Imitating Authority

Abstract

Researchers and the public have devoted increasing attention over the past few years to the issue of school punishment and security. Racial disproportionality in school suspension and arrests at school and the resulting “school-to-prison pipeline” have been the most visible concerns. Others have questioned whether excessive school punishment might contribute to problems at school such as a negative school social climate, student alienation, and increased rates of student misbehavior. In this article, we contribute to the growing body of research on this topic by exploring whether students’ negative perceptions of school rules, punishments, and security practices relate to a previously unexplored potential consequence, that is, rates of bullying victimization. Using the 2009 School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey, we find that students who perceive school rules as unfair and poorly communicated are indeed at greater risk of bullying victimization, relative to other students.

Trust and Discipline: Adolescents’ Institutional and Teacher Trust Predict Classroom Behavioral Engagement following Teacher Discipline

“…Disciplinary action is often a necessary means to improve student behavior and maintain school order and safety (Brand, Felner, Shim, Seitsinger, & Dumas, 2003;Kupchik & Farina, 2016). Yet, implementing discipline in ways that actually promotes positive behavior continues to be a challenge for educators, particularly during the developmental period of adolescence (Eccles & Roeser, 2013;Gregory, Skiba, & Noguera, 2010).…”

Identifying and intervening to stop school bullying: the role of school resource officers

“…Their study's results showed that the items in the index were not inherently related to physical or verbal bullying. Similarly, Kupchik and Farina (2016) found no clear association between the presence of security guards or police officers and bullying victimization in schools.…”

“…According to the 2017-18 school survey on crime and safety (Padgett et al, 2019), roughly 51% of US public schools had a sworn law enforcement officer present at school at least once a week (National Center for Education Statistics, 2020). However, despite such levels of saturation, few studies have examined SROs in the context of bullying prevention Gerlinger and Wo, 2016;Kupchik and Farina, 2016). examined whether SROs affect the degree of bullying in schools, through the use of a difference-in-difference identification strategy geared toward schools that had introduced, discontinued or continued using officers.…”

“…Given its pervasiveness, efforts toward the prevention of bullying will often involve all of a school's personnel and have recently been extended to incorporate school resource officers (SROs). While several prior studies have examined the role of SROs in terms of the overall safety of schools (Crawford and Burns, 2016;McKenna et al, 2016;Popp, 2012;Wolf, 2014), few have focused on their role concerning adolescent bullying Gerlinger and Wo, 2016;Kupchik and Farina, 2016;Robles-Piñ a and Denham, 2012). Specifically, there has been little research to date that investigates the role of SROs in bullying prevention (Broll and Lafferty, 2018;Paez, 2020).…”

A Call for the Conceptual Integration of Opportunity Structures Within School Safety Research

“…Another major example of shifting norms concerns calls to defund school police associated with the recent Black Lives Matter (2020) social movement and documented concerns about the role of school police in the school-toprison pipeline (Mallett, 2015). Social movements have direct effects on safety-related policies such as zero tolerance, school closures in poor neighborhoods, and funding equity patterns (Kupchik & Farina, 2016).…”