Handbook of moral development
Melanie Killen and Judith Smetana (Eds), 2005
Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
$195.00, 808 pp.
ISBN: 0‐8058‐4751‐0
The first and most welcome service provided by Melanie Killen and Judith Smetana's Handbook is that it displays the vitality of the moral development field at the present time. The range, richness, and interest of the research reviewed across this Handbook's 26 chapters is impressive, even for someone who is already familiar with the field and its traditions. All this makes this Handbook a must‐read for those who wish to stay on top of the field's many recent developments − indeed, it is hard for me to imagine a better way to become acquainted with the entire spectrum of studies that this book surveys.
Beyond the Handbook's usefulness as a timely source for moral development research, it also presents a number of world‐class chapters that synthesize work on important topics in ways that are particularly informative. Not every chapter in the Handbook rises to this standard, but Daniel Lapsley's chapter on stage theory, Lawrence Walker's on gender, Paul Hastings and colleagues' chapter on the biological bases of caring, and Darcia Narvaez' chapter on education were written, with exceptional objectivity and clarity. These chapters, along with some sections of several other chapters, offer what handbooks at their best are supposed to do: provide an authoritative treatment of material that needs to be integrated in powerful and insightful ways if its is to be digested by a readership beyond the narrow circle of research specialists that write its chapters.
Killen and Smetana's Handbook also succeeds in capturing the multidisciplinary nature of the field's knowledge base. The book includes insights from psychology, biology, sociology anthropology and education. Yet sociology and, more strangely, philosophy have been mostly excluded. These omissions are unfortunate, because not only do they restrict the sources of data available to readers, but they inevitably (although no doubt unintentionally) slant the ideological positioning of the Handbook.
From Emile Durkheim to Amitai Etzioni, sociologists have approached morality from a traditionalist, collectivist and communal orientation: the whole society, after all, is sociologists' chosen unit of analysis, and respect for society's rules is the coin of their realm. If this Handbook had included more sociological material, we would find more emphasis in it on social cohesion and solidarity as moral priorities, rather than on justice and individual rights. In addition, sociologists in the tradition of Durkheim, Robert Bellah, and Robert Wuthnow have paid attention to the considerable influence of religion on the formation and expression of moral belief, in contrast to most of psychology's myopia on the matter. Any comprehensive coverage of morality needs to grapple with its religious roots if it is to be taken seriously.
Similarly, the field of philosophy as a whole had found a balance between the moral claims of individuals and collectives; and, again unlike mainstream psychology (at least post William James), philosophy has ventured into the realm of the spiritual and the divine in human experience. Thus the omission of systematic philosophical discourse from this volume severely handicaps its capacity to achieve ideological diversity and comprehensive coverage of morality in all its manifestations.
Though desirable, ideological diversity and comprehensiveness are not everything, and, indeed, these may be too much to ask for in contemporary academic discourse, as polemical and specialized as it has become. Within the frameworks of justice and care that are most familiar to psychologists, this Handbook makes some welcome new contributions.
The initial chapter by Eliot Turiel makes forcefully an essential point all too rarely understood in the polemics that have plagued this field. Referring to claims that moral reasoning is nothing more than mere rationalization, Turiel notes that the supposed ‘evidence’ offered for these claims is highly limited and not representative of human morality in all its complexity. For example, the claim that morality is purely emotional and intuitive in nature has been supported with reference to the common revulsion that we all feel at the thought of taboos such as incest. As Turiel writes, incest and other fundamental taboos do not exactly exhaust our moral concerns! Any theory that aspires to explain the full range of our moral senses – our caring for others, our felt obligation to society, our standards of common decency, our commitments to ideals such as truth and fairness, our desires to make the world a better place – cannot allow itself to sink into simplistic reductionism. In driving this point home, Turiel sets a tone for the volume which the Handbook, by and large, lives up to: the Handbook's chapters, for the most part, are serious in their efforts to deal with the range and complexities of morality.
