The purpose of this study was to investigate and report the perceptions of principals of high schools built prior to 1999 and high school principals of high schools built in the past five years as well as the perceptions of architects who build and design schools on the physical design elements that support a safe school environment. Qualitative methods of survey research were utilized to collect, analyze and interpret the data regarding the perceptions of principals and architects on the design elements that influence safety in select old and new high schools in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Data collection consisted of recorded and transcribed interviews from a select group of questions tailored for each group of participants. The data were analyzed and emergent themes were generated from the results of the transcribed interviews. The analyzed data found consistency in all three groups in their response to the interview questions. Common themes from all three groups focused on wide open spaces that increase visibility and hallways wide enough to support the smooth flow of students. All three groups mentioned controlling access to the building by the use of security vestibules and the use of cameras to record and provide surveillance as design elements that support a safe school environment. The location of the school office was cited by all three groups as paramount to school safety. The ability of staff to see who enters the school building and the ability to funnel visitors to the main office and not allow access to other parts of the school building was cited as crucial to a safe environment. All three groups spoke of doors and windows and the ability to secure the large number of doors as problematic. This study also determined the need for doctoral and principal preparation programs to include specific coursework or training that involves principals in the design phase of constructing schools. Principals need to be involved in the planning and design process to insure new and renovated school buildings have the needed safety features they believe will help them in their work of educating students and providing for the safety of faculty and students. The principal should know and understand the workings of a school building and how a school organization operates. The result of such training would allow the principal to anticipate the effectiveness and consequences of certain designs in regards to the movement of students, program demands and requirements. / Ed. D.

Thesis advisor: Elizabeth Twomey / As our world continues to evolve as a global community, schools must prepare students to live, work, and thrive in a diverse society. Teaching the acceptance of diversity to our students is a significant step in building a safe and peaceful culture within our school communities. Teaching the acceptance of diversity to a generation of young people is a significant step in building a peaceful world. This qualitative case study examined an anti-bias education initiative that empowered students to become leaders and activists in their high school. The findings of this study revealed that the diversity education initiative did not have an immediate impact on school culture, but the students who took active leadership roles encountered a transformational experience. The student leaders demonstrated substantial growth in the skills and understandings essential to anti-bias activism. Significant to this development was heightened awareness of discriminatory language and behavior, a more comprehensive view of diversity and its role in community, and the ability to engage peers in dialogue about challenging diversity topics. In a dialogic exploration of individual differences, student leaders discovered the commonality that connects all humanity. This insight led them to affirm individual identity, to conceptualize the richness that diversity adds to community, and ultimately to embrace diversity as fundamental to community. The findings of this study point to the incremental nature of school culture change and the need to institutionalize a diversity education/student leader effort as a long-term initiative in order to achieve substantive school improvement. The findings compel educators to provide leadership opportunities for students, cultivating their ability to become productive citizen-leaders in an increasingly global community. This is the subject matter of their lives, an authentic curriculum that activates their knowledge, their ability, and their responsibility to transform their world (Starratt, 2008). This dissertation captures the lived experiences of a group of students who led this diversity education initiative, and how their reflections inform educational policy, practice, and leadership. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Administration.

Because of a perceived increase in school related violence, a political reaction occurred in Missouri that led in 1997 to the Missouri Safe Schools Act. This new law significantly changed school disciplinary policy and allowed administrators to move large groups of students to alternative education programs, or expel them to the streets. The purpose of this qualitative study was to learn from students who attended at least one year in an alternative education program about their experiences. I interviewed 26 former students and another 14 former students entered into the conversation by posting their thoughts on a Facebook site for alumni of a specific alternative program. The 40 former students shared common stories that indicated their confusion, a misuse of power by the school district, and a lack of due process surrounding the events that led to their suspensions. At the same time, they shared many stories of relationships, kindnesses, and empathy that they experienced from the alternative school teachers and administrators. Results point to the need for families to educate themselves (and sometimes resist) arbitrary decisions made by school personnel, and the importance of teacher and administrator selection for alternative school programs.

