Preventing School Violence and Promoting School Safety: Contemporary Scholarship Advancing Science, Practice, and Policy

Abstract

School safety is essential for children and youth in schools to learn and experience a positive developmental trajectory. School safety research featured herein intentionally draws upon multiple fields of study, including, but not limited to education; special education; school, counseling, clinical and community psychology; social work; juvenile justice; and sociology. The articles in this special issue draw on many theoretical frameworks, considering developmental theories, social-ecological and cognitive-ecological perspectives, information processing, normative behavior theory, social-identity, social-transactional processes, and social networking models. This overview of the special issue synthesizes and integrates findings from these articles across five areas: (a) conceptual foundations, (b) centering race and ethnicity in school safety, (d) school resource officers’ training and roles, (d) discipline and school climate, and (e) bullying and peer victimization. Many of these articles leverage scholarship across topics such as providing beneficial schoolwide systems of discipline, promoting positive school climates, addressing bullying, fostering authoritative models in schools, facilitating culturally responsive schools, and understanding mental health needs of students.

Impact Statement

This paper provides a synthesis of articles featured in the special topic section focused on preventing school violence and promoting school safety. Key implications for practice and policy include enabling stakeholders to understand the current state of knowledge in the field, empowering agents of change for broader policy and programming, and advancing research towards new understandings.

Keywords:

• school violence
• school safety
• conceptual foundations
• centering race
• school resource officers
• discipline
• school climate
• bullying
• victimization

School safety is necessary for children and youth in schools to learn and experience a positive developmental trajectory. Problems of school disorder and violence have sequelae that are not always considered by educational and political leaders such that key issues may be conflated, minimized, distorted, or overstated, often hindering systematic progress. Efforts to promote school safety vary tremendously, with widespread efforts to “harden” schools focusing primarily on security approaches, often at the expense of focusing attention and resources to critical foci investigated in school safety research. For example, schools have periodically responded to school shooting incidents reported in the media by moving to increase school security personnel and restrict access to the school building, as opposed to working systematically to cultivate school-family-community partnerships, facilitate integrated schoolwide programmatic approaches, and work on improving school climate (Cornell et al., 2021).

Media coverage in recent decades has sensationalized horrific school shootings, and while broader public awareness and concern have been evidenced in the short-term, this has yielded limited meaningful investment in change for the long-term. There exists extensive evidenced-based research on ways to improve school climate, reduce bullying, limit other forms of violence in schools, and address threats in systematic ways, yet reports on the efficacy and effectiveness of many of these approaches have varied considerably (Cornell et al., 2021). There is sufficient research demonstrating the inadvisability of zero tolerance and related harsh disciplinary policies, and an overreliance on school security measures (Amicus Curiae Brief; Mahanoy Area School District, petitioner, v. B.L, 2021), as compared to much more promising approaches to prevention programming. Overall, the field remains somewhat fragmented in the ways it pursues school safety.

School safety research encompasses multiple fields of study, including, but not limited to education; special education; school, counseling, clinical and community psychology; social work; juvenile justice; and sociology. These disciplines address a range of issues such as efficient school organizational functioning, victimization and associated forms of harm, student-family partnerships with schools, and promoting desired academic and social-emotional-behavioral outcomes for students. Many of these foci connect to research in areas such as providing beneficial schoolwide systems of discipline, promoting positive school climates, addressing bullying, fostering authoritative models in schools, facilitating culturally responsive schools, and understanding mental health needs of students.

There is considerable variation in schoolwide approaches in the U.S. to address student discipline. Schoolwide Positive Behavioral Intervention Supports (SWPBIS), and Social Emotional Learning (SEL) are the two most widely implemented approaches, with variants of SWPBIS in over 20,000 schools nationally (Horner & Sugai, 2015; Lindstrom Johnson et al., 2020), and state-level SEL initiatives in over 40 states, involving over 67,000 schools (CASEL, 2019). SWPBIS is based on providing adult-centered structures that include schoolwide behavioral expectations and rules, drawing on behavioral approaches rooted in applied behavior analysis. SEL is essentially a child-centered approach, facilitating student capacity for understanding emotions of self and others, managing one’s own behaviors, making responsible decisions, engaging in positive social interactions, and promoting attitudes of respect, caring, and mutual support (Osher et al., 2010). Research over the past decade has pointed to a need to blend aspects of SEL and SWPBIS to better meet the needs of socially, psychologically, and educationally diverse schools (Cook et al., 2015; Domitrovich et al., 2010). Similar blended models have recently been developed, such as Ci3T (Lane et al., 2014). The Ci3T model entails a schoolwide data-driven approach to facilitate improved goals across academics, behavior, and social interactions. It leverages a multi-tiered system of supports that includes principles taken from Response to Intervention (RTI), SWPBIS, and SEL.

