Crisis Detection and Response; A Sustainable, Accessible, Feasible, Effective (SAFE) Community and School Safety Planning

Presenters

Mary Jo Carney, Georgia Southern University
Juliann McBrayer, Georgia Southern University
Chad Posick, Georgia Southern University
Dawn Tysinger, Georgia Southern University

First Presenter's Institution

Georgia Southern University

First Presenter's Brief Biography

Mary Jo Carney, M.S. is a first-year masters student in the Experimental Psychology program at Georgia Southern University. Mary Jo is a research assistant with a focus on conference development and implementation and scholarly interdisciplinary research for the NYAR Research Center. Her research interests include the intersection between autonomic nervous system dysfunction and emotion dysregulation in populations diagnosed with neurodevelopmental, psychiatric, and traumatic brain injury conditions, and the application of neuro-rehabilitative and talk therapies for children, adolescents, and adults with symptoms of ANS dysfunction and emotion dysregulation.

Second Presenter's Institution

Georgia Southern University

Second Presenter’s Email Address

jmcbrayer@georgiasouthern.edu

Second Presenter's Brief Biography

Dr. Juliann Sergi McBrayer is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and is a Co-Director of the NYAR Research Center centered around scholarly practitioner and interdisciplinary research via community partnerships. As a scholarly practitioner, her research interests include the development, implementation, assessment, and impact of educational leadership programs with a focus on purposeful, collaborative, and sustainable professional learning and programming to ensure effectiveness and accountability while emphasizing P-20 community partnerships.

Third Presenter's Institution

Georgia Southern University

Third Presenter’s Email Address

cposick@georgiasouthern.edu

Third Presenter's Brief Biography

Dr. Chad Posick is the Interim Department Chair of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Georgia Southern University and Co-Director of the NYAR Research Center. He teaches in the areas of victimology, public policy, statistics, and quantitative research methods. He has published over 40 peer-reviewed publications and five books on issues concerning violence, crime, and research methods. He was awarded the New Scholar Award from the Victimology Section of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences and the Faculty Researcher of the Year Award from the Victimology Division of the American Society of Criminology. He was the principal investigator for the Savannah-Chatham Innovative Prosecution Solutions project, which began in 2015. He has led funded research projects and is an expert on mixed methods research and data analysis using several software programs.

Fourth Presenter's Institution

Georgia Southern University

Fourth Presenter’s Email Address

dtysinger@georgiasouthern.edu

Fourth Presenter's Brief Biography

Dr. Dawn Tysinger earned a Ph.D. in Psychology with a Concentration in School Psychology and a Sub-specialization in Counseling Interventions from The University of Memphis in Memphis, Tennessee. She has also earned the Nationally Certified School Psychologist credential from the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP). She is a Full Professor in the nationally-recognized and National Association of School Psychologists – Approved School Psychology Program at Georgia Southern University. Dr. Tysinger has publications in school psychology journals, and presentations at the local, state, regional, and national levels.

Document Type

Event

Primary Strand

School Safety

Relevance to Primary Strand

Crisis response in online scholastic settings is a largely unknown yet crucial area of exploration and analysis for the purposes of community and school safety. Although some school safety concerns are null due to the physical distance that an online educational setting provides, others are exacerbated by it. This has become most evident with the Covid-19 health pandemic, which has further illuminated the need for evidence-based online school safety intervention planning and training on both the district and federal levels. Furthermore, educators and administrative professionals themselves are lacking in training and professional development designed to prepare them to detect and respond effectively to varied crisis situations. This study has been designed to meet this need for purposeful, collaborative, and sustainable professional learning, by serving as a foray into the topic of school safety and its implications for the emotional well-being and academic performance of students in online settings.

Alignment with School Improvement Plan Topics

School Safety

Brief Program Description

School safety is a high priority matter to several scholars and practitioners at this time due to the ever-increasing incidents of violence related to school systems that are emergent in today’s media. One might propose that a large facet of the problem is a lack of preparedness on the part of most schools to handle these crisis situations. This presentation will cover the ways in which research can inform public policies and school readiness to both prevent and intervene in situations of crisis within online educational settings.

