Community in School

Community In School:

A Key to Violence Prevention, Character Formation, and More

by Eric Schaps
Developmental Studies Center

This article appeared in Character Educator, Vol. 8, No. 2, Spring 2000
published by Character Education Partnership

and is adapted from an article published in
NAESP’s Principal magazine in September, 1999.

In a huge, recent study (Resnick et al, 1997), researchers individually interviewed 12,000 students in grades 7–12 about their experience in eight different “high-risk” areas:

violence;
suicidal tendencies;
emotional distress;
use of alcohol,
marijuana, and
tobacco;
sexual activity; and
pregnancy.

They also asked students about a wide variety of factors that the researchers thought might bolster resistance to these risks.

The results of this study were striking. Only two factors were strongly linked to most of these risky behaviors—in fact, to all except pregnancy.

One was connectedness to family—feeling close to, and cared about by, parents and other family members. The more connected students felt to their families, the less involved they were in risky behaviors.

The other major factor, and here is the relevance to school safety and school-based character education, was feeling connected to school—feeling close to people at school, feeling fairly treated by teachers, feeling part of one’s school.

Maybe educators can’t do much to help students feel connected to their families, but they surely can do a great deal to promote school connectedness, or as we at DSC like to call it, sense of community in school. Our own research, described below, shows that strengthening students’ sense of community in elementary school has lasting as well as broad effects on students’ overall development, including improving conduct in school and reducing violent behavior outside of school.

Coherence Through Community

Educators are being asked to provide a variety of character-related programs—sex education, drug education, social and emotional learning, violence prevention, conflict resolution, and suicide prevention, to name several. Such “categorical” programs compete for time during an already-packed school day, leaving many educators feeling overwhelmed and fragmented.

Instead of juggling so many separate programs, educators would do well to focus on building students’ sense of community and integrating other aspects of character development into the regular school day, thereby making the ordinary school day itself the school’s basic character and prevention program.

Studies by DSC (Schaps et. al., 1997) and by other researchers (e.g., Bryk and Driscoll, 1988) show that building students’ sense of community has many payoffs.

It boosts academic motivation.
It increases enjoyment of class,
It increases liking for school
It increases trust in and respect for teachers.
It even increases the time that students spend reading.

The importance for character formation of building community in school was shown recently in a multi-district evaluation of the Child Development Project (CDP), DSC’s comprehensive elementary school reform model. Relative to students in initially similar comparison schools, students in schools where CDP was consistently implemented showed:

more positive interpersonal behavior in classrooms,
reported more acts of altruism out of school,
and had stronger conflict resolution skills,
greater concern for others,
and greater commitment to democratic values.

Students at the top grade (5th or 6th grade) in the CDP schools also:

used significantly less alcohol and marijuana,
used marginally less tobacco,
and engaged in marginally less delinquent behavior.

These effects were found even though CDP never raises or directly addresses delinquency or drug use issues (Battistich et. al, in press).

What’s more, an ongoing follow-up study is showing that students from these CDP elementary schools continue to outperform comparison students in middle school. Two or three years after they have left their elementary schools, former CDP students are:

less likely to disobey school rules,
cheat on a test,
show disrespect for teachers,
or skip school without an excuse than former comparison school students.

They also report less involvement in serious delinquent acts such as carrying a weapon, using a weapon in a fight, selling drugs, and committing burglary.

They are more involved in positive group activities such as:

school sports,
other extracurricular activities,
and community youth groups.

And they have

higher educational expectations,
greater trust in and respect for teachers,
greater liking for school,
and higher grades and achievement test scores.

Why does fostering a sense of community in school have such broad and lasting effects?

When educators meet students’ basic needs for close, caring relationships and a sense of competence and contribution, they help their students become committed to the school’s values and goals. Students strive to fit in and to succeed in such schools, just as they try to emulate parents to whom they feel close. When a school engenders a sense of community, peer group dynamics tend to work in support of, rather than contrary to, its goals and values, thereby increasing the likelihood of positive effects.

Because of CDP’s demonstrated effects, the U.S. Center for Substance Abuse Prevention recently selected it as a SAMSHA model drug prevention program, and the U.S. Department of Education listed it as an effective violence prevention program as well as an “Obey-Porter” (Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration) model.

Schools and districts that are interested in learning more should explore the CDP section of this web site or contact Denise Wood at info@devstu.org or by phone at 1.800.666.7270.

References

Battistich, V., Schaps, E., Watson, M., Solomon, D. & Lewis, C. (in press). Effects of the Child Development Project on students’ drug use and other problem behaviors. Journal of Primary Prevention. [Editor's note: JPP published this paper October 2000, Vol. 21(1), pp. 75–99, and is available at the Journal's web site.]

Bryk, A. & Driscoll, M. (1988). The high school as community: Contextual influences and consequences for students and teachers. Madison: University of Wisconsin, National Center on Effective Secondary Schools.

Resnick, M. et. al. (1997). Protecting adolescents from harm, Findings from the national longitudinal study on adolescent health. Journal of the American Medical Association, 278, 823–832.

Schaps, E., Battistich, V. & Solomon, D. (1997). School as a caring community: A key to character education. In A. Molnar (Ed.), The Construction of Children's Character, Part II, 96th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Postnote: In addition, CDP was named a Promising Program by the U.S. Department of Education’s Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program (SDFS), in cooperation with the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, (2001)