School climate has become a central focus in school improvement efforts over the past two decades. School climate has been defined in multiple ways, but overall, it has been seen in terms of providing a welcoming and supportive school atmosphere, fostering positive social interactions among all school stakeholders, with integrated administrative structures and programming to promote student success (Bottiani et al., 2020). Beginning around 2009, the Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program in the U.S. Department of Education launched a grant-funded effort to develop new models of measuring school climate, linked to giving schools actionable tools for related prevention programming (Espelage & Hong, 2019). The overwhelming majority of research on promoting school safety has reiterated the need for fostering positive climate in schools (Cornell et al., 2021).

Bullying remains a serious problem in schools in the U.S. and elsewhere. Theoretical frameworks addressing bullying have included social-ecological, proactive and reactive aggression, social networking analysis, general strain theory, transactional processes, goal-oriented behaviors, and social dominance and power related theories (Postigo et al., 2013; Volk et al., 2014). Harmful effects of bullying include, but are not limited to increased risk of internalizing problems, risk of suicidal ideation and/or attempts, externalizing behaviors, social interaction and friend-keeping challenges, academic failure, school disengagement and dropout, adjustment difficulties to adult responsibilities and career development, and risk for criminal justice system involvement (AERA, 2013; Gaffney et al., 2019; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine [NASEM], 2016). Similarly, harm from cyberbullying can include most of the areas mentioned above. Research has reported variable effectiveness among prevention approaches, but on balance, has found bullying prevention programs to be moderately effective. Better results were seen in European studies, compared to the U.S. (NASEM, 2016). Scholars have debated conceptualizations of bullying, raising questions about arbitrarily distinguishing bullying as something apart from other forms of aggression and school violence (AERA, 2013).

Authoritative schooling, which is somewhat analogous to authoritative parenting (Baumrind, 1968), can provide a healthy balance of administrative supervision and monitoring, school rules, and fairly implemented discipline, along with support structures and programs that help students succeed in meeting their academic responsibilities and handling a variety of social-emotional-behavioral challenges. It can also help promote a positive school climate, fostering student bonding to school. It contrasts with authoritarian approaches that tend to be much more punitive and non-supportive. Reviews of research on authoritative schooling have found evidence of improved student academic performance, students feeling safer at school, and reductions in violence and bullying behaviors (Cornell et al., 2021).

Research over the past few decades has examined highly problematic interactions and relations involving dominant culture school-based authorities and African–American students (Eddy et al., 2020; Kalyanpur & Harry, 1999). Disproportionality in academic and disciplinary outcomes and special education placements have been explicated in terms of biased assessments, differential treatment of students, low expectations for students, and limited instructional and other critical school supportive capacity in financially stressed communities—especially those of color (Brown Griffin et al., 2020; Gregory et al., 2010; Leone & Mayer, 2004; U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2021). Misunderstandings and discriminatory treatment over language use among some minoritized groups and mainly White Euro-centric views of appropriate school behavior have resulted in teacher-student conflict and excessive disciplinary referrals. Nonthreatening, nondisruptive behaviors of students of color have been deemed as defiant and disrespectful based on subjective evaluation, compared to much more objective determinations of behavioral transgressions of white students, resulting in differential and discriminatory treatment of students (Girvan et al., 2017).

Mental health difficulties have periodically become conflated with an expectation of violent behavior. While some degree of connection may exist, the larger research base suggests that such linkages are limited, with a more nuanced and complex story connecting mental health needs and violent behavior, where research results often vary based on methodological differences across studies in framing research questions and collecting and analyzing data (Rozel & Mulvey, 2017). Generally speaking, more individuals involved in mass shootings have a history of a diagnosable mental illness, compared to those engaged in other forms of violence. However, those with documented mental illness typically demonstrate violent behaviors for the same types of reasons as those without mental illness (Skeem & Mulvey, 2020).

