Abstract: Lights, Cameras, Police Action: Support for Target-Hardening Among School Social Workers (Society for Social Work and Research 31st Annual Conference)

Schedule:

Friday, January 22, 2027

Golden Gate 4 (Hilton San Francisco Union Square)

* noted as presenting author

Sawyer Hogenkamp, MEd, Doctoral Student, University of California, Los Angeles, CA

Ron Astor, PhD, Professor, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA

Dorothy L. Espelage, PhD, Professor, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Frank C. Worrell, PhD, Professor, University of California, Berkeley, CA

Eric M. Anderman, PhD, Professor, Ohio State University, OH

Susan D. McMahon, PhD, Professor, DePaul University, IL

Andrew Martinez, PhD, Principal Research Associate, Center for Justice Innovation, NY

Linda A. Reddy, PhD, Professor, Rutgers University, NJ

Background and Purpose

School social workers are trained in trauma-informed care, de-escalation, and evidence-based prevention strategies designed to minimize harm and support healthy child development. These approaches clash with punitive, security-oriented approaches to school safety, such as policing, surveillance, and the presence of armed educators. Although prior research suggests that teachers and other school staff may endorse hardening measures in response to these conditions (Wood & Hampton, 2021), less is known about how social workers, whose professional values often position them in opposition to such approaches, conceptualize school safety in practice. In this study, we examined how social workers reconcile these tensions, with particular attention to how their experiences with violence shape their safety preferences and policy recommendations.

Methods

This study asks, “How do school social workers articulate prevention strategies, responses, and policy recommendations related to school safety,” and “how do their recommendations align with, resist, or complicate hardening (e.g., policing, security measures) and softening (e.g., relational, mental health supports) approaches”?

We analyzed qualitative data obtained through open-ended survey responses from a national sample of 203 school social workers collected during the 2022–2023 school year. Abductive coding was guided by theoretical distinctions between hardening and softening approaches, and capturing emergent emotional responses to violence, moral tensions, and critiques of existing practices (Braun & Clarke, 2021). Qualitative themes were compared across levels of victimization, school climate, and demographic characteristics.

Results: Major Themes

Theme 1: A prominent theme was a perceived lack of leadership support. Social workers frequently criticized school and district responses to both severe incidents of violence and ongoing, disruptive student behaviors, describing feeling unsupported in both crisis and routine scenarios. Social workers who had experienced more victimization critiqued school leadership for not delivering proportional consequences for students or standing up to demanding families.

Theme 2: Participants endorsed multiple types of intervention, some evidence-based and some from a hardening perspective. Evidence-informed suggestions included multi-tiered, prevention-oriented strategies grounded in trauma-informed approaches. These perspectives frequently coexisted with support for hardening measures, including increased security and the presence of police in schools.

Conclusions and Implications

Findings highlight persistent role conflict as social workers navigate tensions between professional training and the realities of school environments where law-enforcement security measures are normalized. Without clear leadership and prioritization of safety, social workers may turn toward enforcement-oriented approaches out of fear and their own feelings of being unsafe. Future research should examine how trauma-informed and security-oriented approaches interact in practice, how hardening and policing counter evidence-based efficacy, and whether they can be integrated to improve both safety and school climate.

Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2021). Thematic analysis: A practical guide. SAGE.

Wood, B. J., & Hampton, E. (2021). The Influence of School Resource Officer Presence on Teacher Perceptions of School Safety and Security. School Psychology Review, 50(2–3), 360–370.