LESSONS LEFT TO LEARN: A SCHOOL SHOOTING CASE STUDY by Barbara-Jane Paris M.Ed. A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Council of Texas State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy with a Major in School Improvement May 2019 Committee Members: Melissa Martinez, Chair Barry Aidman Sarah Baray Bergeron Harris COPYRIGHT by Barbara-Jane Paris 2019 FAIR USE AND AUTHOR’S PERMISSION STATEMENT Fair Use This work is protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States (Public Law 94-553, section 107). Consistent with fair use as defined in the Copyright Laws, brief quotations from this material are allowed with proper acknowledgement. Use of this material for financial gain without the author’s express written permission is not allowed. Duplication Permission As the copyright holder of this work I, Barbara-Jane Paris, authorize duplication of this work, in whole or in part, for educational or scholarly purposes only. DEDICATION This study is dedicated to Nicole Hadley (1983-1997), Jessica James (1979-1997), and Kayce Steger (1982-1997). All were victims of the 1997 Heath High School shooting. More than that, they were young, bright teenagers with lives yet to be lived. If there are lessons to be learned from this study, may they add wisdom to our collective understanding of how to protect the children we serve in our schools. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Bill Bond experienced every school administrator’s salient nightmare, a school shooting. The event, which lasted only eight minutes, left three dead and five injured. While it may only have been a brief moment in time, the effects have reached far beyond anything we could have predicted all those years ago. For the past twenty years, Mr. Bond has committed his time and energy to helping policy makers and school leaders create safe schools for our children, and yet in early 2018 an eerily similar incident occurred at a school barely 33 miles away in Marshall County, KY. Mr. Bond (or Billy Jack as he would tell you) was able, one last time, to get past his deep and abiding sadness that this might happen again. He was able to dig into the recesses of everything he has set aside in retirement to peel back the layers of what happened at Heath High School in the hope of helping other school leaders. I have heard him say many times, “I don’t know if it will do any good, but it won’t do any harm”. I believe two things of his contribution to this study: one that it will unequivocally bring new learning to our understanding of school leaders and their role in school safety, and two, that we must always remember never to judge a person’s entire career by the chapter we walked in on. This study may not have been undertaken, and most certainly not completed, were it not for the encouragement of my committee members, especially my chair Dr. Martinez. In the years since I began, I never imagined a series of equally devastating school shootings would take place and cause me to pause and wonder if my work would still be relevant. With each new horror story, the landscape of school safety would shift, v escalate, and stall. Dr. Martinez empowered me to sift through the rhetoric and focus on that which I believed then and still believe – we know the world of school better by each story we are told about it. Last, but decidedly not least, I owe a debt of gratitude to my entire family. My husband, children, grandchildren and even my 92 year old father sent me back to my computer a thousand times. “If there are lessons left to learn” he would say, “then you had best sit down and learn them”. So I did. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................v LIST OF TABLES ...............................................................................................................x LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... xi ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... xiii CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY...................................................................1 Background: Begin with “Why?” ................................................................1 Statement of the Problem .............................................................................3 Epistemology: Critical Realism .................................................................12 Positionality ...............................................................................................16 Research Questions ....................................................................................21 Challenges Within the Study .....................................................................22 Overview of Methodology .........................................................................25 Significance of the Study ...........................................................................32 Key Terms ..................................................................................................33 Organization of the Remainder of the Study .............................................37 II. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ...................................................................39 Introduction ................................................................................................39 Critical Realism as a guide to the literature review ........................40 Sociology: An Immanent Critique .............................................................41 Social disintegration........................................................................42 Pop culture, violence, and video games ..........................................44 Media, politics, and moral panic .....................................................46 A Political agenda ...........................................................................50 Bullying...........................................................................................55 A question of identity......................................................................58 Psychology: A Minefield ...........................................................................60 Mental health ..................................................................................61 Intersection of psychology studies and community .......................63 vii Risk factors ....................................................................................66 Leakage: Breaking the code of silence ..........................................72 The Scholar-Practitioner Conundrum ........................................................74 Outlier Theories .........................................................................................78 Contagion (copycat) ........................................................................80 The Leader at Work: Prevention, Preparedness, and Response .................83 Threat assessment ..........................................................................83 Integrated Theoretical Framework .............................................................86 Conclusion .................................................................................................90 III. METHODOLOGY ..........................................................................................93 Epistemological Underpinnings .................................................................93 Case Study Approach and Data Sources ....................................................94 Interviews ...................................................................................................97 Guiding Principles of the Data Collection Process ....................................99 Data Analysis ...........................................................................................100 Cycle 1: open coding ...................................................................101 Cycle 2: focused coding ...............................................................103 Cycle 3: axial coding ...................................................................106 Cycle 4: thematic coding .............................................................108 Validation Strategies ................................................................................110 Triangulation ................................................................................112 Self-disclosure, rapport, and reciprocity ......................................113 Delimitations and Limitations of the Study .............................................114 An Introduction to Heath High School, West Paducah, KY .....................116 An Endnote ...............................................................................................117 IV RESULTS .......................................................................................................119 Transcript Excerpt: The Shooting ............................................................120 Theme 1: Leadership in Crisis .................................................................131 Experience or intelligence? .........................................................131 Bill Bond: The person .................................................................134 Authentic leadership ...................................................................137 Lessons Left to Learn ...............................................................................139