Research on school safety has leveraged many theoretical frameworks, considering developmental theories, social-ecological and cognitive-ecological perspectives, information processing, normative behavior theory, social-transactional processes, and social networking models, as well as methodological issues such as framing appropriate research questions, sampling design, units and types of measurement, and preferred analytical approaches. Yet many so-called middle-range theories have permeated the landscape of school safety research over the decades (Mayer & Furlong, 2010). This situation is not very different from allied fields of study and points to the absence of a unifying theoretical framework for school safety research.

Areas in need of further research include fostering a positive school climate, using authoritative approaches that balance structure and support, and creating multidisciplinary collaborative structures, such as threat assessment teams that follow a well-structured approach to analyzing and responding to signals of emerging problems. This special issue brings together multidisciplinary researchers investigating such issues, including scholars who represent different theoretical points of view and diverse research methodologies. Integrated consideration of their research can help advance the field by solidifying points of agreement and identifying areas in need of further research. The special issue seeks to further advance the field of school safety research, including several articles that leverage a transdisciplinary approach, using more complex syntheses, going beyond discipline-specific views. It examines multiple dimensions of school safety research, unpacking empirically-based answers to key research questions, and enabling a broad array of educational stakeholders to identify links to their own areas of school safety concerns, further bridging the research-to-practice gap, linking analysis of research, policy, and practice. The following offers a preview of the contents of this special issue (Table 1).

Table 1. Topics and Papers Featured in This Special Topic Section on Preventing School Violence and Promoting School Safety

Conceptual Foundations • History and Future of School Safety Research • Safe Places to Learn: Advances in School Safety Research and Practice • A Call for the Conceptual Integration of Opportunity Structures within School Safety Research • The Social, Political, and Contextual Drivers of School Safety and Security • Good intentions are not enough: Centering equity in school discipline reform • Addressing School Safety through Comprehensive School Climate Approaches • Guns, School Shooters and School Safety: What we know and directions for change

Centering Race and Ethnicity in School Safety • Centering race to move towards an intersectional ecological framework for defining school safety for Black students • Unequally Safe: Association between Bullying and Perceived School Safety and the Moderating Effects of Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Grade Levels • Associations between Community-level Racial Biases, Office Discipline Referrals, and Out-of-School Suspensions • An Intersectional Examination of the Effects of Race/Ethnicity and Immigrant Status on School Victimization in Predominantly Hispanic/Latino High Schools • School Connectedness and Bystander Intervention: The Moderating Role of Perceived Exclusion and Privilege among African American Students

School Resource Officers’ Training and Roles • School Resource Officers’ Presence and Preventative Roles and Criminalization of Student Behavior • Trauma Informed Care in Schools: Perspectives from School Resource Officers & School Security Personnel During Professional Development Training • The Influence of School Resource Officer Presence on Teacher Perceptions of School Safety and Security D iscipline and School Climate • Mind the Gap: A Systematic Review of Research on Restorative Practices in Schools • Teacher support for zero tolerance is associated with higher suspension rates and lower feelings of safety • Measuring Teacher Perceptions of School Climate: The Georgia School Personnel Survey

Bullying and Peer Victimization • Patterns and Pathways of Peer Victimization across the Transition to Middle School • Perceptions of Emotional and Physical Safety Among Boarding Students and Associations with School Bullying • Disseminating and Scaling Brief Bullying Prevention Programming: Strengths, Challenges, & Considerations

CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS

The field of school safety research has seen remarkable advances over the past two decades and empirical research has been driven by new ways of considering issues. Over the decades, increasing attention has been given to topics such as school shootings, systems of discipline, school climate, and target hardening, among related issues (Cornell et al., 2021). Recent work has opened the doors to additional ways of thinking about school safety, such as opportunity structures, and social and political forces driving these phenomena (Astor et al., 2021). The special issue opens with seven articles that help orient our thinking about multiple dimensions of school safety, advancing theoretical perspectives on a range of critical issues.

Much of the research in school safety has examined impacts, correlates, causal mechanisms, and factors driving forms of physical violence, as well as areas such as harassment, intimidation, and bullying. In the opening article, “History and Future of School Safety Research,” Cornell et al. (2021) examine two dimensions in this field of research, physical and psychological safety. Discussion of physical safety research addresses prevention of violence using security measures, systems of school discipline, and threat assessment. Psychological safety is considered relative to forms of peer aggression such as harassment and bullying, multi-tiered systems, and school climate. The authors provide a pathway for future research in multiple domains, noting relative successes and disconnects between research and practice.

