School Shootings: Broadening the Context, Refocusing the Response

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Much recent research and policy minimize rampage school shooters’ relationships to their educational, communal, and sociocultural environments and to the times in which we live, searching instead for typologies of psychological profiles and proposing intensified security measures. In a multidisciplinary set of presentations, this symposium recurs to the theme that rampage and targeted school shootings are complex and contextualized in institutions, communities, and the broader society and culture. We show how common misconceptions have led to prevalent problematic responses and prevention measures, as we provide new perspectives on the contexts of school shootings and productive modes of response, recovery and prevention. The papers are based on chapters from the forthcoming Wiley Handbook on Violence in Education.

Sub Unit

• Division L - Educational Policies and Politics / Division L - Section 8: Social Policy and Education

Chair

• Harvey Shapiro, Northeastern University

Papers

• Responses to School Shootings: Well-Meaning or Just Plain Mean? - James Alan Fox, Northeastern University; Emma Fridel, Northeastern University

• Student Threat Assessment as a Violence Prevention Strategy - Dewey G. Cornell, University of Virginia

• School Shootings, Societal Violence, and Gun Culture - Douglas Kellner, University of California - Los Angeles

• Learning to Become a Rampage Shooter: The Case of Elliot Rodger - Ralph Larkin, The City University of New York

• The Logic of the Exception and Instrumental Violence: School Shootings Revisited - Harvey Shapiro, Northeastern University

• Aftermath of School Shootings: A Model for Relational Aesthetic Response, Reconstruction, and Associated Living - Patricia L. Maarhuis, Washington State University; A.G. Rud, Washington State University