodologically soundest studies indicate "positive, moderately sized associations between parental corporal punishment and children’s aggression."^[19] Gershoff found that the trajectory of mean effect sizes (the size of the effect of corporal punishment on children's problem behavior) was curvilinear with the largest mean effect size in middle school (M = 0.55; on average the mean of corporal punishment group was more than half a standard deviation higher than the mean of the non-punishment group) and slightly smaller effect sizes in grade school (M = 0.43) and high school (M = 0.45).

Gerald Patterson’s social interactional model, which involves the mother’s application and the child's counterapplication of coercive behaviors, also explains the development of aggressive conduct in the child.^[20][21] In this context, coercive behaviors include behaviors that are ordinarily punishing (e.g., whining, yelling, hitting, etc.). Abusive home environments can inhibit the growth of social cognitive skills needed, for example, to understand the intentions of others.^[9][22] Short-term longitudinal evidence is consistent with the view that a lack of social cognitive skills mediates the link between harsh parental discipline and aggressive conduct in kindergarten.^[23] Longer-term, follow-up research with the same children suggests that partial mediating effects last until third and fourth grade.^[22] Hirschi's (1969) control theory advances the view that children with weak affective ties to parents and school are at increased risk of engaging in delinquent and violent behavior in and out of school.^[24] Hirschi's cross-sectional data from northern California high-school students are largely consistent with this view.^[24] Findings from case-control^[10] and longitudinal studies^[25][26] are also consistent with this view.

Neighborhood environment

Neighborhoods and communities provide the context for school violence. Communities with high rates of crime and drug use teach youth the violent behaviors that are carried into schools.^{[9][27][28][29]} Dilapidated housing in the neighborhood of the school has been found to be associated with school violence.^[30] Teacher assault was more likely to occur in schools located in high-crime neighborhoods.^[31] Exposure to deviant peers is a risk factor for high levels of aggressivity.^[3][7] Research has shown that poverty and high population densities are associated with higher rates of school violence.^[27] Well controlled longitudinal research indicates that children's exposure to community violence during the early elementary school years increases the risk of aggression later in elementary school, as reported by teachers and classmates.^[32] Other, well controlled longitudinal research that utilized propensity score matching indicates that exposure to gun violence in early adolescence is related to the initiation of serious physical violence in later adolescence.^[33] Neighborhood gangs are thought to contribute to dangerous school environments. Gangs use the social environment of the school to recruit members and interact with opposing groups, with gang violence carrying over from neighborhoods into some schools.^[34]

School environment

Recent research has linked the school environment to school violence.^[30][35] Teacher assaults are associated with a higher percentage male faculty, a higher proportion of male students, and a higher proportion of students receiving free or reduced cost lunch (an indicator of poverty).^[31] In general, a large male population, higher grade levels, a history of high levels of disciplinary problems in the school, high student to teacher ratios, and an urban location are related to violence in schools.^[30][36] In students, academic performance is inversely related to antisocial conduct.^[5][37] The research by Hirschi^[24] and others,^[10][25][26] cited above in the section on the home environment, is also consistent with the view that lack of attachment to school is associated with increased risk of antisocial conduct.

Prevention and intervention

The goal of prevention and intervention strategies is to stop school violence from occurring. According to the CDC, there are at least four levels at which violence-prevention programs can act: at the level of society in general, the school community, the family, and the individual.^[38]

• Society-level prevention strategies aim to change social and cultural conditions in order to reduce violence regardless of where the violence occurs. Examples include reducing media violence, reshaping social norms, and restructuring educational systems.^[37] The strategies are rarely used and difficult to implement.
  • Now Is The Time is a federal initiative developed in 2013 in response to the growing number of gun related school violence incidents. The initiative will provide funding and resources to schools in an effort to reduce gun violence in schools. Funding will be provided for implementation of school interventions and training teachers and staff, programs that will support the mental and physical health of students, conflict resolution programs to reduce further school violence, and restoration of school environment after a violent incident.^[39]
• School-wide strategies are designed to modify the school characteristics that are associated with violence. An avenue of psychological research is the reduction of violence and incivility, particularly the development of interventions at the level of the school.^[40][41][42] The CDC suggests schools promote classroom management techniques, cooperative learning, and close student supervision.^[37][43] At the elementary school level, the group behavioral intervention known as the Good Behavior Game helps reduce classroom disruption and promotes prosocial classroom interactions.^[44][45] There is some evidence that the Second Step curriculum, which is concerned with promoting impulse control and empathy among second and third graders, produces reductions in physically aggressive behavior.^[46] Other school-wide strategies are aimed at reducing or eliminating bullying^{[47][48][49][50]} and organizing the local police to better combat gang violence.^[51]
  • The implementation of school-wide early-warning systems, the school equivalent of a DEW Line-like surveillance operation designed to "prevent the worst cases of school violence," has been problematic.^[40] Recent developments in early threat assessment, however, show promise.^[52] Violence-prevention efforts can also be usefully directed at developing anti-bullying programs, helping teachers with classroom-management strategies, applying behavioral strategies such as the Good Behavior Game, implementing curricular innovations such as the Second Step syllabus, developing programs to strengthen families (see below), and implementing programs aimed at enhancing the social and academic skills of at-risk students (see below).
• Teachers are the professional group who works directly where school bullying takes place and who spends the most time with both bullies, victims and bystanders. Thus, whether and how teachers intervene in the case of bullying is of great importance. Research has shown that teachers prefer authority-based interventions towards bullies but seem to neglect to support the victims.^[53] Unfortunately, most teacher training curricula do not include preventive and interventive skills regarding school violence.^[54]

• Some intervention programs are aimed at improving family relationships.^[37] There is some evidence that such intervention strategies have modest effects on the behavior of children in the short^[55][56] and long term.^[57] Patterson's home intervention program involving mothers has been shown to reduce aggressive conduct in children.^[20] An important question concerns the extent to which the influence of the program carries over into the child's conduct in school.
• Some prevention and intervention programs focus on individual-level strategies. These programs are aimed at students who exhibit aggression and violent behaviors or are at risk for engaging in such behaviors. Some programs include conflict resolution and team problem-solving.^[37] Other programs teach students social skills.^[58] The Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, while developing and implementing a universal anti-aggression component for all elementary school children, also developed and implemented a separate social-skills and academic tutoring component that targets children who are the most at risk for engaging in aggressive behavior.^[59][60]

See also

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to School violence.

• U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. (2009).Indicators of school crime and safety 2009.
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2010). Understanding school violence: Fact sheet.
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2009). Youth violence: National and state statistics at a glance.
• Schonfeld I.S. (2006). School Violence. In E.K. Kelloway, J. Barling, & J.J. Hurrell, Jr. (eds.). Handbook of workplace violence (pp. 169–229). Thousand Oaks, California, USA: Sage Publications.
• Using Canines to Address School Violence (FBI)