YOUTH AND VIOLENCE

Youth Crime in Canada

 Many adolescents commit antisocial and delinquent acts at some time during their adolescence.Such manifestations of risk-taking, rebellion, and rejection of traditional values are a part of normal development.Atwater (1983), for example, reported that 75% of American youth admitted to committing one or more delinquent behaviours during adolescence.This figure is likely an underestimate as West (1984) reported that over 90% of Canadian high school boys reported committing some delinquent acts, based on self-reports.Typical behaviours include swearing, fighting, shoplifting, truancy, drinking, and experimentation with drugs.

 Prevalence rates for delinquent behaviour have also been reported for school-aged children.LeBlanc, McDuff, Charlebois, Gagnon, Larrivee, and Tremblay (1991), for example, found that 21.8% of their sample of disadvantaged Canadian youth had committed at least one of three serious delinquent offences (fighting with a weapon, entering and stealing, or stealing goods worth more than $100) between the age of 4 and 9 years.In his review of the literature, Loeber (1987) reported that as many as 50% of elementary-school children have engaged in theft and as many as 37% of boys have been involved in physical assault.Based on self-report data from an American sample of 748 children aged 11 to 12 years Richards, Berk, and Forster (1979) found that 22% had defaced property, 9% had damaged property, 5% had been truant, 3.9% had used marijuana, and 1.5% had stolen a bicycle.

 In most cases, however, the incidence of delinquent behaviours diminishes as the youth enters early adulthood.This transition comes about as a result of the individual assuming greater responsibility for his or her own behaviour, making decisions about what is socially appropriate and acceptable, demonstrating the necessary self-control skills to conduct oneself as a responsible individual, and showing empathy towards others and establishing healthy relationships with adults and peers.It is generally accepted that the school system can help foster and promote these skills and build self-esteem by conveying the message, through policy and programming, that students are valued and respected rather than feared, dismissed, or held in contempt.

 Indeed, only a small percentage of adolescents become identified as "offenders" in a legal sense, as determined by the YOA.The YOA, which came into effect in 1984, "applies to all offences in the Criminal Code committed by a person between the age of 12 and 17 years" (Roher, 1993, p. 1).Children under the age of 12 years cannot be criminally charged but are covered under provincial child welfare legislation such as the Child and Family Services Act (1984) in Ontario.

 Within the general community, criminal behaviour resulting in an arrest occurs among a small percentage of youth.Based on court records, only 3% of the Canadian population of adolescents aged 12 to 17 years were seen in youth court in 1992-1993 (Statistics Canada, 1993).Across the country, this figure ranged from 1.2% in Quebec to 6.6% in the Yukon.In most cases, the charges involved property crimes (e.g., theft under $1,000, break and enter), accounting for 54% of the cases heard in youth court in 1992-1993.In the same period, violent offences accounted for 19% of the cases (Statistics Canada, 1993).

 At the same time, recent police data from the Uniform Crime Report (UCR), indicated that the number of youths aged 12 to 17 years who were arrested by the police in Canada, rose 18% between 1986 and 1992.Moreover, in the same period, the number of charged youths who were charged with a violent crime rose 75%, from 8% to 14%.Indeed, the rate of increase for violent crimes was 2.3 times faster for young offenders than for adult offenders.Most of this increase was due to a greater number of minor assault cases (Statistics Canada, 1993).Interestingly, the number of charged youths who were charged with a property crime decreased 14% between 1986 and 1992.However, this figure was less than the change rate for adult offenders which showed a decrease of 33% (Hung & Lipinski, 1994).More recently, an article in The Globe and Mail ("Crime rate," 1994) reported that, while the crime rate, in general, decreased by 5%, the rate for violent crimes among young offenders increased by 13% in 1993.

 It should also be noted that a relatively small percentage of offenders account for much of the criminal charges, particularly violent crimes.Day, Minevich, Hunt, and Hrynkiw-Augimeri (1994) reported that 21% of a sample of young offenders in Toronto accounted for 65% of the total number of charges incurred by the sample.This finding is consistent with other studies conducted in the United States and England (Farrington, 1983; Shannon, 1980; Tracy, Wolfgang, & Figlio, 1990).Within the general population, only 6-7% of adolescents are responsible for committing the majority of officially-recorded crimes (Shannon, 1980; Tracy et al., 1990).

 Youth involvement in criminal behaviour is also reflected in victimization rates. According to Statistics Canada (1992a) "23% of all violent crime victims were teenagers between 12 and 19 years, double their representation in the 1990 Canadian population" (p. 1).Particularly disconcerting is the finding that "23% of those accused of crimes against younger teen victims were 12-15 themselves and a further 23% were 16-19" (p. 1).Lastly, 30% of those accused of violent crimes against older teens were 16-19 years themselves.

 With regard to the use of guns, firearms are not as significant a problem in youth crime in Canada as they are in the United States."In 1990 there were 276 firearm deaths among 15-24 year olds in Canada" (Leonard, 1994, p. 128), or approximately 7.2 firearm related deaths per 100,000 population.Firearm deaths were "the third leading cause of death in this age group, ranking below motor vehicle accidents (997) and non-firearm suicides (358)" (p. 128).It should be noted that these figures included both accidental deaths and suicides.

 In comparison, the data for the United States paint a more grim picture.Yoshikawa (1994) reported that arrests for those under the age of 18 years for murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rose an astonishing 60.1% between 1981 and 1990, compared with an increase of only 5.2% for those over the age of 18.McDonald (1992) noted that "homicide is the second leading cause of death among young people aged 15-24 years...and the leading cause of death for blacks aged 15 to 24" (p. 1-2).In 1987, in the United States, the homicide rate for youth was 21.9 per 100,000 (Prothrow-Stith, 1991) and 84.6 per 100,000 for African American males in the same age group (Wilson-Brewer, Cohen, O'Donnell, & Goodman, 1991).Lastly, "youth age 16-19 have the highest rates of victimization for rape, robbery, and assault and most are victims of their own age group" (McDonald, 1992, p. 5).

 In summary, while milder forms of delinquent behaviour are considered normal among adolescents, only a small percentage of youth in Canada is charged with criminal offences.Most of these are for property offences.At the same time, relative to the adult crime rate which is decreasing, violent criminal offences among adolescents are increasing.Finally, adolescents are becoming the victims of violent crime at an increasing rate, and often at the hands of other adolescents.These findings are of concern to school officials as violence spills over into the school setting, giving rise to the growing sense of urgency of how to deal with antisocial and aggressive behaviour among children and youth.In comparison, data collected in the United States clearly indicate that the scope of youth violence is much larger and more severe in nature than in Canada.

 The next section reviews the literature on violence in schools.There is no shortage of information concerning school violence.Much of the available literature, however, is based on American data, reflecting the American situation vis a vis the proliferation of guns and weapons, heightened racial tensions, and the escalation of gang activity and protection of turf.The Canadian literature is not as prolific and the data are based largely on impressionistic reports and formal and informal surveys of school personnel.

 Nonetheless, however sparse, the Canadian literature will be reviewed separately from the American literature.This will serve both to highlight the differences in the scope and extent of the problem between Canada and the United States and to point out some of the possibilities that may be lying ahead for us in Canada (rather than what is de facto awaiting us).Moreover, while the American literature is valuable in furthering our knowledge and understanding of the issues, there is a danger of "fuelling the flames of fear" and creating an illusory portrayal of school violence in Canada by focusing on the American-based data which, although, readily available, are a reflection of a social, political, economic, and cultural situation that is not our own.

School-based Violence
 Over the past several years, violence within our schools has been seen as an increasingly serious problem.Incidents range from minor discipline problems such as disobedience, teasing, and taunting, to obscene gesturing, verbal and physical threats, aggression, bullying, assault (with and without a weapon), vandalism, extortion, and gang-related activities.School violence affects not only the perpetrator and the victim, but the entire student body, the staff, and the community as a whole, as well.

 Moreover, school violence is not a recent phenomenon.Events of violence can be traced historically over the existence of schools.Cusson (1990) relates an incident in which the students of le Collège de La Flèche, during the Mardi Gras festival in 1646, attacked their school armed "jusqu'aux dents" requiring their teachers and servants to resort to the use of firearms to resist them.Throughout the history of education, events such as this are commonplace and well-documented in the annals and minutes of the administration of these institutions (du Boulay, 1673).Fortunately, today, students are not mounting mass attacks against their schools.Nonetheless, there is a growing concern with the violence that takes place on or around the school premises.

(a) Canada

 Surveys of teachers in British Columbia (British Columbia Teachers' Federation [BCTF], 1993), Ontario (Roher, 1993; Ontario Teachers' Federation [OTF], 1991), Alberta ("Teacher associations," 1992), Manitoba (The Manitoba Teachers' Society [MTS], 1993), and Nova Scotia (Robb, 1993) indicate that violence is of increasing concern in Canadian schools.Indeed, an Environics poll conducted in April, 1993, revealed that violence is the top educational concern, even surpassing academic standards (MacDougall, 1993).

 A survey of 2,286 teachers in Manitoba reported that 47% had been subjected to abuse (MTS, 1993).This represents a 37% increase from a previous survey conducted in 1990.As well, 45% of the teachers reported being verbally abused and 10% had been physically abused.Only 7% of teachers reported being physically abused in 1990.Moreover, 72% of the teachers and 42% of the administrators agreed with the statement, "Abuse is on the increase."An interesting finding is that only 12% of the teachers reported that there was any support available for abused teachers from either the school division or the MTS.Moreover, in a survey conducted in Alberta, 50% of teachers reported that physical and emotional abuse is on the increase.However, when asked if their school had a policy or procedure to deal with abuse, 19% said "no" and 62% reported that they "didn't know" ("Teacher associations," 1992).

 Another survey of 1,440 principals, teachers, and caretakers at 700 schools in Ontario found that, while 95% of the respondents reported feeling safe in their school, only 67.8% indicated that they felt as safe now as they did five years ago (Safe School Task Force, 1994b).This result was particularly evident among staff at large urban secondary schools.In descending order, the concerns that these school personnel had that made them feel less safe at work were trespassers, verbal assaults, working alone, school architecture, physical assaults, weapons, lack of personal alarms, and a lack of two-way portable communicators.

 According to Roher (1993), the results of a survey of 881 responding schools conducted by the OTF (1991), revealed a 150% increase in major incidents such as biting, kicking, punching, and the use of weapons, and a 50% increase in minor incidents such as verbal abuse over a three-year period, between 1987 and 1990.Much of this aggression was reported to have been perpetrated against other students, although teachers and other school personnel were also victims.The study also found that an increasing number of teachers were assaulted while breaking up fights; the incidence of trespassers had increased, as did the reported consumption of alcohol on field trips and athletic activities held outside the school; and the possession of weapons had become a serious problem.

 The results of the OTF survey must be interpreted with caution, however, as the number of schools that provided data for the three time periods (1987-88, 1988-89, and 1989-90) varied.For example, data were provided by 454 schools for the baseline year, 881 schools for the second year, and 561 schools for the third year.The study's findings, therefore, were based on the number of incidents reported by nearly half the number of schools for the first year as for the second year.The fact that more schools contributed data for the second and third years would artificially increase the incremental values across time.Moreover, in a cautionary note, the OTF report noted that "a significant number of schools did not record any incidents of assault" (1991, p. 14-15).

 Lastly, a survey of 177 elementary and 173 secondary separate schools, conducted by the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association (OECTA, 1992) indicated that, between 1990-91 and 1991-92, the reported number of verbal assaults increased 6.1% and 20.5% in elementary and secondary schools, respectively.The reported number of physical assaults increased 3.2% and 2.4% in elementary and secondary schools, respectively.Some regional differences were observed as were differences across elementary and secondary grade levels and in schools of different size.With respect to student-teacher incidents, verbal assaults were more likely to occur with less experienced teachers whereas the reverse was true for physical assaults: more experienced teachers were more likely to have been subjected to physical assaults.Many teachers attributed student violence to societal factors such as the economy, the pervasiveness of violence in our society and the media, an overemphasis on individual rights with an underemphasis on individual responsibility, a perceived lack of sanctions in the YOA, and lack of religion and general moral decay of society.

 At the same time, an informal survey of 700 teachers in British Columbia revealed that teachers felt a greater sense of fear for the safety of their students than for their own safety (BCTF, 1994).Indeed, surveys of students indicate that school-based violence affects a large number of children and youth.In a recent study of 850 Ontario students in grades 6-9, 45% reported that there was "some" to "a lot" of violence in their schools and 29% said that they felt safe "sometimes" or "not at all" while at school (Ryan, Matthews, & Banner, 1993).However, this finding is in contrast to a survey completed by students in the Niagara Region of Ontario which found that a "vast majority... feel safe at school, and are not particularly concerned about their safety while at school" (Rodgers, 1993, p. 12).The disparity in findings is likely due to regional differences.

 In another survey of 146 children in grades 3-8, in two inner-city Toronto schools, Pal and Day (1991) found that 20% of the respondents had experienced bullying "now and then" or "more frequently."This rate of one child in five is comparable to the figure reported in a similar survey of 211 students in 17 schools (which included both inner-city and non-inner-city schools), grades 4-8, by the Toronto Board of Education (Zeigler & Rosenstein-Manner, 1991).Moreover, while the number of students who had ever been subjected to milder forms of bullying (e.g., teasing) was comparable in the two studies (37% and 33% in the Pal and Day and Zeigler and Rosenstein-Manner studies, respectively), the rate for violent bullying (e.g., hitting, kicking) was found to be higher in the two inner-city schools reported in the Pal and Day survey (34%) than in the Toronto Board of Education's sample (21%).

