Teacher and Peer Responses to Warning Behavior in 11 School Shooting Cases in Germany

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Nora Fiedler¹  Friederike Sommer²  Vincenz Leuschner²  Nadine Ahlig¹  Kristin Göbel¹  Herbert Scheithauer¹ 

[1] Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin;Department of Police and Security Management, Berlin School of Economics and Law

关键词: warning behaviors;    threat assessment;    targeted school violence;    school shooting;    case study;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01592

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Warning behavior prior to an act of severe targeted school violence was often not recognized by peers and school staff. With regard to preventive efforts, we attempted to identify barriers to information exchange in German schools and understand mechanisms that influenced the recognition, evaluation, and reporting of warning behavior through a teacher or peer. Our analysis is based on inquiry files from 11 cases of German school shootings that were obtained during the 3-year research project “Incident and case analysis of highly expressive targeted violence (TARGET).” We conducted a qualitative retrospective case study to analyze witness reports from school staff and peers. Our results point to subjective explanations used by teachers and peers toward conspicuous behavior (e.g., situational framing and typical adolescent behavior), as well as reassuring factors that indicated harmlessness (e.g., no access to a weapon). Additionally, we found organizational barriers similar to those described in US-American case studies (e.g., organizational deviance).

【 授权许可】

CC BY