Support or Punishment Practices: What Works to Reduce School Violence

Abstract

School culture and violence have garnered much public and scholarly attention in recent years. Research in the area has focused on the extent to which strict enforcement of school policies and the law results in safer schools. Other research focuses on providing more supportive, less enforcement-oriented environments for students. We advance this work by using a sample of 2092 respondents from public schools in the United States from the 2015–2016 school survey on crime and safety from the Department of Education. There were several statistically significant supportive practices that reduced violent incidents and disciplinary actions for violence, and the findings generally suggest that punitive policies were not effective in increasing campus safety while controlling for relevant security practices and school contextual variables.

School Culture, Racial Composition, and Preventing Violence: Evaluating Punitive and Supportive Responses to Improving Safety

“…The category of variables constituting the supportive school responses was far more likely than the other categories of variable (i.e., punitive responses, crime prevention/security, and school characteristics) to be associated with reductions in serious violence and disciplinary actions. This finding is supported in previous research, which examined supportive and punitive practices targeting school violence (Crawford and Burns 2020). Further, the variables within this category also demonstrated more notable differences between the predominantly minority and predominantly white schools.…”

“…Determining what approaches work best in different schools is necessary for student safety. School culture is important with regard to effective school functioning and of particular significance with regard to school safety (Crawford and Burns 2020). School officials, teachers, and students significantly impact school culture and more specifically school safety; for instance, administrators may seek to promote a more punitive approach to misconduct, or they may wish to create a more supportive environment.…”

Health Promotion Actions and School Violence—A Cluster Analysis from Finnish Comprehensive Schools

“…Supportive and punitive school practices are usually seen as opposite ways to respond to school violence. According to Crawford and Burns (2020), the supportive school responses revealed some promising findings in reducing school violence, whereas punitive responses had no effect on or even increased school violence [22]. A review article by Mallett (2016) supports this finding [23].…”

Queering School Leadership Preparation Curricula for Gender Justice in Public Schooling

“…Schools that try to provide support networks and a community atmosphere have lower levels of violence and higher levels of academic achievement (Crawford & Burns, 2020; DiPietro et al, 2015). Sex education curriculum in this article is presented as a mode of gender justice that considers how merging queer theory, childhood studies, and curriculum can contribute to school transformation (Dyer, 2020; Elliot, 2016; Henninger, 2018; Walton, 2021).…”