Moral reasoning about school violence: Informational ...

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Moral reasoning about school violence: Informational assumptions about harm within school subcontexts Ron A. Astor Published online: 08 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: Ron A. Astor (1998) Moral reasoning about school violence: Informational assumptions about harm within school subcontexts, Educational Psychologist, 33:4, 207-221, DOI: 10.1207/s15326985ep3304_5 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep3304_5

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EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST, 33(4), 207-221 Copyright 63 1998, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Moral Reasoning About School Vio ence: Inf~ r n l a t i ~ n a l Assumptions About Harm Within School Subcontexts Ron A. Astor

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School of Education, School qf Social Work University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Moral reasoning about violence-prone subcontexts in schools is an understudied topic. I propose that concepts from cognitive developmental domain theory, public health, and environmental psychology be used conjointly to explore students' and teachers' unders~tandingof violence-prone subcontexts such as hallways, playgrounds, and cafeterias. It is argued that members of the school community have differing preformed informational assumptions about violence-proneschool subcontextsthat systematicallyinfluence their judgments and interpretations of events in those locations. Two important informational assumptions are (a:)the individualls' or groups' estimation of risk for physical harm or potential provocation in specific locations within the school, and (b) the individuals' or groups' beliefs about the school staff's professional role or responsibility to monitor and intervene in violence-prone areas. This article puts forth the hypothesis that different groups within the school community (e.g., aggressive vs. nonaggressive children, boys vs. girls, teachers vs. students) view violent school events in different ways because each group has different informational assumptions about the violence-prone subcontext. Therefore, each group focuses on different aspects of the physical and social context related to the violent event. Applicationsof this conceptual framework md future directions for research are explored. The U.S. public has become increasingly concerned about school violence.' Several opinion polls have suggested that the general public perceives school violence as the tlop problem facing the U.S. educational system (Elam & Rose, 1995; Elam, Rose, & Gallup, 1994; see Morrison, Furlong, & Morrison, 1997, for a historical overview). Of the many forms of school violence, school fights are the most common type en-

Requests for reprints should be sent to Ron A. Astor, 610 E. University Ave., Room 1302, School of Education, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109-1259. The definition of violence used in this article is An act carried out with the intention, or perceived intention of causing physical pain or injury to another person. The physical pain can range from slight pain, such as in a slap, to murder. The basis for "intent to hurt" may range from a concern with a child's safety to hostility so intense that the d~eathof the other person is desired. (Strans, Gelles, & Steinmetz, 1980, p. 20) This definitionis more specific than the term aggression (or some investigators' use of the term violence), which can refer to behaviors, such as teasing, vandalism, and verbal aggression, that are different from physical aggression toward people. This definition of violence includes the intention to cause pain, which differs from some other researchers' use of the term.

countered by students and teachers. Indeed, studies indicate the vast majority of children in schools are likely to have witnessed or experienced school fights on a regular basis (Astor, 1995; Centers for Disease Control, 1996; Goldstein & Conoley, 1997a, 1997b).2Research from the school violence literature a.lso suggests that violence is closely associated

he Centers for Disease Control (1996) reported that 38.7% (k2.2) of US. high school students (30.6%vs. 46.1% for girls and boys, respectively) have been in aphysical fight serious enough to require medical treatment during a 12-monthperiod. The 12-monthincidence ratio of physical fighting (requiring medical attention per l0D students) was 127.7 (k31.0; 91.9 vs. 161.1 for girls and boys, respectively), meaning that on the whole, many students are having more than one fight that results in medical aftention. Although these overall estimates appear high, they are most likely underestimatesof the actual number of fights because most school fights are not severe enough to require medical attention. We do not have accurate estimates of fighting in U.S. elementary and middle schools (as a whole). However, Olweus (1991) estimated that 15%of students in elememtaryand middle schoolsare involved in the victim or bully process. If these estimates are even remotely accurate, it could be concluded that many physicaI fights occur in the vast majority of U.S. schools (elementary, middle, and secondary) and that most students are familiar with the experience of school fights (by being victims, witnesses, or perpetrators), and that they have had a chance to form opimions, judgments, and organized systems of thought around such events.


with specific subcontexts within the school (e.g., hallways, bathrooms, playgrounds, lunchrooms,and entrance or exit areas; for research and reviews, see American Association of University Women, 1993; Astor, Meyer, & Pitner, in press; Goldstein & Conoley, 1997a, 1997b;National Institute of Education & U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1978; Sharp & Smith, 1994; Smith & Sharp, 1994). Therefore, students and teachers are far more likely to witness or experience fights in the specific school subcontexts where violence most often occurs. Nevertheless, many interventions currently employed in schools do not directly address children's understanding of social dynamics surrounding fights or the violence-prone subcontext. Instead, the most widely used violence interventions are based on assumptions that individual students are deficient in an array of cognitive-social skills necessary to stem conflict before it escalates into physical violence (e.g., Blakeney & Blakeney, 1991; Coie, Underwood, & Lochman, 1991; Goldstein, 1988; Goldstein & Conoley, 1997a; Goldstein & Huff, 1993; Guerra, Nucci, & Huesmann, 1994; Guerra & Tolan, 1994; Hammond & Yung, 1993; Hausman, Spivak, & Prothrow-Stith, 1994;National Education Goals Panel, 1995; Swarthout, 1988; Ward, 1995). Despite the popularity of these types of interventions,very few studies have directly examined students' or teachers' thinking patterns regarding fights within violence-prone school subcontexts. Moreover, recent research on children's moral reasoning about physical harm suggests that children's cognitive evaluations of school fights are remarkably more complex than assumed by many cognitive and skill-building interventions (Astor, 1994; Astor & Behre, 1997; Astor, Meyer, & Behre, in press; Dodge, 1991; Guerra, Huesmann, Tolan, Van Acker, & Eron, 1995; Guerra et al., 1994; Tisak, 1996; Tisak, Lewis, & Jankowski, 1996; Turiel, 1998). Where and when harm could occur along with the social dynamics associated with specific violence-prone subcontexts appear to be central themes in how students think about school safety. Therefore, a central argument proposed in this article is that students' moral reasoning about school violence is often intertwined with the unique social characteristics of specific school subcontexts. Consequently, this article has two overarching goals. The first goal is to introduce basic concepts and research on moral reasoning about violence from a cognitive developmental domain (CDD) approach (e.g ., Turiel, 1983; Turiel, Hildebrandt, & Wainryb, 1991;Wainryb, 1991,1993). Such concepts can be applied to the issue of how children reason about school fights. Therefore, in the first section of this article, I explore CDD findings that directly pertain to children's understanding of peer violence. Specifically, I highlight relevant findings from CDD research on (a) how children understand unprovoked violence; (b) how children balance moral, social, and personal aspects in their reasoning about school fights; (c) how children reason about the role of provocation and retribution between peers; (d) differ-

ences in moral reasoning patterns between violent and nonviolent children; and (e) the role of informational assumptions about harm. This research serves as the theoretical foundation for furthering research on children's moral reasoning about school contexts. A second and related goal of this article is to outline ways of integrating the context of the school into research on children's moral reasoning about school violence. Therefore, the second part of this article presents research and concepts that could expand CDD theory and research from its current focus on children's understanding of violent behaviors to a focus that also includes (a) children's understanding of the contexts where violent behavior occurs, and (b) children's understanding of the variability of violent behavior between different school subcontexts (e.g., some school contexts are more violence-prone than others). I argue that concepts from urban planning, public health, and architecture, such as undefined public space and research on how people perceive danger within physical contexts, are compatible with CDD research on reasoning about behavior. Findings from these diverse literatures provide indirect evidence that children (and teachers) judge and reason about both violent behaviors and harm-oriented contexts. A synthesis of findings from a CDD approach could create conceptual bridges that further the existing research on children's moral reasoning about violence-prone school subcontexts.