 Pal and Day (1991) also found that, when asked why students bully, the two most popular responses were "to be cool" (63%) and "to feel powerful" (58%).In this regard, bullying appears to be a means by which children attempt to fit in with or impress their peers or to enhance their reputation as "tough."Interestingly, this response pattern did not differ for children who were self-identified as bullies.Note that these responses are the same reasons given to account for why youth in Canada carry guns, with the exception of "for protection" (Walker, 1994).The response "low self-esteem" was endorsed by only 16% of the respondents and slightly fewer of the self-identified bullies.Lastly, an important finding that is often overlooked when considering aggressive behaviour was that bullies were often found to be victims of bullying themselves, usually at the hands of a group of children who were older than they.

 Self-report surveys such as the one used by Pal and Day (1991) and Zeigler and Rosenstein-Manner (1991), developed originally by Dan Olweus (1991), may provide more accurate data on the prevalence of school-based violence than those based on teacher reports (Bonta & Hanson, 1994).Students may be more aware than teachers of aggressive incidents in the schools, particularly if there is a high degree of underreporting.In addition, self-report surveys provide valuable insights into the nature of bullies and victims that cannot be obtained by other measures.Lastly, self-report surveys have been used to evaluate the effectiveness of school-based violence prevention programs (Day & Hartley, unpublished data, 1994; Olweus, 1991; Pepler, Craig, Zeigler, & Charach, 1993).

 In the absence of good data collected over multiple time periods, it is difficult to determine, with any certainty, the level of school violence in Canada.With the exception of the few student surveys, much of the available data are based on the perceptions of a single source, teachers.The difficulty with this is that, teachers' views, just like any other source, are not based on an unbiased assessment of the situation.Moreover, we believe that the perceived level of school violence by teachers is inextricably tied to (a) their sense of personal confidence or self-efficacy to manage discipline problems, both in the classroom and the schoolyard and (b) the level of support they perceive to be available from the school administration.This support is in the form of clear, concise policies that adequately address the range of unacceptable behaviours and delineate an appropriate array of consequences and corrective measures that are implemented and followed through in a firm, fair, and consistent manner.The greater the sense of personal self-efficacy to manage behaviour problems and the higher the perceived support from the school and the school board, the lower the level of perceived violence.In this way, we believe that school boards may achieve a reduction in the level of school violence, as reported by teachers, by establishing and enforcing policies and programs of which teachers are aware and providing training workshops to enhance teachers' level of knowledge and understanding of aggression in children and youth and their personal skills to prevent and manage behavioural problems in the classroom.

 It is interesting to note that some authors, like Rodgers (1993), have contested the reported increase in school violence in Canada, claiming that the prevalence has actually declined (Fitzpatrick, 1994; J. Newman & G. Newman, 1980; West, 1993).Cusson (1990) noted that the rate of violent acts committed by students of the Montreal Catholic School Commission was the same in 1985 as it was in 1974, with the exception of gang activity which involved 10.3% of the students in 1974 and 17.5% in 1985.

 In terms of discerning what is reality and what is perception vis a vis the incidence and prevalence of school-based violence, there seems to have emerged two distinct camps.On the one hand, there are those who appear to "hard sell" youth violence, claiming that youth violence is virtually rampant on our streets and in schools and that the face of youth violence in Canada has changed so dramatically that, if nothing is done now, we will invariably meet with the same destiny as seen in the United States.As Auty noted, "the kids in our schools are moving to the beat of a different drum, a rhythm foreign to the experience of many educational decision-makers.We could no longer afford the luxury of being out of touch" (p. 9).Note that this is the image that is perpetuated through the media (Schmidt, Paquette, & Dickinson, 1990).

 On the other hand, there are those who tend to downplay the reported levels of youth violence, dismissing increasing trends as differences in definitions used, awareness, and methods of reporting (Cusson, 1990; West, 1993).As West (1993) admonishes, "[v]iolence in Canadian schools is comparatively low key and we need to beware of simply assuming our schools are going the way of American ones" (p. 7).

 As noted previously, these conflicting views may be attributed, in part, to regional differences.For example, Rodgers (1993) noted that students in the Niagara region, a predominantly rural area of Ontario, claimed that, aside from some mention of weapons in school, most notably knives, school violence was a "non-issue" (p. 12).As well, Robb (1993) reported that weapons were not a problem in Nova Scotia, although they are seen as a problem in other provinces.A similar conclusion was drawn in separate reports on the low incidence of youth crime and school violence in Kelowna, British Columbia (Child and Youth Committee, 1994) and Newfoundland (Fitzpatrick, 1994).

 One thing on which we can agree is that there is an increasing concern for violence among children and youth.Aggression is no longer something that can be easily dismissed as "kids will be kids."There appears to be a growing sensitivity to and public abhorrence for violence, in spite of its greater acceptance in society; violence appears to be almost ubiquitous as it pervades the media.So whether we are just "seeing" more children and youth engage in violence, where we did not "see" it before, is the result of greater awareness or sensitivity, or whether the numbers are actually growing, is debatable.The reality is that school violence is a social problem, reflecting the violence in society, in general.As such, it is difficult to ignore when a knife is pulled on the schoolgrounds.While the use of weapons is not proliferating in the schoolyards across Canada (Walker, 1994), they are seen with greater frequency by both school personnel and students.This can and does lead to more serious outcomes in schoolyard altercations.Moreover, teachers would agree that they are spending more of their time having to discipline students and this takes time away from their teaching.

(b) United States

 According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (1991), half of all crimes against teenagers occurred in school buildings, on school property, or on the street.Moreover, "44% of teachers in the United States reported that student misbehaviour interfered substantially with their teaching" (Aleem & Moles, 1993, p. 5).Another survey found that school principals considered physical student conflicts (76%), vandalism of school property (53%), and verbal abuse of teachers (55%) to be as serious a problem as student and staff absenteeism, tobacco-related offences, and lateness.Other serious problems were theft over $10 (38%), trespassing (34%), racism (26%), and weapons (20%) (Mansfield & Farris, 1992).

 Although Mansfield and Farris (1992) found that only 20% of principals indicated that weapons were a problem, it is estimated that 568,000 teens or about 5% of the student population of American schools are in possession of a firearm--about half as many as carry pocket video games (Harrington-Lueker, 1992).The weapons policy of the City School District of the City of New York enumerates the following items as weapons: (a) pistol, handgun, firearm silencer, electronic dart gun; (b) shotgun, rifle, machinegun, or any weapon that simulates or is adaptable for use as a machine gun; (c) switchblade knife, gravity knife, cane sword; (d) billy club, blackjack, bludgeon, chucka stick, metal knuckles; (e) sandbag and sandclub; (f) slingshot; (g) explosive, incendiary bomb, bombshell; and (h) airgun or spring gun (e.g., a BB gun).Other items considered weapons include acid or other dangerous chemicals, imitation pistols, loaded or blank cartridges and ammunition, and sharp, pointed objects such as broken glass, chains, wire, and nailfiles (Butterfield & Turner, 1989).

 Statistics on the prevalence of school-based violence in the United States are astonishing.Violent assaults in schools are reported to have escalated 14% in the years between 1987 and 1990 (Landen, 1992).Approximately 28,200 students are physically attacked in schools each month (Hranitz & Eddowes, 1990).Approximately 21% of students, ranging in age from 12 to 19 years, fear an attack at school (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 1991).Assaults on teachers have increased at a steady rate from 41,000 to 110,000, between 1971 and 1979 (Goldstein, Apter, & Harootunian, 1984)."The National Association of School Security Directors estimates that each year there are 9,000 rapes, 12,000 armed robberies, 270,000 burglaries, and 204,000 aggravated assaults in schools.Moreover, an estimated 70,000 serious physical assaults each year are made on teachers" (Rich, 1992, p. 35; see also Gorski & Pilotto, 1993; Roper, 1991).As a national goal, the United States is committed to the attainment of the sixth National Education Goal which states that "[b]y the year 2000, every school in America will be free of drugs and violence and will offer a disciplined environment conducive to learning" (Aleem & Moles, 1993, p. 1)

 In summary, there is an emerging perception that violence has become more pervasive in society, including our schools.School violence is reported to be on the rise and increasing in intensity, particularly in the form of verbal assault, as teachers see students becoming more confrontative.In the main, violence is still perpetrated against other students (i.e., teasing, bullying, assault), although teachers can also be victims.Some teachers in Canada reported that they have become more hesitant to break up fights in the fear that they may become seriously injured, particularly in the event that a weapon is used (Robb, 1993).By and large, however, despite regional differences, occasional serious occurrences, and sensational and anecdotal reports, the data indicate that Canadian schools are safe places for students and staff.

 The next section examines some of the causal factors associated with the development of aggressive and antisocial behaviour in children and youth.The development of associated features or correlates of aggression in children such as impulsivity, poor self-control, hyperactivity, and noncompliance are also considered.As Landen (1992) noted, "[u]nderstanding the causes [of violence] is crucial to determining appropriate solutions" (p. 3; see also Crux, 1993). 

THE ROOT CAUSES OF VIOLENCE

 Much of the aggressive behaviour we observe among children and youth is sufficiently mild to be no cause for alarm or concern.For some children, displays of aggression are low level, infrequent, and more likely reactive (i.e., responding to others' aggression) than proactive (i.e., provoking aggression in others).Sometimes, a child's aggressive behaviour will be accompanied by other disruptive behaviours such as inattentiveness, noncompliance, defiance, and poor self-control.

 For other children, however, the level of aggression will be more extreme, persistent, involve groups of children, and occur across multiple settings (i.e., home, school, community).Children with serious behaviour problems may meet the criteria for conduct disorder, a psychiatric diagnosis given for "a repetitive and persistent pattern of behavior in which the basic rights of others or major age-appropriate societal norms or rules are violated" (American Psychiatric Association, 1994, p. 85).According to the Ontario Child Health Study (OCHS), 5.5% of the general population of children in Ontario, between the ages of 4 and 16 years, meet the criteria for conduct disorder (Offord, Alder, & Boyle, 1986).The OCHS also found that while many cases come to the attention of mental health centres and other social service agencies, a large number of children with severe conduct problems goes undetected.

 In terms of its causal factors, aggression may be understood as multiply determined, having determinants in both biological and environmental factors.As well, it is important to understand aggression and violence as having a developmental progression or trajectory.In this regard, strategic prevention and intervention efforts must be both multifaceted and developmentally appropriate.

Biological Factors

 Research on the biological bases of aggressive behaviour has examined a range of factors.Studies on genetic influences, for example, have noted a greater preponderance of criminals among sons whose biological parents were also criminals (Lytton, 1990).The well-documented finding that males have a greater propensity for aggression than girls has been attributed to higher levels of testosterone and the presence of the Y chromosome. Indeed, some research examining the incidence of aggression among males with an extra Y chromosome (XYY) has found higher rates of criminal convictions than among XY males (Crowell, 1987), although the findings of these studies have been disputed (Mednick, Moffitt, Gabrielli, & Hutchings, 1986).For girls, early onset of menarche has been associated with higher rates of antisocial behaviour (Caspi & Moffitt, 1991; Magnusson, Stattin, & Allen, 1986).However, the observed delinquency among early maturing girls occurred only when they also associated more with older girls (Loeber, 1991).Nevertheless, while the specific causal factors remain undiscovered, a biological basis of aggression relating to gender differences appears to hold even beyond the effects due to sex-specific socialization practices (Eme, 1979).

 In addition to these inherited biological characteristics, acquired biological deficits can also influence the child's behaviour patterns.Even before birth, factors may conspire against the developing fetus, predisposing it towards impulsive, hyperactive, and aggressive behaviour.A lack of proper nutrients during critical periods of development or pre- or postnatal exposure to toxic agents (e.g., fetal alcohol, lead, drugs) may result in mild or severe deficits in cognition and behaviour.These deficits may lead to a wide range of conditions such as poor motor coordination, low intelligence, hyperactivity, language impairment, impulsivity, self-control problems, poor frustration tolerance, social information-processing deficits, and learning disabilities.These features are known to be markers of aggressive behaviour in children.

 Moffitt (1993) has shown how early neurological abnormalities, giving rise to later verbal deficits, may lead to the development of aggression, antisocial behaviour, and conduct disorder.

[A] preschooler who has difficulty understanding language may resist his mother's efforts to read to him, which delays his school readiness.When he enters school, the modal curriculum may not allow for teaching that is tailored to his readiness level....After a few years of school failure, he will be chronologically older than his classmates and, thus, socially rejected....He may be tracked into a remedial class, containing pupils who have behavioral disorders as well as learning disabilities.Daily association with conduct disordered pupils brings familiarity with delinquent behaviors, and he adopts delinquent ways to gain acceptance by peers (p. 138).

It is generally acknowledged that "children with verbal deficits rely more on physical modes of self-expression; resorting to hitting rather than discussion" (Moffitt, 1993, p. 137).Wilson and Herrnstein (1985) have also suggested that:

low verbal intelligence contributes to a present-oriented cognitive style which, in turn, fosters irresponsible and exploitative behavior....Normal language development is thus an essential ingredient in prosocial processes such as delay of gratification, anticipating consequences, and linking belated punishments with earlier transgressions" (Moffitt, 1993, p. 142).

