Teaching and Learning Guide for: Research in School Shootings
Authors: Muschert Glenn W. 
Published: November 2007

Author's introduction

School shootings are among the most shocking crimes to occur in recent decades, and scholars have responded the need to understand these events. Muschert presents a framework for understanding school‐related shooting incidents, including a typology of five varieties of school shootings and a multilevel examination of the causes.

Description of course

Juvenile delinquency is designed to introduce students to the social phenomenon of youth crime, the social/institutional contexts that affect it, and the social control responses to delinquency. This is a senior‐level read/writing intensive course, and as such will require significant student participation, preparation, and research. In addition to engaging the topic of delinquency in general, the course will also place a research‐intensive focus on the topic of school shootings.

Focus questions

What are the types of school shootings, and how do they differ with regards to the identities and motivations of the perpetrators?

What role does the mass media play in influencing public opinion about school shootings?

What appear to be the causes of school shootings, and which cause is a necessary prerequisite for a school shooting to occur?

Course goals

By the end of the semester, students should understand the following:

Social scientific perspectives on juvenile delinquency.

The difference between social scientific perspectives on delinquency and ‘common sense’/pop cultural perspectives.

The recent cultural focus on the delinquency and victimization of youth in American society.

Institutional causes of delinquency, including family, schools, and peer groups.

The juvenile justice system, including police, courts, and corrections.

Required texts

Books

Lotz, Roy 2005. Youth Crime in America: A Modern Synthesis. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. ISBN 0‐13‐026184‐X.

Wooden, Wayne S. and Randy Blazak 2001. Renegade Kids, Suburban Outlaws: From Youth Culture to Delinquency (2nd Edition). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. ISBN 0‐534‐52754‐X.

Articles

Armstrong, Edward G. 1993. ‘The Rhetoric of Violence in Rap and Country Music.’Sociological Inquiry 63: 64–83.

Boettcher, Jennifer 2006. ‘Framing the Scholarly Communication Cycle.’Online 30 (3): 24–26.

Harper, Timothy 2000. ‘Shoot to Kill.’Atlantic Monthly 286 (4): 28–30.

Hawkins, Donald T. 1999. ‘What Is Credible Information?’ Online 23 (5): 86.

Henry, Stuart 2000. ‘What Is School Violence? An Integrated Approach.’Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 568: 16–29.

Muschert, Glenn W., Melissa Young‐Spillers and Dawn Carr 2006. ‘“Smart” Policy Decisions to Combat a Social Problem: The Case of Child Abductions 2002–2003.’Justice Policy Journal 3 (2): 1–32. http://www.cjcj.org/pdf/smart_policy.pdf.

Muschert, Glenn W. 2007. ‘The Columbine Victims and the Myth of the Juvenile Superpredator.’Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice 5 (4).

Muschert, Glenn W. 2007. ‘Research in School Shootings.’Sociology Compass 1 (1): 60–80.

Muschert, Glenn W. and Ralph W. Larkin 2007 (forthcoming). ‘The Columbine High School Shootings.’ In Crimes of the Century, edited by Frankie Bailey and Steve Chermak. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention 2006. ‘Juvenile Arrests 2004.’ Washington, DC: US Department of Justice. http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/214563.pdf.

Author recommends

Recommended texts are grouped by topic area relevant to the further study of school shootings.

Schedule

School violence

Henry, Stuart 2000. ‘What Is School Violence? An Integrated Definition.’Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 567: 16–29.

Henry offers a broad definition of school violence, which includes any action or policy that leads to the harm of students, faculty, and administrators. In all, this article encourages readers to understand the issue of school violence as multifaceted in its causes, effects, and solutions.

Hunnicut, Susan 2006. School Shootings. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press.

Designed for secondary educational settings, this book offers a series of paired articles offering opposing viewpoints on social issues related to school shootings, including media violence, bullying, and guns. Other topics include adolescent brain development, warning signs, and the relevancy of race in school shooting debates. Such a format of readings can be useful for stimulating classroom debate.

Case studies of school shooting incidents

Caputo, Philip 2005. 13 Seconds: A Look Back at the Kent State Shootings. New York, NY: Chamberlain Bros.

This book is a case study and social history of perhaps a quintessential government‐type school shooting. Caputo, who is best known for his memoirs of the Vietnam War, reflects on the May 4, 1970, shootings at Kent State University in Ohio. The author situates the event in the wider phenomenon of official responses to student social protests during the 1960s and 1970s.

Eglin, Peter and Stephen Hester 2003. The Montreal Massacre: A Story of Membership Categorization Analysis. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

This book is a case study of the 1989 mass murders occurring in Montréal, in which a shooter entered a technical college and targeted female students. This book does a good job of clarifying an underlying gender dynamic that is present in many school shooting incidents, and examines the news media dynamic coverage following the incident.

Kirk, Michael, Miri Navasky, and Karen O’Connor 2000. ‘Frontline: The Killer at Thurston High.’ Alexandria, VA: PBS Video.

This PBS Frontline documentary video examines the rampage‐type school shootings that occurred in 1998 in Springfield, Oregon. In 90 minutes, the documentary examines the shooter's learning disability, fascination with guns, and troubled family relationship. Additional resources related to the video are available at the PBS website: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline//shows/kinkel/.

