Advancing a Conceptual and Empirical Model of School Climate for School Staff in California

ABSTRACT

School climate is increasingly intertwined with efforts to create safe schools and improve social-emotional learning and academic outcomes. While current definitions of school climate implicate the decisions and actions of school staff members, the majority of school climate research focuses on the perspectives of students. This study presents an adapted model of school climate that focuses on the experiences of school staff members, and is one of the first empirical studies to explore a statewide data set of responses from staff members in California public schools. Results suggest that there are meaningful differences in the experiences of school climate for different staff members and that these differences should guide the assessments of school climate and changes to policies and procedures that may influence climate.     

School Social Workers’ Perceptions of School Safety and Security in Today’s Schools: A Survey of Practitioners Across the United States

To understand the effects of school safety practices and strategies on the school environment, researchers have consistently investigated the perceptions of students and various school personnel concerning school safety. Yet school social workers, professionals commonly employed in today’s schools to address the mental health needs of students, are often left out of the school safety discussion. Data were collected from 229 school social workers across the United States to examine: (a) school social workers’ perceptions regarding the effectiveness of various school safety strategies; (b) differences in these perceptions based on student- and school-level variables; and (c) comments from participants regarding school safety in U.S. schools. The purpose of this article is to provide timely implications concerning school safety from a unique and unstudied perspective.     

Authoritative school climate and suspension rates in middle schools: Implications for reducing the racial disparity in school discipline

The overuse of school suspensions has been linked to a host of negative outcomes, including racial disparities in discipline. School climate initiatives have shown promise in reducing these disparities. The present study used the Authoritative School Climate Survey—which measures disciplinary structure and student support as key measures of school climate—to investigate an association between teacher and student perceptions of school climate and suspension rates in a statewide sample of middle schools. Regression analyses controlling for school-level poverty and school size found that elements of authoritative climate, particularly structure, distinguish high- and low-suspending schools. Schools with high levels of student- and teacher-reported structure had lower overall suspension rates and a lower gap between Black and White suspension rates. These findings can be used to guide school climate initiatives to reduce racial disparities in school discipline.     

Student–Teacher Relationships Matter for School Inclusion: School Belonging,Disability, and School Transitions

For students with disabilities, the process of school inclusion often begins with a move from segregated settings into general education classrooms. School transitions can be stressful as students adjust to a new environment. This study examines the adjustment of 133 students with and without disabilities who moved from a school that served primarily students with disabilities into 23 public schools in a large urban school district in the Midwest. These students and 111 of their teachers and other school staff rated the degree that students felt they belonged in their new schools and the quality of their social interactions. Results show that students who experienced more positive and fewer negative social interactions with school staff had higher school belonging. Teachers accurately noted whether students felt they belonged in their new settings, but were not consistently able to identify student perceptions of negative social interactions with staff. Implications for inclusion and improving our educational system are explored.     

Memories

SUMMARY

The Hawaiian Studies Program (HSP) integrates the learning of Hawaiian culture with more traditional secondary curriculum in science, social studies, and English. Students also participate in weekly community service-learning sessions. Fifty-five HSP students and 29 peers (who were not involved in the program), completed a survey measuring: students' connection to, pride in, and responsibility for their community; civic attitudes; and career knowledge and preparedness. HSP teachers, community members, and students were also interviewed about program outcomes. Compared to other peers, HSP students tended to report feeling more connected to their community and school and to agree that they had career-related skills. Participants believed that service-learning contributed to these outcomes by making connections between school and community life and by exposing students to a variety of careers.     

School Violence Interventions in the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative

Abstract

The Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative was designed to encourage collaboration among school districts and local community service providers in the provision of behavioral health prevention and early intervention efforts. These efforts would address the physical safety of students as well as provide mental health, violence prevention, and social skills services. One local SS/HS Initiative brought together community and school collaborators in an ambitious agenda that included 14 distinct programs that addressed the needs of over 110,000 students in a large school district. The purpose of the current paper is to report the results of the evaluation of two of the programs designed to reduce violent and disruptive behavior in schools. The programs include a school-based anger management program and a community-based, alternative-to-suspension program. Working in cooperation with program staff and the school district, quasi-experimental designs were used to measure change over time for students. The two studies demonstrate the application of multiple methodologies in evaluating the effectiveness of prevention and early intervention efforts with the aim of providing data to support program improvement and sustainability.     

Social Justice and the University Community: Does Campus Involvement Make a Difference?

