Feeling Safe in School

Jonathan Cohen and Dorothy L. Espelage, two leading authorities in the fields of school climate and prevention science, have gathered experts from around the globe to highlight policy and practice recommendations for supporting children and adolescents to feel and be safe in school.

Featuring analysis and commentaries from experts in public health, psychology, and school improvement, Feeling Safe in School addresses social, emotional, and intellectual aspects of safety as well as physical safety. The experts offer candid and unique insights into the way eleven different countries view and define what it means to feel safe in school, the types of goals and strategies that are being used to promote safety, and whether and how measures are being used to gauge progress.

Interest in supporting the physical as well as the social and emotional safety of students as a prerequisite for learning and healthy development is now a global phenomenon. Feeling Safe in School adds to the understanding of the possibilities for increasing student safety by examining the experiences of other countries that are tackling this issue.
About the Author: Jonathan Cohen is copresident of the International Observatory for School Climate and Violence Prevention and cofounder and President Emeritus of the National School Climate Center. A practicing clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, he is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Psychology and Education (Clinical Psychology) at Teachers College, Columbia University; a member of the Council for Distinguished Scientists at the Aspen Institutes' National Commission on Social, Emotional and Academic Development; a member of the Educational Advisory Council for Character. org; and a Diplomat in Clinical Psychology with the American Board of Professional Psychology. He has also served as a consultant to the World Bank, UNICEF's Child Friendly Schools Program, and a growing number of educational ministries around the world.

Cohen is the author of more than a hundred peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and briefs, as well as five books. Two of his books have been awarded the American Library Association's Choice for an Outstanding Academic Book Award, Educating Minds and Hearts: Social Emotional Learning and the Passage into Adolescence (Teachers College Press, 1999) and Caring Classrooms/Intelligent Schools: The Social Emotional Learning of Young Children (Teachers College Press, 2001).

Dorothy L. Espelage is the William C. Friday Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A fellow of the American Psychological Science Association (APA) and the American Educational Research Association, she is the recipient of the APA's Lifetime Achievement Award in Prevention Science and the 2016 Award for Distinguished Contributions to Research in Public Policy.

Espelage has authored more than 170 peer-reviewed articles, five edited books, and seventy chapters on bullying, homophobic teasing, sexual harassment, dating violence, and gang violence. Her research focuses on translating empirical findings into prevention and intervention programming. She advises members of Congress on bully prevention legislation and conducts regular webinars for the Centers for Disease Control, National Institutes of Health (NIH), and National Institute of Justice. She authored a 2011 White House brief on bullying among LGBTQ youth and attended the White House Conference in 2011. She has also been a consultant on the stopbullying.gov website and consultant to the National Anti-Bullying Campaign, Health Resources and Services Administration in the US Department of Health and Human Services and has presented multiple times at the Federal Partnership to End Bullying Summit and Conference. Espelage is a consultant to the NIH Pathways to Prevention Initiative to address bullying and youth suicide.