School violence prevention and school safety promotion have been conceptualized using multiple theoretical lenses, with varying definitions, measurement approaches, and analytic methods (Cornell & Mayer, 2010). In “Safe Places to Learn: Advances in School Safety, Research and Practice,” Nickerson et al. (2021) review recent data trends, linking issues to several conceptualizations of school safety. The authors examine multiple contexts of schools, prevention models, and some of the major lessons learned over the past two decades. Finally, they chart a course for future research and efforts to make schools safe for children and other stakeholders.

The literature on school safety has typically centered on a restricted range of themes, with relatively little attention to larger social dynamics and related models. Astor et al. (2021) take a school-centered ecological approach to integrate school safety and opportunity structure literatures in “A Call for the Conceptual Integration of Opportunity Structures within School Safety Research”. They consider two dimensions of school safety and opportunity structures: first, pertaining to a set of interacting nested variables in every ecological layer that can impact opportunities and safety, and second, systemic macro level patterns of expectations, rules, and guidelines that influence paths to safety, achievement, and well-being.

Social and political analysis of systemic responses to school violence have generally taken a back seat to other foci in school safety research. Yet larger social processes and political machinations can play a critical role in school safety policy and practice outcomes (Hirschfield & Celinska, 2011). In “School Securitization and its Alternatives: The Social, Political, and Contextual Drivers of School Safety Policy and Practice,” Madfis et al. (2021) consider trends towards criminalization of certain student behaviors and increasing securitization of schools, linked to evolving public perceptions of and responses to risk in society, and schools in particular, and what they describe as broader neoliberal political agendas. They unpack research relating school context and school safety practices, and offer implications for future research, practice, and policy.

While the research literature has considered over a dozen school discipline models since the 1970s, variants of SEL and SWPBIS have predominated over the past 20 years. Throughout the decades, exclusionary discipline has remained a serious problem (Skiba et al., 2014). Gregory et al. (2021) examine multiple approaches to school discipline, with attention to exclusionary discipline and racial dynamics in “Good Intentions are not Enough: Centering Equity in School Discipline Reform.” They analyze limitations of current discipline efforts and discuss the need for integrative and comprehensive culturally responsive approaches to promote goals of student academic and social-emotional-behavioral success and positive development.

School climate has been linked to a range of academic and behavioral outcomes for students, both positive and negative (Thapa et al., 2013). “Addressing School Safety through Comprehensive School Climate Approaches” (Bradshaw et al., 2021) examine research on school climate, considering measurement, data collection, analysis, and prevention and promotion planning. Transactional processes and related contextual factors driving school safety outcomes are unpacked. Promising avenues of changing school and community culture and behavioral norms connected to school climate and school improvement initiatives are explored, along with future directions for research.

School shootings have dominated media coverage since the Columbine shooting in 1999. In “Guns, School Shooters and School Safety: What we know and directions for change” (Flannery et al., 2021), the authors examine data on school shootings and other forms of gun violence at schools. Research is reviewed on gun availability and efforts to limit firearm access to youth. Questionable practices such as arming teachers are considered. Research linked to three prominent strategies that schools have implemented to reduce school shootings and improve school safety is discussed: (a) the role of mental health in school shootings and violence perpetration; (b) implementing multidisciplinary threat assessment protocols; and (c) target hardening and utilizing school resource officers. The article closes with recommendations to inform future research, policy, and practice.

CENTERING RACE AND ETHNICITY IN SCHOOL SAFETY

Increasing emphasis has been placed on the importance of centering race and ethnicity in scholarship and practices to promote school safety (Eddy et al., 2020; Felix & You, 2011; Fisher et al., 2020; García-Vázquez et al., 2020; Gregory et al., 2021; Juvonen et al., 2006; Lacoe, 2015; Madfis et al., 2021; Naser & Dever, 2019; Parker et al., 2020). Jimerson et al. (2021) highlighted the importance of advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the field of school psychology, highlighting the importance of featuring scholarship that advances our knowledge and understanding of minoritized youth, families, and communities. This special topic section contributes multiple articles advancing science, practice, and policies featuring race and ethnicity as key considerations in understanding and promoting school safety and preventing school violence. Research during the past several decades reveals Black students’ concern for their safety at school (Chandler et al.,1995; Lacoe, 2015), differences in Black students’ perception of the school climate (Voight et al., 2015), as well disparate outcomes for Black students resulting from policies meant to increase safety in schools (Kupchik & Bracy, 2009; Noguera, 1995, 2003, 2008; Triplett et al., 2020). In “Centering Race to Move Towards an Intersectional Ecological Framework for Defining School Safety for Black Students,” Elianny (2021) highlights the impact of institutional racism on Black students’ safety and disparate outcomes resulting from policies meant to increase safety in schools. Edwards offers important theoretical considerations to further advance and inform how scholars define and assess school safety, calling for an intersectional ecological framework that considers racial-cultural, gender and queer identity, academic, social-emotional, interpersonal, and physical safety as critical dimensions of school safety for Black adolescents in middle and high school. This paper also highlights common day-to-day systems and practices in schools that threaten the safety of Black students, and provides school leaders, teachers, and staff with a vision of what school safety could look like for Black students.