REASONING ABOUT VIOLENCE WITHIN THE SCHOOL CONTEXT: TWO GENERIC CONCEPTUAL OBSTACLES Most researchers would probably agree with the assertion that violent behavior should be researched or understood within context. This statement may seem obvious to anyone who has worked or conducted research on violence in school settings. Yet, how can it be explained that there are few data on how students think about and understand dangerous school contexts? I believe that there are two generic conceptual reasons that partially explain why children's reasoning about violent school contexts has not been thoroughly addressed thus far. It is important to raise these issues because they undergird the theoretical arguments put forth in this article. One possible reason for this gap in research stems from the fact that within psychology and education, violence is often conceptualized as a behavior associated with a cognitive or cognitive-behavioraldeficit (e.g., a lack of social skills, poor communication skills, diminished emotional capacity, an inability to demonstrate empathy; see Noguera, 1995,for an alternative perspective). Even though most researchers commonly acknowledge that violent behavior is influenced by multiple causes that include a wide array of contextual risk factors (e.g., poverty, child abuse, media violence), children are rarely asked to reason about the relations between the risk


MORAL REASONING 14BOUTSCHOOL VIOLENCE

factors and violence. In reality, most school violence interventions define violence as a behavior either within or between individuals. Theories of moral reasoning halve also focused primarily on judgments about behavioral transactions between individuals within certain social contexts (family, school, community, etc.), but not about the specific physical and social contexts in which the violence occurs. This exclusive focus on behavior is problematic because studies from public health, urban planning, and criminology suggest that violence is closely associated 'with specific places and times (Astor, Meyer, & Behre, in press; Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, 1993; Cisnernos, 1995;Gardner, 1990;Nasar &kJones, 1997;National Institute of Education & U.S. Department of Health, mucation, and Welfare, 1978; Newman, 1973, 1995; Perkins, Meeks, & Taylor, 1992; Perkins, Wandersiman, Rich, & Taylor, 1993; Stein, 1995; Stokols, 1995; Sutton, 1996).It is likely that dynamics associated with school space influence how students perceive violence. However, if researchers do not have a theoretical framework to explore the relation between school context and violent behavior in children's reasoning, they may focus only on children's references to behavior and ignore references to context. Consider the following statement: You wanna see afight, all you need to do is go to the bo:ys and girls bathrooms after the bell rings [between classes]. I just saw a bad one just before you came to get me. One guy got punched while he was going [to the bathroom]. We've got fights there every day, all the time, and no one does nothing about it. I sometimesjust hold it in till I get home, but if I gotta go--I'll just go. If anyone messes with me while I'm gomg [to the bathroom], I'll kill em, and they know that, so no one is gonna mess with me there. [pause] I still would hold it in if I can. (12-year-old boy, middle school)

This student refers to multiple issues including his knowledge that bathrooms are a place where violence often occurs in his school, the lack a4 response of school staff to violence, possible violent responses to violent provocation, and his attempt to avoid the violent location altogether. However, the key focus of his statement is the description of a set of social dynamics that occur within bathrooms. Without a theoretical framework to understand the child's thinking about context, researchers may downplay the student's contextual theme of violence in the bathroom anld focus only on his refeirences to behavior. A singdar focus on behavior could lead to incomplete or erroneous theoretical conclusions about how children reason about school violence. Another reason for &is gap in research on children's reasoning about violent contexts stems from the fact that the school context is often conceptualized as a whole; for example, research on topics such as school climate and social organizational issues (Leie, Bryk, & Smith, 1993; Lee & Croninger, 1995; Rowan, 1990; Zeldin & Price, 1995) or school size (Olweus, 1991). Similarly, school safety studies

209

have inquired mainly about the safety (or lack oisafety) of the school context as a whole (kstaa, Behre, Fravil, & Wallace, 1997; Elam et al., 1994; Furlong, Babinski, Poland, & Munoz, 1996; Furlong & Morrison, 1994; Lee & Croninger, 1995; Metropolitan Life Ingurance Company dk Harris Poll, 1993-1994; National Center for Educational Statistics, 1991, 1992). Consequently, in many surveys, researchers have asked [studentsto evaluate the safety of the lentire school. However, students may or may not evaluate the safety of the school context as a whole. As an example, consider the specificity of this 8-year-old girl in response to a global question commonly asked on surveys ad school viole,nce, "Do you think your school is safe or unsafe? Why or W'hy not?': I think it is kind of safe solmetimes and kind of' not so safe sometimes too . .. it depends. Like, I hate lunch time and recess. I always ask if I can stay in the classroom if the teacher lets me. All the girls in my class want to stay with the teacher in the classroom because the buys run around the: playground after lunch and go wild and hit. The yard lady never does anything to stop it except to give them a warning. But that never works. The boys say "O.K., sorry, I won't do it again" and they break their promise and keep on doing it anyways until somebody gets hurt. It's not fair that they [school staff] don't stop them [boys] from being bad. The girls wanf to play outside too.

Had this student answered this question on a1 survey (using a Likert scale or a yes-no box commonly asked by surveys) researchers may have treated the response as a subjective assessment of the school as a whole. However, this child's judgments about violence were based on an assessment of distinct contexts in the school that could include moral, social, and personal evaluations of when, where, and how the school context is safe or unsafe. These two generic obstacles (the definition of violence as a behavior and the school conceptualized as a whole) are not part of CDD theory, but they are integral for the development of research on violence-prone school subconte:xts and are interwoven with CDD con~ceptsthroughout the: remainder of this article.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: CDD FlFJDllNGS Findings from CDD studies could contribute to better formulations of how children reason about school violence in several ways. First, research from CDD theory suggests that children's thinking about violence in schools is remarkably different than what is assumed Iby current intervention strategies. Current school-based interventions make strong assumptions about deficits in children's capacities to employ moral reasoning (especially aggressive children's reasoning; e.g., Blakeney & Blakenqy, 1991; Goldstein, 1'988;Goldstein &Huff, 1993; Guerraet al., 1994; Hammond & Yung, 1993; Hausnnan et al., 1994; National Education Goals Panel, 1995;


Staub, 1996; Swarthout, 1988; Ward, 1995). Many interventions and theories assume deficits of moral reasoning based primarily on behavior without directly examining the reasoning process of children. Consequently, a child who is chronically aggressive and does not show remorse may be viewed by clinicians or teachers as having a deficit in morality, character, empathy, or prosocial skills (see Bennett, 1994a, 1994b, for similar popular assumptions of moral deficits). However, data from CDD research suggests that it is the way children understand and organize their thinking about aspects of social situations that influences their judgments about violent events rather than social cognitive deficits alone. Contrary to deficit assumptions about moral reasoning and aggression, findings from CDD research have demonstrated that unprovoked and intentional physical harm is almost always condemned and categorized in moral terms (even by very aggressive children and in most social and physical contexts), whereas other types of physical harm are reasoned about by combining moral, personal, or social concerns regarding the school social structure. Second, research an moral reasoning with aggressive and nonaggressive children suggests that the concepts of provocation and retribution are critical to understanding how children perceive peer aggression in school contexts (e.g., Astor, 1994; Astor & Behre, 1997;Piaget, 1932).These studies also imply that different groups within the school are interpreting the meaning of provocation and retribution between peers in very different ways depending on the physical and social context. Finally, the concepts of harm informational assumptions (Wainryb, 1991, 1993; Wainryb & Turiel, 1993) and undefined public space (Astor, Meyer, & Behre, in press; Newman, 1973, 1995) are suggested as bridging constructs that could improve our understanding of how children and teachers differentiate between safe and unsafe school contexts.

