This article analyzes how guns emerged as both urgent topics of dialogue and common features of everyday life for 228 students and their teachers in six communities across the United States who participated in the Digital Democratic Dialogue (3D) Project, a year long social design-based experiment aimed at foregrounding youth voice and fostering…

Background: Sexting is common among adolescents and is associated with numerous health risk behaviors and negative psychosocial constructs. This study examined the relationships between high school students' experiences with sexual violence victimization, dating violence victimization, and engagement in risky sexual behaviors with experiences of…

Were those gunshots I just heard? Between 1990 and 2014 school shootings more than tripled when compared the prior 30-year span of 1960 to 1990. FBI data from 2000-2013 shows active violent incidents were resolved or ended due to citizen engagement of the perpetrator in 16.2% of the total incidents. Common police response times to an active…

School violence is a public health issue with direct and collateral consequences that has academic and social impacts for youth. School violence is often considered a uniquely urban problem, yet more research is needed to understand how violence in rural and suburban schools may be similar or different from urban counterparts. Using school…

In some ways, the project which the author's class had undertaken--creating collaborative plays about issues important in students' lives--was going very well. The students, 20 high school seniors, seemed engaged and invested in the work, from brainstorming and improvising to writing and revising. The class had read and watched a variety of…

Educational leaders have a substantial degree of control over students and generally have a tremendous influence on the decisions that they make. District administrators are already involved in comprehensive efforts to stem sexual harassment, teen violence and bullying; therefore, they may be well positioned to identify and address the problem of…

Youth violence in the city of Philadelphia, PA, has reached epidemic proportions. The majority of homicides related to gun violence is most prevalent among African American males aged 19 to 24 years. Therefore, it is essential to implement youth violence prevention programs to a target population several years younger than this age group to…

This research is a follow up to a similar study published by the Center for Rural Pennsylvania in 2003 in which researchers examined alternative education policies and practices among Pennsylvania school districts. The current study extended the previous research to include information on the perceptions of administrators and teachers on the…

The 2005-2006 year at Olney High School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was the first year that Olney was split into two medium-sized schools. This report is about one of those schools, Olney 705 East. As reported from the School District website during the 2005-2006 school year, the race and ethnic composition of Olney 705 East High School was…

The study provides a unique portrait of young men self-identified as potential perpetrators of school violence, and explores the relative contributions of personal attributes and the media in the creation and preservation of optimistic biases. The study is the first to document optimistic bias among middle and high school students within the…