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Ron Avi Astor Richard M. and Ann L. Thor Professor of Urban Social Development Professor Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, 1991 M.A. University of California, Berkeley, 1989 M.A. Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles, 1985 M.S.W. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 1985 B.A. California State University, Northridge, 1983 rastor@usc.edu http://www.ijvs.org/index.php Download Curriculum Vitae |
| RON AVI ASTOR holds joint appointments in the USC School of Social Work and USC Rossier School of Education. His work examines the role of the physical, social-organizational and cultural contexts in schools related to different kinds of school violence (e.g., sexual harassment, bullying, school fights, emotional abuse, weapon use, teacher/child violence). His quantitative studies have included over 75,000 students, teacher, parents and administrators. Over the past 10 years, findings from these studies have been published in more than 90 scholarly manuscripts.
This work has documented the ecological influences of the family, community, school and culture on different forms of school violence. His book, School Violence in Context: Culture, Neighborhood, Family, School, and Gender, which was published in 2005 by Oxford University Press along with his close colleague Rami Benbenishty from Hebrew University, has been described by leading scholars in psychology, social work and education as the most comprehensive theoretically and empirically sound study of school violence conducted to date. The American Psychological Association recognized the contribution of the book with the William James Book Award in 2006, followed by the American Educational Research Association awarding Dr. Astor and his colleagues a Distinguished Research Award in Human Development. Dr. Astor has also developed a school mapping and local monitoring procedure that can be used with students and teachers to generate "grassroots" solutions to safety problems. The mapping procedure has received several international awards including the American Educational Research Association's prestigious Palmer O. Johnson Award for best research article in 2000. The mapping and monitoring procedure is used in schools across the globe including Los Angeles and Tel Aviv. Along with colleagues at Hebrew University, Dr. Astor continues to conduct studies on the epidemiology of school violence in different cultures, the effects of stereotyping on the approval of violence across development in different cultures and democracy-oriented intervention studies that promote student and teacher participation to achieve school safety. The findings of these studies have been widely cited in the international media in the United States and Israel. In addition, Dr. Astor conducts social psychological research on how children's reasoning about justice in family, school and peer contexts affects their approval of violent behavior. In his work with children, he proposes that more aggressive students have detailed and consistent personal-social theories that justify, in their own minds, why they are being aggressive. Some of these justifications come from cultural, historical and interpersonal experiences that are often described by the child. His research indicates that highly aggressive students commonly believe they are perpetual victims of social injustices and that they are morally right to correct injustices through violent acts aimed at specific individuals or groups connected to the social injustices. Most children are quite sophisticated in their thinking and condemn violent retribution, basically ignoring stereotypes of the "other" group when reasoning about the retribution. His work has been funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health, H.F. Guggenheim Foundation, National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation, William T. Grant Foundation, Israeli Ministry of Education, a Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellowship, University of Michigan, USC and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. |
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