 As can be seen, a relatively minor neurological problem resulting in a verbal deficit may lead a child into a potentially negative spiral of academic failure and peer rejection, on a pathway towards delinquency.Moffitt's scenario also emphasizes the role of labeling, leading to special class placement and association with a deviant group in the development of antisocial behaviour.

 Child temperament has also been identified as a contributing factor in the development of childhood aggression.Some infants may be described as fussy or having a "difficult" temperament.These infants are not easily soothed and cry often.Many parents of such infants come to experience difficulties in the caregiving role, feeling unable or incapable of providing for their child.As a result, disruptions may arise in an effort to socialize their child, as the parent becomes increasingly less involved in directing the child's behaviour and in the teaching process.This could have long-term implications leading to poor social functioning at school.For example, in a study conducted by Buss, Block, and Block (1980), at seven years old, children identified as highly active three-year olds, were rated by their teachers, as "aggressive, manipulative, noncompliant, and more likely to push limits and stretch the rules in many social situations" (Moffitt, 1993, p. 140).

Environmental Factors

(a) The Parent-Child Relationship
 While the presence of certain biological deficits may place a child at risk for aggressiveness, environmental factors may mitigate these negative influences.For example, a child with a serious language deficit who receives special attention, guidance, and support from his or her family may learn to cope with and compensate for the effects of the condition.Indeed, it is well known that a caring, loving, attentive, supportive upbringing during infancy provides the foundation for a secure attachment throughout one's life.Children who are securely attached to a primary caregiver are less likely to develop behaviour and social problems such as aggression and poor peer relations and are better able to regulate their negative emotional states (e.g., anger) than their insecurely attached counterparts (Greenberg, Speltz, & DeKlyen, 1993).Sroufe (1988) posited that a secure attachment relates to "the child's developing sense of inner confidence, efficacy, and self-worth and aspects of intimate personal relationship (the capacity to be emotionally close, to seek and receive care, and to give care to others)" (p. 26).

 At the same time, however, numerous forces external to the child (i.e., social and environmental factors) have been identified as contributing to the development of maladaptive outcomes such as academic, social, and behavioural problems.Considerable attention has been given to the quality of the parent-child interaction, for example, as contributing to the development of childhood aggression.As noted previously, the affective quality of the parent-child relationship in early infancy, as reflected by the parent's ability to be attentive, responsive, sensitive, and reinforce positive social interactions with his or her child relate to the healthy social, emotional, and physical development of the child.However, in the absence of an early supportive parent-child relation, such as one characterized by a neglectful, unresponsive, inattentive, or overly protective parent, maladaptive child outcomes are likely to ensue.Factors that could adversely affect the early attachment process include life stress, family hardship, lack of parental social support, parental psychopathology, and child health problems (Greenberg et al., 1993).

 As the child matures and becomes more independent, the nature of the parent-child relationship takes on a new dimension as the parent spends considerably more time attempting to guide and control or manage his or her child's actions and behaviours.For the parent, noncompliance and the use of effective disciplinary responses become critical issues during this period.The extent to which the parent's discipline style yields compliance and also fosters growth and independence in the child, the more positive the parent-child interaction.Moreover, the degree to which parents feel successful (i.e., high perceived self-efficacy) in managing their child's behaviour, the more positive the parent-child relationship.In a study conducted by Day, Factor, and Szkiba-Day (1994), for example, it was found that parents who felt effective in managing their child's behaviour, that is experienced a high degree of self-efficacy in the caregiver role, were less likely to use coercive discipline techniques such as hitting, spanking, slapping, and yelling in response to child misbehaviour and also rated their child as having fewer behaviour problems than parents who perceived themselves as having a low degree of self-efficacy.In this way, the quality of the parent-child interaction was enhanced by both the parents' feelings of self-efficacy and their use of non-coercive discipline techniques.

 Extensive research has also shown that an ineffective parenting style, particularly the use of harsh and inconsistent discipline techniques are good predictors of aggression and conduct problem behaviours (Loeber & Stouthamer-Loeber, 1986).Based on a decade of research, Patterson (1982) has developed a model of parent-child interactions that lead to the development of childhood aggression.The typical scenario described by Patterson begins with the parent asking the child to do (or not do) something.The child responds by ignoring the parent's command.The parent responds by increasing the intensity of the command and begins yelling at the child.The child responds in kind by yelling back.The parent, feeling frustrated by the lack of compliance, escalates the interchange by physically grabbing the child, to which the child responds, increasing the intensity further, by hitting and kicking the beleaguered parent.At this point, feeling frustrated and defeated, the parent withdraws from the situation as the child returns to his or her previous activity.
 In this scenario, the parent's feelings of ineffectiveness as a caregiver are positively reinforced while the child's use of aversive behaviours in response to the parent's request for compliance is negatively reinforced as a result of the parent's ultimate termination of the initial request.As well, the child learns to control other people's behaviour through coercive means and to use yelling, grabbing, and other aggressive tactics to deal with conflict situations.Furthermore, as Patterson et al. (1989) noted, "[t]he training for deviant behavior is paralleled by a lack of training for many prosocial skills" (p. 330).

(b) From the Family Environment to the School Setting
 It is also well documented that the early training the child receives in the home for aggressive behaviour carries over into the school setting in the form of comparable coercive interactions with teachers and peers (Ramsey, Bank, Patterson, & Walker, 1990).It is not a far leap to recognize that the escalations in aversive behaviours described in Patterson's coercive family process model are equally applicable to many encounters experienced by some teachers with students in the classroom or on the playground.As we have seen for parents, it is obviously important that teachers refrain from entering into a power struggle (i.e., coercive process) with students as this invariably leads to an escalation in "control tactics" from which neither the teacher nor the student comes out a winner.Many effective techniques for dealing with conflict situations with children and youth are available, some of which are described in the teacher manuals and handbooks referred to previously.

(c) Personal Identity
 In late childhood and early adolescence, the influence of the family diminishes as the peer group and school environment play a larger role in the adolescent's life.Peer pressure becomes a significant factor as the search for an identity and a desire to fit in looms large.As well, various patterns of thinking such as a heightened self-consciousness or egocentrism, characteristic of adolescents, become prominent.This can become manifested as two beliefs about the self: (a) that everyone is looking at them, that is, that others are as preoccupied with their behaviour as they are, known as the "imaginary audience" and (b) that they are virtually impervious to harm, that is, that nothing bad will happen to them and that they are so unique that no one can understand how they really feel, known as the "personal fable" (Santrock, 1981).The imaginary audience belief leads to attention-getting behaviour and a desire to be visible and "on stage."The personal fable construction leads one to engage in risk-taking behaviour such as experimentation with alcohol and drugs, having sex without birth control, even engaging in petty crimes such as shoplifting.While these thought patterns, in themselves, do not lead to aggressive and antisocial behaviour, they may be contributing factors for those adolescents whose developmental history carries with it problems of academic and social competence, peer rejection, poor self-concept, low self-worth, and early aggressive behaviour.This may hold particularly for those adolescents who, due to disruptions in their family, home, and school life (due to factors reviewed above) experience a lack of ties to conventional social bonds, hold antisocial attitudes, and develop an outward appearance of tough, anti-authority posturing.

(d) Contextual Factors
 Canada is a country with a changing demographic profile.The median age of the population is rising and is expected to continue to rise until the year 2036 (McKie, 1993).Over the past several decades, many changes have resulted in threats to our social and economic security: increased rate of divorce, more single-parent families, particularly female-led, more dual-income households, wage freezes, and job losses.Eighty-two percent of lone-parent households were mothers who tend to be younger than their male counterparts (La Novara, 1993).Changes in the workforce have led to hundreds of thousands of full time employment positions lost since 1990 and an unemployment rate of 9.6% in November, 1994, (Statistics Canada, 1994).In 1966, a typical unemployment figure was 3.4% (Forum Directors Group, 1993).

 One of the most significant changes observed over the past two decades is the increasing number of people living in poverty.What is most disturbing is the trend towards more younger people, under the age of 25 years, and particularly young families, living in poverty with the concomitant number of children living under the poverty line."The rate of poverty among young families has grown from 21% in 1981 to 37% in 1991, while the poverty rate for elderly families (65 years and over) decreased from 13% to 8% during the same timespan....In 1992, approximately 40% of all welfare beneficiaries were dependent children" (Forum Directors Group, 1993, p. 8).The Canadian Institute of Child Health (CICH; 1994) reported a number of negative outcomes for poor children including more health, mental health, and academic problems.The results of these sweeping changes are that, for a growing number of children, their primary needs are not being met and, as a result, "their development, prospects, and future productiveness are being seriously undermined" (Steinhauer, 1994, p. 15).

 A number of longitudinal studies has examined the effects of these environmental risk factors on developmental outcomes in children and youth (e.g., Offord et al., 1986; Offord, Boyle, Racine, Fleming, et al., 1992; Werner, 1985).A risk factor is defined as a variable that "increases the likelihood that a subsequent negative outcome will occur (such as delinquency)" (Loeber, 1990, p. 4).In Canada, the OCHS examined the effects of a variety of environmental risk factors on school and social impairments and on the presence of a diagnosable psychiatric disorder in several thousand children aged 4 to 16 years over a four-year period, between 1983 and 1987.

 According to the OCHS, there was a high degree of overlap among risk factors in families that were studied.For example, the rate of social assistance among single-parent families was 41.1%.The rate for two-parent families was 2.2%.Fifty percent of children living in subsidized housing were living in families on social assistance (Offord, Boyle, & Racine, 1989)."Obviously, children who are environmentally disadvantaged in one sociodemographic area are at great risk of being disadvantaged in another" (p. ii).

 With regard to the prevalence of a psychiatric disorder, 18.1% of children aged 4-16 years met the criteria for at least one psychiatric diagnosis.The most prevalent disorders among boys were hyperactivity (8.9%) and conduct disorder (8.1%).The comparable rates for girls were 2.7% and 3.3%, respectively.In contrast, the prevalence rate for an emotional disorder among girls was 11.9%; the rate for boys was 7.9%.As with risk factors, the rate of overlap among disorders, referred to as co-morbidity, was also high.The largest overlap was between hyperactivity and conduct disorder in the 4-11 year old group, at almost 60%.In the 12-16 year old group, about 33% of the conduct disordered youths were seen as hyperactive (Offord et al., 1986).Lastly, "23.7% of the children with psychiatric disorder also perform poorly at school; the rate of poor school performance among those without psychiatric disorder was 13.0%" (Offord et al., 1989, p. ii).

 Risk factors were also examined in terms of their relation to aggressive behaviour (i.e., a conduct disorder diagnosis).It was found that being on welfare and living in subsidized housing were most strongly related to the presence of conduct disorder in children.However, the authors noted that the relationship between the disorder and low socioeconomic status is likely not a direct one but is mediated by other variables such as marital discord and disturbed family functioning.In addition, low income was found to be the single best predictor in the development of conduct disorder in children over the study's four year duration.Again, the casual relation between economic disadvantage and conduct problems remains unclear and is probably due to the presence of other mediating factors (Offord et al., 1992).

 What is clear, however, is that as we continue to experience an increase in the number of children growing up in situations characterized by economic privation, inadequate housing, and lack of parental supervision we will continue to see more children coming to school who are ill-prepared to deal with the social, emotional, behavioural, and academic demands placed on them by the rigours of the school setting.We know that as the number of risk factors increases, so do the negative outcomes that children experience.While studies have shown that most children are able to cope with up to four risk factors, beyond that, the chance of developing serious learning and behavioural problems increases dramatically (Werner, 1985).At the same time, as stated previously, the presence of protective factors (e.g., social and academic competence, large support network) serves to reduce or nullify the person's response to environmental conditions that predispose to a maladaptive outcome.In somewhat simplistic terms, the aim of long-term prevention is to reduce the number of risk factors in a child's environment and to increase or strengthen the presence of protective factors.

 A number of other contextual factors have been implicated in the development of aggression and violence in children.These include parental criminality, parental stress, family discord and violence in the home, child abuse and neglect, alcoholism and psychiatric problems such as depression, living in high crime neighbourhoods, the lack of a large social network of friends and family from which children can draw for emotional support, and the ubiquitous nature of violence in both the entertainment and news media.

 With regard to the media, research conducted over the last 40 years indicates that young children and teenagers in the United States spend 28 and 23 hours each week, respectively, watching television (APA, 1993).During the last 20 years, "the level of violence on prime-time television has remained constant at five to six violent acts per hour; there are 20 to 25 violent acts per hour on Saturday morning children's programs" (p. 32).Canadian research indicates that, by the time children graduate from elementary school, each one will have witnessed in excess of 8,000 murders and over 100,000 miscellaneous acts of violence (Campbell, 1993), and that, although they will spend a total of 12,000 hours attending elementary school, as average viewers, they will watch 18,000 hours of television over the same period (Manley-Casmir, 1992).Films that are popular with young people and are readily available on videocassette add many more violent acts; "Die Hard 2 (264 violent deaths), Robocop (81 deaths) and Total Recall (74 deaths) are part of children's culture" (Campbell, 1993, p. 13).

