Guidelines for Responding to Student Threats of Violence Book

A manual for school threat assessment as a violence prevention strategy. This book is a sequel to Guidelines for Responding to Student Threats of Violence.

This publication focuses on the use of the threat assessment process pioneered by the Secret Service as one component of the Department of Education's efforts to help schools across the nation reduce school violence and create safe climates.

Illustrated with numerous case studies–many drawn from the author’s work as a forensic psychologist–this book identifies 19 myths and misconceptions about youth violence, from ordinary bullying to rampage shootings. It covers controversial topics such as gun control and the effects of entertainment violence on children. The author demonstrates how fear of school violence has resulted in misguided, counterproductive educational policies and practices ranging from boot camps to zero tolerance. He reviews evidence from hundreds of controlled studies showing that school-based school violence prevention programs and mental health services, which are largely effective, are often overlooked in favor of politically popular yet ineffective programs such as school uniforms, Drug Abuse Resistance Education, and Scared Straight. He concludes by reviewing some of his own research on student threat assessment as a more flexible and less punitive alternative to zero tolerance, and presents a wide ranging series of recommendations for improving and expanding the use of school-based violence prevention programs and mental health services for troubled students. Key features include the following: Contrarian Approach–This book identifies and refutes 19 basic misconceptions about trends in youth violence and school safety, and shows how the fear of school violence has been exaggerated through inaccurate statistics, erroneous conclusions about youth violence, and over-emphasis on atypical, sensational cases. Readability–The book translates scientific, evidence-based research into language that educators, parents, law enforcement officers, and policymakers can readily understand and shows what can be done to improve things. Expertise–Dewey Cornell is a forensic psychologist and Professor of Education at the University of Virginia, where he holds an endowed chair in Education. He is Director of the UVA Youth Violence Project and is a faculty associate of the Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy. The author of more than 100 publications in psychology and education, he frequently testifies in criminal proceedings and at legislative hearings involving violence prevention efforts. This book is appropriate for courses or seminars dealing wholly or partly with school violence and school safety. It is also an indispensable volume for school administrators and safety officers; local, state, and national policymakers; involved parents; and academic libraries serving these groups.

Online communications can be extremely cruel and vicious. They can cause great emotional harm and can take place 24/7. Damaging text and images can be widely disseminated and impossible to fully remove. There are increasing reports of youth suicide, violence, and abduction related to cyberbullying and cyberthreats. This essential resource provides school counselors, administrators, and teachers with cutting-edge information on how to prevent and respond to cyberbullying and cyberthreats. It addresses real-life situations that often occur as students embrace the Internet and other digital technologies: Sending offensive or harassing messages Dissing someone or spreading nasty rumors on sites such as MySpace Disclosing someone's intimate personal information Breaking into someone's e-mail account and sending damaging messages under that person's name Excluding someone from an online group Using the Internet to intimidate The book includes detailed guidelines for managing in-school use of the Internet and personal digital devices, including cell phones. Extensive reproducible appendices contain forms for assessment, planning, and intervention, as well as a 9-page student guide and 16-page parent guide. An accompanying CD of all the reproducible forms and student handouts is included with the book.

In this comprehensive, multidisciplinary volume, experts from a wide range fields explore violence in education’s different forms, contributing factors, and contextual nature. With contributions from noted experts in a wide-range of scholarly and professional fields, The Wiley Handbook on Violence in Education offers original research and essays that address the troubling issue of violence in education. The authors show the different forms that violence takes in educational contexts, explore the factors that contribute to violence, and provide innovative perspectives and approaches for prevention and response. This multidisciplinary volume presents a range of rigorous research that examines violence from both micro- and macro- approaches. In its twenty-nine chapters, this comprehensive volume’s fifty-nine contributors, representing thirty-three universities from the United States and six other countries, examines violence’s distinctive forms and contributing factors. This much-needed volume: Addresses the complexities of violence in education with essays from experts in the fields of sociology, psychology, criminology, education, disabilities studies, forensic psychology, philosophy, and critical theory Explores the many forms of school violence including physical, verbal, linguistic, social, legal, religious, political, structural, and symbolic violence Reveals violence in education’s stratified nature in order to achieve a deeper understanding of the problem Demonstrates how violence in education is deeply situated in schools, communities, and the broader society and culture Offers new perspectives and proposals for prevention and response The Wiley Handbook on Violence in Education is designed to help researchers, educators, policy makers, and community leaders understand violence in educational settings and offers innovative, effective approaches to this difficult challenge.