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This study was designed to investigate the factors that contributed to high school students' sense of security at school, and what these students perceived as measures that if put in place, would increase their feelings of security. The focus was the relationship between students' perceptions of safety at school and their own opinions of school and their experiences at school. The study was conducted in the School District of Osceola County, Florida. The population of this study was comprised of all students enrolled in the public high schools in the School District of Osceola County. The sample for the study consisted of 354 students from four English classes on six high school campuses within the school district. The Safety Climate Survey, an instrument developed by the researcher was administered to the students during the Fall of 2002. The survey consisted of 5 sections: opinions of school, experiences at school, safety measures, safety concerns, and a demographics section. Results from the study indicated that relationships existed between students' opinions of school and their perceived sense of safety at school; and between students' experiences, particularly victimization experiences, at school and their sense of safety. The strongest correlation between perceived sense of safety and personal experiences existed for student who had been the victims of bullying or threatened by someone at school. Also indicated was that students' victimization experiences at school were related to the decision to carry a weapon to school. Experiences such as being bullied at school, having been physically assaulted at school, and having been threatened by someone with a weapon at school related solidly to a student's decision to carry a weapon to school. Peer weapon carrying, disruptive behavior such as fighting, and suspension were also related to the decision to carry a weapon. Data from the study further suggested violence preventive and interventive strategies that would increase students' sense of safety at school. Initiatives indicated by student respondents that would increase their sense of safety were a wider selection of extra-curricular activities, more adults to talk to on campus, more school resource officers, and more school-wide safety assemblies. Students also indicated what they perceived as the most serious safety issues on their school campuses. Weapons on campus were seen as the number one safety concern. This was followed respectively by racial tensions, bullying, and campus security. Drugs were seen as the least serious safety concern.

<p>Over the past few decades, issues of school violence and crime have received international attention. High profile events, such as the Columbine or Virginia Tech school shootings, have led schools and boards of education world-wide to create and implement numerous policies and procedures in an attempt to keep students safe. However, data on school violence trends demonstrate a far more equivocal situation. School violence trends demonstrate stability over time at low levels of actual violence. In this dissertation, I attempt to account for the gap between the high number of school responses and the relatively low and stable trends in the prevalence of school crime and violence. Three main hypotheses, stemming from the culture of fear, institutional theory, and confirmatory bias, account for this gap. The culture of fear hypotheses suggests that the gap has been created by widespread fear that is pervasive, decoupled from the ecology of school crime and violence, and generated widely by the mass media. Although this is a cultural theory, institutional theory takes an organizational approach to account for this gap. Institutional theory suggests that the gap has been created by institutional processes of schools seeking legitimacy and reflecting how centralized hierarchies respond to the institutional environment, where fear takes a more loosely coupled form, and can be sensitive to the ecological variation of school crime and violence. The third hypothesis is a cognitive one, and suggests that confirmatory bias processes are the mechanisms by which scattered and sporadic acts of school violence receive large scale exposure, and therefore not only are able to generate cultures of fear, but also serve to legitimate policy. These three hypotheses are tested using a mixed-methods approach, including 66 interviews with key-players associated with schools (students, teachers, administrators, and parents), descriptive analyses of existing survey data (e.g., National statistics; Safe Schools Survey), and a content analysis of the media’s presentation of issues surrounding school crime and violence. This mixed methods approach provides a unique and holistic approach to test these hypotheses, asking several different research questions of various levels of analysis (from the individual to the community). Explaining the gap between school violence trends and school responses provides a unique contribution to the literature: it furthers our understanding of the complexities associated with school safety; it operationalizes and tests the culture of fear theory which, to date, has not been accomplished, and; it utilizes institutional theory and confirmatory bias in new ways, by applying them to issues of school safety.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Researchers have been studying school aggression (often termed bullying) for many years, but it was not until the 1980's that the deleterious effects of school aggression became more apparent. Most of the studies on physical and relational aggression focus upon the experiences of children who perpetrate these actions or who are the victims of this form of aggression. However, few studies have investigated how physical and relational aggression is influenced by the teacher and/or specific classroom environments. To date, there is a scarcity of information available regarding teacher characteristics and attitudes within the classroom and how these specific characteristics are associated with physically and relationally aggressive behavior and the overall climate of the classroom. The purpose of the present study was to examine whether teacher positivity is associated with student levels of physically and relationally aggressive behaviors in the classroom. This study specifically examined the relationship between (1) teacher positivity and student physical and relational aggression, (2) the relationship between classroom climate variables and student physical and relational aggression, and (3) differences in school, teacher, student, and classroom variables (teacher and student gender, student grade, and student ethnicity) based on the level of teacher positivity. Data were collected from 502 male (n=259) and female (n=243) 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students from two large urban elementary schools within the School District of Philadelphia during the 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 school year. In addition to student participants, the third, fourth, and fifth grade teachers (n=18) also participated as part of the focus of a systematic observation tool developed by the lead researcher. Results from the first research question found no significant correlations between teacher positivity and non-compliant acts, the proportion of physically aggressive students or the proportion of relationally aggressive students. However, the proportion of physically aggressive students was significantly positively correlated with the average number of non-compliant acts (r = .603, p = .008). Results from the second research question found that the average number of non-compliant acts and the proportion of physically aggressive students was higher in classrooms where the minority of students was engaged and interested in the classroom activity. Results from the third research question showed only that there were differences between School 1 (m = 0.49, sd = .09) and School 2 (m = .29, sd = .14; t (16) = 3.56, p = .003) when comparing teacher positivity by school. Teacher, student, and classroom variables did not produce significant findings. Post hoc analyses, looking more specifically at the types of redirection and praise which composed the teacher positivity score, found correlations between the average number of noncompliant acts and universal redirections (r = .795, p = .000), the proportion of physically aggressive students and total teacher redirection (r = .479, p = .036), the proportion of physically aggressive students and specific teacher redirections (r = .540, p = .021), and the proportion of relationally aggressive students and teacher redirections (r = .477, p = .045) that occurred during an interruption. / School Psychology