 As early as 1969, Dr. Milton Eisenhower, Chairman of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence in the United States, suggested that "a constant diet of violent behavior on television has an adverse effect on human character and attitudes....It encourages violent forms of behaviour, and fosters moral and social values about violence in daily life which are unacceptable in a civilized society" (Hammonds, 1984, p. 16).The undesirable effects of television have been confirmed in a series of three major studies conducted in the United States in 1972, 1982, and 1992 which led to the "irrefutable conclusion that viewing television increases violence" (APA, 1993, p. 33). 

 Two additional concerns about media violence are first, through media violence, children learn to value rather than devalue the use of violence to solve conflicts.Second, children will not learn, through mass media viewing, to use alternative, prosocial responses to express intense feelings and deal with conflict.The vocabulary and language skills needed to enact these behaviours are learned from parents and other significant adult role models in the child's life.

 The popularity of video games has also helped to compound the negative effects of television.Children spend an estimated two hours a day playing video games, in addition to the time spent watching television.In many of these games, the player is allowed to participate in the violent activity portrayed on the screen.Although the themes of these games are most frequently the triumph of good over evil, the way to success often involves highly violent means, death, and destruction (Provenzo, 1992).As well, the effect of visual images lasts a lifetime; "Images have great power to evoke feeling, shape beliefs, and inform behaviour" (Campbell, 1993, p. 12).Lastly, Provenzo (1992) suggests that the sex-role stereotyping in video games is distorted and unacceptable, as women are usually portrayed as victims, dependent upon the actions of the games' male heroes.

 Drugs and alcohol also contribute to school-related violence.Gaustad (1991) suggests that, aside from the harmful mental and physiological effects of narcotics on the individual user, the vast amounts of money that illegal substances generate has resulted in an increase in the size and influence of youth gangs.In the United States, the average "crack" user needs over $250 per week to support his or her habit, amounting to over $13,000 a year.Many of these users come from families with an average income of less than $11,000 per year (Donaldson, 1993).Pre-teenagers are often used by gangs to serve as lookouts and couriers for the gangs' illicit drug activity, since children of a young age (under 12 years in Canada) cannot be subjected to criminal prosecution (Gaustad, 1991; Prothrow-Stith, 1991).Eventually, some of these children may become "user-dealers" and are absorbed by the gang for which they work.Although not all teenage users of drugs are members of a gang and, in fact, most are not (Knox, Laske, & Tromanhauser, 1992), it is wise to remember that all drug activity in Canada and the United States is illegal and that any use of drugs will enhance the activity and strength of criminal organizations.

 As can be seen from this brief review, the causes of violence are many and complex and the task facing educators a challenging one.The search for general laws leads to the identification of countless causal factors that are complexly related to aggression and other maladaptive outcomes.Both biological and environmental factors transposed over a developmental paradigm are seen as contributing to the development of (a) markers of aggressive behaviour such as impulsivity and poor self-control, (b) aggressive behavior itself, and (c) delinquent and antisocial tendencies, characteristics associated with the conduct disorder diagnosis.Moreover, as Loeber (1990, p. 31) noted, children and youth who act aggressively do not just "spring out of the cabbage" when they commit their first aggressive or antisocial act.Such children bring with them a developmental history of risk factors, as they display a progression from mild to more serious disruptive behaviour patterns.

 Lastly, much of the literature is based on research conducted with boys.Although there are relatively few published studies on conduct problems in girls, the extant literature indicates that different correlates and predictors come into play, suggesting a need for gender-specific models and developmental pathways (Keenan & Shaw, 1994; Zoccolillo, 1993).

 The next section reviews the literature concerning models for dealing with violence in schools.Descriptions of specific school-based programs that have been implemented in Canada and the United States are presented in Appendix A.Where available, evaluative data are integrated into the discussion of the programs.

THE SCHOOL BOARD'S RESPONSE TO VIOLENCE

 Violence among children and youth is a social problem not just a school problem (Auty, 1993; Guetzloe, 1992; Landen, 1992; Robb, 1993).As Berger (1974) noted, "school violence is simply one manifestation of the modern violent urban society" (cited in Newman & G. Newman, 1980, p. 3).Schools cannot be expected to act alone to reduce the prevalence of youth violence and prevent its future occurrence.As we have seen, the sources of the problem often lie outside the domain of the school.Paraphrasing Matthews (1992 cited in Riddle, 1993), mobilizing resources to meet the needs of "at risk" youth, families, and communities will have a more permanent impact on the problem of school violence than simply a punishment-focused, "law-and-order" response by school boards.

 Moreover, youth violence is multiply determined and so requires a multifaceted approach to be effectively reduced.A long-term solution will involve a broad-based effort involving partnerships with many community groups including parents or guardians, government agencies, the juvenile justice system, the police, children's mental health centres, racial and ethnocultural minority organizations, the local business community, and industry.According to Bala (1994), "there is no single, simple philosophy and no single type of program which will 'solve' the problem of youthful criminality" (p. 7).Moreover, the school board's response to youth violence must itself be multifaceted.Developing discipline policies is only one part of the solution.

 It should be emphasized, however, that, within any violence prevention strategy, it is just as important to attempt to increase alternate, prosocial behaviours as it is to reduce the offending behaviour.Replacing one behaviour for another is a much better approach for long-term change than simply eliminating the single behaviour.In this regard, school-based efforts need to be as comprehensive as they are concerted and sustained.

The Role of the School Board's Policies and Programs
 It is axiomatic to state that every student has the right to attend school and feel safe from harm or danger.Basic to this right is the right to study in surroundings that encourage the learning process.School boards have a responsibility to ensure that the school environment is conducive to learning.Related to this issue of safety, some of the critical questions facing school boards today are: How is the right to feel safe maintained and enforced at school?; What should the school do in the event that a student's right to feel safe has been violated?; How should board policies balance the protection of the school community with the rehabilitation of the offender?; What are effective deterrents for different types of disciplinary problems?; and How can a school board be seen as acting proactively in response to violence in schools?

 A school boards' response to school-based violence, in terms of its policies and programs, may be conceptualized on a number of overlapping dimensions.Policies and programs may be reactive or proactive.They may be targeted toward identified, aggressive students, the entire student body, or staff.Policies and programs may be directed toward younger children or older children and adolescents.They may be single-focused or involve a wide range of outcomes.Lastly, they may be designed to achieve decreases in children's aggressive behaviour or increases in prosocial behaviour.In developing a comprehensive, coordinated, multifaceted approach to deal with school violence, a school board should consider where on these dimensions their violence prevention strategy can be placed.Ideally, a school board will have policies and programs to address the full spectrum of each of these continua.

The Public Health Model
 In Schools under seige (1992), Knox, Laske, and Tromanhauser present a bleak vision of the future of the United States.They suggest that America has already lost the wars on drugs, poverty, and illiteracy and that if the attempt to reduce the effects of violence and gangs do not succeed they propose that (a) America will be relegated to a back seat in the international science community as colleges and universities come under the sway of gangs; (b) social strife and racial conflict will proliferate; (c) American children will be adopted by more humane citizens of European countries as Americans now adopt child victims of conflict in places such as Lebanon and Yugoslavia; (d) gangs will infiltrate local, state, and federal administrations and even the armed forces; (e) schools may well be considered "war zones" and come under the authority of the judiciary; and (f) public nuisance laws will be used to close schools as being facilities in which repeated criminal offences are allowed to happen.In order to prevent this pessimistic vision from becoming reality, the authors suggest that it is imperative to develop strategies to counteract the violence and antisocial behaviour that will lead to such an end.

 The dominant approach for dealing with juvenile delinquency and school violence in the United States is to conceptualize the problem and potential solutions within a public health model (Coie & Jacobs, 1993; Guetzloe, 1992; Hawkins & Weis, 1985; Mercy & O'Carroll, 1988; Page, Kitchin-Becker, Solovan, Golec, & Hebert, 1992; Prothrow-Stith, Spivak, & Hausman, 1987).This approach emphasizes the need for a long-term, concerted, multifaceted, community-based approach for dealing with this complex social problem.

 The public health model conceptualizes violence and aggression as a "disease" and identifies three major foci in the violence prevention process, primary, secondary, and tertiary, "depending upon the stage to which the disease has progressed when the activity is initiated" (Guetzloe, 1992, p. 5).Each focus has its own strategy for addressing the problem.Primary prevention involves "the alteration of one of the essential components of disease/disorder occurrence" (p. 5) which is ideally achieved by eliminating the cause, immunizing the victim, and changing the environment or conditions that encourage the disorder.Secondary prevention is concerned with the early identification of those who show symptoms of the disease and corrective intervention.Tertiary prevention involves more intensive treatment of those with the disorder with the goal being rehabilitation.

 According to Guetzloe (1992), primary prevention of violence consists of (a) public education as to the origins and preventions of violence; (b) providing food, jobs, child-care and medical care for all; (c) providing for the basic needs of all young children; (d) encouraging prosocial behaviour in all children; (e) regulation of the media to reduce or eliminate the representation of violence; (f) reducing the availability of illegal drugs; and (g) gun control.Secondary prevention is seen as one of the responsibilities of the school system, with collaboration from parents and other stakeholders.Within the schools, provisions could be made for (a) an environment with logical, clearly stated, and consistently enforced rules; (b) opportunities for children and youth to learn non-violent means of resolving conflict; (c) opportunities to develop prosocial behaviours such as empathy, co-operation, and sharing (d) fewer competitive games and activities; (e) opportunities for vigorous exercise; and (f) opportunities to help others and to feel success in this endeavour.Tertiary prevention involves punishment, incarceration, and rehabilitation, and, in some respects, may be beyond the scope of the school's domain with the exception of the use of "time out," detentions, suspensions, and alternative programs to suspension and expulsion (Guetzloe, 1992).Although Guetzloe has served as the main source for the above discussion, similar ideas are presented and developed by Prothrow-Stith (1991) in Deadly consequences.

 Further to the public health model, Weissberg and Elias (1993) argue for the development of a comprehensive approach to school-based health promotion and prevention.Their recommended approach targets multiple outcomes and addresses a range of issues, in addition to violence and delinquency, including AIDS, drug, sex, career education, nutrition, cardiovascular fitness, and self-esteem enhancement.Weissberg and Elias believe that health promotion programming in schools cannot effectively deal with these issues in piecemeal fashion, that is, using a variety of "well-marketed packaged programs" (p. 180).Rather, a comprehensive program tailored to the needs of the school setting must be in place.This program would involve:

a broad spectrum of activities and services that intersect to provide students and perhaps their families with exposure to a range of cognitive, affective, and skill development opportunities that contribute to overall competence with respect to [physical, mental-emotional, and social] health (p. 180).

 In order to provide direction for achieving this aim, Weissberg and Elias (1993) have developed the Comprehensive Social-Competence and Health-Education (C-SCAHE) programming model.Their model involves (a) a broad conceptualization of health rather than a focus on one categorical outcome; (b) developmentally appropriate, planned, sequential K-12 classroom instruction; (c) a focus on cognitive, affective, and behavioural skills, attitudes, values, and perceptions of norms, and domain-specific information about target social and health domains; (d) teaching methods that ensure active student engagement, emphasize positive change, and change the ways in which children and adults communicate about problem situations; (e) multilevel, multicomponent interventions to effectively address the widespread social and health problems of children and adolescents; (f) programs that are designed and delivered in ways that are acceptable to and reach populations at risk; and (g) systems-level policies, practices, and infrastructure.Moreover, Weissberg and Elias argue that effective school-based prevention must become institutionalized within the infrastructure of the school system and seen as integral to the curriculum in the same way that academic curricula like reading, writing, and arithmetic are integral to the school system.In order for the C-SCAHE program to be effective, teachers must understand, accept, and endorse the need for a school-based, health promotion and social competence intervention.

 Lastly, the American Psychological Association (APA; 1993) has articulated an approach for dealing with the problem of school violence.Although, developed as a response to the American situation, the report makes a number of recommendations that are equally applicable to the Canadian scene.First, the report suggests that the school's role in counteracting violence should be to provide the educational programs by which children can learn to reduce and prevent violence and promote the use of prosocial skills and behaviour.Schools and the government should be involved in:

efforts to develop, implement, and evaluate violence prevention and aggression reduction curricula for use in schools from childhood through the teen years.Such efforts would involve teacher training, training for other school personnel, curricular activities, coordinated parental support activities, and technical assistance in implementing programs that apply techniques known to be effective in reducing aggression and preventing violence (p. 75).

 Second, the report recommends that "schools take a long view of children's education regarding violence" by developing and implementing programs that are "coordinated, systematic, and developmentally and culturally appropriate" (p. 75) and begin in the earliest grades and continue until adolescence.Professional organizations should become involved with schools in the preparation, dissemination, evaluation, and development of assessment tools on an ongoing basis.The report also encourages "schools to engage in the early identification of children who show emotional or behavioural problems related to violence and to provide for them or refer them for appropriate educational experiences and psychological interventions" (p. 75).Schools should provide after-school programs and recreational activities as an alternative to gang membership, prohibit the use of corporal punishment in the schools and encourage parents to do likewise, and make violence-reduction training a part of preservice and inservice training for staff.Lastly, the report urges schools to become involved in prevention and treatment programs for alcohol and drug use that focus on the links between substance abuse and violence and to develop programs and interventions designed to eliminate hate crimes and dispel stereotypes that are physical, racial, or sexual.