Nevertheless, the efforts are incomplete, and even Turiel indulges in a reductionism of sorts when he ascribes virtually all behavioural choices to the conscious cognitive judgements that individuals make − judgements such as whether something is really a moral issue and, if so, how important that issue is in relation to other moral issues raised by a particular context. Without disputing Turiel's valuable contention that this kind of reasoning can play an active role in conduct choice, I would also emphasize the important role of other processes that Turiel dismisses − learned habit, divine intimations, gut feeling and all the less‐than‐conscious processes that influence most of our daily experience and action. Theory‐building should not be an exercise in winning arguments, but rather an effort to integrate insights from every source that can shed light on the matter. In a matter as multifaceted as human morality, multiple sources from as many vantage points as possible are required.
The Handbook's greatest failing is its irregular treatment of the crucial concept ‘culture’ throughout. The lone exception is Joan Miller's chapter. Miller, a cultural psychologist, helpfully goes to the trouble of telling us what she means by the term (‘culture is understood in symbolic terms as meanings and practices …’) p. 376. Her chapter then presents a coherent research that draws contrasts among various symbolic meaning and practice systems in the moral domain. We can agree or not with the research that she cites, or with her interpretations and conclusions, but at the very least we know what the subject of analysis is.
In other Handbook chapters, the concept of ‘culture’ is conflated with the concept of society, so that we are left puzzling over what counts as a cultural experience in everyday life and in the course of human development. Is a cultural belief the same as any socially induced belief or attitude? Is a cultural experience any community‐based social interaction, or is it a particular exposure to some kinds of traditional belief or practice? What is a ‘cultural group’− who's in and who's out? Does social conflict or rebellion mean that a culture is divided, sending ‘mixed messages’; or does it mean that people in any society partake of many cultural views simultaneously? I do not see how it will be possible to examine the role of culture in human development without first settling on a definition of culture that is distinct from generic social interactions. My hope is that, by the time of the following edition of this Handbook (and the publication certainly deserves to go into many subsequent editions), this key conceptual issue will be resolved carefully and with consistency across the chapters.
William Damon
Center for Adolescence, Stanford University, Cypress Hall C, Stanford, CA 94305‐4145, USA, [email protected]
Nebraska symposium on motivation: Vol. 51. Moral motivation through the life span
Gustavo Carlo and Carolyn Pope Edwards (Eds), 2005
Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press
$50.00 (clothbound), 296 pp.
ISBN: 0‐8032‐1549‐5
The organizers of the Nebraska Symposium on Motivation have, at long last, focused their lens on the topic of moral motivation. The product is this significant volume that presents, in a prismatic light, various theoretical and empirical perspectives on an issue of pressing concern to the field of moral psychology. The volume's value is enhanced because, unlike many edited books, the contributors here are tackling a common conceptual problem, a feature which helpfully casts the critical issues into stronger relief. The six symposiasts are eminent scholars in the field of moral development, well‐chosen to proffer persuasive albeit competing accounts of moral motivation: Jerome Kagan, Ervin Staub, Nancy Eisenberg, Darcia Narvaez, Dan Hart and Clark Power.
The crucial issue is one that many laypeople would readily identify as fundamental − what really motivates moral action? − but it is one that extant theories of moral development have not yet been able to resolve compellingly; indeed, most have accorded it minimal attention. This failure can be attributed, at least in part, to the inherent complexity of the moral domain (as it obviously involves the dynamic interplay of many aspects of human functioning) and the consequent simplification of focus by most theoretical perspectives. For example, the once‐dominant cognitive‐developmental approach assumed the primacy of moral reason and its motivating power for behaviour. However, the accumulated evidence reveals that moral judgement turns out to be only weakly predictive of moral action. In contrast, various emotivist perspectives, which now seem to be in ascendancy, perhaps do better in accounting for ‘hot’ aspects of affective motivation but struggle in providing adequate criteria for defining the moral quality of actions. It is the nature of this cognitive/affective linkage as it underlies moral behaviour that is hugely relevant for a more comprehensive understanding of moral functioning, as well as for more efficacious paradigms of moral education and other interventions.
