Constructing Cultures of Non-Violence: The Peace Power! Strategy.

Abstract Extensive redesign of overall systems, like entire schools, could dramatically reduce the level of violence, threat, and coercion in schools, but this is generally unrealistic. This article presents an alternative approach, the development of evidence-based tools that can be used in existing networks to structure systemic changes in maintainable ways. Within an on-going program of developmental research, behavioral systems analysis is used to clarify sets o interlocking repertoires that can, together, have a significant effect on the incidence of coercive behaviors. These analyses suggest concrete, practical tools that can be flexibly combined into realistic, customized local programs. The PEACE POWER! strategy emerged from this process. KEYWORDS: Youth violence prevention, behavioral systems analysis, cultural practices. Riley, a young man placed in a special education school as the result of a history of behavior problems and academic failure, is in the wrong classroom at the beginning of the school day. A teacher, Mr. Wilson, walks in and asks, using foul language, what Riley is doing in the room. The young man responds angrily, using a racial epithet. The teacher instructs the young man to leave, or else, "I'm going to put my hands on you. " The young man escalates, beginning to throw furniture, and Mr. Wilson says, "If I have to put my hands on you, it's over. " Security is called, and the boy and teacher have further words in the hall as the young man is taken away. The same week, Riley has an altercation with another teacher, as well as one with another student in the school, both of which also require security staff intervention. Several threatening or physical altercations among youth and staff occur in this school each day. Schools are among the safest places in the United States for children (Kaufman et al., 1998), and the rate of violence in schools and communities, happily, has declined significantly over the past several years (Jenson & Howard, 1999). Still, as indicated in the real incident above, contemporary school environments are often troubled, and troubling, for everyone involved. The science of behavior could provide considerable guidance for preventing violence, threat, and coercion, both in schools and in the communities in which schools are embedded (see, for example, Embry & Flannery, 1999; Mattaini & Lowery, in press-a, in press-b). Dissemination of research-based knowledge is notoriously difficult, however, in education (Greer, 1996) as well as in the broader society (Stolz, 1981). Many research programs have paid only limited attention to issues of community acceptability and feasibility (social validity) (Fawcett, Mathews & Fletcher, 1980; Fawcett, 1991). Also, often little attention is paid to the need to es tablish systemic and systematic supports for implementation and maintenance (Sulzer-Azaroff & Mayer, 1991). Finally, youth in the US are deeply immersed in interlocking cultures of coercion and oppression (Lowery & Mattaini, in press; Sidman, 1989); attention to violent behavior alone, therefore, is often too narrow to have powerful effects within a sociocultural matrix that relies extensively on coercion and threat. According to Fawcett, Mathews and Fletcher (1980), effective community-based research and programs need to be effective, inexpensive, decentralized, flexible, sustainable, simple, and compatible with existing community values, experiences, and needs. Over the past five years, the PEACE POWER! Working Group has engaged in a program of developmental research to elaborate a strategy consistent with these principles for use by schools, communities, and organizations working with youth. The PEACE POWER! strategy and the materials and procedures developed to support it, emerge from three intersecting sources. These sources are: (a) an analysis of the ways that coercive behaviors and alternatives to those behaviors are selected at the biological, behavioral, and cultural levels (Embry & Flannery, 1999; Mattaini, Twyman, Chin, & Lee, 1996); (b) existing research and results of our own research; and (c) certain Native American traditions that converge in useful ways with contemporary behavioral science (Lowery & Matt aini, 1999). …