Student Aggression and Teacher-Related Trauma

Date of Award

Fall 12-8-2023

Document Type

Project (696 or 796 registration)

Degree Name

Master of Science in Special Education

Department

Graduate Studies

Committee Chair

Marci Glessner

Keywords

Teacher Trauma, Student Aggression, Violence

Abstract

Teaching has changed, especially since the coronavirus pandemic. An area of teaching that has also changed, yet is not often discussed, is the increased awareness and numbers of incidents of violence, including violence toward educational staff. In a recent study of 138 Minnesota districts (40% of the districts in the state) student-related injuries made up 26% of the workers’ compensation claims with 8% resulting in lost work time (Schofield et al., 2019). According to Gerberich et al. (2014) and Schofield et al. (2019), special education teachers and paraprofessionals are at an even higher risk of being injured than other educational staff.

Almost every day a teacher will be disrespected somehow by a student – these types of problematic student behavior can be categorized into three categories: harassment, property offenses and physical offenses (McMahon et al. (2014). Sometimes these behaviors are minor, but at others an incident can result into a major, life-changing event. My capstone project describes data regarding student aggression, strategies for educators to use to de-escalate situations before aggression occurs, and the story of how one September day and one incident of physical aggression changed my whole life and caused ongoing trauma.

Abstract only: No full text available.

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