Concepts and Definitions Moral, social-conventional, and personal domains. CDD researchers have generated a sizable number of empirical studies (see Turiel, 1998,for arecent review of domain research) demonstratingthat children's social reasoning is organized into three separately developing domains of thought. The three domains are termed the moral, the social-conventional, and the personal-prudential (e.g., Davidson, Turiel, & Black, 1983; Nucci, 1981; Smetana, 1981; Smetana, Kelly, & Twentyman, 1984; Turiel, 1983, 1996; Turiel et al., 1991; Weston & Turiel, 1980). When defining morality, Turiel(1983) stated, Moral prescriptions entailjudgments about issues such as justice, fairness, human rights, and welfare of persons. In addition to being obligatory, moral prescriptions are generalizable and impersonal and are not defined by existing

features in social organization. They are generalizable in the sense that they arejudged to apply across situations and to everyone in similar circumstances; they are impersonal in that they are not based on individual preferences or personal inclinations. (p. 98)

In contrast, social organizational or conventional prescriptions entail judgments about norms created by society (or people) for the purpose of maintaining social order (Turiel, 1983).These include laws, regulations, customs, and rituals that are relative and created through consensus. Social-conventionaljudgments are contingent on the existence of rules, the d~ctateof authority, or institutional practices. Norms pertaining to social convention are not generalizable to all social contexts and they are alterable. Personal prescriptions refer to reasons that are of primary concern to the actor, such as personal preferences, choice of friends, self-interest, and what might be considered more egocentric justifications. When CDD researchers examine children's reasoning patterns they document the domain components of the situation each child discusses. Componentsrefers to aspects of the situation discussed by the child that correspond to the definition of each domain. For example, if a child refers both to rules and social consensus, researchers would document that two social-conventional components were mentioned. If a child refers both to physical pain and rules, researchers would document that the child discussed a moral component and a social-conventional component.

Prototypical situations. Domain research has explored two types of social situations: those involving one domain (usually termedprototypical situations) and those situations involving more than one domain of reasoning. Prototypical also refers to domain-specific actions that are unprovoked and intentional. For instance, a child hitting a peer for no reason (unprovoked and intentional) is a prototypical moral situation. With prototypical scenarios, children are often provided with very short stories depicting acts of physical harm in which one child hits another child (in most studies, the act occurs on a playground) intentionally and unprovoked. The following is an example of such a scenario: Jim is playing on the school playground. He is not bothering anyone and he is playing nicely, when suddenly another boy walks up and punches him hard. Jim starts to cry.

Children are then asked to judge this type of situation ("Do you think it is alright or not alright for that boy to hit Jim?') and asked to provide reasons or justijications (why or why not?) for their judgments. A series of follow-up questions generally explore the child's understanding of rules, authority, and peer consensus surrounding the act. Findings have


MORAL REASONING ABOUT SCHOOL VIOLENCE

consistently shown that the vast majority of children (usually approaching 100%) as young as 2.5 years old (Sinetana, 1981) condemn unprovoked acts of physical harm between peers. Moreover, children's justifications tend to focus on the intrinsic moral components in the situation (e.g., the physical harm, pain, crying, lack of intent, and psychological harm) rather than rules, punishment, peer consensus, and adult authority (as predicted by other theories). Scores of studies conducted across many countries, cultures, and religious groups have shown that young nonviolent children utilize moral reasoning when presented with prototypical moral siluations (see Turiel, 1998, for a review). That is, children judge the physically harmful act as wrong, describing the intrinsic features of the act (such as "it hurts others") rather than reiasoning about social-conventionalrules (we're not supposed to hit in school) or personal reasons (if he wants to hit him he can just hit him, he does not need a reason). The implications of these findings for the role of reasoning within specific social subcontexts are important. In unprovoked harm situations, the social and physical context does not appear to alter children's condemnation and use of moral reasoning about the violence. Tlhat is, the vast majority of children (approaching 1100%) would condemn unprovoked physical harm regardless of the school location (e.g., rest rooms, classes, yard, locker room, principal's office) and with little regard to the authority, status, and relationships of the participants. Basically, contextual issues do not have a very large impact on children's judgments or justifications when the violence is perceived as unprovoked and intentional.

Multiple domains in complex situations. Thie second type of social situation studied by CDD researchers is more complex and includes topics that involve multiple social-conventional, moral, and personal components (e.g., abortion, nudity, free speech, pornography; see Turid, 1996, for a review). Several domain researchers have argued that many interpersonal and real-life situations involving violence contain multiple components from the moral, social-conventional, and personal domains, as well as multiple transgressions related to single domains (Astor, 1994; Astor & Behre, 1997; Guerra et al., 1994; Tisak, 1996; Turiel, 1987). Consequently, children may be reasoning and balancing various conflicting (componentsin a given violent situation. Balancing or coordinating componentsrefers to the process of recognizing different or conflicting domain components in a situation and deciding which ones are most important when approving or disapproving of a situation. Therefore, detailing the specific justifications (or types of reasons) used by children and the domains used (i.e., moral, social-conventional,personal, or a combination thereof) is an important initial step in determining whether or not a child is using moral reasoning to justify a violent act. In complex violent situations, children may be reasoning about conflicting

