School safety and violence: Research and clinical understandings, trends, and improvement strategies

Abstract

Feeling and being safe provides an essential foundation for children to learn and develop in healthy ways. I will summarize the current research and clinically based understanding about K‐12 school violence and school safety. I summarize prevalence rates that underscore that school violence is tragically common. I then outline the spectrum of experiences that undermine safety in schools: from normal moments of misunderstanding to microaggressions to mental illness to international acts of verbal/cyber cruelty to “grey zone” sexual‐social‐emotional experiences, harassment, and rape as well as natural disasters, assault, murder, and suicide. I then summarize research‐based policy and practice steps that we can take that will dramatically enhance how safe students feel and are in schools: (1) Supporting prosocial universal K‐12 improvement efforts for all students; (2) Supporting coordinated educational, “at risk” and targeted K‐12 interventions; (3) Addressing weapons in schools; and (4) Preventing school shootings. Schools are one of the safest places for children and adolescents to be physically. However, this is often not true psychosocially. Today, there is so much that we do understand about how to promote individual and organizational health as well as prevent school violence and intervene most helpfully when it does occur.

School safety starts in the classroom

“…As Jonathan Cohen writes, too often we focus efforts to improve safety in schools on bullying, weapons and shootings, but "there is a significantly wider spectrum of experiences that undermine children feeling safe and being safe" (Cohen, 2021). Cohen names the fatal coronavirus pandemic, natural disasters and violence in streets and homes as contexts relevant to any discussion of safety inside our schools.…”

“…Cohen discusses classroom instruction as part of what he calls "prosocial universal k-12 improvement efforts, " one of the four broad approaches for enhancing "how safe students feel and are in schools" (Cohen, 2021). In a couple of key passages, Cohen remarks the importance of teachers helping students have effective discussions and choosing rich content for those discussions.…”

“…Effective discussion norms and protocols are relevant at all levels of school life, from the classroom to the faculty meeting to parent and community forms. Cohen notes, specific to teachers working with children, "it is only rarely that we teach children how to recognize and helpfully address micro-aggressions in particular and to have controversial or difficult conversations in general" (Cohen, 2021). Cohen goes on to cite the important work of Hess and McAvoy (2014), research that affirms that "learning how to have constructive controversial conversations is an essential foundation for healthy relationships on the one hand and democracy on the other" (Cohen, 2021).…”

“…In addition to "prosocial universal k-12 improvement efforts, " Cohen names three other areas of focus to help increase safety in schools: "supporting coordinated educational, 'at risk' and targeted k-12 interventions, " "addressing weapons in schools, " and "preventing school shootings" (Cohen, 2021). Each of these domains is important.…”

“…Cohen's paper largely-and appropriately-centers on the first two areas. When it comes to preventing shootings, Cohen remarks that too much attention to school fortification is "largely unhelpful" when it comes to addressing the circumstances that make students feel unsafe and act unsafely in schools (Cohen, 2021).…”