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The purpose of this paper is to examine the reduction of school violence from the management point of view. It reflects on the utterances by teachers, principals, learners and members of school governing bodies (SGBs) to establish the influence that school management practices can have on the prevalence of school violence.

This was a qualitative case study. Thus, semi-structured interviews with teachers, principals, learners and members of SGBs were conducted. In addition, focus group interviews with pupils and observations were used to collect data.

Findings suggest that most schools were still run in an authoritarian manner. Resultantly, it was also found that an authoritarian school management style practiced seemed to encourage the persistence of violence in schools.

Policies should incorporate and emphasise the use of pragmatic, critical democratic style of management to address school violence. This is important because a well-run, inclusive and more democratic school can help to reduce external and internal forms of violence. The results from this study further indicate that a poorly run and badly organised school is more prone to various forms of violence.

The paper adds to the growing body of knowledge in the field of educational management and offers a reference point for further research in the pursuit to eliminate violence in schools. The findings may also be a useful resource for school principals, teachers, policy-makers and other stakeholders who are seeking to eliminate violence in schools.

Recent highly publicized acts of violence and shootings on campus have prompted numerous crime prevention suggestions including having an armed presence in the schools. The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of protective measures, policies, and school/neighborhood characteristics on school violence.

The data used in this study were part of the School Survey on Crime and Safety collected in 2006. The dependent measures of school violence include reports of violence, threatened attack with a weapon, attack with weapon, and gun possession. The sample was divided into high schools and all other grades to consider differences in levels of school violence among grade levels in relation to various law enforcement security measures, school security measures, and school characteristics.

Findings revealed mixed and often counterproductive results for law enforcement and school security efforts to control school violence. School characteristics, such as reports of bullying, location, and gang activity yielded numerous statistically significant findings. Policy recommendations and suggestions for future research are provided.

This study differs from much of the previous literature, which typically examines student and administrator attitudes about victimization and crime prevention. The current study examines detailed information on the actual effects of school violence prevention efforts. Furthermore, this study moves beyond most other works (that typically focus on high schools) as it considers school safety approaches by different grade levels.

Recent highly publicized acts of violence and shootings on school campuses have prompted numerous crime prevention responses. The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of protective measures such as law enforcement, security policies, and school/neighborhood characteristics on school violence within the context of the racial composition of the school and grade level.

The data used in this study were part of the School Survey on Crime and Safety collected in 2006. The dependent measures of school violence include reports of serious violence, physical attacks/fights, gun or knife possession, and threats and attacks with a weapon. The sample was divided by racial composition of the school (predominately white, and predominately minority schools) and by grade level (high schools, and all other grades). A negative binomial regression was conducted due the count-based dependent variables.

Findings revealed that minority schools often face higher levels of reported violence and had a heavier law enforcement presence, which often had mixed or counterproductive results for reducing school violence. School characteristics, such as reports of bullying, location, gang activity, and security measures yielded numerous statistically significant results.

Officials proposing school violence prevention efforts should strongly consider the importance of school and community characteristics, most notably grade level, and the unique context of a predominately white or minority school as there were different statistically significant results. Furthermore, officials should be cautious about relying on simple efforts such as more security personnel to address school violence. Violence and crime on school grounds should not be viewed as being isolated from violence and other forms of crime in the community. Policy recommendations and suggestions for future research are provided.

This study differs from much of the previous literature, which typically examines student and administrator attitudes about victimization and crime prevention. The current study examines detailed information on the effects of school violence prevention efforts and moves beyond most other works as it considers school safety approaches within the context of racial composition of the school and by different grade levels.

Violence is still an alarming issue in Brazil, a country profoundly affected by social inequality. Since 1997, studies from UNESCO in Brazil have highlighted this worrying situation for youngsters from 15 to 24 years old, who are the portion of the population most exposed to violence, whether as victims, or agents. In terms of deaths that are caused by the so‐called external factors (i.e. homicides, traffic accidents and suicides), the quantitative data corresponding to the youth age groups are so high that they place Brazilian indices as the third highest in the world. In the light of the above, this paper provides a brief overview of the literature on the issue of violence in schools. In addition to that, the paper from the Director of the UNESCO Brasilia Office also analyses the series of studies and researches that UNESCO has been undertaking over the past years, an effort which would culminate into one of its most successful strategies to foster social inclusion through a community perspective, the “Making Room” program.

In recent years, violence in schools has become a major preoccupation all over the world. This has led to a considerable increase in the number of public policies and programmes aimed at tackling the problem, as well as to a very large number of empirical studies. In this article, we begin by showing that this research goes part of the way toward making up for the lack of administrative knowledge of the problem, in particular concerning the prevalence of the phenomenon. It examines the possibility of there being a link between the globalisation of worries about school violence and economic globalisation. To do so, it analyses the hypothetical link between school violence and social inequalities. The literature is precise on this question, opting in favour of there being a strong link between the two: the sociology of violence in schools is a sociology of social exclusion. Research also shows, however, that these causes that are external to schools are not the only explanation of the process and, in particular, that effects linked with the institutions themselves or the system give good reason to hope that action can be effective.