21 1

components from different do~rnainsthat impact their approval or disapproval of violence in that particular situation. This is important because mimy current theories of violence (and intervention strategies) often assume a uniform type of reasoning when children reason about violence. However, children could discuss acts of violence with reference to the pain and suffering of the victim (moral domain), school rules and peer consensus (social-conventional domilin), in pragmatic terms (personal preference) or any comb~~nation of domains. ]Exploringhow children combine domain components in different situations could lead to better theoretical conceptions of how children underslkmd school violence. For example, children could refer to several domains in a fairly common playground act of name: calling followed by a response of hitting between peers. Consider the multiple: components referred to by this 6-year-old boy: I don't think it's alright for him [the one that was called names] to hit him back [the name caller] like that because hitting is a lot badder, arid so what if he [the name cdler] called him names first? ... He should just go to the teacher and get him [the name caller] in trouble for calling him [the hitter] names and making him feel bad first ... [pause] ... but now he hit him back and that's really more bad than name calling cause he could have broken his nose or something [pause].If you break his head that is reallly really bad and he will maybe have to get stitches.If his feellings are hurt and he is mad about it, he should try and get the teacher to get him [the name caller] sent to the principal's office for calling him [the one who hit in response to name calling] bad things. In this response, the childjudged retribution for name calling as wrong. In justifying his judgment, he r~zferredto the psychologicalharm caused by the name calling and the phy sical harm caused by hitting (1.~0conflicting moral transgressigns). Recognizing both these behaviors as moral transgressions,the child then balanced between the two types of h a m and reasoned that the physical harm was worse than the psychologkal harm. The: child also referred to the social structure of the school and th~eauthority of the te:acheror principal as alternative social organizational responses to hitting after being called a name. Consequently, in this response, the child evoked both moral justifications of physical welfare, psychological welfare, and social-conventionaljustifications of school rules, authority, and potential punishment. However, it is possible for a childl who heard the same scenario to focus entirely on social rules or on personal preferences (although this is very rare). Knowing how children balance compqnents from different {domains when reasoning about violence within specific school subcontexts could test theoretical assumptions of interventions and possibly improve on futur~ecognitive-based intervention strategies (i.e., by documenting the patterns children actually use, the cognitive interventions can become more precise). There are numerous types of complex situations that could involve violence. Reviewing them all would be beyond the scope of this article.

However, recently, a CDD framework has been applied to how aggressive and nonaggressive children understand and reason about provocation and retribution.


MORAL REASONING ABOUT PROVOCATION AND RETRIBUTION: AGGRESSIVE AND NONAGGRESSIVE CHILDREN Although there are many reasons for school violence, perceived or real provocations are among the most common and obvious. The importance of aperceived or real provocation as a precursor for the enactment of peer aggression (retribution) has been highlighted by many research traditions (e.g., Bandura, 1973; Dodge, Pettit, NcClaskey, & Brown, 1986; Goldstein & Huff, 1993; Hammond & Yung, 1993; Patterson, 1982). Later in this article, it is argued that children's perceptions of moral provocations (i.e., name calling, lying, stealing, hitting) and retribution are also associated with students' generalized anticipation for provocation (i.e., name calling, lying, stealing, hitting) within violence-prone school subcontexts. The role of provocation and retribution becomes even more prominent when examining research on how aggressive versus nonaggressivechildren view provocation and retribution. That research literature suggests that aggressive children are far more likely to approve of retribution after being provoked (Astor, 1994; Bandura, 1973; Dodge et al., 1986; Guerra et al., 1995). How aggressive and nonaggressive children view provocation and retribution in school settings is highly relevant because aggressive children account for many of the fights and much of the violent behavior on school grounds (Centers for Disease Control, 1996; Olweus, 1993).Furthermore, this research demonstrates how various key groups associated with violence perceive violence issues. Therefore, how groups of aggressive and nonaggressive children understand school fights within the school context is vital for understanding the complex social dynamics surrounding school violence. Using a CDD theoretical framework (e.g., Nucci & Herman, 1982; Piaget, 1932;Turiel, 1983,1987;Turiel et al., 1991; Wainryb, 1991), Astor (1994) compared how aggressive and nonaggressive children reasoned about scenariosdepicting both unprovoked and provoked violence between (a) two siblings, (b) a parent and a child, (c) a husband and wife, and (d) two peers at school on a playground. The aggressive children were expected to be especially sensitive to moral provocations (e.g., lying, stealing, hitting, insults) and therefore more likely to approve of physical retribution.Moreover, testing out hypotheses put forth by Piaget (1932), the study examined if children who approved of hitting back after being provoked would describe retribution as a form of reciprocal justice (an exchange of physical or psychological pain that is equal in severity and quality) rather than a lack of rules or peer consensus, or a deficit in reasoning abilities (what many theo-

ries predict and most school violence interventions are based on). It was hypothesized that approval of retribution was connected with perceptions of provocations as moral transgressions and that retribution would often be described as a form of reciprocal justice. In the unprovoked scenarios all the children condemned the physical aggression and referred to the physical and psychologicalpain, lack of intent, and lack of fairness as their primary reasons for condemning the act. This finding was identical to findings from many prior prototypical studies conducted with nonaggressive children. However, because this study included children who were chronically aggressive at school, the findings raised questions about assumptions of global moral deficits in aggressive children. In the unprovoked scenarios both groups of children gave little weight to the context, the social hierarchy, and the relationships of the participants (parent-child, peers, siblings, parents) when condemningunprovoked violence. Moreover, the aggressive children gave the same types of moral reasoning about the act (showing that they were capable of employing moral reasoning in unprovoked situations).Another study (Astor & Behre, 1997) with young and extremely aggressive children (and their parents) replicated these findings (see also Crane-Ross, Tisak, & Tisak, 1995; Nucci & Herman, 1982; and Tisak, 1996, for studies with similar results). In the second set of scenarios, the moral provocations (name calling, lying, stealing, and hitting) increased all the children's approval of violence, but moral provocations drastically increased the aggressive children's approval of retribution. The greatest differences in approval between the aggressive and nonaggressive groups were evident when the provocation and retribution occurred on school grounds (playground) between peers. With a provocation of name calling, the aggressive children approved of retribution almost three times more often than the nonaggressive children. With a provocation of lying, the aggressive group was more than seven times more likely to approve of hitting as a response. Finally, with aprovocation of stealing, the aggressive group was more than five times more likely to approve of hitting as a response. Similar results were found when violsnce occurred between siblings. Violent and nonviolent children's reasoning about the provocation and retribution revealed intriguing thought patterns. Both groups referred to moral components (mainly psychological and physical ham) when approving or disapproving of the provoked violence. However, each group focused on different moral transgressionswithin each situation. The violent children focused on the provocation as a transgression causing serious psychological harm. Therefore, they allowed hitting back as a form of reciprocal justice or fairness. By contrast, the nonviolent children recognized both the provocation and hitting response as moral transgressions and reasoned that the physical harm from hitting was worse than psychological harm from name calling. Therefore, hitting in response to a psychological provocation was not allowed.


MORAL REASONING AB(DU?' SCHOOL VIOLENCE

The differences in judgments between the groups' approval or disapproval of violence were attributableto the way the aggressive and nonaggressive children organized components in the scenario and their assessment of the comparativeseverity of the different moral transgres,sions(e.g., name calling vs. not the absence of moral reahitting) in the violent sit~~ations, soning. Additionally, findings indicated that aggressive chldren had a tendency to h e psychological provocation as acts of harm equal to or worse than acts of physical retribution. However, it should be noted that there was less approval of retribution and more variation in domain reasoning when the retribution took place in different social contexts, such as between a parent and child or between a husband and a wife. This means that children do not globally approve or disapprove of violence when the situation is provoked. Their judgments and reasoning are contingent, in large part, on the context in which provocation andl retribution occurs. In provoked situations,the physical context, social hierarchy, and relationships of those iinvolved greatly influenced how both groups viewed the violent behavior (recall that in unprovoked situations they did niot influence judgments and domain use). Based on these results, it could be argued that in provoked situations, aggressive children are not onl~ymore sensitive to provocation, but are also more cont.extual1y discerning about when, where, and with whom retribution is allowed. Perhaps then, it is not by chance that violent scenariospresented to children in many studies (including my own research) have been embedded in cafeterias, playgrounds, hallways, routes to and firom school, and other violence-prone school contexts. It is possible that researchers intuitively know that these contexts increase the chances of approval for retribution among all children, but more so with aggressive children. For instance, aggressive children may believe that cafeterias during lunchtime are places where moral provocations occur to themselves or others quite often, and quite often nothing is done by adults to stop such provocations. Such a schema about a specific place c~ouldpredispose aggressive children to approve of aggression in cafeterias and reason about the act as if it were an act of retribution or reciprocaljustice. Would differencesin aggressive and nonaggressiwe children's approval of retribution decrease if situationsinvolving provocation and retribution were embedded in the principal's office or in the classroom with a teacher present? If a slight change in the physical and social context can change judgments and reasoning about violence, it is likely that children have attributions towarcl settings that add or detract from the actual behavior they are evaluating. The remainder ofthis article explores how CDD can be expanded to include children's moral reasoning about violence-prone school contexts. Given current definitions of morality and violence, researching children's moral reasoning about physical subcontexts is difficult for several reasons. First, conceptually, how does one morally judge and reason about a location?

