IU professor studies school violence incidents

IU School of Education Professor Jeff Daniels, like most people, has taken note of the school violence trend. But instead of researching why these violent crimes occurred, Daniels took a new approach by examining how such frightening situations can sometimes end without tragedy. \nWhile researching school violence, Daniels, whose other areas of research include counselor and supervisor of training and development, and positive psychology, noticed that all of the research done in the area involved situations where shooting or other forms of violence occurred. Daniels decided he wanted to see what the staff and students of schools did where violence was diffused.\nTo find schools to research, Daniels began to search Lexis-Nexis for articles about schools where violence had been thwarted. He then set up a database of approximately 40 schools and began to contact the superintendents to investigate the possibility of researching their schools.\nFour schools have been examined so far, and Daniels found that the most important aspect for the schools, which are unnamed in the report due to human subject clearance restrictions, was building relationships with students. \nThe teachers and staffs, according to the report, interacted with students in a variety of ways, including eating lunch with them, talking to them in the hallways and attending extracurricular activities.\nDaniels said he believes this common theme of paying attention to students is very important in preventing and diffusing violence.\n"Parents need to pay attention to their own children," he said, "and educators need to pay attention to all their students, not just the ones they like."\nDaniels is running his research on a profit grant from the School of Education, which will run out in the spring semester. Daniels has applied for a Guggenheim grant but will not find out the results of that application until December.\n"If we don't get the Guggenheim grant," Daniels said, "we'll run on what we have for the next phase (of research)."\nThe next phase of his research includes interviewing the perpetrators of these school violence incidents, especially those who were convicted. He hopes to find out how the school successfully talked the students down from violence and averted tragedy.\nDebbie O'Leary, assistant director of communications for the School of Education, believes Daniels' report was released at an opportune time, especially after a recent incident in the Detroit, Mich., area, where a student reported a boy she met online was planning to blow up his school.\nO'Leary said she thinks the research is important because "even after Columbine, there are still these people that have a really, really bad plan." \nDaniels recently presented his findings at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association and will report this fall at a convention of the American Society of Criminology. He also hopes his findings will be published and said there was interest from various journals and magazines, as well as New York University Press, to report his findings.\n-- Contact staff writer Jenny \nKobiela at jkobiela@indaiana.edu.