 In summary, conceptualizing the problem of and potential solutions to school-based and youth violence within a public health model (i.e., primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention) has framed much of the American prevention literature.This model, exemplified by the work of Guetzloe, Prothrow-Stith, and Weissberg and Elias, advocates for large-scale, comprehensive, multifaceted, and sustained community-based efforts.As an observation, the Canadian literature which is much more recent and smaller in sheer quantity of published articles has not followed suit in embracing this model.This may be due to the smaller scope of the problem and lack of a perceived urgency or immediacy to find a solution, which only recently has emerged.Indeed, whether the situation in Canada merits adopting such a comprehensive, broad-based approach to deal with school-based violence remains a question that has yet to be examined.The next two sections present the methodology and findings of a nation-wide survey conducted to investigate the range of school-based, violence-prevention policies and programs in Canada.

METHODOLOGY
The Sample
 In order to achieve the study's objectives, we attempted to conduct a survey of 210 school boards across Canada.As a survey of every school board in Canada was seen as impractical, we decided to limit ourselves to school boards in larger urban areas.While it is recognized that violence among children and youth is not limited by particular geographical regions, population densities, and so forth, there is a perception that the rate of increase of youth violence is greater in urban than rural areas.

 For the purpose of this study, we adopted the Statistics Canada (1992b) definition of an urban centre as "an area which has attained a population of at least 1,000 and a population density of at least 400 per square kilometre....Urban areas separated by gaps less than two kilometres are combined to form a single area" (p. 178).Subsequently, we identified the 65 largest urban areas in Canada as the targets of the study.These urban areas ranged in population size from Toronto (Greater Toronto Area), with 3,550,733 people, to Charlottetown, with 33,153 people (see Appendix B for a list of the urban areas included in the survey).

 According to the Canadian Educational Association (CEA) Handbook (1994), these 65 urban areas are served by a total of 210 school boards.In this way, we selected for survey the total population of school boards serving these 65 centres rather than taking a randomly selected sample.The population included public, separate, and French language boards, as well as English boards in the province of Quebec.Table 1 presents the percentage of school boards surveyed in each province.As indicated in Table 1, 28.4% or 210 out of 740 school boards in Canada were surveyed.Table 2 presents the percentage of French school boards surveyed in each province.

Survey Method
 In March, 1994, a letter was sent to a representative of each of the 210 targeted school boards describing the objectives of the study and requesting policy, program, and evaluative information.The name of the person who appeared at the top of the list in the CEA Handbook (1994), for a given school board, was selected as that school board's representative.The position of this person was, typically identified as the Superintendent of Schools or Education, Director of Education, Director General, or Directeur général or Directrice générale.While the letter was addressed to this person, in many cases, the task of responding to the survey was delegated to another person, as indicated by the name on the cover letter accompanying the school board's response.The deadline for responding was either May 6 (English version) or April 29 (French version).However, submissions received after that were included in our analyses.Indeed, as a result of followup telephone calls to increase our sample size, submissions were received late in July.

TABLE 1
Sampling Distributions and Response Rates of School Boards Across Canada
Province Total  No.  Boards Contacted  Responded  Response  Rate
 
British Columbia                  75 21                       (28%) 1781.0%
Alberta                                  13423                     (17.2%)1460.9%
Saskatchewan                      10113                      (12.9%) 7 53.8%
Manitoba                              56 12                       (21.4%)1191.7%
Ontario                                  147 62                    (42.2%)4775.8%
Quebec                                  15567                      (43.2%)2029.9%
New Brunswick                    18 4                         (22.2%)4 100%
Nova Scotia                          22 4                         (18.2%)3 75.0%
Prince Ed. Isle.                     51                            (20%)1 100%
Newfoundland                     27 3                         (11.1%)2 66.7%
Total                                      740210                    (28.4%) 126 60.0%

In addition to surveying school boards, several other methods were used to gather information.First, a brief article was included in Data Based EduTrends, a national newsletter about issues in education.The article described the study and requested information about school-based policies and programs.Second, individuals at school boards with particularly unique policies or programs, with which the researchers were already familiar, were contacted.Third, considerable effort was made to contact school-based and university-based researchers who may have been involved in evaluations of violence-prevention programs.Indeed, this proved to be a highly successful technique for gathering available evaluative information and we are particularly grateful for those individuals who supplied us with reports of completed work and works-in-progress.

Content Analysis Procedure
 The policy submissions provided by school boards were subjected to a content analysis.This process began with the development of a series of categories to describe the content of the policy statements.In order to develop the categories, the first two authors perused the submissions, noting the various aspects of school-based violence to which the policies applied, general themes, range of consequences, and so forth.Categories were then developed in conjunction with the relevant literature to reflect a broad range of areas related to the issue of school-based violence.

TABLE 2
Sampling Distributions and Response Rates of French-Language School Boards Across Canada

Province Total No. BoardsContacted RespondedResponse Rate

Quebec                 14357 (39.9%) 1526.3%
Ontario                 12 4 (33.3%) 1 25.0%
Nova Scotia                 11 (100%)1 100%
Total                      15162 (41.1%) 1727.4%

 Once the list of categories was developed, a coding sheet (see Appendix C) was prepared with which the second and third authors used to code the submissions.The codesheet was divided into three sections.The first section (items a-n) included those specific items that the policy was designed to counteract (i.e., infractions).The second section (items o-aa) referred to practices involved in the implementation of policies within relevant systems and in particular schools.The third section (items bb-ii) referred to various outcomes or responses stated as expectations for students' violations of policy statements and several miscellaneous categories.Definitions of the categories are provided in Appendix D.Subsequently, the school boards' policy documents were examined for statements, pronouncements, provisions, procedures, guidelines, and so forth, that reflected the different content analysis categories.These policy statements, guidelines, etc. were then coded into the appropriate categories.

 The categories were conceptualized as policy components.It was expected that the greater the number of categories into which a school board's policy could be coded, the more comprehensive that board's policy.For example, if a policy consisted of statements that could be coded into 25 of the 35 (71.4%) categories, this policy was considered to be relatively comprehensive.A 50% cutoff was used as an indication of a policy's relative comprehensiveness.Note that equal weight was given to each of the categories such that no one category or policy component was viewed as more important or essential than another.

 In addition, within provinces (and nationally), we examined the percentage of boards that included in their policy documents, statements that could be coded into a given category.This was used an indication of the degree of strength or focus within the province for a given policy component. For example, if 95% of the boards' policies in Manitoba included a statement that was coded into the category "fighting," then fighting-related policy was considered an area of strength or focus in that province.For ease of interpretation, we examined the categories for which there was an 80% or greater representation across the school boards as an indication of the areas of strength and 20% or less for areas of relative weakness.

 In conducting the content analysis, we confined ourselves to the policy documents, that is, the "raw data," as it were, that were received from school boards as a result of our requests for information.As well, we did not differentiate between draft and existing policies.Lastly, we maintained a literal stance in the interpretation of the data, making no attempt to imply or extrapolate policy that was not explicitly identified as such.In some cases, this meant that a board which sent information about violence prevention programs but none about policy was treated as having no policy in place.Rather, the program descriptions provided by the board were summarized in the Directory, included as Appendix E of this report.[1]Confining ourselves in the content analysis to the "data at hand" also meant that many innovative programs that are undoubtably operating in schools across Canada might not have been represented in this study as they might not have been included in their board's submission.

RESULTS
As indicated in Table 1, the overall response rate for the survey was 60% (126 out of 210 boards).Response rates ranged by province from 29.9% in Quebec to 100% in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.The response rates for French-language school boards are presented in Table 2.

Policies and Programs
 In our request for information, we asked for policies, programs, and evaluations that were extant in school boards.Some respondents returned large packages containing extensive policies and programs.Some sent policies only; some programs only; and some sent good intentions.Of the 126 responding school boards, 116 (92.1%) were involved in some manner of counteracting school-based violence through either existing policies and/or programs, the development of policies and/or programs, or some other related activity such as establishing a safe school task force or committee.Eighty-two of these boards had some form of policy in place.Thirty-four boards were actively engaged in promoting programs or some other activity such as a task force or committee while still in the process of developing policies.Ten boards reported that they had neither policies nor programs.Lastly, systematic program evaluation was the exception than the rule with only five boards (4.3%) submitting a completed evaluation of a program currently in use.At the same time, additional evaluation reports were obtained for this study as a result of further contact with particular researchers or school boards.The results of these evaluations are presented in Appendix A.

 With respect to policies only, 82 of the 126 responding school boards (65.1%) submitted policies that were currently in use or in the development stage (see Table 3).These "codeable" policies were subjected to the content analysis.

 As the sample selection for the survey was based on population size, the number of submissions received by province was skewed, with a greater number of policy statements received from Ontario.These submissions comprised 45% of the policies obtained in the study.British Columbia followed next with 14 policies received from the 17 respondents.The number of boards from Quebec that contributed policy documents was very small relative to the total number of responses received from that province.

Content Analysis of School Boards' Policies
 The results of the survey are presented first for each of the provinces then for Canada, overall.In presenting the results, we examined (a) the number of school boards that responded in each province, (b) the percentage of boards that were represented in at least half of the 35 policy components, (c) the areas of relative strength, and (d) the areas that were underrepresented in the province's policy documents.

(a) British Columbia
 We received responses from a total of 17 school boards of which 3 provided no policy materials.Therefore, the analyses were based on the responses of 14 school boards.With respect to the 35 categories, the policy statements of only two of the school boards were represented in over 50% of the policy components.

TABLE 3
Responding Boards Submitting "Codeable" Policies

Province RespondedPolicy Received
British Columbia                  17 14 (82.3%)
Alberta                                  14 10 (71.4%)
Saskatchewan                      73 (42.8%)
Manitoba11                          10 (90.9%)
Ontario                                  4737 (82.2%)
Quebec                                  20 3 (15.0%)
New Brunswick                    42 (50.0%)
Nova Scotia                          32 (66.7%)
Prince Ed. Isle.                     10 (0.0%)
Newfoundland                     21 (50.0%)
Total                                      126 82 (65.1%)

 Seven areas of strength were identified among the policies in British Columbia, that is, seven policy components were found to be represented in most of the board policies.These included provisions for suspension/expulsion (represented in 14 out of 14 boards or 100%), substance abuse (93%), physical assault (93%), defining a code of conduct (93%), dealing with trespassers (86%), intimidation/bullying/threats (86%), and reporting violent incidents (86%).Other relatively strong areas covered in the policy statements were delegating administrative responsibilities (79%), communicating policy information to stakeholders (79%), verbal harassment (64%), providing alternative-to-suspension programs (64%), police liaison (57%), involving committees for policy development (57%), and promoting a positive school climate (50%).

 We also identified nine areas which were represented in less than 20% of the school boards' policy documents.These included aftermath services (14%), staff development (14%), gangs (14%), site security (7%), sexual assault (7%), procedures for program/policy evaluation (7%), responding to emergencies such as bomb threats and arson (7%), provisions for conducting incidence surveys (0%), and early/ongoing identification of aggressive students (0%).

(b) Alberta
 A total of 14 school boards responded from Alberta of which 10 submitted policy materials.Only one school board's policy statements was represented in more than 50% of the content analysis categories.Among the codeable submissions, a strong focus was observed in three policy areas, delegating administrative responsibility (100%), suspension/expulsion (90%), and communicating policy information to stakeholders (80%).Other relatively strong areas were code of behaviour (70%), reporting violent incidents (70%), promoting a positive school climate (60%), delineating a range of consequences (50%), substance abuse (50%), and verbal harassment (50%).

 Less than 20% of the school boards included information that could be classified into 11 of the categories including alternative-to-suspension programs (20%), trespassers (10%), sexual assault, (10%), gangs (10%), site security (10%), staff development (10%), early/ongoing identification (10%), aftermath programs (10%), procedures for policy/program evaluation (10%), responding to emergencies (0%), involving committees in policy development (0%), conducting incidence surveys (0%), and screening curricula for violent content (0%).

(c) Saskatchewan
 The results from Saskatchewan are less clearly defined due to the relatively low number of policy materials submitted (3 out of 7).None of the three submissions had statements that were represented in at least 50% of the 35 categories.Two policies had statements that were represented in 34% and one included statements that were represented in 31% of the content analysis codes.

 All three policy submissions had statements concerning suspension/expulsion and delegating administrative responsibilities.Two of three submissions were represented in nine of the categories including weapons, sexual harassment, communicating policy information to stakeholders, promoting a positive school climate, and delineating a range of consequences.Eleven of the categories were reflected in one of the boards' policy documents and 13 categories were reflected in none of the policies including trespassers, discrimination, gangs, site security, recording violent incidents, staff development, police liaison, involving committees, conducting incidence surveys, early/ongoing identification, screening curricula for violent content, intervention/prevention programs, and aftermath services.

(d) Manitoba
 We received responses from 11 school boards of which 10 provided policy statements.Four of the policies were represented in more than 50% of the content analysis categories.Among the submissions, a strong focus was observed in six areas, physical assault (90%), suspension/expulsion (90%), weapons (80%), fighting (80%), promoting a positive school climate (80%), and reporting violent incidents (80%).Between 60% and 70% of the boards provided statements concerning intimidation/bullying/threats (70%), delegating administrators responsibilities (60%), and police liaison (60%).Half of the boards provided information on sexual assault, sexual harassment, code of conduct, communicating policy information to stakeholders, screening curricula for violent content, and evaluation.