Student perceptions of school safety among diverse populations of students and contexts warrants further empirical study. Findings from research examining the racial/ethnic differences in the perceptions of school safety have been mixed, with some revealing no racial differences in students’ perception of school safety (Bachman et al., 2011; Hong & Eamon, 2012) and others revealing differences in students’ perception of safety at school among ethnic groups (Jackson, 2015; Lacoe, 2015; Thibodeaux, 2013). In “Unequally Safe: Association between Bullying and Perceived School Safety and the Moderating Effects of Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Grade Levels”, Yang, Lin, et al. (2021) employ social-ecological, social identity, and social misfit theories, to examine the gender, racial/ethnic, and grade-level differences of students’ perceived school safety and their associations with bullying victimization and school-wide bullying. Yang, Lin, et al. (2021) explore ecological influences of school-wide bullying and bullying victimization on school safety at both the student and school levels. The findings further illuminate the importance of understanding students’ normative perceptions of racial/ethnic identity, membership, and social status in schools when developing racially/ethnically responsive and grade-level specific strategies that promote school safety and alleviate the negative influences of bullying on students’ perceptions of school safety.

Previous studies reveal that Black students are more likely to receive office discipline referrals (ODRs) than any other group of students (Anyon et al., 2014, 2018; Bradshaw et al., 2010; Losen & Whitaker, 2017) and out-of-school suspensions (OSSs; U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2021), however, the extant literature has yet to examine how community-level racial biases are linked to ODRs and OSSs. In “Associations between Community-level Racial Biases, Office Discipline Referrals, and Out-of-School Suspensions,” Girvan et al. (2021) present compelling evidence from 2,100 schools in the U.S. that community-level racial biases (explicit and implicit) are associated with racial disproportionality in ODRs, and OSSs at the school-level. Results indicate that a significant proportion of racial disproportionality may result from the effects of bias on the decision to issue an ODR, as opposed to the decision to suspend a student. Based on the results of this study, Girvan et al. discuss the importance of further emphasis on classroom systems in efforts to increase equity in school discipline.

Whereas prior research has shown that youths’ race/ethnicity and immigrant status impact their victimization experiences at school, most of these studies have examined the influence of these two identities separately. Recognizing that intersecting identities can exacerbate or attenuate health outcomes (e.g., Bowleg, 2008; McCall, 2005), further investigation of the intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991) is important. In “An Intersectional Examination of the Effects of Race/Ethnicity and Immigrant Status on School Victimization in Predominantly Hispanic/Latino High Schools,” Yang, Manchandra, et al. (2021) incorporate the theory of intersectionality and social identity theory to examine the interactive influences of both racial/ethnic majority status and immigrant status on students’ school victimization experiences in predominantly Hispanic/Latino high schools. The findings from this study revealed that among U.S. born students, non-Hispanic/Latino students reported higher victimization incidence rates than Hispanic/Latino students, but no significant difference was found between Hispanic/Latino and non-Hispanic/Latino immigrant students. Yang, Manchandra, et al. (2021). highlight the importance of understanding context-specific group dynamics and describe how the intersection of multiple individual and group identities can inform school violence prevention and intervention in diverse school settings.

As education professionals increasingly recognize the importance of facilitating bystander orientation to stop bullying and prevent future instances of aggression (Grassetti et al., 2018), researchers have begun to examine predictors of bystanders’ willingness to intervene (Jenkins & Nickerson, 2017, 2019). In “School Connectedness and Bystander Intervention: The Moderating Role of Perceived Exclusion and Privilege among African American Students,” Knox et al. (2021) highlights the importance of recognizing that predictors of bystander intervention may look different in various groups of students. This study examined the moderating role of perceived exclusion/privilege in the school on the relationship between school connectedness and willingness to intervene in social exclusion, relational aggression, cyber aggression, and physical aggression for African American students in 6th and 9th grade. Findings revealed that perceived exclusion/privilege in the school can decrease students’ willingness to intervene in acts of aggression despite feeling connected to the school. Knox et al. highlight the urgent need for providing African American students (as well as other student populations) with a fair and just environment that can help them to feel accountable in confronting bullying situations.

