School violence includes violence between school students as well as attacks by students on school staff and attacks by school staff on students. It encompasses physical violence, including student-on-student fighting, corporal punishment; psychological violence such as verbal abuse, and sexual violence, including rape and sexual harassment. It includes many forms of bullying (including cyberbullying) and carrying weapons to school. The one or more perpetrators typically have more physical, social, and/or psychological power than the victim. It is a widely accepted serious societal problem in recent decades in many countries, especially where weapons such as guns or knives are involved.
Forms of school violence and different types of bullying
School violence occurs in all countries and affects a significant number of children and adolescents. It is mostly perpetrated by peers but, in some cases, is perpetrated by teachers and other school staff. School violence includes physical, psychological and sexual violence.
Bullying
Bullying, in its broadest sense, can be defined as a form of aggressive behavior characterized by unwelcome and negative actions. It entails a recurring pattern of incidents over time, as opposed to isolated conflicts, and typically manifests in situations where there exists an imbalance of power or strength among the individuals involved.
Various forms of bullying exist, including physical, psychological, sexual, and cyber-bullying. 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. Just as externalizing behaviors are observed outside of school, such behaviors also observed in schools. Lower IQ seems to be related to higher levels of aggression. Other findings indicate that motor, attention, and reading problems predict later persistent antisocial conduct in boys.
Home environment
The influence of the home environment on school violence has been a subject of study from the Constitutional Rights Foundation. According to this foundation, various factors within the home contribute to the acceptance of criminal and violent behavior among children. Long-term exposure to gun violence, parental alcoholism, domestic violence, physical abuse, and child sexual abuse all play a role in shaping children's perception of acceptability regarding such activities. Research indicates a correlation between harsh parental discipline and increased levels of aggression in youth. and, to a lesser extent, violent video games has been linked to heightened aggressiveness in children. These aggressive tendencies can carry over into school environments.
One line of research, led by Straus, suggests that parental corporal punishment heightens the risk of aggressive behavior in children and adolescents. However, these findings have been challenged by Larzelere and Baumrind. Nonetheless, a comprehensive meta-analysis of numerous studies on corporal punishment suggests that it leads to unfavorable outcomes for children and young people. The most methodologically sound studies demonstrate a "positive, moderately sized association between parental corporal punishment and children's aggression". This model highlights the dynamic between the mother's use of coercive behaviors and the child's counter-application of such behaviors. Coercive behaviors can include actions that are typically punishing, such as whining, yelling, and hitting. Abusive home environments can hinder the development of social cognitive skills necessary for understanding others' intentions. Short-term longitudinal evidence supports the idea that a lack of social cognitive skills mediates the relationship between harsh parental discipline and aggressive behavior in kindergarten. Follow-up studies indicate that the mediating effects persist until third and fourth grade. Hirschi's cross-sectional data from northern California largely support this view. and longitudinal studies also align with this perspective.
Neighbourhood environment
Neighbourhoods 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. Children in violent neighborhoods tend to perceive that their communities are risky, and that these feelings of vulnerability carry over to the school environment. Dilapidated housing in the neighbourhood of the school has been found to be associated with school violence. Exposure to deviant peers is a risk factor for high levels of aggressivity. 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. Neighbourhood 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 neighbourhoods into some schools. Alternatively, many children who grow up in violent neighborhoods learn to deliberately find and make "street-oriented" friends as an instrumental tactic used to avoid being victimized. Teacher assaults are associated with a higher percentage of the male faculty, a higher proportion of male students, and a higher proportion of students receiving free or reduced cost lunch (an indicator of poverty). In students, academic performance is inversely related to antisocial conduct.
- 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. 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.
- 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. The CDC suggests schools promote classroom management techniques, cooperative learning, and close student supervision. At the elementary school level, the group behavioral intervention known as the Good Behavior Game helps reduce classroom disruption and promotes prosocial classroom interactions. 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. Other school-wide strategies are aimed at reducing or eliminating bullying and organizing the local police to better combat gang violence.
- 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. 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. Unfortunately, teacher training curricula tend not to include preventive and interventive skills regarding school violence.
Not only does physical violence in schools affect its victims, it also affects the witnesses. In elementary schools, young students tend to copy their peers actions in schools, which may lead to more physical harm towards other students.
- Some intervention programs are aimed at improving family relationships. and long term. Patterson's home intervention program involving mothers has been shown to reduce aggressive conduct in children. 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.
- Bullying prevention programs such as Olweus provides materials for educators that will train them on how to mediate a bullying situation as well as procedures to take if a child is suicidal.
Challenges in measuring violence in schools
According to a UNESCO report on school violence and bullying, research on violence affecting children in schools is challenging for a variety of reasons.
To mitigate these concerns, UNESCO argues that questions regarding sexual orientation and gender identity should be handled with care and recommends that inquiries be conducted under confidentiality and anonymity, external to the school environment.