 Twenty percent of the boards provided statements on robbery/extortion/theft, substance abuse, emergency situations, recording violent incidents, and alternative-to-suspension programs.Ten percent of the boards included information concerning gangs, involvement of committees, and early/ongoing identification of aggressive students.None of the policies included procedures for site security, incidence surveys, or screening curricula for violent content.

(e) Ontario
 Thirty-seven policies were provided by the 47 responding school boards.Twenty-eight of the policies (75.7%) were represented in more than 50% of the policy components.A strong focus was observed in ten areas including physical assault (95%), suspension/expulsion (95%), weapons (89%), verbal harassment (89%), communicating policy information to stakeholders (86%), sexual assault (84%), promoting a positive school climate (84%), trespassers (81%), intimidation/bullying/threats (81%), and fighting (81%).Components that were found in 50-70% of the boards' policies were sexual harassment (78%), delegating administrative responsibilities (78%), police liaison (78%), committee involvement (70%), reporting violent incidents (70%), discrimination (70%), intervention/prevention (68%), code of conduct (65%), vandalism (59%), and delineating a range of consequences (57%).On the other hand, only 16% of the policies included statements on responding to emergencies, 8% on screening curricula for violent content and early/ongoing identification of aggressive students, and 5% on conducting incidence surveys.

(f) Quebec
 Although we received 20 responses from Quebec, only three included policy materials.Thus, the data representative of Quebec was limited and not necessarily generalizable to the province.Of the responding boards, only one was represented in more than 50% of the policy categories.All three of the boards included policy statements concerning substance abuse and promoting a positive school climate.Two of the boards included information on 14 categories including weapons, intimidation/bullying/threats, robbery/extortion/theft, discrimination, fighting, physical assault, sexual harassment, delegating administrative responsibilities, code of conduct, communicating policy information to stakeholders, intervention/prevention, police liaison, and suspension/expulsion.Policy categories that were represented in none of the board materials included gangs, staff development, screening curricula for violent content, delineating a range of consequences, and alternative-to-suspension programs.

(g) New Brunswick
 Two of the four responding school boards provided policy materials.Neither of the materials was represented in more than 50% of the categories.One was represented in 43% and the other in 29% of the categories.The two boards provided statements concerning seven of the categories including delegating administrative responsibilities, code of conduct, communicating policy information to stakeholders, involvement of stakeholders, promoting a positive school climate, and suspension/expulsion.One board provided information concerning an additional eleven categories including trespassers, intimidation/bullying/threats, robbery/extortion/theft/ fighting, physical assaults, intervention/prevention programs, and alternative-to-suspension programs.None of the two boards could be classified into the remaining 17 categories.

(h) Nova Scotia
 Two of the three responding boards submitted policy materials.One of the boards included information that was classified into 29% and one in 26% of the categories.Four categories were reflected in both of the school boards' policies including vandalism, verbal harassment, delegating administrative responsibilities, and suspension/expulsion.Half of the boards were represented in 11 categories including weapons, trespassers, physical assault, reporting violent incidents, police liaison, and delineating a range of consequences.None of the boards included information that could be classified into 20 of the categories including discrimination, gangs, substance abuse, staff development, early/ongoing identification, and evaluation.
(i) Prince Edward Island

 While our single response from PEI did not provide a specific violence prevention policy, it did include an extensive policy concerning child abuse and family violence.It is our understanding that in this administration it is the responsibility of individual schools to provide policies for discipline and matters concerning aggressive and antisocial behaviour.

(j) Newfoundland
 One of the two responding boards provided policy materials.The board's policy document was represented in 19 or 54% of the categories including weapons, intimidation/bullying/threats, vandalism, robbery/extortion/theft, fighting, physical assault, sexual harassment, gangs, delegating administrative responsibilities, promoting a positive school climate, and suspension/expulsion.Policy statements were absent in the areas of trespassers, discrimination, gangs, bomb threats, involvement of stakeholders, conducting incidence surveys, early/ongoing identification, delineating a range of consequences, alternative-to-suspension programs, and procedures for evaluation.

(k) Canada
 Given the wide range in the number of school boards across the provinces that submitted policy statements, the results for Canada were determined by taking an average of the percentage of boards within each province that included a policy statement reflecting a given policy component.In other words, for each policy component, the percentage of boards in each province that submitted a policy statement was summed and averaged to yield the rate for Canada (see Table 4).This procedure also gave each province an equal weight in contributing to the nation-wide statistics.Note that these Canada-wide results do not include Prince Edward Island as the one responding board from this province did not submit a policy document that could be coded.

TABLE 4
An Example of How the Results for Canada were Determined: The Number and Percentage of Boards in Each Province that Included the Policy Component, "Fighting," in their Policy Document

Province NumberPercentage
British Columbia6/1443
Alberta 4/10 40
Saskatchewan2/3 67
Manitoba8/1080
Ontario 30/3781
Quebec 2/3 67
New Brunswick1/2 50
Nova Scotia 0/2 0
Newfoundland 1/1 100
Mean for Canadaa58.7
Range Across the Nine
Provinces 0-100
 
aNote:Prince Edward Island was omitted from these analysis as no "codeable" policy documents were submitted.

 The results indicated that 13 of the 35 policy components (37.1%) were observed in at least half of the 82 submitted policy documents.The most frequently occurring component was the almost universal presence of a policy for suspension/expulsion, recorded in an average of 93.6% of the school boards in each of the nine provinces (range=67-100% across the nine provinces).This was followed by delegating administrative responsibilities (M=87.1%, range=60-100%) and communicating policy information to stakeholders (M=77.7%, range=50-100%).Other frequently occurring policy components included promoting a positive school climate (M=76.8%, range=50-100%), physical assault (M=72.4%, range=40-100%), defining a code of conduct (M=69.8%, range=33-100%), intimidation/bullying/threats (M=66.8%, range=30-100%), verbal harassment (M=65.4%, range=33-100%), weapons (M=63.2%, range=0-100%), police liaison (M=61.3%, range=0-100%), fighting (M=58.7%, range=0-100%), reporting violent incidents (M=58.1%, range=0-100%), substance abuse (M=55.0%, range=0-100%), and involvement of stakeholders (M=52.1%, range=0-100%).

 Components that occurred infrequently (i.e., an average of less than 20% representation in each of the provinces) were aftermath support services for victims (M=19.8%, range=0-100%), responding to emergencies (M=19.6%, range=0-100%), early and ongoing identification of aggressive students (M=14.2%, range=0-100%), procedures for policy/program evaluation (M=14.1%, range=0-50%), involving committees for policy development (M=13.6%, range=0-57%), site security (M=8.8%, range=0-33%), dealing with school gangs (M=7.7%, range=0-35%), conducting incidence surveys (M=4.2%, range=0-33%), and screening curricula for violent content (M=3.2%, range=0-21%).

 The results for the remaining 12 items were as follows: vandalism (M=50.0%, range=0-100%), sexual harassment (M=47.6%, range=0-100%), intervention/prevention procedures (M=47.4%, range=0-100%), robbery/extortion/theft (M=39.9%, range=0-100%), sexual assault (M=35.2%, range=0-100%), delineating a range of consequences (M=37.2%, range=0-67%), intervention/prevention programs (M=32.4%, range=0-100%), trespassers (M=31.4%, range=0-81%), recording violent incidents (M=29.2%, range=0-100%), staff development (M=28.1%, range=0-100%), discrimination (M=26.2%, range=0-70%), and alternative-to suspension programs (M=24.7%, range=0-64%).

Classification of Policies into Types
 Subsequent to the content analysis procedure, it became apparent that each of the board's entire policy submission could be classified into one of four general

TABLE 5
A Comparison of the Content of the Four Policy Types
Provisions of PolicyType IType II Type III Type IV
Definition of Infractionsyesyesyesyes
Specific Sanctions yesyesyesyes
Models for Behaviour no yesyesyes
Focus on Disciplineno yesyesyes
Identification of Potentialno no yesyes
 Problemsa
Programs to Prevent andno no yesyes
 Counteract Problems
Identification of Non-Schoolno no no yes
 Sources of Problem Behaviour
Partnership with Communityno no no yes
 Agencies

a Refers to in-school identification of potential antisocial behaviour problems.

philosophical orientations or types identified as follows: (a) Response/Sanctions, (b) Expectations for Behaviour (c) Identification/Prevention, and (d) Community Focus.These four types were conceptualized as philosophical or ideological underpinnings of the policy documents.Each classification, building on the previous type, represents a stage in the progression towards a more comprehensive (and presumably more effective) policy.The basic principles underlying the four types are (see also Table 5):

Type IResponse/Sanctions - punishment for misbehaviour.
Type II Expectations for Behaviour - development of a model for appropriate behaviour with expectations for students to follow it.
Type IIIIdentification/Prevention - strategies and programs to inhibit antisocial behaviour.
Type IV Community Focus - inclusion of community groups in initiatives to address the problem of school-based violence.

 The first level of policy (Response/Sanctions) focuses on the belief that a clear message of "consequences will follow unacceptable behaviour" is the best deterrent for aggression.Thus, policies delineate infractions and consequences.This type of policy is essentially reactive in nature in that it makes provisions for dealing with violent behaviour after it has occurred.Note that this should not necessarily be labeled a "zero tolerance" position as several consequences or a range of consequences may be identified for a specific infraction.[2]

 The second level of policy (Expectations for Behaviour) focuses on the idea that fair, clear, and equitable rules will prevent the further incidence of inappropriate behaviour.These policies contain the provision for consequences but do not focus on these as the main element of policy.Rather, the development of acceptable behavioural patterns and the establishment of appropriate models to emulate in order to promote prosocial behaviour take precedence over punishment.Policies of this type recognize a need to act before violence occurs.

 Policies at the third level (Identification/Prevention) focus on the identification and reduction of student behaviour problems.Attention is directed towards activities designed to reduce violence such as through promoting positive interpersonal relations.Peacemakers, conflict management, and peer counselling are policy/program initiatives characteristic of this type.Adherents of this policy type recognize that interpersonal conflict does arise and believe in the notion of preparing students to deal with its inevitability (i.e., inoculation theory).

 The fourth level (Community Focus) is characterized by the recognition that the root causes of school-based violence go beyond the borders of the school grounds.This type of policy, most closely aligned with the public heath model, acknowledges the importance of working outside the school system with community agencies.In adopting this type of policy, school boards recognize that violence, in itself, is not a problem of the school but a problem that students (and staff) bring with them to school.As well, particularly central to this orientation is the involvement of community-based agencies in the development of strategies to address a range of issues that are related to school-based violence including child abuse and family violence (MacNeil, 1993).

 With respect to classifying the policies, the majority of boards were identified as having a Response/Sanctions focus (48.8%), popularly characterized as a "zero tolerance" policy.Nearly 30% of the boards were classified as having an Expectations for Behaviour approach, 18.3% as an Intervention/Prevention model, and 3.7% as having a Community Focus.

 With regard to the small number of boards that were classified as having a Community Focus, we recognize that many school boards have adopted community-based programs to deal with related issues such as domestic violence.However, in classifying the policy documents, we were looking for this community focus to be pervasive in both the policy statements and programming efforts.Therefore, only a few school boards met our stringent criterion.

 Interestingly, a progression along the continuum from Type I to Type IV orientations was found to correspond to an increase in the number of policy components each type represented (Figure 1).Therefore, it would appear that the philosophical position that leads policymakers to involve external agencies also leads them to include a greater number of policy components.

A Brief Historical Comparison
 In many respects, policies have not changed a great deal over time.Consider the policy statements presented in Table 6 concerning duties of pupils and discipline.These statements delineate the expectations for students' behaviour while at school, e.g., to be attentive, quiet, and orderly, as well as the consequences for the policies' violation.In this case, the consequences referred to are suspension and expulsion.

 This policy was, in fact, adopted by the Toronto Public School Board in 1893.Indeed, a cursory examination of school policies of today reveals that, in some respects, surprisingly little has changed in 100 years.In comparison, consider the current policy statements presented in Table 7 from three school boards in three different provinces.Aside from wording, the assumptions and expectations for student behaviour of these policies appear to be identical to the Toronto Board's policy of 1893.Perhaps we need to examine whether these assumptions are still tenable today given the shifting social and economic situation which many families are confronting (Edwards & Young, 1992; Steinhauer, 1994).

Figure 1:
Policy Components: Average Number per Policy Type

TABLE 6
A School Board's Policy Relating to Expectations for Student Behaviour and Student Suspensions

III.DUTIES OF PUPILS

All pupils shall--
 1. Obey their teachers.
 2. Conform to the regulations of the Board.
 3. Be attentive, quiet, and orderly in school.
 4. Be respectful to their teachers and all persons in authority, and kind and obliging to each other.
 5. Promote, as far as possible, the comfort and improvement of others.
 6. Speak the truth on all occasions.
 7. Refrain from playing games, likely to excite ill feeling.
 8. Refrain from indelicate or profane language, from mocking or nick-naming their school-fellows or others; from chewing or spitting in school, and from other improper practices.

