Background: Mass school shootings have created fear in the American public. The results of this fear have been the hardening of schools, lockdowns, and active shooter drills, yet the mass shootings have not ended. The goal of this study was to analyze the mental health awareness of K-12 public schools teachers in Texas with a goal to identify the…

School shootings challenge educational safety, demanding effective leadership strategies. The Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, which claimed the lives of 19 children and 2 teachers, heightened concerns about campus vulnerabilities, urging administrators to prioritize student protection. I performed a qualitative study interviewing…

While previous studies have assessed public opinions for arming teachers in K-12 schools in the United States, comparatively less research has focused on understanding teachers' opinions for such policies and assessed whether and to what extent school- and individual-level factors are associated with differences in support. The current study aims…

This study was designed to explore the process of threat assessment training at schools in North Texas. Using a guided interview protocol, eight administrators with an array of experiences were selected from various districts in the North Texas area to gain multiple viewpoints on the perception of the threat assessment training process and…

We assessed college students' perceptions of safety related to concealed carry of firearms on a university campus. Explicit assessments were collected before passage, before implementation, and after implementation of the law; implicit assessments were collected before and after implementation. For comparison, we included college students from a…

The prediction of dangerous and/or violent behavior is particularly important to the conduct of the U.S. criminal justice system when it makes decisions about restrictions of personal freedom, such as preventive detention, forensic commitment, parole, and in some states such as Texas, when to permit an execution to proceed of an individual found…

School shooting prevention has become a priority for educational leadership for nearly twenty years. The brutality and significant loss of life distinguish the attacks at Columbine High School and Sandy Hook Elementary School (Jonson, 2017). However, lawmakers encounter difficulty with the wide range of behaviors, program initiatives, and risk…

Background: Addressing school violence is an important public health goal. To assess the role of school mental health curricula in violence prevention, we evaluated effects of an anti-stigma curriculum on violence victimization/perpetration. Methods: An ethnically/socioeconomically diverse sample of 751 sixth-graders (mean age 11.5 years) across…

The issue of school safety is of paramount concern but what is lacking is clarity on the best course of action aimed at bolstering safety in public schools. We sought to answer the following research questions: What topics are addressed in school board policies related to arming employees? What outlying policy topics are addressed in school board…

We use data from Texas spanning 2007-2017 to explore the frequency of teacher sanctions for illegal and unethical behavior and their disproportionality by teacher characteristics. Analyses reveal that the overall incidence of teacher sanctioning is low, with teachers most frequently sanctioned for sexually related offenses. Consistent with…

This article analyzes how guns emerged as both urgent topics of dialogue and common features of everyday life for 228 students and their teachers in six communities across the United States who participated in the Digital Democratic Dialogue (3D) Project, a year long social design-based experiment aimed at foregrounding youth voice and fostering…

This article discusses the nationwide shortage of sports officials, best practices and solutions, and how current physical educators, coaches and SHAPE America members in general can help address the shortage and educate youths on the value of sportsmanship.

Formal schooling in the U.S. has a long and violent history towards Indigenous peoples, today morphing into exclusion and erasure. Using a novel longitudinal dataset of U.S. textbooks (n = 193) from California and Texas, published from 1850 to 2019, we seek to shine light on the issue through a comprehensive analysis of depictions of Indigenous…

Campus shootings have impacted campuses across the United States for almost two centuries. Between 2015 and 2016, at least three historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) experienced multiple shootings where students were killed in each incident. This qualitative comparative case study used secondary data to explore the similarities and…

Objective: Despite increased research on emerging adults and interpersonal violence, evidence on the role of college attendance in risk for dating violence and sexual assault is mixed. We examined the role of college attendance on victimization risk in emerging adulthood. Participants: Participants were a diverse longitudinal sample of 630…