The purpose of this paper is to examine risk factors associated with Western Australian secondary school students’ involvement in violence-related behaviours.

This cross-sectional study examined data collected using an anonymous self-completion questionnaire from 542 school students aged 13-17 years. The questionnaire measured risk factors associated with being a perpetrator and/or victim of violence-related behaviours.

Gender was significantly associated with being a victim and perpetrator of violence-related behaviours. Males were significantly more likely than females to be a victim of threatening and physical violence at school, and to be a perpetrator of physical violence at school and in the community. Males were significantly more likely than females to watch violent media, with exposure to violent media associated with physically hurting someone at school. Students involved in greater acts of animal cruelty had increased odds of being involved in all forms of the violence measured.

Limitations such as the cross-sectional nature of the study and the small sample size are noted, along with suggestions for future research.

Implications of the research for practitioners working with adolescents, with a particular focus on the school setting, are discussed.

Most previously published research on adolescent involvement in violence has been conducted outside Australia, and as such, may not be directly applicable to the experiences of young people in Western Australia.

This paper aims to discuss the construction of two composite indices to assess children’s experiences with violence and peace in primary schools in Sierra Leone.

The authors provide a conceptual framework based on the three dimensions of the violence index (direct, structural and cultural violence) and the three dimensions of the positive peace index (inclusion, citizenship and well-being). After that, this work proposes an operationalisation of these concepts based on a survey administered with 2,000 pupils and examine the correlates of the indices.

Results indicate not only a substantial level of violence among the sampled schools but also a considerable level of positive peace. These indices are negatively correlated, suggesting that lower levels of violence are related to higher levels of positive peace. Further analysis also shows that socioeconomic variables and school characteristics such as headteacher experience and teacher qualification are associated with levels of violence and peace. Finally, based on longitudinal evidence, this study also indicates that the prevalence of violence is a significant predictor of reading development among children.

The indicator presented is the first to combine children’s experiences with violence and experiences with positive peace in schools. It is a unique contribution to the measurement of school outcomes that are usually overlooked in the literature.

The past decade has seen an increasing concern for the problem of school violence. As a result, school administrators have focused their attention on the development of effective policies and programmes to promote safer schools. While addressing the same mandate of reducing the prevalence and incidence of school violence, however, there may be vast differences in the comprehensiveness of school‐based policies in terms of the range of unacceptable behaviours with which the policies deal and the array of suggested consequences that may be imposed. This study reports the findings of a survey of 126 urban school boards in Canada on the development of violence prevention policies. The results indicate that there is a tremendous amount of activity to understand and come to terms with the issue of school violence and to identify and implement effective solutions. However, there is considerable room for improvement, particularly around the development of a community focus to address the issue of school violence.

This paper proposes the use of martial arts as a means to combat aggressiveness and, at the same time, to provide a concrete and preventive answer to the problem of violence against women.

The paper suggests the teaching of martial arts in school for both sexes, with a double positive effect: the reduction of the tendency to violence for boys and an increase in the defensive potential for girls. In both cases, looking to the long term, these synergistic effects could contribute to a reduction in violence against women.

The paper describes the Italian experience in teaching karate and judo at school. The Italian federation of judo, karate, fight and martial arts (FIJLKAM) was one of the first sports federations to have obtained the approval of a project for teaching its disciplines in schools. Thus, a lot of clubs of martial arts have been entering primary and secondary schools and they are teaching martial arts to children between 5 and 14 years old. During the school year 2008/2009 there were: 400 sports clubs implementing the project; 500 schools involved; 60.000 students participating.

In the paper two important points are proposed in order to achieve the goal: the obligatory inclusion of martial arts in school education programs by the government; and a scientific monitoring of the effects of these programs on the improvement of pupils' school performances and on the reduction of violence among boys.

In many cases some parents and school administrators still think that including martial arts in school programs may lead to incidents and instigating violence. But, the Italian experience shows that after the implementation of right projects in the schools, both parents and school administrators radically change their opinions on martial arts. Most cases have shown that after the first year just the parents who were initially dubious about the project ask the school for the reactivation of similar projects for the following years.

The paper identified a long‐term strategy to combat the problem of violence against women.

A series of highly publicized school shootings in the USA generated the misperception of an epidemic of school violence. Fears of school violence stimulated an ill‐advised expansion of zero tolerance school discipline policies and the widespread dissemination of profiles or warning signs of potentially dangerous students for use by school administrators. This article presents the rationale for student threat assessment as an administrative alternative to zero tolerance or profiling. It describes the development and field‐testing of guidelines for school administrators to follow in investigating and resolving student threats of violence. Student threat assessment permits administrators to make reasonable judgments about the seriousness of a threat, to resolve most threats quickly and efficiently, and to reserve more labor‐intensive procedures for the most serious threats.