IV.DISCIPLINE

1. Pupils may be suspended for any of the following reasons:
 (1)Truancy, persisted in.
 (2)Absence for six half-days in four consecutive weeks without a reason satisfactory to the Principal, showing that the absence was caused by the sickness of the pupil, sickness in the family, or other urgent reason.
 (3)Lateness, if repeated after four notifications have been sent to the parent or guardian in a session.
 (4)Leaving school without permission.
 (5)Determined opposition to authority.
 (6)Repetition of any offence after notice.
 (7)Habitual neglect of duty.
 (8)The use of profane, obscene or other improper language.
 (9)General bad conduct, and bad example to the injury of the school.
 (10) Writing any obscene or improper words on the fences, out-buildings, or any part of the school premises.
 (11) Bad conduct on the way to or from school.
 (12) Throwing stones or other dangerous missiles while under school control.
 (13) Bringing tobacco, lucifer matches, firearms, fireworks, or any explosives to school, or having them in possession there.
 (14) Destroying or injuring school property, if their parents or guardians refuse to repair or make good the damage.
 (15) Pupils may be suspended for a first offence under sub-sections 5, 12,13, or 14 above, but in other cases parents or guardians shall be notified on the proper form concerning the misconduct of their children before suspension.
 
2.Principals may re-admit pupils suspended for the first time.Pupils who have been previously suspended shall be re-admittedby one of the Inspectors.Suspended pupils shall be re-admitted only on the personal application of the parent or guardian.Pupils who have been suspended for misconduct shall not receive medals, prizes, or honor certificates.

3. Any pupil adjudged so refractory by the Board that his presence in school is considered injurious to the other pupils, or whohas been convicted of crime by the Police Magistrate, or in any Court, may be expelled from school, and sent to an IndustrialSchool or other special school.


TABLE 7
Three School Boards' Policies Relating to Expectations for Student Behaviour and Student Suspensions
School Board A

This Code of Conduct is intended to encourage students to:

!conduct themselves in a polite, responsible and considerate manner in class, on school property, travelling to and from school, and when attending school related activities away from campus.
!respect the property of others.
!attend classes regularly and punctually.
!dress in an acceptable manner.
!be considerate of others - their thoughts, feelings and background
!use appropriate language
!be sensitive to and contribute to the maintenance of a positive school environment.
!be free of illegal drugs, and other substances than can be abused, alcohol, and weapons while under the jurisdiction of the school.
!be aware of their own rights and responsibilities and to exercise these in a positive manner.

School Board
1. Suspension by a Teacher and Teacher's Reports Relating to Suspension
A teacher may suspend a student from class period where a student is guilty of:
(1) Open opposition to authority
(2) Wilful disobedience
(3) Habitual neglect of duty
(4) The use of improper or profane language, or
(5) Other conduct injurious to the moral tone or well-being of the school.

School Board C
DUTIES OF A STUDENT
Under the Education Act, Regulation 262: Schools General, Section 23(1) states:

"A pupil shall:

a)be diligent in attempting to master such studies as are part of the program in which the pupil is enrolled;
b)exercise self-discipline;
c)accept such discipline as would be exercised by a kind, firm and judicious parent;
d)attend classes punctually and regularly;
e)be courteous to fellow pupils and obedient and courteous to teachers;
f) be clean in person and habits;
g)take such tests and examinations as are required by or under the Act or as may be directed by the Minister;
h)show respect for property."
DISCUSSION

 The findings of this report indicate that there is a tremendous amount of activity within the education community to understand and come to terms with the issue of school-based violence and to identify and implement effective solutions.Indeed, recent conferences sponsored by the Canadian Association for Safe Schools, British Columbia School Trustees' Association/British Columbia Teachers' Association and British Columbia Teachers' Federation, catalogues of violence prevention materials such as that prepared by the Manitoba Women's Directorate, and publications from educational institutions such as the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) and Brock University are acting as national clearinghouses for information for those involved in policymaking.

 Within particular school boards, a large majority have policies and/or programs to address the issue of violence and violent incidents.With regard to specific components, nearly all the school boards in the survey included a statement concerning suspension and expulsion.While having a long tradition in history, however, we believe that this approach serves only as a "quick-fix" solution by removing the offending student from the immediate environment and fails to address the long-term problem.Indeed, the long-term implications of suspending and expelling students, some of which are discussed in Appendix A, need to be carefully examined.For example, the practice likely contributes to the further marginalization of students who are already at risk for school failure.

 In this regard, the development of alternative-to-suspension programs is encouraged.Interestingly, such programs were identified as a relatively strong area in only one province and as a weak area in four.Further discussion of alternative-to-suspension programs is provided in Appendix A.

 Other areas which school boards in Canada were addressing include delegating administrative responsibilities, communicating policy information to stakeholders, and promoting a positive school climate.The former two components indicate that school boards are proactively taking steps to ensure that the process of implementing policies is successful.It is essential that members of the school administration are made aware of their roles and responsibilities for violence prevention policy.However, it is also important that all stakeholders including students, parents or guardians, and others with a vested interest in the school be aware of both the content of the policy documents (e.g., code of conduct, range of consequences, etc.) and the procedures, regulations, and guidelines for implementing board policy (e.g., protocols for responding to violent situations or students).

 With regard to the latter component, a positive classroom and school environment is essential as a "macro-level" strategy for addressing school-based violence and has the potential to deal with a wide range of related issues on a very broad level.Of course, it is also important to address these issues at the "micro-level," for example, implementing policies and programs to deal with specific incidents and aggressive individuals.

 Most of the documents we reviewed consisted of policy statements concerning some of the specific infractions included in our content analysis categories.Typically, these were physical assault, verbal harassment, intimidation/bullying/threats, and the presence of weapons.It would seem that the next step in developing comprehensive violence prevention policies is to implement procedures for responding to emergency situations such as serious assaults involving a weapon, arson, and gang-related activity.Perhaps a crisis intervention team could be established.While a school may never have to respond to an emergency situation, it is best to be prepared with a clear policy statement.

 As well, measures could be taken to ensure that moderate levels of site security are maintained (e.g., adequate lighting, limited access to isolated stairwells, and increased adult supervision on the school playground) and to foster relations with the local police (Riddle, 1993; Ryan, Matthews, & Banner, 1994).Community policing initiatives such as police liaison programs appear to hold some promise (Ryan et al., 1994).

 Trespassers and gang activity are another concern related to the security of schools (Symons, 1993).Many schools have signs posted prohibiting trespassers and some schools use senior students to monitor halls and lock external doors.Other schools use two-way communication devices for security purposes (Gentile, 1992).

 Another area for which there was a paucity of policy statements concerned staff development.The relatively low frequency of this component suggests that many school boards are missing the consensus-building opportunities that exist when staff are provided with the support needed to familiarize themselves with their board's policies and programs.Also, once staff clearly understand the relationship among a student's developmental history, household circumstances, poor academic performance, and disruptive behaviour they may become more committed to the success of a prevention strategy.

 Lastly, there is an obvious need for evaluation of policies and programs as well good methods to record incidents of violence in schools.The ongoing evaluation of policy is an essential component in the policy process (Golench, 1992).All policies should contain a specific statement for self-evaluation, indicating the frequency and method of the evaluation.This ensures a procedure for monitoring policy and program impact and identifying areas for further development.

 At the same time, the overwhelming evidence based on a review of the literature is that evaluations of school-based violence prevention programs are rare (Aleem & Moles, 1993; Gaustad, 1991, Wilson-Brewer et al., 1991).In a survey of 51 school-based violence prevention programs in the United States, 30% were found to have no evaluation or had outdated or unavailable data (Wilson-Brewer et al., 1991).Programs that did have an evaluation typically only monitored program implementation (referred to as "process" evaluation) and not program impact (referred to as "outcome" evaluation).Moreover, difficulties with interpreting evaluation results of school-based interventions resulted from considerable theoretical, methodological, and pragmatic limitations of the research.Cohen and Wilson-Brewer (1991) reported that most evaluation studies of school-based violence prevention interventions used nonexperimental and correlational designs which make cause and effect statements difficult.As well, because of the ease of measurement, the primary findings reported in most evaluations are short-term changes in knowledge, attitudes, and self-reported behaviours.

 We suggest that, where it cannot be done internally, school boards develop relations with community- or university-based researchers to conduct high quality evaluations of policies and programs.This type of partnership has been successfully achieved in a number of school boards in Manitoba, Ontario, and New Brunswick.As well, government could become involved in devising and implementing systems for collecting and reporting incident data, as is currently being done in Ontario.

Barriers to Implementation
 We recognize that there are a number of barriers to the implementation of a concerted, sustained violence prevention strategy.Primary among these is the lack of funding to support such an effort.Second a lack of funding for staff development often undermines the effective implementation of a violence prevention policy or program.Providing opportunities for staff training to upgrade their knowledge and skills serve to optimize the success of a program.Lastly, the cost of program evaluation, in both time and money, hinders the examination of policy and program effectiveness.Frequently, programs are initiated with adequate funding and good intentions, but the long-term view does not include provision for a comprehensive evaluation with sufficient follow-up to assess the program's impact.Certainly, an infusion of funding demonstrates a commitment from government and administration to violence prevention that is not lost on school personnel.

Limitations
 While the intent of this study was to develop a comprehensive overview of existing policies and programs in Canada designed to counteract school‑based violence, we realize that the findings are limited by our response rate and the nature of the responses we received.As a result, no attempt was made to generalize these results to rural areas in Canada or beyond the material we used as data.We also recognize that the issue of school‑based violence does not manifest itself in the same form and to the same degree throughout the country and that these regional differences will necessitate developing policies that are individualized to the needs of the particular school board.

 With regard to programs, we recognize that we were limited by the nature of information we received in that, in many cases, programs were not described fully but were briefly mentioned in accompanying correspondence or were included in listings of school‑based programs operating within individual schools.We speculate that the prevalence of violence prevention programming within school boards is higher than our data would indicate.We also recognize that school‑based violence prevention programs are a relatively recent practice and, as such, available evaluation data are rather scant.It is also too early to evaluate the true impact of these programs as they have not been in place long enough.

 Lastly, a survey such as this must be considered within its historical context.Conducted at another time, the study's findings could be vastly different.In Ontario, for example, shortly after this study began, the Minister of Education and Training issued a directive mandating that each school board in the province have in place a violence prevention policy by September, 1995 and that the process for developing these policies begin no later than September, 1994 (Ontario Ministry of Education and Training, 1994a).The results presented here, therefore, are essentially a "snapshot" of the country's school-based violence prevention efforts as of July, 1994.

Conclusions
 Six general points emerged from this study.First, a school board's violence prevention policy should be internally consistent, that is, the various statements, procedures, and provisions should relate to each other to form a unified document.For example, if a school board has an elaborately detailed policy concerning weapons, e.g., defining what constitutes a weapon, outlining the consequences for an infraction, and so forth, it goes without saying that the board should also have a policy concerning less severe behaviours such as intimidation/bullying/threats, harassment, and fighting.Policies should build up from the less to more serious behaviours, otherwise, the policy as a whole appears disjointed.

 Second, in addition to being internally consistent, policies should be congruent with programs.For example, if a conflict resolution program is implemented within a board's schools, this preventative approach to dealing with school violence and promoting prosocial skills should be reflected within the board's policy documents.

 Third, policies should be comprehensive.In our view, policy documents should incorporate as many of the 35 components identified in this report as feasible.In addition, violence prevention programs should be multifaceted in order to address the various aspects of this issue.For example, programs could be targeted toward (a) the school "community" and student body as a whole (e.g., conflict resolution, curriculum-based programs, promoting a positive school climate and academic excellence), (b) teachers (e.g., staff development), (c) identified children and youth (counselling and support services, social skills training, alternative-to-suspension programs), (d) victims of violence (e.g., aftermath services, protocols for responding to emergency situations), and (e) the community outside the school (e.g., police liaison programs, involvement of community groups in the development of violence prevention policy).The public health model serves as an example of a comprehensive approach to school-based violence prevention that addresses a wide range of related issues.

 Fourth, board policies should have a community focus.The causes of youth violence are many and often lie outside the purview of the school system.Partnerships between schools and community groups must be developed for concerted, sustained, and comprehensive violence prevention efforts to occur.Certainly, schools need to forge working relationships with parents or guardians, as well as the juvenile justice system, police, children's mental health centres, social service agencies, government agencies, racial and ethnocultural minority organizations, local business, and industry to address the problem jointly.However, government agencies and community groups should also take the initiative to develop partnerships with school boards.As well, as we have seen, having a community focus was associated with a more comprehensive violence prevention policy.

 Fifth, school boards should have supplemental programs for students who are disruptive, aggressive, and violent.These programs should be supportive and corrective rather than punitive, demoralizing, and inflexible.There will always be a group of children and youth who require specialized services such as social skills, self-control and anger management training, and individual counselling and therapy.Placing students in special education and behaviour classrooms is often not sufficient to address the range of needs for some students or for behaviours to generalize to the regular classroom setting.As well, programs targeted to the entire school community may not be effective with an aggressive population (Day & Hartley, 1993).

 Supplemental programs may be provided either internally, using the school board's ownresources, or through the services of a community-based social service agency that specializes in difficult children and youth.A collaborative community-based program that has had considerable success in providing a range services to schools is the Earlscourt School-based Program (ESP; Hartley & Levene, 1994) offered by Earlscourt Child and Family Centre in Toronto.

