Program evaluation of a school-based violence prevention initiative

¶ … Program Evaluation of a Proposed Violence Prevention Program

High school seniors are more likely to take weapons to school than to take calculus in school. - President George Bush, 1997

Targeted promotion and prevention issues.

Students who enroll in biology quickly realize that the world is not a sterile place, but no classroom is required at all to introduce them to the high incidence of violence in the nation's schools today. Indeed, many students encounter violence at home, in their schools, as well as in their places of recreation, and some become victims of such abusive behaviors early on in their lives. These episodes of violence may well affect many of these young people for the rest of their lives in adverse ways, ranging from fear of school to full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder. In addition, other young people may encounter violence in their homes or schools in the form of sexual abuse.

Taken together, these issues are some of the most important problems facing the country today, and despite efforts to reduce the incidence of such behaviors, the problem persists and remains as complicated as ever. According to Rozalski and Yell (2000), "Violence in American society has reached epidemic proportions. Especially troubling is the increasing violence among young people, with the predictable spillover of effects into the public schools. In fact, violence has become a significant aspect of the public school experience in America" (p. 187). The highly publicized recent school shootings in Arkansas, Mississippi, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Oregon, and Colorado have riveted the country's attention on these issues; however, the incidence of violence in our schools have been increasing for the past decade (Rozalski & Yell, 2000). The statistics make it clear that there is a real crisis at hand: "Violence in and around schools has become more common and more serious. Three million crimes are committed each year on the campuses of America's public schools. In the two-year period from 1992 to 1994, 105 students and 12 teachers died violently at school or during school-related activities" (Rozalski & Yell, 2000, p. 187). Fully 80% of these deaths were homicides and guns were used in 77% of the cases; the other 20% of these deaths were suicides (Rozalski & Yell, 2000). Violence in the nation's schools has frequently been associated with impoverished inner-city schools, but the problem has moved to suburban and rural schools as well (Rozalski & Yell, 2000).

Another authority adds that, "Problems of violence caused by our school age children (in and out of schools) are worse now than they have ever been. Youth violence is on the rise and permeates every segment of our society" (Hoffman, 1996, p. 8). Unfortunately, in many ways, the problem has even gotten worse in recent years with the ready availability of weapons. For instance, reflecting the epigraph by President Bush above, Hoffman (1996) emphasizes that, "Today the possibility that a disagreement among students will be settled with some type of weapon rather than an old-fashioned fistfight has increased significantly. A major difference between violence in the schools in the 1950s and the 1990s is the presence and use of weapons, especially guns. Also, students seem to hold a grudge much longer. Some students wait until the last day of school to settle an incident that occurred weeks or even months earlier" (p. 8). In this environment, it is little wonder that many students drop out or turn to substance abuse or other self-destructive behaviors rather than face another day in a school where their safety is not guaranteed (Gabor, 1999).

II. Project vision.

While there are a number of positive outcomes that can be reasonably anticipated that would result from any reduction of violence against children, the project vision for this initiative will focus on the following four areas:

1. Promote pro-social behavior and conflict resolution skills in students;

2. Augment parent and staff conflict resolution strategies and skills;

3. Improve parental affiliation with schools; and, 4. Increase awareness in child sexual abuse issues.

III. Population to be served and rationale for selection.

While many observers might believe that targeting "just the troublemakers" will solve the problem of violence in the schools and elsewhere, the problem is far too complex to benefit from this approach. According to Weinstein (1999):

Decent students struggle to remain decent while warding off their peers who are not. To do so, decent, usually nonviolent students who think adults cannot protect them devise ways to protect themselves. These students may carry weapons for protection, and use posturing, threat displays, and other behavior to appear dangerous and unmanageable. Their hope is that intimidation will ward off predators over whom adults have relinquished control. Students use toughness and bravado as self-protective behavior, and these have become dominant indicators for social evaluation in the peer group. This is the process through which decent students become transformed into proactive instruments of violence. (p. 40)

