School Violence In Schools

Introduction

Violence in schools is an omnipresent cause of angst for parents, teachers, and administrators. The high rates of aggression, threats, and physical harm at schools have not only been investigated by researchers but have also been regularly covered in the media and hence have drawn additional public attention to the problem. “According to the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) findings from the School Survey on Crime and Safety indicated approximately 76% of schools reported violent incidents for the 2007-2008 school year….65% of the primary schools, 94% of the middle schools, and 94% of the high schools….Physical fights have been noted as the most common form of violence on school grounds” (as cited in Fahsl & Luce, 2012, p.214). Opinion polls “rate school discipline as one of the biggest concerns in U.S. public schools” (Fahsl & Luce, 2012).

Therefore, finding answers as to how to prevent and reduce aggressive behavior against students in order to protect children and youth from being bullied, threatened, and victimized at schools is a primary concern for parents, teachers, administrators, and policy makers. Bliss, Emshoff, Buck, and Cook (2006) reported “Parents exhibited strong support for almost all proposed causes and solutions” and the authors addressed the parents’ “desire for immediate and often invasive interventions to prevent future violence” (p. 265).

Numerous studies have examined the effect of violence prevention programs in order to determine whether these programs lower hostile behavior and serve to protect students and teachers from being assaulted by aggressors. Most studies focused on the outcome of these programs on students being attacked, but there appear to be no studies that t...

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...ention programs, from varying behavior change theories to social learning theory or by providing information about the predictors of violence and how to avoid them. Hahn et al. used a conceptual model and analytic framework to evaluate the effectiveness of violence prevention programs on reducing violence (Figure 1). The authors’ flowchart illustrates the influences from the intervention to the outcome categories.

Considering the positive outcome of researchers that studied the effect of violence prevention programs on reducing violence, either by conducting a study or by reviewing studies, I argue that my study, analyzing the effect of violence prevention programs on the number of attacks against teachers, will contribute to thematic, scholarly literature by providing a better understanding of violence prevention programs and their effect on violent behavior.