Abstract

Few studies explicitly examine how opportunity structures impact school safety, school climate, or bullying. This article applies school-centered ecological theory as a heuristic conceptual framework that links opportunity structures and school safety. Historically, opportunity structures identified how institutional characteristics such as labor conditions, combined with factors such as geographic location, gender, race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, and family background, influence the opportunities open to individuals and shape patterns of entering the labor market. In education, the concept has been used when describing systemic racism in educational inequality. Examples are drawn from several bodies of research that have strong implications for future study of these issues. These areas include research on communities and families, creating positive school cultures and climates, and different types of educator bias that restrict opportunities and result in less safe environments. The authors suggest new research that combines school safety, opportunity, and social justice-oriented school reform.

Impact Statement

Opportunity gaps based on social injustice often overlap with school safety concerns. Yet most school safety studies and interventions focus on individuals or interpersonal relationships and not on structurally changing opportunity or safety gaps. This article calls for new research, intervention, and policy approaches that jointly address opportunity and school safety gaps. Examples include research on (a) school-community opportunity and safety gaps, (b) low resourced schools’ opportunity and safety gaps, and (c) racially biased classroom interactions that decrease opportunity and increase safety gaps.

摘要

很少有研究明确研究机会结构如何影响学校安全、学校氛围或欺凌。本文应用以学校为中心的生态理论作为将机会结构与学校安全联系起来的启发式概念框架。从历史上看，机会结构确定了制度特征（如劳动条件）与地理位置、性别、种族、宗教、国籍、民族和家庭背景等因素如何影响个人机会和进入劳动力市场的模式。在教育中，在描述教育不平等中的系统性种族主义时，已经使用了这个概念。示例来自几个研究机构，对这些问题的未来研究具有重要意义。这些领域包括对社区和家庭的研究，创造积极的学校文化和氛围，以及不同类型的教育者偏见，这些偏见限制了机会并导致环境不太安全。作者建议将学校安全、机会和以社会正义为导向的学校改革相结合的新研究。

影响声明

基于社会不公正的机会差距通常与学校安全问题重叠。然而，大多数学校安全研究和干预措施都侧重于个人或人际关系，而不是结构性变化的机会或安全差距。本文呼吁联合解决机会和学校安全差距的新研究、干预和政策方法。例子包括对 (a) 学校-社区机会和安全差距、(b) 资源不足的学校的机会和安全差距以及 (c) 减少机会和增加安全差距的种族偏见课堂互动的研究。