Bullying, School Violence, and Climate in Evolving Contexts

Paul Stephens, European Journal of Social Work Astor and Benbenishty know that their work can significantly reduce the suffering of children and youth. They make their point powerfully and eloquently.


European Journal of Social Work In this welcome book, Astor and Benbenishty present a heartfelt bidding. [The authors] not only bring a wealth of sound advice and guidance, their research is buttressed by a huge amount of studies.


Children & Society Whilst the majority of research around bullying and school violence focuses on individual factors, the volume by Astor and Benbenishty brings school climate and context into the spotlight.


Social Service Review Astor and Benbenishty have offered us a book to read, think about, reread,and think about again. And it ought to be read widely-by both researchers and practitioners. This volume is refreshing in its breadth of approach, challenging in its arguments, and ultimately fair-minded in its discussion. In a now heavily published area, it stands out in its contribution to what is a vitally important topic for students, parents, teachers, and social workers across the globe.


Alana Siegel, Psy.D., Psychology Today This interesting and well-researched new book should certainly be on the must-read list for anyone connected to or interested in schools, systems theory, or education. Bullying, School Violence, and Climate aims to contribute to how school safety is conceptualized, researched, studied, and taught in schools of social work, education, medicine, public policy, and cultural studies.


Peter K. Smith, PhD, Emeritus Professor, Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London This important and ground-breaking volume builds substantially on the previous book by the same authors from 2005. It provides authoritative coverage of school violence and bullying, now including cyberbullying. Whereas most previous research has focused on individual factors, this volume brings school and community factors into the spotlight. It also gives important consideration to culture and historical change in what amounts to a uniquely comprehensive
perspective. The future research and policy recommendations are well argued and forceful-the book is vital reading for those wishing to make schools safe and happy places.


Susan Stone; Catherine Mary; Eileen Clare Hutto, University of California, Berkeley Bullying, School Violence, and Climate in Evolving Contexts provides conceptual coherence to a voluminous literature focused on school violence, its correlates, and consequences. This conceptual integration-which has both significant breadth and depth-is a significant contribution. Yet, the authors go further to actualize a contextually sensitive model of school violence using rich data sources and a rigorous analytic approach. Their attention to the central
roles of schools conditioned by dynamic factors at district-, community-, and country-levels elaborates the multiple ...

Ron Avi Astor, PhD, is the Stein-Wood Professor of School Behavioral Health in the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work and Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. His work examines the role of the physical, social-organizational, and cultural contexts in schools related to different kinds of bullying and school violence (e.g., sexual harassment, cyber bullying, discrimination hate acts, school fights, emotional abuse, weapon use, and teacher/child violence). Astor's studies have included tens of thousands of schools and millions of students, teachers, parents, and administrators. Over the past 20 years, findings from these studies have been published in more than 200 scholarly manuscripts. Rami Benbenishty, PhD, is Professor in the School of Social Work at Bar-Ilan University. His main area of interest is the safety, welfare, and well-being of children around the world. He studies children and youth both in community-normative settings (such as schools) and in out-of-home placements (such as foster homes and residential care). He investigates and tries to improve decision processes that lead to referral to protective services, removal of children from their biological families, and their reunification thereafter. He is also studying the decision-making processes of child protection teams in hospitals that report children to community protective services.

Chapter 1. Introduction Chapter 2. A Heuristic Model of School Violence and Bullying in Evolving Nested Contexts Chapter 3. Victimization: Patterns and Interrelationships of Behaviors Chapter 4. Variations and Similarities in School Victimization Chapter 5. Weapons and Schools Chapter 6. Sexual Victimization Chapter 7. Understanding Suicide in the School Context Chapter 8. Teacher-Student and Student-Teacher Victimization and Their Interrelationship Chapter 9. Cyberbullying Chapter 10. School Climate Chapter 11. Future Theory, Research, and Policy Epilogue Appendix 1. Databases Used in Analyses Appendix 2. Additional Technical Information on Statistical Analyses References Index