Rami Benbenishty

Rami Benbenishty / School climate, bullying and violence

School climate, bullying and violence

Ways to measure how safe students feel at school, and to turn those measurements into action.

Research interests and projects

Monitoring school climate and violence

Rami and Ron Avi Astor built an approach in which schools, districts and national agencies regularly collect students' and staff's reports, and use them to match interventions to each school. In Israel this became a national system, described in the chapter The Israel Model (Harvard Education Press, 2020).

Their book Mapping and Monitoring Bullying and Violence: Building a Safe School Climate (Oxford University Press, 2018) is a guide for school professionals.

An ecological theory of school violence

Their research treats school violence as the product of culture, neighborhood, family, school and gender, and of how these change over time. The framework runs through School Violence in Context (2005) and Bullying, School Violence, and Climate in Evolving Contexts (2019), both from Oxford University Press.

Welcoming, empowerment and monitoring

The WEMA approach pairs welcoming practices with listening to the school community and with monitoring, so that students and families feel they belong and schools can see whether things are improving.

Military-connected students

With U.S. Department of Defense support, the team adapted the Israeli monitoring model for schools near military communities in California, and wrote practical guides for teachers, administrators and parents.

International work

Versions of the monitoring system run in other countries, including Chile. Rami has also served on France's Scientific Committee on Violence Prevention and as Vice President for Research of the International Observatory of School Violence.

Selected publications

  • In pressBenbenishty, R. & Astor, R. A. (in press). School bullying and violence in evolving contexts: A framework for school professionals. In C. Franklin, M.B. Harris & P.A. Meares (Eds). The school services sourcebook, Third Edition. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • 2024Benbenishty, R., Astor, R. A., Benbenishty, A. (2024). Listening to the voices of the school community as part of the welcoming, empowerment, and monitoring approach (WEMA) to improve school outcomes. In J.S. Hong, H.C.O. Chan, A.L.C. Fung, & J. Lee (eds.), Handbook of school violence, bullying, and safety. Edward Elgar.
  • 2024Benbenishty, R., Astor, R. A., Shemesh, M., Avital, D., Raz, T., & Roziner, I. (2024). A 12-year population-based analysis of victimization and climate trends in Israeli Arab and Jewish elementary schools. Journal of School Violence, 1.
  • 2024Wu, C., Astor, R. A., & Benbenishty, R. (2024). A large-scale longitudinal study of school factors as mediators from depression and parental monitoring to peer victimization in Mainland Chinese middle schools. Journal of School Violence, 23(1), 13.
  • 2023Astor, A., Benbenishty, R, Capp, G. P., Watson K. R., Wu, C., McMahon, S. D., Worrell, F. C., Reddy, R., Martinez, A., Espelage, D. L., & Anderman, E. (2023). How school policies, strategies, and relational factors contribute to teacher victimization and school safety. American Journal of Community Psychology 52(1), 39.
  • 2023Kelmendi, K., Arënliu, A., Benbenishty, R., Astor, R. A., Hyseni Duraku, Z., & Konjufca, J. (2023). An exploratory study of secondary school student victimization in Kosovo and its correlates. Journal of School Violence, 1.
  • 2022Benbenishty, R., Astor, R. A., & Roziner, I. (2022). An eighteen-year longitudinal examination of school victimization and weapon use in California secondary schools. World Journal of Psychiatry.
  • 2022Astor, R. A., & Benbenishty, R. (2022). Integrating policy into school safety: Theory and research. Research on Social Work Practice.
  • 2022Arënliu, A., Benbenishty, R., Kelmendi, K., Duraku, Z, H., Konjufca, J., & Astor, R. A. (2022), Prevalence and predictors of staff victimization of students in Kosovo, School Psychology International, 43(3), 296.
  • 2021Benbenishty, R., & Astor, A. (2021) School- and student-level prevalence and predictors of weapon-related behaviors and experiences among secondary schools in California. Journal of School Violence, 20(4). 445.
  • 2021Astor, R. A., Benbenishty, R., & Watson, K. (2021). A conceptual and large-scale empirical examination of the Welcoming Empowerment Monitoring Approach (WEMA) for school safety and substance use reduction. Research in Social Work Practice, 31(5), 454.
  • 2021Astor, R. A., Noguera, P., Fergus, E., Gadsden, V., & Benbenishty, R. (2021): A call for the conceptual integration of opportunity structures within school safety Research, School Psychology Review, 50(2-3), 172.
  • 2021Berkowitz, R., Astor, R. A., Pineda, D., De Pedro, K., Weiss, E., & Benbenishty, R. (2021). Parental involvement and perceptions of school climate in California. Urban Education, 56(3), 393.
  • 2020Benbenishty, R., Astor, R. A., Shadmi, H., Glickman, H., Luke, E., Ratner, D., Segal, H., & Raz, T. (2020). The Israel Model: A centralized national and local system designed to achieve optimal school climate driven by monitoring on multiple levels. In J. Cohen & D. Espelage (Eds.). Creating safe, supportive and engaging K-12 schools: Challenges and opportunities around the world. Cambridge MA: Harvard Education Press.

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Presentations and materials

Slides and talks will be added here.