Summary

The need for better crisis prevention and intervention through detection and preparedness has been indicated by recent national trends, specifically in regards to online education settings. The goal of this study is to consider the perceptions of crisis frequency and readiness of online educators for such crises. Such research is necessary to create plans which effectively meet the needs of students in online settings for detection and response to crisis situations, which has become more evident with the recent global health pandemic. This survey study utilized data taken from participants to include perceptions of crisis frequency and preparedness in varied crisis areas. Preliminary results have suggested that the percentage of educators who feel “very prepared” is insufficient for adequate school safety preparedness. The quantity and quality of training necessary to equip educators in online settings deviated across various crisis events. Furthermore, a small number of educators reported having received any professional education relative to working with students in an online setting. Although several educators had received some form of training for some areas, their level of perceived preparedness was insufficient to guarantee safety from the many and varied crisis situations that are pertinent in online school settings today. Practical implications of this study have been a need for quantitatively and qualitatively greater crisis management planning and training for online school settings and the professional learning necessary to accomplish this goal. The purpose of this study is to assist efforts to formulate better school safety plans. Future research recommendations include a wider gathering of data from a larger scope of educational professionals throughout the nation.

Evidence

Foundational research suggested that 93% of educators working in traditional school environments have been required to respond to a crisis event and the authors assume this would also be high in an online setting (McBrayer et al., 2020; Tysinger et al., 2016). Homicide is the second leading cause of death for all youth, and the leading cause of death for non-Hispanic Black or African American youth (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021). Within the last two decades, 95% of multiple-victim academically associated youth homicides were due to injuries caused by fire-arms procured through family or friends (CDC 2021). Additionally, twenty three percent of the children reported victimization of any form of bullying (i.e., cyber, relational, physical, verbal) within the last month (Waasdorp & Bradshaw, 2015), while nearly 20% of students have reported being bullied on school grounds (Basile et al., 2019). From 2016 to 2021, there was a 153% increase in the amount of emergency room visits from 5- to 18-year-olds for suicide attempts or self-harm (Children’s Hospital Association, 2022).

Regarding school safety preventative measures, schools may perceive themselves as being prepared for a crisis, in actuality, their plans may lack specificity to their school, the quality of their steps, and overall comprehensiveness (An et al., 2021; Steeves et al., 2017). When evaluating specific crisis-focused drills, “[many] states have legally mandated armed assailant drills without providing much guidance, which has contributed to confusion about the differences between lockdown, options-based training, and full-scale simulation drills, as well as growing concern over the unintended harm caused by conducting drills inappropriately” (Association of School Resource Officers, 2021, p. 1). When school personnel participate in school safety planning, such as drills, their perceived preparedness and execution of the proper steps taken to respond to a crisis also improves (Schildkraut & Nickerson, 2020; Dockson & Varg, 2017).

Comprehensive school crisis plans are essential and should include provisions not only for intervention in the face of a crisis, but also prevention and preparation (Steeves et al., 2017). There is a need to focus on school safety as a means of preventing incidents as a significant part of prevention is recognizing and addressing the mental health needs of students and staff. Teachers have concerns about their students when in an online setting, especially at the peak of a pandemic in regards to factors such as their physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing and the after effects remain (Alathari et al., 2018; National Education Association, 2018; NASP School Safety and Crisis Response Committee, 2015). While we strengthen our response and recovery capabilities, we must also strengthen our capacity to identify and address mental health issues and create a positive and healthy learning and working environment for the entire school and surrounding community.

Learning Objective 1

Participants will cultivate a greater understanding of how ready educators feel in detecting and responding to varied crisis situations in an online educational setting.

Learning Objective 2

Participants will cultivate an understanding of the quantity and quality of training that educators receive on crisis events and the amount of training specific to online learning.

Learning Objective 3

Participants will develop a better understanding of evidence-based intervention and safety planning in physical and online learning environments.

Recommended Citation

Carney, Mary Jo; McBrayer, Juliann; Posick, Chad; and Tysinger, Dawn, "Crisis Detection and Response; A Sustainable, Accessible, Feasible, Effective (SAFE) Community and School Safety Planning" (2023). Southeast Conference on School Climate. 10.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/secsc/2023/2023/10

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