This handbook shares some practical and conceptual knowledge about gangs in schools and suggests some strategies for coping with gang problems in schools. A radical approach is proposed which advocates assimilating gangs into the fabric of daily school life. The strategies were derived from two formal studies conducted from 1982 to 1990 on Los…

Findings of a study that examined teachers' and principals' attitudes toward responsibility for student disciplinary action are presented in this paper. Two questionnaires compared principal and teacher responses to vignettes of specific disciplinary situations. In the first survey, 40 elementary principals, 40 secondary principals, 40 elementary…

Originally presented to a high school faculty surveyed on student cheating, this paper serves as a teachers' guide to preventing cheating and dealing with cheating incidents. An introduction cites figures indicating that cheating is widespread and urges teachers to impress upon students the seriousness and offensiveness of cheating. The first part…

A total of four approaches to teacher preparation in classroom discipline, including Gordon's Teacher Effectiveness Training, Adlerian-based approaches, Glasser's Reality Therapy, and Canter's Assertive Discipline, are reviewed in this document. These systems have been widely used for inservice teacher education for a decade or more, and each has…

Student reponsibility and self-disipline can be facilitated and learned in the school environment, regardless of existing negative influences in a student's life. By focusing on problem prevention and teaching students alternative ways to behave and meet their needs when they do exhibit behavior problems, schools will achieve a high degree of…

Disciplinary violations, the violations of school rules, are rightfully censured solely by school district employees. Crimes, however, represent violations of federal, state, or local laws and concern law enforcement agencies as well as school system officials. Since the mid-1970s, there has been a refining of police-school roles; interagency…

A study in Columbia, Missouri, revealed that many teacher and student background characteristics correlated weakly but significantly with teachers' perceptions of the frequency of discipline infractions and the effectiveness of disciplinary techniques. The data (derived from school records and from a questionnaire to which 162 elementary teachers…

A kindergarten teacher employed in an elementary school implemented a practicum designed to decrease the number of students referred to the principal's office for disciplinary action. Additional practicum goals were to improve student behavior in the classroom, cafeteria, and school bus; and teachers' classroom management techniques. Teachers were…

This study was designed to determine parent and student perspectives on school discipline in Tennessee schools and is parallel to an earlier study that examined the opinions towards discipline of teachers, administrators, and other school personnel. The sample includes nearly 1,300 students from three districts representing rural, small city, and…

A questionnaire was developed, pilot tested, and then administered to approximately 4,000 Tennessee teachers, administrators, and other school personnel to determine their views on which discipline problems seem most significant, the conditions or influences related to the problems, the most appropriate approaches for solving discipline problems,…

New Jersey's state board of education formed a task force in 1978 to conduct a six-month study of the effectiveness of various strategies for reducing violence and vandalism in the schools. The forty-seven recommendations developed by the task force were of three types: those designed to improve state-level capabilities (areas addressed included…

A means was developed to reduce the necessity for discipline among the 25 students who were the most chronic discipline problems at Thomas Jefferson High School, a 1,500-student school in suburban Pittsburgh. The students were identified by assigning point values to various disciplinary measures administered to students. The 25 students met with a…

Studies of child-rearing practices have consistently shown that the degree of physical punishment used by parents is positively correlated with various forms of psychopathology and negatively related to conscience development. One explanation of these findings has to do with modeling; the child learns by example that aggressiveness toward those of…

The speaker raises questions surrounding the existence of school district crisis policies, relations with law enforcement agencies, relations with the news media, the designation of an official spokesman for the schools, the releasing of information, and the posting of regulations concerning such things as closing hours and fire department…