Introduction to Special Issue: Addressing Aggression and Violence in Diverse School Settings
- PDF / 193,681 Bytes
- 3 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 89 Downloads / 183 Views
EDITORIAL
Introduction to Special Issue: Addressing Aggression and Violence in Diverse School Settings Meagan O’Malley 1 & Stephen E. Brock 1 Published online: 1 September 2020 # California Association of School Psychologists 2020
Little time passes without a new report of violence occurring in or near US schools. It is difficult to turn on the television or check social media without seeing violent images of youth being physically and verbally assaulted by school-based law enforcement; communities living in fear of, or coping with, mass school shootings; and, in urban areas, a relentless epidemic of gun violence causing deaths and injuries to hundreds of young people each year. Among a growing set of Americans, awareness about the prevalence of structural violence and discriminatory violence in schools, and society, is growing. For all these reasons, many young people, educators, and community members are disturbed and justifiably outraged. Trends in national data suggest good cause for concern, as well as some glimmers of hope, as indicators of school-related violence suggest mixed patterns over the past 10-year period. First, little progress has been made in reducing school avoidance due to safety concerns, being threatened or injured with a weapon at school, and being bullied at school or electronically in the past year (Kann et al. 2018). Discriminatory bullying (i.e., bullying because of race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion) has not historically been measured on the national Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance System (YRBSS; Kann et al. 2018), but state-level data from California suggest a positive trend from 2011 to 2019, with youth reporting decreases in bullying and harassment due to race, religion, sexual orientation, and disability (Austin et al. 2020). Critically, violence toward self, including suicidal and non-suicidal selfinjury, has risen over the most recent decade (Burstein et al. 2019; Kann et al. 2018). Students report increases in persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness (Kann et al. 2018), and notably, suicide accounted for 19.2% of all deaths of young
* Meagan O’Malley [email protected] 1
California State University, Sacramento, CA, USA
people ages 10–24 in the USA in 2017, making it the second leading cause of death for this age group (Heron 2019). Youth exposed to violence, including those who are victims, offenders, and/or witnesses, often experience personal and academic challenges as a result. Exposure to violence has been associated with psychosocial distress, delinquency, and impaired learning and functioning at school (Polanin et al. 2020). This special issue of Contemporary School Psychology addresses supports for preventing school-related violence in all its forms and for reducing the deleterious effects of exposure to school-related violence. The eight included works describe recent developments in state-level policy making related to school safety, restorative and culturally relevant approaches to violence prevention and intervention, technological advances
Data Loading...