In reviewing an edited book, it is perhaps helpful to explore the main contribution of each chapter, particularly as it pertains to the overarching issue we have identified. The editors (Gus Carlo and Carolyn Pope Edwards), in their introductory chapter, provide a brief historical overview to the challenge of moral motivation and then discuss the various themes that frame the volume. Their introduction provides an invaluable orientation to the topic.
At the core of Kagan's wide‐ranging chapter is an emphasis on the early (and hence predominantly affective) bases for morality. His style vacillates between philosophical richness, on the one hand, and unapologetically ad hoc and unsubstantiated on the other, as he makes the case for the significance of various developmental phenomena in the emergence of moral awareness and moral behaviours. Some of these important phenomena include: schema for proper versus prohibited actions; empathy‐related responding; awareness of others' thoughts and feelings; emotions of shame and guilt (and the self‐consciousness they entail); acquisition of the semantic categories of good and bad; and, finally, recognition of the values and ethical requirements of the social categories to which one belongs. He further contends that variability in these moral emotions is partly attributable to temperament. Kagan's focus on moral affectivity and biological predispositions is explicitly conjoined with a contextualized view of moral evaluation − the consequence is that his arguments become stuck in the quagmire of ethical relativism.
Staub contends that the evolving fulfilment of basic human needs powerfully motivates moral functioning. His typology of needs includes: security, agency and control; interpersonal connections; a positive identity; autonomy; comprehension of reality; contentment with life; and self‐transcendence. Although Staub does not address the validity of this typology nor compare it to competing models, he does, most helpfully, outline the socialization experiences that foster their fulfilment, most of which should be considered integral to models of moral education. Additionally, Staub discusses the determinants and development of extraordinary moral action − inclusive caring (beyond one's in‐group), moral courage (in the face of opposition) and resilient altruism (arising from a context of victimization).
In Eisenberg's framework, emotional factors figure at least as prominently as rational ones in explaining moral motivation. Her review of a significant body of research (much of it her own) provides the basis for her fundamental (albeit unsurprising) claim that moral behaviours can indeed be predicted from emotional responding. She further argues that this relationship is enhanced by: careful differentiations across types of emotions; consideration of the motivational factors inherent in various moral behaviours; and attention to the mediating role of other variables in this relationship, including moral reasoning, temperament, emotion regulation and socialization experiences. The advances in our understanding of moral motivation apparent here demonstrate the utility of careful conceptualizations integrated with systematic psychological research.
A spirited defence of the essential role of cognitive variables in moral motivation is proffered by Narvaez in her chapter. Here she moves beyond the traditional strictures of the cognitive‐developmental model and instead advances constructs of contemporary cognitive science and social‐cognitive psychology, notably the concepts of schemas and expert functioning. Such concepts yield some critical advantages in conceptualizing moral motivation. They provide a means to link content and structure in moral knowledge; they reflect the significance of tacit moral understandings; and they impart a dynamic view of moral personality as entailing the construction of chronically accessible schemas that motivate and automate moral behaviours. Narvaez is not reticent about educational applications; indeed, she provides fulsome suggestions for fostering moral schemas and ethical expertise. This, however, points to the necessity of research that examines developmental processes in the acquisition and activation of these aspects of moral motivation.
Hart advocates the notion of moral identity as figuring large in our understanding of moral motivation, and illustrates its utility through reference to both egregious moral failures and exemplary moral commitments. Most heuristic is his model of moral identity formation which, at a distal level, emphasizes the role of personality characteristics and enduring social influences (such as family and community), and which, at a proximal level, emphasizes the interactive significance of moral reflection, a sense of self and opportunities for moral action. Data from several large national studies are used to demonstrate the efficacy of the model in predicting volunteer community service. Whereas such service is often commendable, it is not entirely unambiguous from a moral perspective. The predictability of the model now needs to be extended to a range of other moral behaviours.