The major purpose of this study was to determine school board members’ perceptions about violence in their school districts. The study asked school board members if they thought violence was a problem in their district, how violence affected their school district and about the effectiveness of policies, educational programs and other measures enacted to control violence. Data were collected regarding the frequency of board members’ perceptions that violence was a problem and their perceptions as to the effect of violence in their district. Data were collected to determine board members perception of the effectiveness of programs and measures their district had taken in an effort to control violence. Data were cross tabulated by size of school district, region of the country and type of school district. Descriptive research methods were employed in this study. A stratified, random sample of school board members was identified from the list of school board member subscribers to The American School Board Journal. Of the 21,655 board members in the population, 5,847 or approximately 27% were surveyed using a mailed questionnaire. The response rate was 17.9%. The study was sponsored by The American School Board Journal. The study revealed that while the majority of board members who responded to the survey do not feel violence is a problem in their district, the board members who feel that violence is a problem represent approximately 75% of the students in the United States. The majority of board members from the southern and pacific regions of the country perceive violence as a problem. The board members from the southern and pacific regions are more heavily involved in programs designed to control violence. Of note is the fact that in virtually all cases and cross tabulations, if a school district had enacted a plan to control violence, the plan was viewed by the majority of board members to be effective. / Ed. D.

This study was an evaluation of the Abeyance Alternative Schools Program (AASP) in the Brevard County Public School System, which consisted of three sites located in the north, central, and south areas of the county. The purpose was to investigate the effect that the AASP had on expellable, felony suspension, or community control students who had transitioned back to their home schools after participation in the AASP. Pre- and post-data in the areas of attendance, discipline, and grades were compared to ascertain if students' performance had improved after AASP participation. Further, the study examined if any particular AASP site demonstrated more student success, and if so, what factors may have contributed to this success. The study was conducted in Brevard County, Florida, the ninth largest school system in Florida. The research population included 113 students who were returning to their home schools after spending a minimum of four months in the AASP. It was noted that this was a small research group and a delimitation of this study. The data collected were primarily from students' cumulative files and the school system's mainframe computer. Data were nominal in nature and descriptive statistics as well as Pair-Wise T-Tests were utilized to compare pre- and post-data. A semi-structured interview with five AASP site administrators, five counselors, and seven teachers was also conducted to determine program differences among sites and offer suggestions for improvement of the AASP. An overall analysis of the total population data revealed that students were classified as "Improved" in the area of academic performance only. Further, it was established that students attending the North Area AASP showed improvement in attendance and discipline while students attending the South Area AASP showed improvement in grades. The following conclusions were reached: (a) Alternative programs must embrace the research-based characteristics of successful programs to maximize success for all students; (b) Alternative schools should conduct evaluations of incoming students and develop individual education plans based on students' .academic and social problems; and (c) The AASP should be funded to provide adequate numbers of computers and other innovative materials. Recommendations for further research were made.

After teaching in High school for six years, I was frustrated to see the institutional action on the issue of school violence. The creation of a climate conducive to teaching and learning has become a serious challenge to many educators. Through research, it became clear that enough has not yet been done. Therefore, an empirical investigation into this problem was necessary to determine the nature of violence in order to enhance better understanding of the phenomenon under study. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the factors related to the prevalence of violence in rural secondary schools in the Bushbuckridge (Bohlabela) district in Mpumalanga province. This research employed a qualitative research approach to answer the research question. The study aimed to provide an accurate, objective, representative and empirically sound body of data on the extent of violence within schools in the Ximhungwe circuit in Bohlabela district, Mpumalanga. The research design comprised a case study that included focus group interviews with six participants in each group. In addition, I employed participant observation and document analysis. The study focused on four rural secondary schools that were purposefully selected in the Ximhungwe circuit in Bohlabela district, Mpumalanga. Ethical issues were taken into consideration while conducting the sampling and the selection of learners was based on their accounts of frequent violence against learners or teachers, and because they were considered knowledgeable and informative about the phenomenon under study. / Educational Leadership and Management / M. Ed. (Education Management)

After teaching in High school for six years, I was frustrated to see the institutional action on the issue of school violence. The creation of a climate conducive to teaching and learning has become a serious challenge to many educators. Through research, it became clear that enough has not yet been done. Therefore, an empirical investigation into this problem was necessary to determine the nature of violence in order to enhance better understanding of the phenomenon under study. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the factors related to the prevalence of violence in rural secondary schools in the Bushbuckridge (Bohlabela) district in Mpumalanga province. This research employed a qualitative research approach to answer the research question. The study aimed to provide an accurate, objective, representative and empirically sound body of data on the extent of violence within schools in the Ximhungwe circuit in Bohlabela district, Mpumalanga. The research design comprised a case study that included focus group interviews with six participants in each group. In addition, I employed participant observation and document analysis. The study focused on four rural secondary schools that were purposefully selected in the Ximhungwe circuit in Bohlabela district, Mpumalanga. Ethical issues were taken into consideration while conducting the sampling and the selection of learners was based on their accounts of frequent violence against learners or teachers, and because they were considered knowledgeable and informative about the phenomenon under study. / Educational Leadership and Management / M. Ed. (Education Management)