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A place is not a transaction bletween individuals. There may or may not be any people o~ccupyingthese spacles and actual violent behavior may or may not have occurred in that place. CDD studies (e.g., Wainryb 8z Turiel, 1993) on tlhe concept of informational assumptions could provide a conceptual bridge for understanding how children may reason about orjudge violence-prone contexts.

INFORMATIOE\IALASSUMPTIOFG ABOUT CONTEEXT: PERCEIVEID DANGER IN SETTINGS AND UNDEFINED SPACE Informational Assumptions Wainryb and Turiel (1993) demonstrated that individuals sometimes take into account informational assumptions about reality when they make judgments about complex situations. They summarized the results of a series of studies that explored how informational assumptions inflluence moral reasoning about homosexualil.y, abortion, pornography, childrearing practices in other cultures, and parental beliefs about spanking a child for misbehavior. Findings from these studies strongly support the hypothesis that indiwiduals often enter situations with preexisting detailed information about social situations. In general, the notion of informational assumptions is straightfonvarcl: Individuals or groups of individuals may have different information about reality that they believe is true and credible. Informational assumptions are treated by the person or group as facts and are n~otnecessarily moral judgments or reasoning per se (although they can greatly influence moral judgmeints about a situation). To clearly illustrate the difference between informational assumptions and moral reasoning, I use a somewhat extreme exemplar. A belief in reincarnation is an example of an informational assumption that could influence moral judgments and reasoning. If, within a given culture, indivilduals believe that reincarnation exists in fact and that the dead are reincarnated, possibly as animals, tlhern killing and eating an animal may be perceived by members of that culture as an immoral act comparable to killing and eating a human. A person from another culture who does not believe the information about reincarnation to be true in fact may arrive at a di~fferingmoral judgment about killing and eating animals. However, with this example, it is important to emphasize that it is the information about what is believed to be true that differs between these two individuals and not their morality, per se. Hypothetically, from a research perspective, if it were possible to convince individuals fro11rnone culture that the other group's information was in fact correct and true (e.g., people are really reincarnated as animals), one would predict that individuals allowing the consumpition of animals might change their judgments and condemn the killing and (eatingof animals.


However, informational assumptions about the meaning of behavior do not need to be as extreme and dramatic as the exemplar might imply. In one study, Wainryb (1991) explored parents' views of corporal punishment. The study found that those parents who approved of corporal punishment tended to have informationalassumptionsthat spanking served a positive educational role or purpose. Those parents who disapproved of spanking had a different informational assumption that corporal punishment had harmful psychological and physical effects on the child. However, when presented with manipulated "research information" advocating the opposite of what the parents believed would be true, many parents either switched their original judgment or claimed that they would switch theirjudgment if they were certain that the opposite information was "in fact" true (see also Wainryb & Turiel, 1993, and Turiel, 1998, for further research examples).

INFORMATIONAL ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT CONTEXT: PERCEIVED DANGER IN CONTEXT How could the concept of informational assumptions pertain to reasoning about violence-prone school contexts? In research interviews I have conducted with hundreds of students, teachers, and parents, linkages between physical space and harm are often so strong that the mere mention of the specific school contexts (such as the playground or rest room) triggers a range of harm-oriented informational assumptions about the setting. These assumptions of potential harm are often supported by personal testimonials (storiesabout past violence, the way the area appears, warnings heard from others, etc.) that provide evidence for that person's informational assumptions of danger. Furthermore, there is research within several literatures supporting the notion that people perceive danger within specific locations. For example, within criminology, urban planning, architecture,and environmentalpsychology, there are studies that show that individuals make attributions of potential danger to physical locations. Studies conducted on the safety of women in urban areas, on college campuses (Day, 1994; Gardner, 1988,1989,1990; Gordon & Riger, 1989; Gordon, Riger, Lebailly, & Heath, 1980; Molidor & Tolman, 1998; Stein, 1995; Wekerle, 1980), and on environmental factors associated with violence (Goldstein, 1994; Greenberg, Rohe, & Williams, 1982; Newman, 1973, 1995; Perkins et al., 1992) have shown that the physical context is often an important component in people's perceptions of potential danger. Similarly, studies of victims and perpetrators suggest that violent events tend to cluster in specific urban and public spaces (Cisnernos, 1995; Fisher & Nasar, 1992; Goldstein, 1994; Gottfredson, 1985; Newman, 1973,1995). Although the perception of potential danger is not the same as moral judgments and reasoning, the estimation of

danger can be seen as an indirect proxy for estimations of potential harm within certain contexts. Findings from the literatures previously cited strongly suggest that individuals routinely attribute danger toward specific contexts (unprovokedphysical danger) and that various groups of individuals (male vs. female, aggressive vs. nonaggressive children) form differential risk assessments about specific contexts. Furthermore, these estimations of physical danger within contexts are conceptually similar to provocation and retribution situations described earlier, except that the person does not necessarily perceive real provocation. In the case of informational assumption about dangerous areas (or passing through a dangerous area), the individual behaves as if provocative immoral acts of harm are highly likely to occur. In those contexts, any slight behavioral cue may be interpreted as a provocation and the child may be primed for retribution or avoid the area as much as possible during risky times. Consequently, one important type of informational assumption about context is the belief that a generalized potential provocation or danger exists in certain locations. The assumption of harm appears to be closely associated with children's reasoning about provocation and retribution except that the information about harm is structured around the specific settings and the potential of provocative immoral behaviors within those settings, rather than about the. meaning of behaviors alone. Children may have these types of preexisting estimates of provocation toward particular school subsettings that influence their perceptions of sichool safety. These informational assumptions about violence-prone contexts could be best understood as estimations of the potential risk for physical harm. Through various sources of infomation, including their own experiences, students arrive at a belief that certain locations, during specific times, are linked with a higher likelihood of physical h a m either to themselves or to others in the school. Children's preexisting theories on context (informational assumptions) follow patterns of reasoning that can be examined by exploringtheir use of moral, social-conventional,and personal domains.For example, children may (a) condemn an area as being unsafe and focus on the fact that physical harm is highly likaly to occur in a specific area (reasoning from the moral domain), (b) focus on the lack of rules or punishments for those who engage in violent behavior (social-conventionalreasoning), (c) reason that conflict in those areas is the personal choice or preference of those in the fight (e.g., some children reason that fights are the personal prerogative of the participants when they occur after school and off school grounds-even if it is dn-ectly in front of the school; personal domain), or (d) combine various components of each domain in their reasoning about a place. In summary, the structure and nature of children's harm-oriented informational assumptions about violence-prone locations could also be examined using domain theory. As another example of how informational assumptions about danger in a context may influence reasoning about