SCHOOL RESOURCE OFFICERS: ROLES, TRAINING, AND IMPACT ON TEACHER PERCEPTIONS OF SAFETY

A current and controversial societal issue addressed in this special issue focuses on the role, function, and impact of school resource officers (SROs) in schools. There has been a widespread increase in the presence of SROs in the past three decades, and more recently, there is a movement to remove SROs from schools based on the argument that their presence harms and criminalizes minoritized students, particular Black males from economically disadvantaged backgrounds (Turner & Beneke, 2020). Research to date has been mixed, with some studies finding that the presence of SROs is associated with increased perceptions of safety (Lindstrom Johnson et al., 2018; Theriot, 2016), where other research has found SRO presence can relate to decreased perceptions of safety, particularly for Black students (Pentek & Eisenberg, 2018; Theriot & Orme, 2016). In addition, SRO and other police presence in schools has been associated with increased recorded arrests, crimes, and exclusionary discipline (Devlin & Gottfredson, 2018; Fisher & Hennessy, 2016; Hirschfield, 2018), particularly for males and Black students (Homer & Fisher, 2020).

The articles in this special issue push the conversation and evidence base forward regarding SROs by examining how the roles they assume relate to outcomes (Stevens et al., 2021), the impact of trauma-informed training on SROs (Forber-Pratt et al., 2021), and the important yet often neglected input of teachers on the presence of SROs in relation to perceptions of safety (Wood & Hampton, 2021). In “School Resource Officers’ Presence and Preventative Roles and Criminalization of Student Behavior,” Stevens et al. (2021) examined how different aspects of the roles of SROs, including law enforcement presence (e.g., patrolling, carrying firearms) and prevention (e.g., mentoring, teaching) are associated with school practices that can impact student outcomes. Using the School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSCOS) with a sample of 1,529 school administrators, the authors found that in high schools, law enforcement SRO presence was associated with increased reports to police for nonviolent and serious violent incidents, whereas the SRO prevention role was associated with decreased reports to police for nonviolent and serious violent incidents. In addition, administrators who reported limitations in mental health service availability also reported more school problem behavior.

Consistent with the implications from Stevens et al. (2021) about the importance of SROs engaging in a preventive role, Forber-Pratt et al. (2021) examined qualitative responses from 95 SROs and school security professionals about the role of intentional training on trauma-informed practices in creating physically and psychologically safe schools. Their findings revealed that engaging in these training experiences can help SROs understand how school safety is influenced by influences from the neighborhood, community, and society, and how treating students with compassion, establishing trust, and focusing on building relationships can facilitate a positive school climate. This article is important in providing a model for such training and providing preliminary support for emphasizing these preventive roles for SROs in conjunction with other evidence-based approaches to school safety to address racial trauma and prevent school violence.

As SRO programs expand, there have been calls for research focused on how SRO presence in schools can impact stakeholder perceptions of safety and security (Lynch et al., 2016), although the voices of teachers are largely absent from decision-making processes and research about school safety policies and practices (Garcia & Weiss, 2019). Wood and Hampton (2021) surveyed more than 3,800 teachers from a midwestern state, with the overwhelmingly majority disagreeing that schools are dangerous places and agreeing that they and their students feel safe at school. Teachers with an SRO present in their school were more likely to report feeling physically safe at school and to believe their school possessed adequate security, although they also perceived students to be more concerned about their safety when compared to teachers in schools without an SRO present.

SCHOOL DISCIPLINE AND CLIMATE

The field of school safety has been exploring positive alternatives to harsh discipline and exclusion as pathways to promote positive youth development and academic achievement for several decades. Most recently, in late March, 2021, a group of 32 scholars joined in filing an Amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, addressing alternatives to harsh discipline and zero tolerance procedures in a case involving school authority to regulate student speech outside of the physical school property and apart from normal school activities (Amicus Curiae Brief; Mahanoy Area School District, petitioner, v. B.L, 2021). School administrators and teachers have held varying and sometimes opposing views within their respective work domains concerning best practices for school discipline. Zero tolerance practices have come under increasing scrutiny with a growing body of literature pointing to their shortcomings (Cornell et al., 2021). Alternatives such as restorative practices have been gaining increased attention and school climate has been a central focus in most school discipline debates. Several articles in the special issue focus closely on these issues.

