The article titled “School Shootings as Organizational Deviance” by Cybelle Fox and David Harding is found in the Sociology of Education journal. Fox and Harding argue that rampage school shootings in American public schools can be understood as instances of organizational deviance. Organizational deviance occurs when organizations do not conform to their goals and expectations, especially anti-bullying policy and awareness, which produces unanticipated and harmful outcomes. The topic of this research is the role of the school administration to recognize troubled and bullied teens to prevent future violence. The proposed research question is, “What role do teachers, administrators, and counselors play in intervention of troubled teenage boys, looking specifically at the schools of Heath and Westside?” “Does an inability to recognize the social and emotional problems of teenage boys by school staff increase the likelihood of future violent rampages?” Fox and Harding draw on qualitative case studies of two schools that experienced shootings to show the ways in which the organizational structure, environment, and culture of these schools led to a lack of recognition of socially and emotionally troubled teenage boys. The researchers aim to understand the causes of each shooting, suggest measures to prevent school shootings, and to understand how the communities were affected by these events. The type of data needed to answer this research question are acts/behaviors/events and reports of acts/behaviors/events. The data collection method involves fieldwork such as participant observation and interviews with the community members. Once the tape-recorded formal interviews were transcribed, in combination with notes from observations, the researchers analyze the data through thematic analysis. Coding is then utilized to sort out the discovered patterns to find underlying themes. This research successfully calls for a policy change to provide teachers with better training on the warning signs of students with social and emotional problems. It is an interesting fact that schools tend to center their focus on students with overt and disruptive behavioral and academic problems, rather than students suffering with social and emotional issues. The teachers must communicate their concerns with one another so that students with social and emotional problems can be identified and receive the guidance they need.

Fox, C., & Harding, D. J. (2005). School Shootings as Organizational Deviance. Sociology of       Education, 78(1), 69-97.