Hate Posters at Vancovuer School of the Arts 2918
All 50 U.S. states crave schools to have a bullying prevention policy.
But a policy, alone, is not enough. Despite the requirement, there'southward been a slight uptick in all forms of bullying during the last three years. Bullying tin look like experienced basketball game players systematically intimidating novice players off the court, kids repeatedly stigmatizing immigrant classmates for their cultural differences, or a eye-school girl suddenly beingness insulted and excluded by her group of friends.
Bullying occurs everywhere, fifty-fifty in the highest-performing schools, and information technology is hurtful to everyone involved, from the targets of bullying to the witnesses—and even to bullies themselves. October is National Bullying Prevention Month, so it's a skillful time to inquire ourselves: What are the best practices for preventing bullying in schools? That'south a question I explored with my colleague Marc Brackett from the Yale Eye for Emotional Intelligence, in a recent paper that reviewed dozens of studies of existent-world bullying prevention efforts.
As we discovered, not all approaches to bullying prevention are equally constructive. About bullying prevention programs focus on raising sensation of the problem and administering consequences. Simply programs that rely on penalty and zero tolerance have not been shown to be effective in the U.S.; and they often disproportionately target students of color. Programs similar peer mediation that place responsibility on the children to work out conflicts tin increase bullying. (Adult victims of abuse are never asked to "work information technology out" with their tormentor, and children have an boosted legal right to protections due to their developmental status.) Bystander intervention, even among adults, simply works for some people—extroverts, empaths, and people with higher social status and moral appointment. Many approaches that educators prefer have not been evaluated through research; instead, educators tend to select programs based on what their colleagues use.
We plant two research-tested approaches that bear witness the almost hope for reducing bullying (forth with other forms of aggression and conflict). They are a positive school climate, and social and emotional learning.
Edifice a positive school climate
School climate can be difficult to define, though possible to measure. Information technology is the "felt sense" of being in a school, which can arise from a greeting, the style a problem is resolved, or how people work together; it is a school's "heart and soul," its "quality and character." Schools with a positive climate foster healthy development, while a negative schoolhouse climate is associated with higher rates of student bullying, assailment, victimization, and feeling unsafe.
The elements of a positive climate may vary, simply may often include norms well-nigh feelings and relationships, power and how it is expressed, and media consumption. Social norm engineering is a conscious process that builds a positive culture among student peers and school adults that becomes cocky-reinforcing. Like a healthy immune system, a positive school climate promotes optimal health and reduces the chances of dysfunction or affliction.
Leadership is key to a positive climate. Is bullying minimized as a "normal rite of childhood," or is it recognized every bit the harmful peer abuse that it is? Do leaders understand that uninterrupted, severe bullying can confer lifelong negative consequences on targets of bullies, bullies, and witnesses? Are school leaders committed to promoting all children'south positive psychological health, or practice they over-rely on punishing misbehavior? Tin can they discern betwixt typical developmental processes that need guidance versus bullying that needs assertive intervention? Are educators empathic to their students, and do they value children's feelings?
Side by side, are teachers prepared to bargain with bullying? Students consistently report that teachers miss near incidents of bullying and fail to help students when asked. A majority of teachers written report that they feel unprepared to bargain with classroom bullying. Some teachers bully students themselves, or prove a lack of empathy toward children who are bullied. Teachers report that they receive little guidance in "classroom management," and sometimes default to the disciplinary strategies they learned in their own families growing up.
However, reforming schoolhouse climate should involve all stakeholders—students and parents, too every bit the administrators and teachers—so a school'due south specific bug tin can be addressed, and the flavor of local cultures retained. Schoolhouse climate assessments can be completed periodically to track the impact of improvements.
Advancing social and emotional learning
Social and emotional learning (SEL) is well known, and involves pedagogy skills of cocky-awareness, self-direction, social awareness, responsible decision making, and relationships management. (Full disclosure: Brackett and I are affiliated with the SEL program RULER.)
Evidence-based SEL approaches have been shown to evangelize cost-effective, solid results. Numerous meta-analyses, inquiry reviews, and individual studies of hundreds of thousands of M-12 students bear witness that SEL improves emotional well-beingness, cocky-regulation, classroom relationships, and kind and helpful behavior among students. It reduces a range of issues like anxiety, emotional distress, and low; reduces disruptive behaviors like conflicts, aggression, bullying, anger, and hostile attribution bias; and it improves bookish achievement, creativity, and leadership.