The construct of moral self‐worth is central to Powers' understanding of moral motivation, which he argues convincingly in his philosophically elaborated chapter. He contends that self‐esteem provides two potential sources of moral motivation: One is earned self‐esteem that arises when people appraise their self‐worth by criteria that entail meeting one's moral aspirations and ideals. (Note, however, that many people base their self‐esteem on essentially amoral criteria and thus, for them, moral standards lack motivational force.) The notion of earned self‐worth is also somewhat problematic in that ego‐defending rationalization processes can function to preserve self‐esteem even in the face of significant moral failure. The corrupting power of these self‐enhancing processes needs to be better accounted for in our models of moral motivation. The second source of moral motivation is the realization of inherent self‐worth, based on a fundamental respect accorded to all persons, which, in Powers' view, is suggestive of transcendent spiritual concerns. Powers has here provided a worthwhile conceptual framework; the field can now move to a systematic empirical examination of the psychological mechanisms by which a spiritual framework can motivate moral action.
This Nebraska Symposium advances the field productively toward developing a comprehensive and compelling answer to the basic conundrum, ‘What really motivates moral action?’
Dr Lawrence J. Walker, Jeremy A. Frimer
Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada, [email protected] and [email protected]
Learning to live together: preventing hatred and violence in child and adolescent development
David A Hamburg and Beatrix A Hamburg, 2004
New York, Oxford University Press
$19.95, 432 pp.
ISBN: 10: 0‐19‐515‐779‐6, ISBN13: 978‐0‐19‐515‐779‐6
In Learning to Live Together, Hamburg and Hamburg take an exceptionally comprehensive and detailed look at the aetiology of hatred and violence, and also the ways in which these behaviours can be prevented. Their book can be characterized as one that transcends the often arbitrary boundaries of social scientific and other disciplines, which all examine some small part of the aetiology of these behaviours. In addition to mechanisms related to psychological and human development, the book carefully analyses biological and evolutionary mechanisms, as well as historical, political and ideological accounts and mechanisms of both hatred and violence, and thus provides in essence a fully contextualized view of what leads human beings to be apparently unable to live together. They also closely examine modern day challenges faced by human beings as a whole, including the impact by media, the Internet and a global culture.
One of the most poignant examples in human history of how hatred and violence has led to the killing and extermination of an entire people is what happened in Germany under the leadership of the Nazi regime. The authors use this ‘vivid historical example’ to illustrate how human beings can be readily indoctrinated to hate, can be readily indoctrinated to discriminate against and ultimately, in the name of higher ideological ideals, perform almost ritualized mass murder – all the time supervised by an authoritarian parent, the state. They provide evidence of how children and youth were indoctrinated to hate as part of youth programmes in the guise of higher social and ‘Vaterland’ ideals, how parents were taught how to socialize their children and what to believe in, and how adults were in essence programmed to celebrate sexist gender roles that supported state‐sanctioned goals and ideals. This process also included dehumanizing the victims and creating a ‘Feindbild’ that ultimately would make killing easy. What happened in Nazi Germany is that the social learning and indoctrination was coupled with biological propensities – propensities which apparently promoted survival at one time in the distal evolutionary past, when there were clear survival advantages to maul and kill an unknown or unfamiliar stranger – unknown or unfamiliar for any reason. Nazi Germany and its genocides seem such a distant memory, though only 60 years in our past; surprisingly, much of Europe (including entire countries) is still coming to grips with what happened then. Hamburg and Hamburg make it very clear that a number of parallel socialization and indoctrination efforts are currently underway today, thus setting the stage for additional ritualized maulings, killings and genocides, in the name of some apparently higher ideal. Such efforts are being carried out in madrasas, educational settings that ‘breed[s] holy warriors in Pakistan’ (p. 56), where children are taught that the United States and other Western nations, comprised of Jews and Christians, have as their life goal to annihilate Muslims; some estimates suggest that up to 750,000 youth are being indoctrinated in over 750 such schools. Recent human history is replete with unfounded hatred, violence and genocides, based on ‘Feindbilder’, including ones in Rwanda or in the former Yugoslav republics.
