From Violence to Safety: Centering School-Based Relationships to Increase Student Safety in Schools

• In Event: Repositioning Learners: Transformative Case Studies in Relationship and Identity Development

Abstract

Narrow crime-stopping notions of school safety have limited our scope for assessing and mitigating different forms of harm in schools. This manuscript offers a historical overview of how research, public perception, and education policy have intersected across time to frame school safety via a lens of crime and physical violence. In working toward a more comprehensive framework for defining school safety, this paper introduces relational safety as a critical dimension. Relational safety refers to the cultivation of environments that are conducive to helping students forge and maintain loving, growth-fostering relationships at school. Relational safety acknowledges the impact of social-emotional wellbeing, race and cultural identity, gender and sexual orientation, and academic experience on youths’ feelings of safety at school.

Author

• Elianny C Edwards, University of California - Los Angeles