School Psychologists’ Perspectives on School Violence: Causes, Consequences, and Recommendations

• In Event: Violence Against Educators in Context: New National Evidence from School Personnel Across Roles and Identities

Abstract

School violence and safety have garnered national attention in recent years, yet most research in this area has focused on student perceptions and outcomes (Cornell et al., 2020). Less is known about how school psychologists experience, interpret, and respond to safety-related issues. Expanding on a previous study (Robinson et al., 2025) examining similar questions asked during the 2020-2021 school year, this study examined the perspectives of school psychologists across the U.S. in 2023 regarding (1) current safety concerns in their schools, (2) perceived causes of violence, and (3) recommendations for improving school safety policy and practice.
The data are interpreted using a socioecological model of school safety (Benbenishty & Astor, 2005), which conceptualizes school safety as influenced by a complex interplay of individual, relational, institutional, and societal factors. This framework is essential in helping researchers interpret the wide-ranging responses of school psychologists, and permits insights to be organized across systemic levels. The model also emphasizes that effective safety interventions must extend beyond student behavior and include broader structural supports (Capp et al., 2020). By utilizing this framework, we are able to contextualize school psychologists' responses within the broader ecosystem of school safety, recognizing the interconnected nature of the causes, consequences, and policy recommendations they identified.
The primary data source for this study comes from a national sample of U.S. school psychologists (n=504) during Spring 2023. Data were collected as part of a larger initiative by the American Psychological Association Task Force on Violence against Educators and School Personnel. Participants represented a diverse range of demographics, school settings, and geographical locations. Participants were asked to describe the most pressing school safety issues they had observed, reflect on why these issues were occurring, and share their policy or practice recommendations during the 2022-2023 school year. Our analysis is inductive yet guided by the socio-ecological model, allowing themes to emerge while situating them within broader systemic contexts.
Coding and analyses are ongoing but preliminary findings suggest that responses captured a breadth of professional roles and experiences, including student and parent aggression, staff conflict, inadequate mental health resources, and district-level policy gaps. Participants represented diverse regions and demographics, enhancing the generalizability of emergent themes. This study is among the first to capture a large-scale, post-pandemic snapshot of school safety through the lens of school psychologists. By leveraging the socio-ecological model to understand the perspectives of school psychologists, we illustrate how school violence cannot be understood or solved at a single level. The preliminary findings support prior research on the urgent need for comprehensive, multi-tiered prevention policies that address not only individual behavior but also systemic and institutional contributors to school violence (Astor et al., 2010).

Authors

• Luz Robinson, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Sawyer Hogenkamp, University of California - Los Angeles

• Andrew Holmes Perry, The Ohio State University

• Susan D. McMahon, DePaul University

• Linda Reddy, Rutgers University

• Eric M. Anderman, The Ohio State University

• Frank C. Worrell, University of California - Berkeley

• Andrew Martinez, Center for Court Innovation

• Ron Avi Astor, University of California - Los Angeles

• Dorothy L. Espelage, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill