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8 - Evaluations of School-Based Violence Prevention Programs
- from III - SCHOOL-BASED INTERVENTIONS
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- By Faith Samples, National Center for Children of Poverty Columbia University New York, New York, Larry Aber, National Center for Children of Poverty Columbia University New York, New York
- Edited by Delbert S. Elliott, University of Colorado, Boulder, Beatrix A. Hamburg, Kirk R. Williams, University of Colorado, Boulder
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- Book:
- Violence in American Schools
- Published online:
- 12 October 2018
- Print publication:
- 13 October 1998, pp 217-252
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- Chapter
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Summary
Introduction
As youth violence continues to rise in the United States, even when adult crime rates are falling (Blumstein, 1995), the search for effective youth violence prevention strategies becomes more urgent. Because of near-universal school attendance by American children (until some time in high school), schools are a common site for preventive interventions, including strategies to prevent youth violence. But despite the growing need for youth violence prevention and the logic and attractiveness of using schools as prevention sites, the literature on empirical evaluations of school-based violence prevention initiatives is scattered and thin. The primary purpose of this chapter is to begin to compile the scant existing systematic literature on violence prevention programs in schools. A second purpose is to provide a developmental and contextual framework within which to understand current school-based violence prevention efforts.
Finally, a third purpose of this chapter is to briefly raise two sets of issues based on the description and analysis of school-based youth violence prevention initiatives that, in our opinion, are critical to our nation's progress in preventing youth violence. They are: (1) how to begin to move from violence prevention programs to violence prevention policies, and (2) how to develop a prevention science for school violence adequate to the task of guiding prevention policy.
We begin this chapter by briefly presenting a developmental and contextual framework we use to understand preventive interventions in schools. This framework is the prevailing paradigm linking research on child development with thinking about the design, implementation, and evaluation of child and youth programs and policies (Aber, Brown, Chaudry, Jones, & Samples, 1996; Connell, Aber, & Walker, 1995). Because this framework is described in detail elsewhere (see Williams, Guerra, & Elliott, 1996) and widely shared in the field, we will only briefly review the main features of the framework required to understand school-based violence prevention programs. These include the concepts of stage-salient (i.e., developmental) tasks and the school organizational (i.e., contextual) issues associated with aggressive/violent behavior.
Resolving conflict creatively: Evaluating the developmental effects of a school-based violence prevention program in neighborhood and classroom context
- J. LAWRENCE ABER, STEPHANIE M. JONES, JOSHUA L. BROWN, NINA CHAUDRY, FAITH SAMPLES
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- Journal:
- Development and Psychopathology / Volume 10 / Issue 2 / June 1998
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 01 June 1998, pp. 187-213
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- Article
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This study evaluated the short-term impact of a school-based violence prevention initiative on developmental processes thought to place children at risk for future aggression and violence and examined the influence of classroom and neighborhood contexts on the effectiveness of the violence prevention initiative. Two waves of developmental data (fall and spring) were analyzed from the 1st year of the evaluation of the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program (RCCP), which includes 5053 children from grades two to six from 11 elementary schools in New York City. Three distinct profiles of exposure to the intervention were derived from Management Information System (MIS) data on between classroom differences in teacher Training and Coaching in RCCP, Classroom Instruction in RCCP, and percentages of students who are Peer Mediators. Developmental processes that place children at risk were found to increase over the course of the school year. Children whose teachers had a moderate amount of training and coaching from RCCP and who taught many lessons showed significantly slower growth in aggression-related processes, and less of a decrease in competence-related processes, compared to children whose teachers taught few or no lessons. Contrary to expectation, children whose teachers had a higher level of training and coaching in the RCCP but taught few lessons showed significantly faster growth over time in aggressive cognitions and behaviors. The impact of the intervention on children's social cognitions (but not on their interpersonal behaviors) varied by context. Specifically the positive effect of High Lessons was dampened for children in high-risk classrooms and neighborhoods. Implications for future research on developmental psychopathology in context and for the design of preventive interventions are discussed.