Restorative justice practices have seen increasing use in schools, but the empirical research base justifying such approaches is scattered and incomplete (Gregory et al., 2018). In “Mind the Gap: A Systematic Review of Research on Restorative Practices in Schools,” Zakszeski and Rutherford (2021) perform a systematic review of the literature on restorative practices in schools, working with a final sample of 71 articles, examining shortcomings of current research in informing practice. They discuss a “practice-to-research gap” with respect to restorative practices in schools where too often, “the “cart” appears to be before the “horse.” The results of the authors’ investigation identified needs for future research to more clearly define restorative practice approaches, provide defensible measurement approaches, and provide guidance evaluating interventions.

Zero tolerance has been a prominent feature in schools since the early 1990s (Cornell et al., 2021), yet there is limited quantitative research on the relationships of zero tolerance to school safety. Huang and Cornell (2021) explicate issues connecting zero tolerance practices to school safety in “Teacher Support for Zero Tolerance is Associated with Higher Suspension Rates and Lower Feelings of Safety”. They analyzed statewide survey data in Virginia middle schools from 108,888 students and 10,990 teachers. Using logistic regression, they found a surprisingly large percentage of teachers who supported zero tolerance practices as a tool for improving school discipline. The authors also determined that students and teachers in schools with increased approval of zero tolerance felt less safe, while controlling for school and student characteristics linked to safety.

The psychological literature has demonstrated how perception, as least in part, drives behavior (Dijksterhuis & Bargh, 2001). Considering the impact of school climate on school safety (Cornell et al., 2021), surveys of how teachers perceive school climate can provide a pivotal source of data in local school safety analysis and planning. In “Teacher Perceptions Matter: Psychometric Properties of the Georgia School Personnel Survey of School Climate,” Saint et al. (2021) contribute to a currently limited body of literature on characteristics of instrumentation measuring school personnel perceptions of school climate. The authors used confirmatory factor analysis to analyze the structure, measurement invariance/equivalence, and structural invariance/equivalence of the GSPS of school climate using a representative sample of 166,887 Georgia school personnel. Results supported using the instrument in practice.

PEER VICTIMIZATION AND BULLYING

Peer victimization and bullying, in particular, continue to be issues of concern for society and in schools (NASEM, 2016; Rose et al., 2015). Given the modest effectiveness of bullying prevention programs (Gaffney et al., 2019; Ttofi & Farrington, 2011; Yeager et al., 2015), there is a need to better understand the phenomenon of bullying within the context of development, gender, race and ethnicity, and school environments, and to implement prevention strategies and supports that are realistic and meet diverse needs. Articles in this special issue fill this gap by providing a nuanced examination of the patterns and pathways of peer victimization for a diverse sample (Monachino et al., 2021), exploring the relation between bullying, perceptions of safety, and the buffering effect of mental health supports in a boarding school context (Fredrick et al., 2021), and demonstrating the opportunities and challenges of scaling up brief bullying prevention programming (Leff et al., 2021).

Despite research advances in bullying and peer victimization, there is a scarcity of research that uses person-centered approaches to examine pathways of different forms of peer victimization and identify differences based on gender, race, and disability. In “Patterns and Pathways of Peer Victimization across the Transition to Middle School,” Splett et al. (2021) used person-centered analyses with a large (>1,000), racially diverse sample of students followed from grades 4, 5, and 6 from 25 schools across two southeastern states. The majority of students reported no victimization. Although physical victimization decreased across the transition to middle school, verbal and relational victimization persisted and even increased for some students. Female students and Black students were more likely than their male and White peers, respectively, to experience relational victimization during the middle school transition. Students with disabilities were more vulnerable to experiencing all forms of victimization than their peers without disabilities. Results suggest a need to prevent verbal and relational aggression and to use implicit bias awareness training and other strategies to prevent victimization based on race and disability.