A study of 36 get-go-course teachers showed that when teachers were more emotionally supportive of students, children were less ambitious and had greater behavioral self-control, compared to the utilize of behavior management, which did not improve student cocky-command. 1 meta-analysis showed that developing emotional competence was protective against condign a victim of bullying; social competence and academic performance were protective confronting becoming a not bad; and positive peer interactions were protective against becoming a bang-up-victim (one who has been bullied and bullies others). A serial of longitudinal studies showed positive furnishings into midlife (due east.g., fewer divorces, less unemployment) and fifty-fifty cross-generational furnishings of early SEL. Compared to a matched control group, the children of the adults who participated in the Perry Preschool Project had less criminal interest and higher educational and employment achievement. A cost-benefit analysis of 6 SEL programs found them to be good investments, with $11 saved for every $i spent.
Teachers too do good from SEL. Those with emotional and social skills preparation have higher job satisfaction and less burnout, show more positive emotions toward their students, manage their classrooms ameliorate, and utilise more strategies that cultivate creativity, choice, and autonomy in their students. Teachers report that they want more SEL support to cultivate their ain emotional and social skills, and to improve sympathise their students' feelings. But few teacher training programs focus on growing the teachers' emotion regulation skills.
Bullying at different age levels
SEL approaches should be developmentally wise, since what is salient and possible for children changes at different ages.
For example, preschoolers are expelled from school at the highest rates of all, but the neurological hardware for their self-command is but just developing. Only then are the connections betwixt the emotion circuitry and the more thinking regions of the prefrontal cortex outset to be myelinated (insulated for faster connectivity), something that will take until the mid 20s to complete. An SEL program similar PATHS or RULER that teaches young children linguistic communication for feelings, and strategies for thinking before acting, tin develop meliorate self-regulation.
Sometimes, adults confuse normal developmental processes with bullying. For example, children brainstorm to reorganize their friendships midway through elementary schoolhouse, something that can naturally create hurt feelings and interpersonal conflict. It should not be misconstrued as bullying, though, which involves intentional, repeated aggression within an imbalance of power. Normal development also includes experimenting with power, and these normal dynamics should exist guided safely toward developing a healthy sense of agency, rather than a hurtful exertion of power over someone else.
Finally, the onset of puberty marks the beginning of heightened sensitivity to social relationships, an especially important time to cultivate skills for kinder, gentler relationships. Unfortunately, this is the period when bullying spikes the highest. And while some strategies work well for younger children (for example, advising them to "tell a trusted developed"), this option may fail with teens, and the breakpoint seems to exist effectually the 8th class. Older teens require approaches that are less didactic and leverage their need for autonomy, while affirming their values and search for meaning. Physiologically, the brain changes during puberty confer a second chance for recalibrating their stress regulation system. That opportunity should exist constructively seized.
Approaches should also take into account private differences between children. Even SEL programs can stumble here, over-relying on just ane or two emotion regulation strategies, like breathing or mindfulness. But children vary in their temperaments, sensitivities, strengths, and vulnerabilities. The best SEL approaches guide students toward discovering strategies that piece of work best for them—strategies that are emotion- and context-specific, personalized, and culturally responsive. This arroyo requires unconventional flexibility on the part of the educators.
And, finally, approaches work all-time if they are not standalone pedagogies or from kits that terminate upwards in the classroom closet at the finish of the yr. In order to be effective, skills should become fully embedded across the curricula and the unabridged day, in all settings, and implemented past all adults—in other words, infiltrating the ecosystem. Only approaches used and taught equally intended are successful.
Schools can't practise this lonely
Families affair, too. Bullying in schools sometimes arises from harsh parenting practices or sibling bullying at domicile.
Even parents' workplaces matter. Adults experience bullying in their workplaces at well-nigh the aforementioned rate as children in schools, and it's even found among teachers and in senior living communities. In other words, bullying is non just a childhood problem; information technology is a pervasive man problem. And children are non buffered from the wider social globe—bullying of children who belong to groups targeted in the national political discourse has spiked on playgrounds nationwide.
Ultimately, we need a substantial shift in our mindsets about the importance of children and their feelings. Children are more probable to thrive when nosotros nurture their humanity, and offering them linguistic communication and strategies and values to assistance them identify, limited, and, thus, regulate their feelings. When parents, teachers, and administrators gain new awareness into the circuitous roots of bullying and adopt new strategies for addressing it, schools can lead the mode. The kids are counting on united states of america.
Source: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/what_are_the_best_ways_to_prevent_bullying_in_schools
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