Moreover, another ingredient in this mix is teacher complacency or apathy concerning violence in the schools. In this regard, Shidler (2001) reports that, "Violence occurs each day within earshot of teachers, ranging from verbal taunts to pushing, shoving, and other types of physical contact. Often, teachers do nothing. This teacher-sanctioned violence is indicative of destructive conflict management. Students' violent behaviors go unchallenged by teachers and administrators, and may result in significant damage to students' self-esteem and sense of dignity" (p. 167). Researchers have found that 80% of children enter their 1st grade year with a high self-esteem and a high sense of dignity; however, by the time children reach 5th grade, just 20% have maintained the same sense of self-esteem, and only 5% carry a high sense of dignity into high school (Shidler, 2000). Therefore, because the entire school's population, including professional staff, is involved in some fashion or another by the incidence of violence, the population to be served by this initiative is a school's entire student body, teachers, support staff, administrators and parents or caregivers. This approach is congruent with Furlong and Morrison (2000) who advise, "When violence occurs in the community, and especially on a school campus, whether by the hands of another student or by an outsider, actions must be taken to ensure the safety of all students and the staff who serve them" (p. 71).

IV. Scope of preventative efforts.

The scope of the preventative efforts envisioned herein are broad and are based on other school-based violence prevention programs that use Elliott et al.'s (1998) definition in developing and implementing intervention strategies that attempt to prevent violence in school settings. Other violence preventive intervention initiatives, though, have also used broader definitions of violence that include delinquent and antisocial behavior such as verbal abuse, the threat of the use of weapons, vandalism, and property crimes (D'Andrea, 2004). Still other prevention programs have expanded this definition by defining six categories of violence as shown in Table 1 below.

Table 1.

Six Categories of Violence to be Addressed.

Category

Definition/Description

Physical violence

Included in this category are fistfights that occur in public schools, various forms of physical violence committed by youth gangs, and frequent though underpublicized incidents of domestic violence.

Sexual and gender violence

This category includes hostile and aggressive behaviors that devalue gays, lesbians, and women in our society. Although a tremendous amount of media attention is directed to the problem of violence in our schools, the same amount of attention is not devoted to examining violence against women, which occurs with much greater frequency. The magnitude of this latter problem is highlighted by the National Health and Education Consortium, which reports that one woman is battered every 12 seconds in the United States, usually by a family member, husband, boyfriend, or other acquaintance.

Media violence

Experts have noted that the average child in the United States has viewed more than 10,000 hours of violence on television by the time she or he is 12 years old (Hughes & Hasbrouk, 1996). Investigative reports that emerged from the deadly killings that took place in 1999, at Columbine High School in Colorado, suggested that the repeated viewing of violent films, having access to various hate sites on the Internet, and playing violent video games were all factors that are thought to have contributed to the deliberate manner in which Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold planned for and conducted the shooting at their Colorado high school.

Cultural-racial violence

As the nation continues its transformation into an increasingly multicultural society from a nation that has historically been comprised of a majority of persons from white European ancestry to a nation in which most of its citizens will come from non-White, non-European backgrounds, the racial tensions that characterize the country are likely to become exacerbated in the future unless time, effort, and resources are directed toward dealing with this problem. Without directing appropriate resources to deal with the heightening tensions that will predictably accompany the cultural-racial transformation of the United States, several multicultural counseling theorists have argued that these tensions are likely to lead to the increased manifestation of culturally and racially based acts of hatred and violence in the coming years