We examined perceptions on school sense of community and social justice attitudes among undergraduates (N = 427; 308 women, 115 men; M age = 19.72, SD = 1.91), and how year in school and club membership affected these constructs. Results demonstrated that involvement with a greater number of clubs was associated with having a stronger school sense of community and more positive social justice attitudes. Multiple regression analyses demonstrated that year in school did not significantly predict social justice attitudes. Results suggested that greater involvement and sense of school belonging might be linked to social justice attitudes.     

Teaching Experientially in the Undergraduate Community Psychology Classroom

Experiential learning is a useful teaching tool in the undergraduate community psychology classroom. In addition to improving student outcomes, experiential learning is particularly relevant for community psychology, as it aligns with several core values of the field and can prompt not only student learning, but also civic engagement, social justice, and community betterment. In this article, we provide an overview of the themed issue on “Experiential Teaching Practices in Undergraduate Community Psychology.” The issue contains a variety of experiential teaching examples that fall into three clusters: (a) individual and group service-learning exercises; (b) using community experiences to augment in-class learning outside of a service-learning context; and (c) ways of having students draw on prior out-of-class or in-class community experiences to increase student understanding.     

Attitudinal and Academic Effects of Service-Learning

SUMMARY

We examined perceived learning and attitude change in classes in Cognitive Psychology and Sensation and Perception in which some but not all of the students did service-learning with autistic children or in other settings. Attitudes toward people served became more positive based on questionnaire and journal entry data, and in one class, service-learning students felt they learned more about course material from their experiences.     

在优化学校环境中渗透心理健康教育

学校环境是影响青少年学生身心健康的重要因素。学校环境包括学校物质环境和心理环境,它们都直接或间接地影响着学生的心理健康。因此,优化学校的物质与心理环境,可以为学生的心理健康发展提供平台,从而真正实现学校心理健康教育的目的。     

Faculty and Student Participation and Perceptions of Service-Learning Outcomes

SUMMARY

Faculty (n = 55) and student (n = 75) perceptions of service-learning outcomes were evaluated using a questionnaire format. Results indicated that while faculty strongly believe service-learning is important to student academic growth, few actually teach service-learning courses because of time constraints and unfamiliarity with service-learning course models. Comparisons of faculty and student perceptions showed that compared to students, faculty had a stronger perception of the value of service-learning for students. When students were divided into those who had (n = 33) or had not (n = 42) participated in service-learning, faculty and service-learning students' perceptions did not differ, and both rated these experiences more valuable than did non-service-learning students.     

学校治安权的分析及强化路径

连续发生的校园安全事件,把人们的目光再一次聚焦到了如何保障学校安全,师生人身安全的问题上。发挥治安学科在解决这一问题上的独特优势,同时利用法学相关理论,重点围绕对学校现有治安权(也可称为安全管理权)的分析和强化路径展开,探讨通过落实现有治安权和专门立法(如《校园安全法》)授予学校新的治安维护权(或称一定限度的执法权),赋予学校保卫人员有限的治安执法权,将学校治安权适当扩展到校园周边,赋予保卫人员一定的警械使用权等解决问题的思路。     

Free-Standing Doctoral Programs in Community Psychology

We examined school sense of community (SSOC) between university students who are first-generation U.S. citizens (n = 936) or students who are non-first-generation U.S. citizens (n = 3,556), and between first-generation college students (n = 1,114) and students who are non-first-generation college students (n = 3,378), both attending an urban and diverse Roman Catholic university. Participants reported their SSOC and whether the school was innovative and inclusive, examining whether a higher sense of school community and positive notions of one's campus mission related to being a first-generation U.S. citizen or a first-generation college student. Results showed that a lack of belongingness may lead to lower academic achievement, school dropouts, and less school involvement. Future research should explore why there is a differing impact on school sense of community and campus mission perception for students who are first-generation U.S. citizens or first-generation college students.     

School Vandalism in Mexico

Mexico, like other countries in Latin America, is currently facing significant problems with regard to juvenile antisocial behavior and crime. The current study explores some of the factors associated with school vandalism in public high schools. Multilevel modeling with survey data from 22,345 students from 249 schools, acquired over two years, was used to determine how much variation in the rates of school vandalism exists between and within schools, and to detect individual and contextual characteristics that explain significant proportions of the variance. Results demonstrated significant differences across schools in the rates of student vandalism, most of which were associated with gang involvement, drug use, bullying, no attachment to school rules, and unequal treatment of students by teachers. These results are discussed in relation to the literature on school vandalism, and implications for the prevention of school vandalism are discussed.     

