Black, Indigenous, People of Color and Feelings of Safety in School: Understanding Variation, Longitudinal Resilience

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: Indigenous Educational Opportunities

Abstract

Feeling unsafe at school undermines student well-being and suppresses student outcomes. Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) might feel less safe at school due to attending systemically inequitable schools and discriminatory treatment. This QuantCrit study examines two facets of this inequality of opportunity: the factors explaining differing rates of feeling unsafe and resilience of BIPOC students. We find BIPOC students felt less safe at school than White students, and these differences are more attributable to variation between schools for Black students and school climate/demographic characteristics for Hispanic and American Indian students. Feeling unsafe has a weaker relationship with BIPOC students’ resilience than White students, and resilience potentially fully mediates the negative association between feeling unsafe and longitudinal outcomes.

Authors

• Samantha Viano, George Mason University

• Natalie Truong, George Mason University