 The ESP (see also Appendix A) is a multifaceted program for children between the age of 6 and 12 years.The program is staffed by a psychologist, who is the Program Manager, two social skills group facilitators, and a family worker.A range of services is offered including prevention-oriented classroom-wide and school-wide activities, intensive intervention for identified aggressive children and their families, and teacher support and training.The prevention components, designed to promote a positive school culture and prevent the escalation of behaviour problems, include peer mediation, social skills training in the classroom, and school-wide prosocial theme weeks.Select students are trained as peer mediators to provide conflict resolution services in the playground.Prosocial theme weeks highlight and reinforce prosocial behaviour through special school-wide activities and, as well, the themes are integrated into the classroom curriculum.The core program component is the half-hour weekly classroom-based social skills training sessions that are co-led by the ESP staff and classroom teachers.These sessions enable all students to learn and practise social skills (e.g., problem solving, making and maintaining friendships, and dealing with bullying).The intervention components for identified aggressive children, i.e., remedial social skills training and parent outreach, build on the classroom-based social skills training.Teacher-identified aggressive children receive remedial cognitive-behavioural social skills training which is done either individually, in pairs, or small groups.Each identified aggressive child has an individualized behavioural goal and is withdrawn from the classroom on a weekly basis to receive intensive practise to facilitate the achievement of this goal.Progress is regularly evaluated by the ESP staff with the child, teacher, and parents.The nature of the family outreach services varies from information-sharing about the child's progress to helping parents get their child involved in age appropriate community recreational activities, to parent management training.Finally, teacher training services are offered to enhance teachers' competence and confidence in dealing with aggressive behaviour problems and in continuing some of the program components once the ESP staff leave the school.Given limited mental health resources , the ESP operates on the "train-the-trainer" model that aims to increase teachers' skills to continue with this prevention/intervention model.Future program developments involve increasing parental involvement in school activities.Forming partnerships between parents and school is important not only to ensure the academic success of the children, but also as a key factor in violence prevention initiatives.The ESP exemplifies a successful partnership between a community agency and school setting in the provision of a range of violence prevention and intervention services.

 Sixth, violence prevention solutions must address the root causes of violence, that is, the biological, familial, environmental, social, and academic factors that place a child at risk.Moreover, prevention and intervention strategies (including consequences for inappropriate and aggressive behaviour) must be appropriate to the developmental level of the target population and be consonant with psychological principles of personal growth.For some children, biological deficits which contribute to or exacerbate some of the marker variables of aggression such as speech and language problems, learning disabilities, poor attention, or hyperactivity could be addressed through medication or specialized support services.Providing child caregiving experiences to high school students and prenatal classes for pregnant teenagers is an effective preventative measure.

 Family factors associated with the development of aggression such as insecure attachment, harsh and abusive discipline, and lack of parental monitoring could be addressed through parent management training provided by staff from a children's mental health centre or child welfare agency.Within the school setting, a relationship could be established with high-risk families to maintain regular contact and support between the parent or guardian and the teacher, guidance counsellor, and principal.As well, the school could be opened up to the community to provide drop-in centres or parent relief programs.

 Programs to address the environmental and social risk factors could include social skills training, enhancing awareness about related issues such as teen pregnancy, birth control, and drug and alcohol abuse, and promoting good peer relations, prosocial behaviour, and nonaggressive responses to conflict situations.After-school programs could be provided as opportunities for children to build friendships and develop outside activities and hobbies (Grizenko & Pawliuk, 1994).To address the specific risk factor of a lack of positive relationships that some children experience, teacher- and peer-mentoring programs could be implemented.Lastly, academic risk factors are a prime target for schools in that a range of specialized learning opportunities and support services could be made available for identified children.As well, identification and remediation of academic problems as early as kindergarten and grade 1 may lower the risk of children falling behind in school.

 In conclusion, we believe that a school boards' response to school violence must address children's and adolescents' need to feel valued and respected.Students, for example, should have a role in the development of violence prevention policies.In this way, they will come to feel that the rules are theirs.This will enable them to feel empowered, to have a stake in the system, and to take ownership and responsibility for the problem of school violence and the solutions (Berger, 1974; Brooks, 1994; Rodger, 1993).While this may seem antithetical to the popular belief that youth have too much independence, it is through empowerment that young people learn how to make responsible decisions as they move into adulthood.

 Second, school boards must not succumb to the populist view that youth are a threat and to be feared; that they are "out-of-hand" and need to be controlled.This perspective leads to the perceived need for stricter and harsher law-and-order responses.Schools need to promote a healthy, prosocial environment, have clear, comprehensive policies, a range of developmentally appropriate consequences for inappropriate and unacceptable behaviour, and multifaceted violence prevention programming.School boards' policies and programs must be imbued with an attitude that the school system is not one to give up on difficult students but is willing to work with all students on an equal partnership in order to reduce the prevalence of school-based violence and facilitate the development of prosocial skills and behaviours.At the same time, we know that youth violence is not a school's problem, it is a social problem and, as such, members of the education, mental health, welfare, and legal systems must work together in a concerted fashion to develop a viable solution.

Recommendations

As a result of this study we are able to make a number of recommendations for policymaking at school boards across Canada.These recommendations fall into four areas: (a) the actual expression of written policy, (b) the content of policy, (c) programs, and (d) general recommendations.

(a) The Expression of Written Policy
 Policy documents, like course outlines and other school board documents are in the public domain.It is advisable that these documents be written using language that makes them accessible to the general public.In conducting the content analysis, we found that the policy statements were written in a variety of formats.Without implying that every school board follow an identical format for writing policy, we would like to make a number of suggestions to enable boards to develop clearer violence prevention policies.

 1.Policy should be specific.Policy statements can generally be short and to the point.Definitions and explanations can be contained in the operating procedures and regulations which are attached to the policy and form an integral part of the policy document.Many policies we received lacked a specific focus.Others were more direct and to the point.

 2.The language of policy should be the language of common speech.Any use of jargon or of complex legal terminology should either be eliminated or clearly defined.In these litigious times it is essential that all parties affected by policy be absolutely clear about the exact meaning of all terms used in documents.

 3.Policy should be clearly identified as to content.In conducting the content analysis, we found it misleading that there were numerous applications for what school boards considered to be violence prevention policies.We recommend that all elements of policy that refer in any way to the philosophy or practice related to violence prevention be clearly labeled as such.

 4.In writing policies to reduce school‑based violence, it is necessary to remember that, while we typically identify violence as either weapons‑related or overt behaviour, violence can be covert, subtle, and insidious appearing as discrimination, harassment, and intimidation.School administrators should ensure that all forms of violence are addressed in policy.

 5.Education authorities should more closely examine the process of policymaking so that policies are thorough, comprehensive, and effective.The process of policymaking is complex, involving more than the simple process of decision-making by a board committee.Policymakers should seek advice and involvement from representatives of all groups affected by a specific policy.Violence prevention policy is no different in this respect.The process of developing policy to counteract violence should involve as many different viewpoints as possible for a comprehensive strategy.

(b) The Content of Policy
 6.The provision for developmentally appropriate and age-specific consequences with escalating repercussions that are also consonant with psychological principles of personal growth is essential to the development of a violence prevention strategy.

 7.Policy statements should be all-inclusive.For example, there is no need to write separate policy statements to deal with the violent behaviour of students and staff.All acts of violence should be treated consistently.If it is necessary to establish different consequences for student-staff violence than student-student violence, include this difference as part of the range of consequences rather than drafting separate policy statements.Similarly, violent acts committed by staff against students should also be included in this policy statement.

 8.Policy documents should be comprehensive.More specifically, we recommend that policies and programs be developed for alternative-to-suspension, intervention/prevention, and aftermath support services, staff development, stakeholder participation, early and ongoing identification of potential antisocial and aggressive behaviour, and responding with emergency situations.

 9.Policymakers should strive for Type IV (Community Focus) policies.Policies with this orientation were found to be the most proactive.

 10.Some legal concepts, such as the ideas of "search and seizure" and arrest are more properly the realm of the law and should be left to the discretion of law enforcement officers.Policy should clearly indicate the boundaries between the influence of the school authority and that of civil authorities.

 11.There needs to be congruence between a school board's violence prevention policies and the array of programs that are implemented within that school board.

 12.More consideration in policy should be given to the physically and mentally challenged members of the school community.In our examination of Canada‑wide policies, only two documents made provision for these students.For example, a perfectly reasonable evacuation plan might not consider the evacuation of students in wheelchairs.

 13.School boards should engage in ongoing evaluation of their policies.Documents should contain the provision for a regular review and evaluation process of violence prevention policy.

(c) Programs
 14.Strong administrative support is a basic element in the implementation of violence prevention programs.Without this support, staff efforts will be undermined; with it, a positive school climate can be fostered.

 15.It has been observed that programs frequently do not reach the students who are most in need.Programs such as peer counselling and conflict mediation are generally aimed at the general population, embraced by those students who, for the most part, do not require this form of intervention, while the potentially difficult students remain unaffected.It is our recommendation that high risk students receive the benefit of more intensive services.Moreover, fostering partnerships with outside agencies that specialize in services for aggressive children and youth may serve school boards well.

 16. Students should be involved in the development, implementation, and evaluation of programs.

 17.Implemented programs should be appropriate to the situation within the specific school community.Prepackaged programs may be useful for increasing student awareness, but frequently do not address local needs and situations beyond that.Therefore, school boards should remain flexible in terms of implementing a violence prevention program.This was best described by some school board officials as having a program "dropped in" fully formed from the outside.Needs assessments were identified in some board materials as an important first step in program implementation.

 18.As with policy, evaluation is essential to the ongoing effectiveness of anti‑violence programs.All those individuals affected by the program including staff, students, parents or guardians, and community groups, should be involved in the evaluation process and this process should be ongoing.

 19.School boards should keep a central registry of the programs that are operated in the schools of their jurisdiction.The results from program evaluations should also be kept with the registry.

(d) General Comments
 20.When dealing with representatives of the media, it is wise to rely on one spokesperson.While this is not a preventative issue per se, the use of a media resource person ensures that all information released to the media is consistent.Some school boards have included in their policies, procedures for communicating with reporters.

 21.School boards should make it a priority to build school playgrounds that accommodate the needs of children.Barren school grounds, lacking in playground equipment and poured in asphalt and concrete do not promote the kinds of play activity that facilitate cooperative, prosocial behaviour and foster creativity.Moreover, injuries resulting from aggressive incidents may be more serious on surfaces of gravel than grass.

 22. School boards should ensure that teachers are committed, enthusiastic, and comfortable with a particular program to facilitate its successful implementation.A teacher's enthusiasm, coupled with solid knowledge of and skills in the issues presented, are necessary for students to deal with topics that can be difficult, complex, and challenging.

 23.Teacher training at Faculties of Education should address the entire issue of school-based violence prevention by teaching about conflict resolution, methods for working collaboratively with community agencies, and the need to include violent prevention information in the course curriculum.

 24. School boards should develop relations with community- or university-based researchers to conduct or collaborate on high quality evaluations of policies and programs.

 25.Collaborative efforts involving school personnel, students, parents or guardians, community agencies, local business, and the police should be involved in the ongoing process of identifying and addressing the roots causes of violence behaviour in their community.

 26.With respect to the previous recommendation, in order to carry out this form of policy and program development, expenses will be incurred.Governments, school boards, social service agencies, local business and industry should be encouraged to contribute funds to develop and sustain violence prevention programming.

A Final Word About Policy

 Policy is the official public face of an organization.It is the way in which those who interact with the organization come to know the organization and the way in which those who are employed by the organization are directed to develop procedures and programs for the dissemination and promulgation of the business of that organization.

 Policies within school systems have a variety of layers.First, there is the actual policy statement which represents the official position of the school board on a specific issue.Second, there are the regulations which are the definitions and specific requirements that the board sees as necessary to implementing the policy.Third, there are the operating procedures and guidelines for those who must actually make the policy work in day-to-day activity.Finally, there exist programs--the tools of policy, the blueprints for building the outcomes of policy.

 An analogy can be seen in a developer who wishes to build a housing project.Analogous to the policy would be the intent to build a specific number of houses.Regulations would conform to the decision to build houses of a certain size on certain sized lots.Operating procedures would dictate the materials used, the designs of the houses and the layout of the subdivision and programs would be the actual plans given to the builders to build the houses.As anyone in the housing industry knows, the original planning stage involves municipal utilities, planning committees, and many other interested parties.It should be so with violence prevention policy, as well.

 "The development of clear, concise policies and procedureswith widely known and accepted definitions...can serve as powerful...preventive interventions" (Roark, 1987, p. 369).This, in itself, implies that policies themselves, stated clearly, and widely advertised, can be the first step in a prevention strategy.Gottfredson and Gottfredson (1985), offer advice to the policymaker, recommending mechanisms to monitor the implementation of programs, plans to evaluate the programs and perseverance.

 Based on the work of Golench (1992) and Musella (1987), good policy should contain (a) an exhaustive policy development process that focuses on the desired outcomes and involves input from all parties in any way affected by the policy; (b) a concise, clear policy statement; (c) strategies for policy implementation; (d) a monitoring process to note the achievement of outcomes; and (e) a review and evaluation process to ensure the policy is appropriate and effective.

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