Theses and Dissertations

Date of Award

2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Abraham S. Fischler College of Education

Advisor

Deeb Paul Kitchen

Committee Member

Roberta Silfen

Keywords

active shooter, firearms, gun control, mass shootings, rampage shooter

Abstract

This applied dissertation focused on the attitudes of teachers, administrators, and parents towards teachers carrying handguns in middle schools. This qualitative study will illustrate the perceptions of specific middle school stakeholders and their views on the issue of middle school teachers carrying guns on school grounds. The lack of research about teachers carrying handguns in schools can be detrimental to informing policymakers and school officials when deciding to allow teachers to carry firearms on campus. Arming teachers has become a phenomenon of interest with many high stakeholders, but to understand the logic behind arming teachers, a historical timeline of school shootings, gun control, and armed school resource officers were included in the literature.

The researcher developed an interview protocol with questions for specific stakeholders about the phenomenon of armed teachers. The interview questions included questions that facilitated the researcher in exploring the personal opinions of teachers, administrators, and parents to understand their feelings towards this occurrence. The interview questions also assisted in the investigation of the views of the impacts teachers carrying handguns can have on the school climate.

An analysis of the data will be conducted to identify common themes between the participants' views. The discovered themes will assist the researcher in providing data to policymakers and other stakeholders about the opinions of people who are impacted closely by arming middle school teachers.

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