The solution is not simple. Hamburg and Hamburg provide an extensive analysis and examples from the social scientific literature, which illustrate the importance of teaching and internalizing prosocial behaviours and empathy, as well as instilling values consistent with diversity and differences; this socialization process also includes discouraging rather than celebrating aggression and violence in young children and throughout life, in effect systematically overcoming the biological propensities from a distant past. To this effect, the authors discuss advocacy as well as strategies for global cooperation and positive intergroup relationships that include school mediation, conflict resolution, and community service programmes; they also present information on and discuss preventative interventions for childhood (e.g., prenatal care, child care), early adolescence (e.g., Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, extracurricular groups, such as 4‐H, Girls Incorporated, and The Junior League) and middle adolescence (e.g., teaching conflict resolution in schools, managing conflict, and resolution programmes). In this sense, the book is also an excellent tool for undergraduate and graduate students as it provides assessments of programs and particular ways in which, collectively, collaboration can lead to the construction of a global belief system, one characterized by human rights and well‐being, and one which promotes commonalities across peoples, as well as diversity across populations.
Though some burden falls on parents or caregivers early in a child's life, the burden also lies with teachers, schools, social institutions, entire societies or nations, and any mechanism of influence on the development of human beings. These also include what seem to be rather ‘innocent’ influences, such as the Internet, the media and so forth. The authors in fact suggest that social goals must become part and parcel of human socialization, such that hatred and violence should be addressed as public health problems and that they should be dealt within much the same fashion as any other life‐threatening diseases. Over the past decade, there has been good progress in addressing this goal in the United States, where numerous school‐based prevention and intervention efforts have shown some promise, based on systematic evaluations, especially for children who have been exposed to a number of known risk factors for these behaviours. However, the authors make a strong case that these are only modest beginnings, and that much more needs to be done, both in American society, but especially also across societies, to condition our basic in‐group/out‐group minds, to contextualize the (un)importance of national ideologies, national identities, religious and other belief systems which perpetuate an us/them mentality, and thus, perpetuates suspicion, animosity, hatred and ultimately, violence. The authors believe that there is hope for a peaceful world, but concerted local, national and international educational efforts must be launched to achieve ‘a transforming effect throughout the world’ (p. 264), one which ultimately would provide the means for learning to live together.
Dr Alexander T. Vazsonyi, Professor, and Elizabeth Trejos‐Castillo, Ph.D.
Student, Auburn University, Dept. of Human Development and Family Studies, 202 Spidle Hall, Auburn, AL 36849, USA, [email protected] and [email protected]
Social motivation: conscious and unconscious processes
J P Forgas, K D Williams and S M Laham (Eda), 2005
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
£55.00 (hbk), 386 pp.
ISBN: 0‐521‐83254‐3
Moral development researchers perpetually ask, ‘Why are some compelled to moral action while others overlook or refrain from its pursuit?’ Indeed, researchers have discussed and identified a variety of reasons, such as sociocognitive development, self‐understanding and identity, social learning, and emotional elicitation in their attempt to explain moral motivation. Social Motivation: conscious and unconscious processes provides additional insights about potential reasons for both the presence and absence of moral motivation and motivation generally.
