Violence Prevention in Elementary School: A Quasi-Experimental Study

Purpose: Preventing violence, including bullying, is key for creating a safe learning climate in today's schools. This research evaluated the effectiveness of a violence prevention curriculum facilitated by trained staff in fourth grade classrooms in one county. The curriculum, developed by a consortium of social service agencies, furthers their goal of violence prevention in the community. This five-session program takes a broad-based approach to teach skills and knowledge for conflict resolution and personal safety to fourth graders. Relationship violence has been shown to be of serious concern in the elementary grades (Benbenishty & Astor, 2005). Most programs evaluated for elementary schools rely on teacher implementation (for example, Aber, Jones, Brown, Chaudry, & Samples, 1998; Frey, Nolen, Edstrom, & Hirschstein, 2005) or do not include a comparison group (McMahon, Washburn, Feliz, Yakin, & Childrey, 2000). A previous evaluation of the preschool Peacemaker curriculum (Author citation) indicated that, per teacher observation, children receiving Peacemaker lessons showed improvements in conflict resolution skills compared to the comparison group. This research builds on the previous study to examine the elementary curriculum and includes additional variables of child self-report, teacher involvement, and demographic characteristics of the schools.

Methods: Fourth grade classrooms that voluntarily participate in Peacemakers were assigned to the experimental or comparison group within schools. Children in experimental classrooms received the Peacemaker curriculum during the research period; children in the comparison classrooms received Peacemakers after all research data were collected. Children completed questionnaires at the beginning and end of the five-week period to measure their knowledge of personal safety and prosocial skills and self-reports of aggressive and peacemaking behaviors. Teachers were surveyed pre and post on their observations of each child's aggressive and prosocial behaviors. Only children with Parental Informed Consent were included in the research. Teachers in experimental classrooms and Peacemaker facilitators completed surveys to measure teachers' involvement with the program. Secondary data from the FL Department of Education described demographic characteristics of the schools.

Findings: Eight schools participated with a sample size of 345 students. Schools included were distributed throughout the county representing both urban and suburban communities. Statistical analyses indicated no significant differences between experimental and comparison groups for gender and age. Independent groups t-tests indicated that there were statistically significant differences in pre to post test changes between experimental and comparison groups for child knowledge of safety t(261.09)=4.91, p<.001 and social skills t(308)=5.83, p<.001 and teacher observations of aggressive t(307.61)=3.64, p<.001 and prosocial t(153.16)=5.49, p<.001 behaviors. Child self-reports of aggression and use of peacemaking skills were not significantly different between groups pre to post test.

Conclusions and Implications: This study offers some support for the effectiveness of a brief violence prevention program for elementary school children. Future research should track the longitudinal effects of such curricula on child knowledge and behavior. School social workers can have a key role in implementing programs, such as Peacemakers, that promote student use of conflict resolution skills and help to deal with the continuing challenges of violence in our schools.