MORAL REASONING ABOUT SCHOOL VIOL,ENCE

school violence, suppose a boy has heard from friends about harassment and violence that occurs in the school gym locker room. He may believe that this information is true and that the locker room is indeed a potentially risky place for himself or other students (moral and personal domains). He may have observed that there was no adult supervision in the locker room and that students rarely got punished for violent behaviors (social-conventional domain). These informational beliefs could influence his behavior and interpretation of events he may encounter within the locker room. For example, he may interpret an ambiguous stare from a student as a threat or provocation. Another boy who does not share this bdief that the locker room is dangerous or unsupervised may interpret the same stare in the locker room in an entirely different way. Hypothetically,if it were possible to convince those 1wo individuals that the other person's information ab~outthe locker room was in fact more correct, one could predict that each boy would alter his interpretation of those events and possibly his behavior. If a switch in reasoning and judgments occiurred between the two students, it could mean that it was the information believed to be true about the context that differed and not the individual's capacity to use moral reasoning.

INFORMATIONALASSUMPTIONS ABOUT UNDEFINED PUBLIC SPACE Research also suggests that some violence-prone locations have informationalassumptionsabout the lack of responsibility, ownership, and care of the space that, in turn, increase assumptions of provocation or danger. For example, Newman (1973, 1995) and otheirs (Cisneinos, 1995; Greenberg et al., 1982; Nasar & Jones, 1997; Newman & Franck, 1982; Perkins et al., 1992; Perkins et al., 1993) have proposed that estimations of potential danger in specific community contexts are associated with the perception that those specific areas have become undefined public space. Within these undefined areas, the social monitoring, physical upkeep, interpersonal care, andl personal human involvement are defined as outside the personal responsibility of community members. Studies have shown that undefined public locations within various contexts tend to be prone to viollence and that both children and adults tend to fear, avoid, or become hypervigilant (ready to respond to aggression) when they are in these undefined spaces (Cisnernos, 1995). I propose that many violence-prone areas within schools also fit Newman's concept of undefined physical space. CDD theory and methods could be used in future studies t~oexplore student and teacher assumptions of responsibility, care, and ownership of these violence-prone locations. Future studies should explore if there are undefined areas within the school community. If so, are the undefined areas also described as having informational assumptions about harm (e.g., places where unprovoked and provoked harm are likely to occur)? If specific school areas are perceived both as undefined and

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dangerous, one could predict that teachers and students would not have clear notions about whose moral, social, or personal responsibility it is to monitor, intervene, or follow up after violence occurs in those locations. This undefined responsibility associated with specific school spaces might decrease teachers' likelihood to intervene while increasing children's perceived need t~orely on personal strategies (as opposed to organizational procedures) such as retribution or avoidance of areas of those school contexts.

STUDENTS' ,AND TEACHERS' DIFFERENT UNIDERSTANDINGS OF VIOLENCE-PRONE SCHOOL SPACES: AN APPLICATION OF MORAL REASONING ABOUT CONTEXT Although most of this articne is devoted to children's understanding of context, how teachers think about different school spaces (reasoning from moral, social, or personal domains), along with their informational assumptions ab~outdanger and undefined space, may also influence the way students reason about and behave in violence-prone subconte:xts. Likewise, students' informational assumptions about the: school staffs response to aggression may influence their views about and behaviors in certain school subcontexts. One study explored the diverse views of violent subcontexts held by students and teachers (Astor, Meyer, & Behre, in press). Documenting the complexity of thought emerging from teachers and studentsis perhaps an important first step in creating a theory of how school violence is experienced and understood by students and teachers. I present this study as an example of how it is possible to examine both teachers' and students' diverse informational assumptionsabout school context.,and how CDD combined with the other concepts presented in this article can be used to compare and examine how teachers and students reason differently about the same violence:-prone school spaces. In Astor, Meyer, and 13ehre (in press), students and teachers in five high schools were provided with individual maps of their school (similar t~oa small blueprint) and asked two sets of questions. First, each participant was asked to identify (using small round stickers) where the worst violent events occurred during that scholol year. On the map j tself they were also asked to indicate who participated in the violent events (by grade and gender), when the event occurred (in the morning before classes, during cllass periods, transitions, lunch, recess, etc.), and their awareness of a response (if any) by the adults and peer group in the school. On a second map, children and teachers were asked to identify (using a color marker) areas they perceived as dangerous within the school. These areas could be locations they either avoided or feared because of potential violence. The participants were then interviewed, with their maps in hand, about the locations marked on the maps and their understanding of why these ar-

eas were violence-prone or dangerous (see Astor, Meyer, & Pitner, in press, for a detailed description of the mapping and interview process). Using this procedure it was possible to explore the informational assumptions of students and teachers about danger and undefined space within schools. Furthermore, it was possible to compare reasoning patterns of teachers and students by comparing their references to moral, social, and personal reasons when discussing these areas.


Students Data from the maps showed that violent events reported in each of the five schools were occurring in consistent locations, at consistent times of day, and with consistent groups of students. These events occurred mainly in hallways, playgrounds, lunchrooms, before and after school, and during transition periods when little or no adult monitoring was occurring. The second set of maps were used to identify unsafe areas in each school and were not necessarily associated with a specific behavioral event. These findings revealed that virtually all the children had specific areas they perceived as potentially unsafe or dangerous (although most were not willing to categorize the entire school as violent or unsafe). Overall, girls identified more dangerous locations than boys in all five schools. Based on the territories marked on their maps (and square footage in each of the buildings), it was estimated that 25% to 30% of school space during different times of the school day was considered unsafe by the girls (this accounted for almost all of the spaces that were not typically frequented by teaching staff). In contrast, boys marked only 10% to 20% of school space as unsafe during specific times of the school day. Based on the map data alone, it is possible to conclude that students perceived danger in very specific school contexts. The interview data explored why they thought these areas were dangerous. Data from the student interviews about the locations on the maps provided support for the hypothesis that the violence-prone areas were perceived both as dangerous (e.g., places where children would hurt one another without sufficient reasons to do so and places where children engaged in provocation and retribution -justifications from moral domain) and undefined spaces (places where school staff or students did not take responsibility and respond to acts of physical harm or provocation-social-conventional reasons). It is important to note that most students used both moral and social-conventional reasoning when referring to locations marked on their maps. Students recognized that both the perpetrators and the school staff were responsible for the potential danger in those settings. However, they reasoned that the school staff was more accountable because they were professionally responsible for maintaining the school and its climate. Students mentioned that the social response of the school staff was inconsistent when violent situations occurred in un-

