Dewey Cornell

Keynote session from the World Anti-Bullying Forum 2021 in Stockholm by Dewey Cornell.

School Threat Assessment to Help Distressed Students and Prevent Violence.

Many of the students who carried out homicidal attacks at their schools were victims of bullying. Our research group has studied the use of the Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines by school-based multidisciplinary teams to identify and support distressed students who have threatened violence. CSTAG training is equally effective across disciplines of school administration, school mental health, and law enforcement. Over the course of six controlled studies, we have found that schools using this approach are able to resolve student threats safely and effectively without resorting to school expulsion or legal prosecution. Schools using CSTAG have reductions in bullying and teachers report feeling safer. There were no disparities among Black, Hispanic, and White students who received a threat assessment in school suspension, transfer, expulsion, or legal actions. CSTAG is being used in thousands of schools across the U.S. and Canada.

Dewey Cornell is Professor of Education at the University of Virginia, USA

Dr. Cornell first became concerned about the problem of bullying in 1984 when he evaluated a teenage boy who murdered a classmate who had verbally and socially bullied him. Dr. Cornell’s subsequent work at the University of Virginia focused on the development of better methods to identify victims of bullying and to measure school climate conditions that affect the prevalence and impact of peer aggression.