Social Motivation: conscious and unconscious processes addresses how conscious and unconscious forces interact and/or collide in determining social motivation. Section one is devoted to the nature of and general issues concerning conscious and unconscious states of social motivation. The section begins with a chapter from Harackiewicz, Durik and Barron, who detail a multiple goal perspective which illustrates conditions documenting the utility of both performance and mastery goals in promoting interest and performance and also illustrates the importance of adopting both types of goals. Pyszczynski, Greenberg and Solomon introduce Terror Management Theory in the next chapter and outline evidence that illustrates how distal and proximal defence mechanisms are activated by conscious and non‐conscious death‐related thoughts in enabling protection from vulnerability. In the next chapter, Wood and Quinn compare behaviours that are largely habitual and unconscious with those that are more intentional and consciously driven. Wood and Quinn present a two‐system model of behaviour generation and apply it to self‐regulation, emotion and self‐understanding in illustrating how these systems can interact in guiding behaviour. Gendolla and Wright address the nature of effort, or task engagement, in the next chapter. By incorporating Jack Brehm's motivational intensity theory and referencing cardiovascular responses, Gendolla and Wright cite evidence countering presumptions about task engagement especially when challenges are unfixed, when empathy is triggered, when performance is evaluated, when a task is ego‐involved, and when certain moods are activated. How unconscious and conscious mechanisms of motivation work together in leading to a behavioural outcome is the topic of Strack and Deutsch, who detail their Reflective−Impulsive Model in the following chapter. Spencer, Fein, Strahan and Zanna explain how unconscious forces activate conscious forces. Specifically, these authors illustrate ways in which motives such as the desire to maintain self‐image, avoid prejudice or quench thirst activate thoughts and actions that would not be activated otherwise.
The role of cognitive and affective processes in impacting social motivation is detailed in section two. Neuberg, Kenrick, Maner and Schaller begin this section with a consideration of selective attention and provide support for their assertions that ‘self‐protection and mating goals influence attention to, perceptions of, and cognitions about individuals who differ in gender, physical attractiveness, and ethnicity’ (p. 134). Next is a chapter by Aarts and Hassin, who consider their concept of goal contagion, defined as ‘the automatic adoption of others' goals’ (p. 160). Unlike other theories that focus on conscious goal adoption, Aarts and Hassin claim that goal contagion is the product of deciphering behavioural information that occurs automatically and without conscious intent. In the next chapter, Forgas and Laham illustrate how affect interacts with motivation in showing how good moods result in greater confidence and assertiveness in one's pursuit of goals while bad moods yield increased pessimistic and cautious behaviours regarding goals. Conversely, Forgas and Laham also reveal how motivational states can regulate mood. Lewicki considers the motivational consequences of internal and external encoding styles, which impact implicit cognition and knowledge acquisition. Lewicki argues that both encoding styles can have behavioural ramifications in areas such as sport strategies, constrained versus unstructured environments and vocation. Kernis and Goldman introduce their construct of authenticity and discuss the ways in which this multifaceted construct relates to behaviour stemming from psychological health, well‐being, goal strivings and psychological and interpersonal adjustment. The last chapter of this section is by Liberman and Forster, who review four general principles as a means for explaining the accessibility of motivational sources such as goals, needs and concerns. From this, Liberman and Forster explain the implications of these four principles in social psychological research areas, such as person perception, post‐suppressional rebound and catharsis of aggression.
The third and final section of this volume examines how conscious and unconscious forces are relevant to specific social behaviours. Prejudice is considered in the first two chapters of this section, as Devine, Brodish and Vance reveal internal and external motivations to respond without prejudice, and Son Hing, Chung‐Yan, Grunfeld, Robichaud and Zanna introduce the concept of aversive racism as a means of illustrating the distinctions among implicit and explicit forms of prejudice. In the third chapter, Warburton and Williams focus on ostracism and show how social motives pertaining to belonging, control, self‐esteem and the belief that life is meaningful can lead to either prosocial or antisocial behaviours among those who are ostracized. Weiss, Ashkanasy and Beal address social behaviours in work environments in detailing how affect‐driven behaviours can directly and indirectly impact related motivation, behaviour and performance. In the next chapter, Rhodewalt addresses narcissism in reviewing his self‐regulatory processing model of narcissism, which maintains that such behaviour is the product of motivated self‐esteem regulation. The final chapter of this section is a concluding chapter for the volume overall, in which Schooler and Schreiber distinguish consciousness (e.g., ongoing and implicit experiences) from metaconsciousness (e.g., explicit awareness of experience) as a means for conceptualizing the conscious and unconscious processes and resultant motivational phenomena reviewed in the volume.