Disproportionality in Daily Metal Detector Student Searches in U.S. Public Schools

While the effectiveness of metal detectors to improve school safety remains debated, many public schools continue to rely on this technology to control school violence. Among them is the 1% of public schools where students are searched on a daily basis by metal detector. This study examines the school-level risk factors associated with daily searches to estimate the disproportionality of their use in high-violence, majority-minority public schools. Analyzing data from the 2007?2008 School Survey on Crime and Safety, this study finds that 91% of public schools that perform daily metal detector searches of students are high-violence, majority-minority schools. However, the results also show that, among high-violence schools, those with majority-minority enrollments are significantly more likely than others to conduct these searches. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of policy responses to school violence that are distinct and disproportionate according to student demographics, rather than safety conditions.     

The Design and Implementation of Early Childhood Intervention Programs: Informing Efforts to Address Risk and Promote Resilience

With the goal of narrowing disparities in children's school success, a growing number of innovative early childhood interventions have been launched. As these interventions begin to show evidence of enhancing children's development, it is important that we understand the design of these interventions and their implementation. This themed issue of the Journal of Prevention and Intervention in the Community includes four articles that each highlight a different early childhood intervention program, and a fifth article that provides a commentary on the main set of articles, from a community perspective. The first article focuses on children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and a program that sought to integrate children with ASD into public schools. The next two articles center on children from low-income families, with a focus on preschool classrooms. The last article discusses a program that aimed to foster young children's school readiness as well as families' readiness for children's transition to school.     

Examining the Role of School Resource Officers on School Safety and Crisis Response Teams

School resource officers (SROs) are being increasingly employed in schools to respond to incidents of school violence and to help address safety concerns among students and staff. While previous research on school safety and crisis teams has examined the role of school mental health professionals’ and administrators, fewer studies have evaluated the role of the SRO. The current study examined differences between SROs, school administrators, and school mental health professionals (i.e., school psychologists, school counselors, social workers) regarding experiences with crisis events, as well as perceived effectiveness of crisis prevention and response strategies. The most common crisis events across professionals included student assaults, drug offenses, and mandated child abuse and neglect reporting. While SROs and school mental health professionals had similar ratings of school safety strategies, school administrators had less effective appraisals of crisis response plans and crisis postvention activities. Implications for practice and future directions for research are reviewed.     

公安院校人才培养模式及反思

公安院校人才培养模式的内涵是公安院校在人才选录制度化基础上,科学设定人才培养目标,构建教学内容、课程体系,组织教学方式方法的职业化人才培养体系。公安院校现存三种形式的人才培养模式,即高中起点普招本科生培养模式、大学起点普招二学位培养模式和政法干警招录体制改革二学位培养模式,在充分考虑公安院校人才培养模式的特殊性之后,对此三种人才培养模式进行深入剖析各自的优劣,最后提出在人才培养模式科学理论的指引下构建公安院校人才培养模式的方向。     

Student outcomes associated with service-learning in a culturally relevant high school program

The Hawaiian Studies Program (HSP) integrates the learning of Hawaiian culture with more traditional secondary curriculum in science, social studies, and English. Students also participate in weekly community service-learning sessions. Fifty-five HSP students and 29 peers (who were not involved in the program), completed a survey measuring: students' connection to, pride in, and responsibility for their community; civic attitudes; and career knowledge and preparedness. HSP teachers, community members, and students were also interviewed about program outcomes. Compared to other peers, HSP students tended to report feeling more connected to their community and school and to agree that they had career-related skills. Participants believed that service- learning contributed to these outcomes by making connections between school and community life and by exposing students to a variety of careers.     

Clinical Application of the Service-Learning Model in Psychology

SUMMARY

Students in Abnormal Psychology who pursued a service-learning opportunity worked with troubled youth in the juvenile justice system. Consistent with an a priori hypothesis, results revealed the following pattern: (a) service-learning students and traditional students exhibited similar levels of academic performance early in the semester; and (b) as the semester progressed, and service-learning students became more involved in course-related service, they showed increasingly superior academic performance relative to traditional students. As hypothesized, service-learning students were more likely than traditional students to perceive themselves as: (a) achieving personal development in the area of social responsibility and (b) learning to apply course concepts to new situations. Preliminary evidence that the project made clinically significant contributions to the service agency is also presented. Innovations to be implemented in this ongoing project are discussed, and recommendations for research are noted.