OU-Tulsa Professor Leads National Virtual Conference on School Safety
An OU-Tulsa professor has organized a national virtual conference series on school safety and violence prevention measures.
Held in partnership with Harvard University and featuring the nation’s leading experts, the conference series aims to understand the increasing rate of campus violence occurring as students nationwide return to in-person learning and to discuss ways to prevent it.
“School safety has become an issue of vital importance as we have emerged from the pandemic,” said Daniel Hamlin, professor in the department of educational leadership and policy studies in Jeannine Rainbolt School of Education on the OU-Tulsa campus.
The conference, titled, “A Safe Place to Learn: A Virtual Conference Series on School Safety” is organized and moderated by Hamlin, along with Peter E. Peterson, professor of government at Harvard University. The series is held in partnership with the Program on Education Policy and Governance at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
There are six sessions in total, each focusing on a different aspect of school safety that began April 22 and will conclude June 3. Access to previous sessions is available to those who register for the virtual series.
Panelists in the series include the nation’s leading policymakers, scholars and experts on school safety. The keynote speaker during the first session held was David Banks, chancellor of the New York City Department of Education.
“In recent years bullying, violence and shootings have focused public attention on safety and security in schools,” Hamlin said. “As students have returned to in-person learning following the COVID-19 pandemic, school staff are now reporting dramatic spikes in physical assaults and mental health issues.”
Hamlin was a panelist during one of the sessions held Friday titled “What can be done about school shootings?”, where he presented data going back to 1980 on school shootings in the U.S.
His data showed that there was a sharp increase in school shootings around 2018 that continued into 2019, the cause of which was unclear.
As concerning as school shootings are, bullying and inappropriate aggression on school campuses in a post-lockdown environment are prompting researchers to peer further into those issues.
Kalyn Belsha, a reporter for Chalkbeat, a national publication that follows education issues, was a panelist in the second conference session that Hamlin moderated on April 29. Belsha cited evidence from school districts around the country that administrators are seeing an uptick in stress and anxiety in students, along with students exhibiting emotional skills that are behind their expected levels for their ages.
Some of the experts on the panel said school shutdowns could have contributed to the difficulties students are experiencing due to social isolation.
One technique that schools are using to curb school violence is called threat assessment, Hamlin said, which employs a committee of school staff who watch for signs of emotional or mental distress in students and will contact families or dispatch other resources to help care for the student before any violence takes place. A tip-line could also be a part of this strategy, he said, where concerning behavior can reported anonymously.
Although definitive causes for this type of violence and comprehensive strategies to combat it may be unclear, Hamlin hopes the discussions are still impactful.
“We’re trying to move the ball forward in the area of school safety by bringing the best available empirical evidence we have nationally to bear on some of these important policy debates on school safety,” he said.
Hamlin’s work has appeared in a number of scholarly journals, including the American Educational Research Journal, Educational Policy and Urban Education. His research focuses on issues of school safety, school climate, parental involvement and school choice. This year Hamlin received the College of Education’s Research and Scholarship Award.
Other series topics have included research on racial and ethnic disparities in school discipline practices. Remaining sessions are scheduled for May 27 and June 3, and will cover whether school choice can ameliorate safety challenges and what strategies schools can use to promote safe learning. Sessions begin at 11 a.m. CDT.
To learn more or register for remaining sessions, click here.
By Bonnie Rucker and Jaimy Jones
Article Published: Wednesday, May 18, 2022