Newswise — In light of the recent school shootings in which 10 people were killed by a student at Red Lake High School in Minnesota, the following faculty experts from Teachers College, Columbia University, are available to discuss school violence and conflict issues in schools.
Marla R. Brassard, Associate Professor of Psychology and Education, studies psychological aggression in the teacher-student and peer relationships and its impact on children's functioning. She is now completing a Spencer foundation funded longitudinal study, entitled, "Modifiable risk factors for aggression in middle schools" Clinically, she has worked in a prison, preschool, schools, and clinics with disabled, maltreated and other troubled children and youth. Additional areas of expertise include psychological and educational assessment (especially preschool, early adolescence, parent-child, adult learning disabilities, death penalty mitigation) and diagnosis and intervention planning. She has taught courses and supervised practica in the university clinic in this area for over 20 years.
John Broughton, Associate Professor of Psychology and Education, is an expert in cultural studies, education and violence, masculinity and war, unconscious fantasies about technology, youth subcultures, cinema as educator, and the achievement gap in Humanities/Arts. Selected published works by Professor Broughton are: Critical Theories of Psychological Development (Plenum Press); "Smart weapons and military TV" (Technoscience and Cyberculture); "The experience of the father" (Insights); "Hollywood ultraviolence as educator" (Psychoanalysis and Education); "What the transgender child teaches us." (Bank Street College Occasional Papers).
Peter Coleman, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Education, is Director of International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (ICCCR), continuing the work of Morton Deutsch, a pioneer in the study of intergroup relations, conflict resolution, social conformity and the social psychology of justice. In his role as Director, Coleman works to bring conflict resolution skills to schools and others in the community in an effort to teach people to resolve conflicts more constructively as a preventive strategy for reducing violence. Through the Center's work with groups from pre-school and elementary school to adolescents and adults, all levels of the system are touched upon to help the schools create a peaceful culture throughout the environment. Coleman's scholarly interests include: the conditions required for fostering constructive change in situations of protracted and intractable conflict; and, the psychological processes and social conditions which foster the use of constructive social power. Coleman is out of the country until the week of 10-9-2006.
Professor Elizabeth Midlarsky has clinical training in both psychodynamic and social learning approaches. Her research and scholarly interests include gender and racial differences in mental health health-seeking, altruism and aggression through the life-span, gender roles, and helping behavior as a means for coping with stress. She is currently working on a project concerning school violence. Current applications of her interest in helping include investigations of the effects on mental health of helping during the Holocaust, among older adults, and in families of children with disabilities.
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