defined places. In fact, poor monitoring by adults with little authority or very few adults supervisinglarge numbers of students were also the primary explanations given for the existence of violence-prone contexts. Most students harshly judged their teachers' lack of response in undefined locations because they thought that teachers cared mainly about student behavior only when it occurred within the physical space of the classroom during the academic period when the teacher was teaching. Outside of that space, students felt that teachers (as a group) would not respond consistently unless they were assigned monitoring duty. For some students, the teachers' differential response associated with different subcontexts was evidence that teachers only cared about students' safety in areas where it was their professionalrole to care. Many students expressed beliefs that they were on their own when they entered hallways, playgrounds, and other violence-prone contexts. These informational assumptions regarding the inconsistent responses of teachers in undefined spaces influenced some students' beliefs that they must respond to provocation swiftly and harshly to prevent future provocations. Students felt that merely placing adults who were not part of the mission of the school in these locations did not necessarily increase monitoring and supervision. That is, temporary security guards, part-time yard monitors, substitute teachers, and community volunteers were not consideredto be good alternatives compared with teacher monitors who knew the children and were part of the normal day-to-day academic functioning of the school. Many students expressed their disapproval of teachers who chose not to become involved in securing areas that were known to be dangerous. Consequently, students not only had informational assumptions about danger in context, but informational assumptions about the staff's lack of responsibilityin those contexts. These assumptions were associated with moral judgments about the teachers' overall moral obligation to intervene regardless of where the violence occurs.Finally, without acoherlent system of justice (e.g., consistentintervention,punishment, consequences, follow-up with victims and perpetrators) in violence-prone areas, many students justified retribution as a necessary deterrent for future provocation and as a form of reciprocaljustice. The next section describes results for the teachers in our study.

Teachers The teachers had different views from the students regarding the role of the teacher in violence-prone subcontexts. On their individual maps, the teachers identified the same dangerous areas as the students within each school. Interviews with teachers also suggested that these spaces were associated with informational assumptions of danger and undefined responsibility. Overall, teachers were very distressed by student violence and the existence of violence-prone locations


MIORALREASONING ABOUT SCHOOL VIOLENCE

within the school. When talking about student fights, teachers referred to the physical and psychological pain suffered by students in those areas (references to moral components). However, for the majority of teachers, the responsibility to monitor student behaviors within these specific areas was described as outside the sphere of their formal role as teacher (social-conventionalreasons). Within these locations, teachers expressed uncertainty about their professional mandate and obligation to stop violence between students (informational assumptionsregarding undefined space and their role). For most teachers, violence in undefined spaces raised a combination of moral, social, and personal dilemmas surrounding whose role it was to prevent or intervene with violence. Teachers saw their primary role as teaching subject matter within the walls of the classroom during their classroom period (see Grossman & Stodolsky, 1995). Hence, although teachers appear to have had detailed-information about potential harm in specific areas during specific times, they did not see the monitoring or control of such violence-prone subcontexts as part of their professional role or purpose. Furthermore, teachers often referred to a lack of school policy or guidelines surrounding violence-prone areas, alack of professional and personal support from tlhe principal, and the potential of legal threats by parents (without the support of the school) as explanations for why they did not frequent dangerous areas (social-conventional references). They also mentioned concerns about being harmed by students (personal and moral references) if they became active in preventing violence in undefined and dangerous spaces. However, the teachers' ambivalenceswere most often associated with informational assumptions pertaining to their professional role within specific locations or times. The issues raised by this teacher were fairly common: I can't tell you how many fights I see right outside the school gate here [he points to school gates], students beating the: crap out of each other, just in front of my office. So what am I supposed to do? If I decide to go out there and break it up, will the vice principal and principal support me, or will they [the students] be back out there 15 minutes after I bring them to the office? If I'm hit when I'm stopping a fight off of school grounds, are they [administrators] going to tell me that I shouldn't be getting into it because it's happening after school or are they going to support me? If a fight happens in the gym I'd pull the kids apart in two seconds and they'd be suspended. But am I supposed to do it all the time? Even when it is outside the school? Maybe? If I could depend on the principal I'd be out there every day. Personally, I think the students can't do it without the teachers and the teachers can't do it without the support of the principal. (Male high school physical education teacher)

This teacher's reasoning process demonstrates that his judgments are not attributable to a global moral reasoning deficit or a lack of care (i.e., Noddings, 1992, 199.5). This teacher recognized that it was wrong for fights to occur be-

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tween students (for moral reasons). However, due to the social complexity of the school context, his ambivalence centered ,wound "whose professnond role it was" to stop fights within a~very specific area (and time) and his belief that administration would not support such an intervention within that tim~eframe and location. This particular teacher claimed that he would not have any ambivalence about intervening had the act occurred on school grounds during his gym classes. For this teacher, the social-conventionalassumptions pertaining to his role and administrative support outweighed his moral concerns regarding physical harm to children, only when the aggression occurred in undefined spa~ces. Examining both teachers' and students' reasoning helped to provide further explanations as to why some teachers were considered more effective in preventing fights. A handful of teachers, identified by students and administrators as exceptionally "caring" teachers, expressed the belief that all school territories were part of their professional role and responsibility. However, even these teachers framed the obligation to intervene as a personal moral choice (due to the possibility of personal harm directed at the teacher) and refused to generalize responsibility to all school staff or as part of an overarching school policy. For example, It's really no mystery. We've got serious serious hallway problems. Some of the teachers are just too afraid to do anything about fights because if you've taken a lalok around, some of our students are larger and stronger than we are and who knows maybe they have weapons or friends with weapons. The girls are just as dangerous as the boys-I think. I don't blame the teachers who just won't get involved-you can't mandate to professionals what you feel inside. You see, I don't want to get hurt, but I feel that I have no ch~oice[about stopping a fight]. If I see a fight and someone is getting badly hurt. even if I don't know 'them, I have to stop it or get someone who can stop it. If I didn't, how can I expect my students to respect me and how can I look at myself in the mirror the next morning. (Female high school English teacher)

Even thatugh this teacher focused mainly on the moral issue of preventing physical harm between students, she was also very aware of the potenb~alfor personal hanm. She recognized that other teachers face the same dilemma (moral vs. personal) and chose to allow teachers to make a personal choice. Even so, one might guess by her comments that she would prefer intervention to nonintervention. Consequently, teachers recognized issues surroundingthe violence from all three domains but some focuse:dmore on social-conventional components whereas others focused more on personal or moral issues. However, the majority of teachers focused more on social organizational issues (i.e., the example of the first teacher) that overrode the moral concerns only in undefined places and times (but not oth~erplaces and times). By contrast, a minority of teachers focused mainly on the moral issues (the second teacher example) and did not consider social organizational and personal concerns as pri-


mary issues forjustifying their own judgments. As mentioned earlier, student perceptions of potential provocation within undefined contexts were connected to their beliefs regarding the adult monitoring of these locations. Some students mentioned that the lack of organizational response surrounding school fights increased their willingness to aggress (when provoked) in those contexts, and other students avoided the context altogether. This study was conductedin a high school. One would predict very different transactions between informational assumptions and locations when comparing elementary school teachers and students and middle or high school groups. Future studies on children's and teachers' informational assumptions of violence and undefined space in elementary, middle, and high schools would be helpful. Because elementary school teachers teach a variety of subjects to the same group of children, one might predict that teachers have different informationalassumptions about the physical space of the school and their willingness to intervene. In an elementary school, teachers may be more child centered and thus see more spaces within the school as part of their professional responsibility. Thus, they may be more apt to prevent or intervene in school fights. In middle and high schools, teachers may be more subject-matter oriented and therefore perceive their workplace as the classroom space. Studies exploring how sixth-grade students and teachers in elementary schools versus sixth-grade students and teachers in middle schools understand school fights could highlight the role of the school context. One would predict more undefined spaces in middle and high school and more area perceived by students and teachers as prone to violence.

