How should educators deal with pupils’ verbal and physical violence?
Suspending and expelling them is not the answer.
There have been shocking incidents in which pupils have been not only verbally but also physically violent against their teachers. Should they be suspended or expelled to another school where their misbehavior is transferred to another address?
Educators are often the targets of school violence, and these experiences are linked to damaged mental health and harmful professional consequences. Yet very little is known about school interventions and practices that can help to ensure teachers’ safety.
For the first time, US teachers have told researchers what strategies they think work best to deal with violence by pupils against educators.
Teachers rated suspending or expelling students as the “least effective way” of coping with violence, despite the popularity of “zero tolerance” policies in many school districts.
Instead, teachers rated prevention policies, such as counseling for troubled students and improving the atmosphere in schools as the best strategy for dealing with violence.
The research has just been published in the journal School Psychology under the title “Addressing violence against educators: What do teachers say works?”
Violence prevention methods
Results showed that schools’ use of exclusionary discipline practices like expulsion or suspension was linked to a higher likelihood of teachers reporting violence – verbal attacks and threats and physical and property violence against themselves. The reason may be because suspending or expelling students makes them angrier and leads to more violence, said study co-author educational psychology Prof. Eric Anderman.Teachers also rated their school’s effectiveness at using the 21 safety measures. Finally, participants rated how often they experienced 13 different types of violence from students in the past year.
Another is to improve school climate so that teachers, pupils, and administrators work together to make the school a place where they all want to be. “These are proactive approaches that schools can use to try to reduce and prevent violent events before they occur,” Perry said.