In response to an increase of school shootings, America has seen public outcry for safer schools and the implementation of get-tough discipline policies that remove students who pose threats of violence to the safe school environment. One response to the increased rate of violence was the implementation of the Gun-Free Schools Act (GFSA). Criticism of these policies grew, unintended outcomes undermined their implementation, and research data supporting their effectiveness were lacking. The legislature sought to address issues relating to discretion in implementation, due process rights, mandatory expulsion language, and alternative education placement. This study sought to trace the evolution of GFSA legislation in Virginia. Selected sponsors of GFSA and patrons were identified and interviewed to learn their perceptions of goals and outcomes of legislation prohibiting the possession of weapons on school grounds. Interview questions sought to identify key factors that were considered throughout the legislative process. Interviews were recorded and transcribed. Interview data were analyzed using QSR NVIVO 9, data analysis software. The research design incorporated the collection and analysis of extant information, as well as the use of open-ended interviews with selected policymakers in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Emerging themes were described, categorized, and analyzed within the structure of a historical timeline of the GFSA legislation. Non-legislative documents were analyzed to add support to the interview findings and legislative analysis. Twelve themes emerged, which were supported in the review of non-legislative documents and in legislative documents. The legislative intent was reinforced in the literature and in the interviews. A review of these data led this researcher to conclude that the General Assembly came full circle and virtually reversed the initial requirements for zero-tolerance discipline policies. Continued study is recommended to trace how the General Assembly ameliorates racial inequity, increased drop-out rates, increased criminalization, and other harsh and unintended consequences of GFSA legislation in the Commonwealth. / Ed. D.

All students should be guaranteed a learning environment that is free from all forms of harassment that negatively affect the school climate as well as the learning environment. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the perceptions and attitudes of Sullivan County, Tennessee, K-12 administrators regarding harassment and the associated legal liability. The study also ascertained the attitudes of the administrators pertaining to various forms of student-to-student harassment in their schools, collected data regarding their perceptions of the effectiveness of mandated anti-harassment measures, and examined administrators' attitudes toward the need for more harassment-avoidance training. The research design was descriptive and used data gathered from a survey instrument developed by the researcher regarding administrators' perceptions and attitudes regarding harassment and the associated legal liability. The survey contained 26 question-items. The study's population consisted of 48 Sullivan County administrators. Data were analyzed using analysis of variance, t test, Pearson's correlation, Tamhane post hoc pairwise comparison, and Tukey post hoc test. The results of the study indicated that administrators were knowledgeable about the law and legal ramifications regarding student-to-student harassment. The results also showed that middle and high school students needed more harassment-avoidance training than elementary students. No significant differences were found in their perceptions of the current status of harassment based on population, socioeconomic status, or level of the school. The study offers a valuable insight into administrators' perception and attitudes regarding harassment and the associated legal liability. It also offers a number of recommendations including the need for more harassment-avoidance training to combat this problem for middle and high school students. Effective implementation of bullying prevention programs will need to involve all school stakeholders in order to be successful. The results may be used by school systems to plan for future staff development regarding harassment-avoidance training. Students have a right to feel safe at school as they grow and mature into adulthood. It is the duty of all schools to provide them that safe and secure atmosphere.

Informed by institutional ethnography, and taking the problematic from disjunctures in teacher/participants’ experience between actual practice and official policy, this study is an intertextual analysis of print/electronic documents pertaining to students ‘at risk.’ It unpacks the Student Success Strategy in Ontario secondary schools as organized around discourses on risk and safety. Discriminatory classing and racializing processes construct students ‘at risk’ in ways that reproduce socio-economic inequities through premature streaming into pathways geared to post-secondary destinations: university, college, apprenticeship and work. This study questions the accounting logic that reduces education to skills training in workplace literacy/numeracy, and contradicts the official ‘success’ story that promotes Ontario as a model of large-scale educational change. The follow-up intertextual analyses reveal ideological circles that promote ‘evidence-based research’ and ‘evidence-informed practice,’ while actually gearing education to improving ‘results’ on large-scale standardized tests and manufacturing consent for government policies. Questions arise about the lack of transparency and selective use of educational research. A web of behind-the-scenes activities are made visible at public policy think-tanks (e.g. Canadian Council on Learning; Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network), and two little-researched bodies in educational governance — the Council of Ministers of Education Canada (CMEC) and OECD. Although invisible to teachers, the infrastructure for the Student Success Strategy is the Ontario School Information System (OnSIS); this web-enabled data-management technology has built-in capacity to profile students ‘at risk’ and to instigate accountability and surveillance over teachers’ work, with implications for re-regulating teaching practice towards test scores and aggregate statistics. With the intention of transforming education towards genuine equity, and linking the re-organization of social relations in large-scale reform locally, nationally and globally, this study contributes to critical scholarship on the effects of reform policies on people’s lives and extends knowledge of how translocal text-mediated ruling relations operate in education.