For those with an interest in understanding the motives underlying moral behaviour – and any form of behaviour for that matter – this book is a ‘must read’. Indeed, the consideration of unconscious with conscious forces seems to be an important factor that moral psychologists may want to explore further. For example, when a person is asked to describe the motives underlying a particular moral action (e.g., saving the life of another) and/or moral inaction (e.g., not recognizing the dire need of another), many illustrate their inability to consciously reflect upon their motives in responding with statements such as, ‘I don't know’, or ‘It was just the right thing to do’. Consideration of unconscious forces by capitalizing on some of the methodologies detailed in this volume may therefore be an important key to realizing unknown moral motives. At the same time, however, it is important to understand that consideration of unconscious forces in isolation is not a panacea for understanding moral behaviour and can result in the same frustration that a singular focus on conscious forces can bring about.
Dr W. Pitt Derryberry
Assistant Professor of Psychology, Western Kentucky University, 1906 College Heights Blvd. #21030, Bowling Green, KY 42101‐1030, USA, [email protected]
Bulletproof vests vs. an ethic of care: which strategy is your school using?
D Smith (Ed.), 2003
Lanham, MD, Scarecrow Press
$21.95, 144 pp.
ISBN: 0‐8108‐4618‐7
This short edited volume on school violence (seven chapters totalling 120 pages) is among the many articles and books written in the wake of the dramatic and sensationalized accounts of school shootings in the United States during the 1990s. Despite the siege mentality suggested in the title, the introduction and first chapter accurately portray the scope of the problem: schools are, by and large, very safe places and very little youth violence occurs in schools or is school‐related. Of course, even rare instances of homicide and other serious violent acts in our schools are unacceptable and warrant our best efforts to prevent them. Unfortunately, this book provides little guidance for such endeavours.
Fully half of the book is devoted to describing the prevalence and predictors of youth violence. The first chapter reviews official government statistics and national survey data on youth violence in general and school violence in particular, focusing on trends in the prevalence of these behaviours during the decade of the 1990s. This is followed (Chapter Two) by a summary of identified risk factors for youth violence, including characteristics of individuals, families, peer groups, schools and communities. The third chapter focuses on the question of whether special needs students, particularly those with identified emotional and behavioural disorders, are more likely to be involved in school violence. This section of the book, particularly the first two chapters, may be a useful resource for those needing a brief and generally accurate overview of the problem of violence in schools.
Chapter Four provides brief descriptions of Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory and Noddings' ethic of care, and argues that an integration of these two perspectives provides a useful framework for examining and addressing school violence. This is a transitional chapter for the final three chapters on preventive interventions. Although the view of schools as social contexts for student development and, particularly, the emphasis on the quality of interpersonal relationships within classrooms and schools is important for understanding the occurrence of violence in schools, these themes are not developed in the book. In fact, the book actually has very little to do with schools. Of the three chapters concerning prevention of youth violence, only one focuses on the school and school‐based programmes (the other two deal with family and community programmes), and this provides, at best, very general guidance about practices that might prove effective at reducing or preventing the occurrence of school violence. The book is thus ultimately disappointing on two counts: it outlines a promising theoretical perspective for understanding school violence, but fails to clearly articulate the implications of this perspective for educational policy and practice, and it provides relatively little information or guidance with respect to specific educational practices and programmes that might effectively address this troubling problem.
Dr Victor Battistich
Division of Educational Psychology, University of Missouri, St. Louis, One University Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63121‐4400, USA, [email protected]