Understanding how we talk about school safety

• In Event: Navigating violence, trauma and safety

Proposal

Conversations about school safety and security dominate the thinking of many teachers, other educational leaders, and policy makers. As the era of mass shootings in the US (an exception among wealthy democracies) continues with 28 mass killings only halfway through 2023 according to the AP, activist groups continue demanding change. Inevitably, local media gravitates towards covering the mass killings. As competing approaches to peace and security in schools play out on the national stage, it’s important to have a scholarly appraisal of the nature of this coverage and thus its probable impact. One approach is a more traditional “hard security” view, which emphasizes lockdown drills, surveillance, and law enforcement in schools. Another approach, grounded in human security and consistent with peace education, is based on community building, youth leadership and restorative practices. Ample evidence exists that a hard security approach may be doing more harm than good (Counts, J, et al, 2018; Croft, Moore and Guffy, 2019; Gottfredson, et al, 2020; Garver and Noguera, 2012; Kupchick 2016; Mowen and Freng, 2019).

Public opinion, of course, as this debate plays out, is shaped by national and local news coverage. This proposal will provide a qualitative content analysis of various coverage of school shootings, from Columbine through to the grief in Uvalde, to pose critical questions. Drawing on the theoretical anchor of peace education, this paper will explore questions include seeking to determine any bias in the coverage, how consistent the coverage is with known empirical evidence about gun violence, and most importantly, how such coverage may shape debates on school safety. Finally the presentation will apply a peace education lens. Given what we learn from said analysis of coverage of school shootings, is the coverage that we see likely to facilitate a culture of peace in schools? How might the peace education community best respond?


Sources
Counts, J., et al. (2018). “School Resource Officers in Public Schools: a national review.”
Education and Treatment of Children (41) 4, 405-430.

Cremin, H and T. Bevington. (2017). Positive peace in schools: tackling conflict and creating a
culture of peace in the classroom. London: Routledge.

Croft, M., R. Moore and G. Guffy (2019). Creating safe schools: examining student
perceptions of their physical safety at school. Accessed online 7/16/21 at https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/R1767-school-safety-brief.pdf#_ga=2.215158871.117190819.1626463449-745764123.1626463449

Dazio, S. and Fenn, L. July 14, 2023. “Six months. 28 mass killings in the US. That’s the worst yet, and all but one case involved guns”. Associated Press.
https://apnews.com/article/mass-killings-record-gun-violence-0174103c37756fe4d247fd15cd3bc009

Gottfredson, et al. (2020). “Effects of School Resource Officers on School Crime and
Responses to School Crime.” Criminology and Public Policy (19), 905-940.

Garver, R. and Noguera, P. (2012). "For Safety’s Sake: A Case Study of School Security
Efforts and Their Impact on Education Reform," Journal of Applied Research on Children: Informing Policy for Children at Risk (3) 2, Article 5.

Kupchik, A. (2016). The Real School Safety Problem. Oakland, CA: UCLA Press.

Mowen, T and Freng, A. (2019). “Is more necessarily better? School security and perceptions
of safety among students and parents in the United States.” American Journal of Criminal Justice 44, pp. 376-394.

Author

• Cheryl L Duckworth, Nova Southeastern Univ