SUMMARY, IMPLICATIONS, AND DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH In this article, I have suggested how a synthesis between CDD theory and other concepts such as undefined space and perceived danger could be used to conduct future research on how students, teachers, and principals understand violence-prone school subcontexts. Furthermore, the exploration of children's moral reasoning about violent school contexts could expand CDD theory in new directions. For example, CDD theory and research can be applied to explore how teachers and students understand school fights in violence-prone school contexts. A CDD approach is potentially useful because it provides a way to document how children and teachers organize their thinking about multiple, complex, social aspects of school fights. It can also be used to test the underlying theoretical assumptions of social-cognitive deficits present in many popular cognitive-based school violence interventions. In summary, in this article I introduced concepts that could further the development of CDD theory and school violence research on children's understanding of violence-prone

school contexts. The following major points highlight several central arguments I put forth here. However, these major points should be treated as empirically generated working theoretical hypotheses rather than empirical certitudes. As with all theoretical hypotheses, they need to be tested, replicated, refined, and expanded on by future studies. 1. Schools have many distinct subcontexts. Within undefined spaces, both children and teachers will reason about violent events using combinations of moral, social, and personal reasoning. When violence is unprovoked, contexts are not a major component in children's judgments and reasoning. Most children will condemn the unprovokedviolence using moral reasoning. When situations are provoked, context plays an influential role in reasoning and judgments. There will be greater variation in domains referred to by children in situations involving provocation and retribution. Differences in reasoning and judgments among individuals and groups are attributable, in part, to different reasoning processes within different situations rather than social-cognitive deficits. 2. Various school groups have informationalassumptions regarding school locations that influence their reasoning and behaviors. Informational assumptions assigned to subcontexts include attributions of potential danger and undefined space. These types of harm-oriented assumptionscan either increase or decrease retribution and avoidance behaviors of different school constituents when they reason about aggression in different school contexts. Aggressive and nonaggressive children view these locations in very different ways. Furthermore, other distinct groups involved in the dynamics of school violence (e.g., bullies and victims, boys and girls, teachers and students, older students and younger students, various ethnic groups, etc.) have systematic (andpossibly differing) informational assumptions regarding potential harm in certain school spaces that influence their reasoning and judgments about violence in those locations. These informational assumptions about potential violence also influence their own behaviors related to those settings. 3. The relation between teachers' informational assumptions toward violence-prone locations may influence how students view violent events in those same locations. For example, if teachers do not perceive certain school areas as part of their professional responsibility to monitor or to intervene in, some children may believe that there is not an effective justice system within undefined areas, and therefore approve of retribution as a form of reciprocaljustice. Teachers recognize a wide range of moral, social, and personal aspects of school violence. Although teachers recognize the moral implications of violence in school settings, they tend to focus more on social-conventionalissues of organizationalsupport, professional role definition, and legal liability, especially when violence occurs within undefined spaces. It is important to note that many teachers also mention the potential for personal harm as a reason for not being more active in vio-


MIORALREASONING ABOUT SCHOOL VIOLENCE

lence-prone and undefined areas. A greater understanding of the social-organizationaland personal harm issues confronting teachers may lead to school policies or interventions that allow teachers to become more engaged in preventing school violence in undefined areas. High school teachers' reasoning about their role in preventing violence is highly dependent on the subcontext in which the violence occurred and the informational assumption they have about their role in that location. There may be great drfferences in how elementary school, middle school, and high school teachers view their roles in violence-prone areas. Future research shoulid compare how children and teachers in elementary, middle, and high schools reason about violence-prone school spaces. 4. The possibility that children assume danger in specific school contexts also rakes concerns about how chlldren who are repeated victims of aggression understand those contexts. Would assumptions of dlanger in these contexts increase the avoidance of certain areas by children who are potential victims of aggression? If so, fear of context may decrease the amount of school space children physically occupy through their development (as suggestedby Astor, Meyer, & Behre, in press). This may affect some children's socioemotional growth and mental health by limiting their experiences in school. Studies on these issues are needed for a clearer picture of how harm assumptions toward subcontexts influence members of the school community who are potential victims of violence. There may be practical implications based on these concepts. If areas within schools are seen as undefined and dangerous, context-focused interventions could be deveIoped to reclaim or redefine the social dynamics within those locations. These kinds of interventions, targeting "hot spots" of violence, are credited with a reduction of crime iin many high-crime urban locations ~(Cisnernos,1995; see also the popular media, Bragg, 1995; Herbert, 1997; Walsh, 1997). Furthermore, if students reason that hallway fights are due to a combination of peer provocaticm and a lack of supervision or monitoring (moral ar~dso~ial-conventionalreasons), current popular intervention strategies based on the acontexual assumption of deficits in communication skills, conflict management skills, and moral reasoning slulls may continue to produce poor and inconsistent research outcomes (Caie et al., 1991; Guesra & Tolan, 1994; Pepler, King, & Byrd, 1991; Prothrow-Stith, 1987).Finally, if teachers view social organizational issues and personal harm issues as major obstacles to their involvement and ownershipin undefined locations, then it is possible to initiate policies and procedures that address these concerns. Research on the following questions could further the development of the concepts presented in this article. Future studies should explore (a) how students and teachers balance the various moral, social, and personal components when confronted with fights within violence-prone locations; (b) how aggressive and nonaggressive children reason about the

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role of teach~ersand peers within these contexts (c) how specific groups attribute moral provocation and danger to spaces encountered across development; (d) how chronic victims reason about the moral, social, and personal issues surrounding violence-prone contexts: and (e) how students reason about the role of peer witnesses to fights in specific school contexts. In conclusion,Lewin (1935, p. 73) posited that behavior is equal to the function of the person within the environment (the classic, B =APE]). The: call for more research on the physical and social contexts of children's development is not new. Bronfenbrenner (1979) urged developmentalpsychologists to better conceptualizethe meaning of context for developing children. When discussing empirical studies prior to 1979, he stated, the data in these studies consist to)an overwhelming degree of information not about the setting from which the persons come but about the characteristics of the persons themselves, that is, how peoples from diverse contexts differ from one another. (p. 16)

How chlldren understand violent behavior within school subcontexts remains an unde:rexplored area of research. The application of CDD theory to children's understanding of school fights could contribute to a developing literature on the contexts of school violence. Overall, it is hoped that the ideas presented in this article will facilitate more research and dialogue in this direction.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This article was supported, in part, by an National Institute of Mental Health grant, a Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellowship, and a SpencerlNational Academy of Educatioln Fellowship. Special thanks to Sheva Locke, Heather Meyar, Ron Pitner, William Behre, Rami Benbenishty, Robert Roeser, and an anonymousreviewer for their helpful comments Ion this article.

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