In “Perceptions of Emotional and Physical Safety Among Boarding Students and Associations with School Bullying,” Fredrick et al. (2021) advance the research by examining the relation between bullying and perceptions of emotional and physical safety within a boarding school context and also identifying the importance of mental health supports in perceptions of safety and as a buffer in the relation between bullying and emotional safety for males. More specifically, results from the sample of 313 students attending a boarding school in a midwestern state indicated that male and female boarding school students who reported high levels of bullying at the school felt less emotionally and physically safe. The authors also found that school mental health supports were positively associated with physical and emotional safety. Furthermore, school mental health supports buffered the relation between schoolwide bullying and emotional safety for males.

Addressing a critical need for efficient and effective bullying prevention programs during the middle school years when bullying peaks (Hymel & Swearer, 2015), “Scaling and disseminating brief bullying prevention programming: Strengths, challenges, and considerations” describes the dissemination and evaluation of Free2B, a positively-oriented 90-minute multi-media bullying prevention experience (Leff et al., 2021). This paper highlights and provides examples of leveraging positive results from pilot studies, partnering with state agencies to recruit schools and ensure equitable access, and developing implementation guidance. The examination of short-term impact (90 minutes between pre- and post-intervention) with over 14,000 middle school from 40 diverse schools revealed that Free2B was associated with improved (a) problem-solving knowledge, (b) confidence about being a positive bystander, and (c) sympathy for victimized peers. Over 80% of students reported the intervention to be relevant, engaging, and acceptable. Results from these studies highlight the need to address verbal and relational peer victimization, particularly for females and Black students, the importance of school mental health supports for emotional safety and buffering the effects of bullying, and the promise of using data and partnering with agencies to disseminate and evaluate brief bullying prevention programming.

CONCLUSIONS

While spanning a wide range of topics central to school safety, the special issue provides a balance of conceptual think pieces/literature reviews, experimental and quasi-experimental studies, correlational and descriptive research, and survey research. Several of the articles do an excellent job positioning our current state of knowledge relative to decades of prior research, where others explore and test key propositions. Some articles blaze new trails, facilitating important avenues of future research (e.g., Astor et al., 2021).

The special issue holds promise for many stakeholders across research, policy, and practice, bridging parts of the research-to-practice gap, better informing multiple areas of policy, and solidifying broader understandings of factors and processes driving school safety. Taken in its entirety, it can be viewed as a pivotal contribution to the literature, a knowledge marker of sorts, along a pathway to improving schools. School psychologists and allied personnel working in and with schools can leverage the content of this special issue towards better serving the needs of students, and their families and communities.

DISCLOSURE

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Matthew J. Mayer

Matthew J. Mayer, PhD, is an Associate Professor at Rutgers University. He has many publications pertaining to school violence and school safety and related areas, including work as lead co-guest editor of 3 special issues of journals, and 4 books as co-editor: Keeping Students Safe and Helping Them Thrive: A Collaborative Handbook on School Safety, Mental Health, and Wellness (2019, Praeger); School Safety and Violence Prevention: Science, Practice, and Policy (2018, American Psychological Association); The Handbook of School Violence and School Safety: International Research and Practice 2nd Edition (2012, Routledge); and Cognitive-Behavioral Interventions for Emotional and Behavioral Disorders: School-Based Practice (2008, Guilford).

Amanda B. Nickerson

Amanda B. Nickerson, PhD, is a Professor at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York. Her scholarship addressing school violence and school safety includes multiple journal articles and book chapters on school crisis prevention and intervention and understanding the preventing bullying and other forms of violence and victimization. She is also co-editor of The Handbook of School Violence and School Safety: International Research and Practice 2nd Edition (2012, Routledge), coauthor of School Crisis Prevention and Intervention: The PREPaRE Model (2009, 2016, National Association of School Psychologists), and lead author of Assessing, Identifying, and Treating Posttraumatic Stress Disorder at School (2009, Springer Science).

Shane R. Jimerson

Shane R. Jimerson, PhD, is a Professor University of California, Santa Barbara and Nationally Certified School Psychologist. His scholarship addressing school violence and school safety includes 6 books. School Safety and Violence Prevention: Science, Practice, and Policy (2018, American Psychological Association); Supporting Bereaved Students at School (2017, Oxford University Press); The Handbook of School Violence and School Safety: International Research and Practice 2nd Edition (2012, 2006, Routledge), Best Practices in School Crisis Prevention and Intervention 2nd Edition (2012, National Association of School Psychologists), The Handbook of Bullying in Schools: An International Perspective (2010) Routledge), School Crisis Prevention and Intervention: The PREPaRE Model (2009, 2016, National Association of School Psychologists).