Informed by institutional ethnography, and taking the problematic from disjunctures in teacher/participants’ experience between actual practice and official policy, this study is an intertextual analysis of print/electronic documents pertaining to students ‘at risk.’ It unpacks the Student Success Strategy in Ontario secondary schools as organized around discourses on risk and safety. Discriminatory classing and racializing processes construct students ‘at risk’ in ways that reproduce socio-economic inequities through premature streaming into pathways geared to post-secondary destinations: university, college, apprenticeship and work. This study questions the accounting logic that reduces education to skills training in workplace literacy/numeracy, and contradicts the official ‘success’ story that promotes Ontario as a model of large-scale educational change. The follow-up intertextual analyses reveal ideological circles that promote ‘evidence-based research’ and ‘evidence-informed practice,’ while actually gearing education to improving ‘results’ on large-scale standardized tests and manufacturing consent for government policies. Questions arise about the lack of transparency and selective use of educational research. A web of behind-the-scenes activities are made visible at public policy think-tanks (e.g. Canadian Council on Learning; Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network), and two little-researched bodies in educational governance — the Council of Ministers of Education Canada (CMEC) and OECD. Although invisible to teachers, the infrastructure for the Student Success Strategy is the Ontario School Information System (OnSIS); this web-enabled data-management technology has built-in capacity to profile students ‘at risk’ and to instigate accountability and surveillance over teachers’ work, with implications for re-regulating teaching practice towards test scores and aggregate statistics. With the intention of transforming education towards genuine equity, and linking the re-organization of social relations in large-scale reform locally, nationally and globally, this study contributes to critical scholarship on the effects of reform policies on people’s lives and extends knowledge of how translocal text-mediated ruling relations operate in education.

Through the simple action of covering one’s head with the wrong type of apparel, at the wrong time, and in the wrong spaces, Black and racialized youth exist in a hostile environment where their identities are reconstructed and relabeled according to dominant economic-political needs. This study interrogates and ruptures dominant notions of how space, identity and power are constructed, confronted, engaged, negotiated and resisted by Black and racialized youth in greater Toronto Area (GTA) schools. In an atmosphere of zero-tolerance toward policing youth violence, the anti-gang focus of the Safe Schools headwear policies institutionalize a ‘colour-coded’ link between crime, violence and race. Through ethnographic narrative inquiry this study critically interrogates the multiplicity of ways how the collision between zero-tolerance approaches toward regulating school violence and the policing of specific types of headwear and bodies results in differential outcomes and impacts on Black students and other racialized groups.

Through the simple action of covering one’s head with the wrong type of apparel, at the wrong time, and in the wrong spaces, Black and racialized youth exist in a hostile environment where their identities are reconstructed and relabeled according to dominant economic-political needs. This study interrogates and ruptures dominant notions of how space, identity and power are constructed, confronted, engaged, negotiated and resisted by Black and racialized youth in greater Toronto Area (GTA) schools. In an atmosphere of zero-tolerance toward policing youth violence, the anti-gang focus of the Safe Schools headwear policies institutionalize a ‘colour-coded’ link between crime, violence and race. Through ethnographic narrative inquiry this study critically interrogates the multiplicity of ways how the collision between zero-tolerance approaches toward regulating school violence and the policing of specific types of headwear and bodies results in differential outcomes and impacts on Black students and other racialized groups.

The purpose of this study was to explore the promotion of safe schools in the Eastern Cape according to a Whole School Development Approach. A literature study investigated the factors contributing to violence in schools in the Eastern Cape as well as South Africa, the strategies that can be used to involve all stakeholders in education to combat school violence and the strategies to promote safe schools through Whole School Development Approach. An empirical investigation following a qualitative approach was used to explore the views of learners, educators, principals and teachers of two secondary schools in the Eastern Cape. Data was gathered by observation, interviews, analysis of written documents and analysis was according to qualitative procedures. Findings showed a prevalence of violence in the schools as a result of non-application of the Whole School Development Approach. The implications of the findings of both literature and the empirical investigation are discussed and certain guidelines are provided to assist all stakeholders in education on the promotion of safe schools through the Whole School Development Approach. / Educational Studies / M. Ed. (Education Management)