Peacekeeping

In the peacekeeping mode, educators use violence prevention activities to create an orderly learning climate in schools. At the peacekeeping level, educators use peace-through-strength strategies to create a safe school climate. In schools with high levels of physical violence there are often daily weapons searches, frequent detentions and expulsions, and the use of such devices as metal detectors at school entrances. Some schools have also installed extensive surveillance and warning systems to monitor students. Others have turned to such devices as school uniforms, (primarily to reduce theft of expensive clothing and jewelry), ID badges, closed-circuit television surveillance, and staff walkie-talkies. Violence prevention programs are also part of such peacekeeping strategies to reduce levels of youth violence. Their tactics frequently have an educational component as suggested by most of their names -- anger management, racism/sexism prevention, drug/alcohol education, gang discrediting, domestic violence prevention, and handgun discouragement. These programs help youths understand the consequences of violent behavior, with the hope that this will lead to the avoidance of self-destructive and cruel behavior.

Peacemaking

For peacemaking, educators use conflict resolution techniques to teach students to manage their own conflicts constructively. Educators involved in these types of conflict resolution programs demonstrate to students how conflict can become a peaceful yet positive force that can encourage both personal growth and institutional change. Advocates of the peacemaking approach maintain that conflict resolution programs help young people, and school personnel as well, acquire a deeper understanding of themselves and others through improved communication. Generally a higher level of citizenship activity can result from young people becoming involved in creating a peaceful school climate. Students who learn about nonadversarial conflict resolution and its relationship to the legal system develop a heightened knowledge of peacemaking strategies at all levels of society.

Peacebuilding

With peacebuilding, educators teach students how the power of nonviolence can demonstrate to the young the futility of inflicting violence on others. This term refers to the general goal to create in all people a desire to learn how nonviolence can provide the basis for a just and sustainable future; the concept includes the goals of peacekeeping and peacemaking as defined above, but is much broader. A primary assumption as well as a fundamental orientation of a peacebuilding approach is nonviolence.

The three approaches are interrelated and build on each other, and all three components represent an integral and necessary part of a peaceable school environment (Forcey & Harris, 1999). To instruct educators, support staff and administrators in the application of these three components, a series of weekly in-service training sessions will be conducted to identify ongoing areas of concern and priority so that appropriate interventions can be developed and implemented. During these sessions, attendees will be requested to provide specific examples of current problems they are aware of so that specific effective interventions can be devised and shared, and innovative techniques will be encouraged. To instruct students, parents and caregivers, outreach efforts, school assemblies, newsletters, after-school "no-violence" pep rallies and other cost-effective techniques will be used.

Other techniques that will be used as part of this initiative will include conflict resolution seminars wherein students will be trained in effective conflict resolution techniques, and anger management workshops where students can learn alternatives to expressing their anger other than violent behaviors. If deemed appropriate, the educator in charge of the initiative can coordinate small counseling groups as well in which students can communicate the problems they are experiencing with violence, or where students with such behavior problems can identify the potential source of these behaviors and take action to resolve them. Finally, teachers may elect to include conflict resolution and violence prevention as a subject of study. This approach is congruent with the Center for Civic Education's recommendation for preventing violence and substance abuse in the nation's schools. In this approach, "Classes work cooperatively to develop solutions that they present to other students, adults, and authorities in their communities" (Center for Civic Education, 2002, p. 2).

VI. Expected results.

The expect result of this initiative is that by providing young people with constructive ways to address the causes of violence, there will be a concomitant reduction in the incidence and intensity of violent confrontations. In this regard, Shidler (2001) emphasizes that, "Regardless of the causes of violent behavior, educators' main goal should be to prevent the victimization of children at the hands of their schoolmates" (p. 167). Based on the foregoing, other expected results of the initiative envisioned herein concerns the following two issues:

There will be a reduction in violence and sexual abuse in schools and school-sponsored extracurricular activities; and,

The initiative will promote pro-social behaviors that provide students with alternatives to carrying weapons for protection or engaging in self-destructive behaviors such as substance abuse. This approach is congruent with Weinstein's (1999) observation that, "Violence in the schools is just one more powerfully disorganizing and stress-inducing influence for decent young people at risk of substance abuse" (p. 40).