Contexts and Dynamics of School Violence: A Multi-Method Investigation in an Ontario Urban Setting

Abstract

<p>The issue of bullying, among school age children, has been popularized by North American news media. These media frame bullying as a violent epidemic plaguing our schools, resulting in school officials implementing new anti-violence intervention and prevention programs. However, popular media and school administrators often do not rely on research with consistent definitions for bullying behavior to inform these changes. As a result, the term bullying has become quite ubiquitous, conflating bullying behavior with other forms of youth violence. My research aims to delineate the contextual influences for youth violence and the types of violence youth engage in. I argue that sociology can contribute to the study of bullying by elaborating on the roles of three kinds of contexts: immediate networks, neighborhoods and micro-geographies, and status situations. Further, gender can also be a consistent conditioning influence on those contextual effects. This study utilizes a multi-method approach to better understand the contexts and dynamics of youth violence. My quantitative component uses data from systematic social observations of all Hamilton public school neighborhoods, Hamilton Safe School Surveys and the 2006 national census. These methods build on different contexts for youth violence. While the survey findings used in the quantitative portion of this thesis examine broad contextual influences, my qualitative interviews develop micro-geographic contexts for youth violence. Using these data sources, I found significant relationships between gender, age, physical disorder and types of violence used by students. My qualitative component used interviews conducted with fifteen Hamilton youth from a variety of different neighbourhood backgrounds to understand youth’s social dynamics in different kinds of violence. I found dynamics that were consistent with the types of in-school violence described by Randall Collins (2008, 2011) and different types for violence used by male and female students for similar social ends. It is my hope that these findings can be used to better inform violence intervention and prevention policies within Ontario schools.</p>