Larkin, Ralph 2007. Comprehending Columbine. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

This book is a case study of a rampage‐type school shooting that occurred in 1999 in Littleton, Colorado. The author conducted interviews with eyewitnesses, and situates the analysis within the wider community and cultural context in which the event occurred. The author interweaves the multiple‐levels of factors leading up to this quintessential rampage school shootings, including psychological states of the perpetrators, an intolerant community setting, the failure of authority figures to react, and the influence of white male rage.

Moore, Mark H., Carol V. Petrie, Anthony A. Braga, and Brenda L. McLaughlin 2003. Deadly Lessons: Understanding Lethal School Violence. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

This book includes six case studies of school‐related shootings, and was commissioned by the US National Research Council and Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science. Particularly of note are the studies conducted of the lesser‐known targeted school shooting incidents that occurred in New York and Chicago. In addition, this book is an excellent academic treatment of the problem of school shootings. Strong points include the attempt to conduct a cross‐case analysis linking the six case studies (Chapter 8) and an attempt to situate the problem of school shootings within school violence in general (Part II).

Newman, Katherine 2004. Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings. New York, NY: Basic Books.

This book links two case studies conducted in towns where two rampage‐type school shootings occurred, Paducah, Kentucky, and Jonesboro, Arkansas. Social scientists lived in the communities while researching the cases, resulting in an insightful examination of the community antecedents and effects of the shooting incidents. The author situates the two case studies within research about the problem of school shootings in general (Chapter 10), positing five factors that may cause such incidents. These include the social marginality of the shooter(s), psychological problems of the shooter(s), the availability of violent cultural images, the failure of surveillance systems to prevent attacks, and the availability of guns.

Fear

Altheide, David L. 2002b. Creating Fear: News and the Construction of Crisis. New York, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.

This book examines the role that fear plays in guiding contemporary social action. The author argues that news media play a crucial role in creating fear, as they attach emotionally evocative frames to social problems. Thus, contemporary society is becoming more fear‐oriented and reactionary. Particularly relevant to the study of school shootings is the examination (Chapter 7) of the medias characterization of youth as increasingly involved in crimes, as victims and/or victimizers.

Glassner, Barry 1999. The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things. New York, NY: Basic Books.

This popular book examines how people fear relatively rare events such as school shootings and airline crashes, rather than fearing more common risks such as automobile crashes, drug and alcohol addiction, and food poisoning. The author examines the mass media's coverage of crime (Chapter 2) and the role that these images play in creating public opinion about youth. The author makes a call for a sober assessment of the risks facing modern society, and advocates the sober development of public policy.

Media

Bonilla, Denise M. 2000. School Violence. New York, NY: H.W. Wilson.

This book is an edited volume, including articles derived from mainstream news media, commenting on school shooting incidents. The news media are among the first commentators for any social problem, and they frequently play a significant role in shaping public opinion about emergent problems. This volume will aid in understanding the media discussion occurring during the late 1990s.

Simpson, Roger and William Coté 2006. Covering Violence: A Guide to Ethical Reporting about Victims and Trauma. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

This book is an examination of the challenges faced by journalists who report on horrible crimes and natural disasters. This will be helpful for those wishing to understand the professional and psychological challenges faced by those covering school shootings, and for those who wish to understand how to minimize the negative impact of news reporting on the individuals (mostly children) and communities who witness school shootings.

Policy responses

Cornell, Dewey G. 2006. School Violence: Fears Versus Facts. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

This book identifies 19 myths about youth violence, including those relevant to school violence in general, including rampage shootings. The author shows how fear of school violence has resulted in misguided responses including boot camps to zero tolerance policies. This book is accessible to college students, educators, law enforcement personnel. The author asserts that student threat assessment is a more flexible and less punitive alternative to zero tolerance policies.

McCabe, Kimberly A. and Gregory M. Martin 2005. School Violence, the Media, and Criminal Justice Responses. New York, NY: Peter Lang Pub.

McCabe and Martin offer an historical overview of school violence in the USA, from the colonial period to present day. The authors examine the role of bullying and teachers’ perceptions of violence in schools. Suggestions about how teachers may prevent and respond to school violence are offered.

Online materials

National Center for Education Statistics. ‘Indicators of School Crime and Safety.’ (http://nces.ed.gov/programs/crimeindicators/).

Published with the cooperation of the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, this annual report from the US Department of Education surveys victimization of students and teachers in US schools. In addition, the report surveys specific forms of criminality, including gun availability, gang involvement, hate crimes, and substance abuse.

National School Safety Center (http://www.schoolsafety.us/).

Provides information about school crime prevention and response.

See in particular, the report ‘School Associated Violent Deaths’. (http://www.schoolsafety.us/pubfiles/savd.pdf), which is a good source of sober information about rates of homicide and suicide in US schools.

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (http://ojjdp.ncjrs.org/).

Web site run by the US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, which provides information, news, statistics, conferences, and reports about juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice. Their annual reports on juvenile arrests present aggregate data derived from Uniform Crime Reports compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Research project idea

Students can learn about school‐related shootings by conducting case studies as individual or group research projects. Assign or have students select a school‐related shooting incident, and have them research the details of the case using any available library and Internet resources. The book Deadly Lessons of Moore et al. (2003) provides an extensive list of data points in table 8.2 (pp. 266–83) that students can research relevant to their own case. Such topics include the details of the incident, community setting, school setting, background and preparatory actions of the perpetrators, community responses, and the legal disposition of the case. Students should connect their case study with Muschert's article ‘Research in School Shootings’, by exploring the variety of causes that contributed to the incident they studied.