bullying

Matthew Lynch published in Bullying

What works best to help stop bullying in schools?

Peter K Smith, Goldsmiths, University of London and Fran Thompson, Goldsmiths, University of London

Bullying in schools has been recognised as a serious and pervasive problem now for at least two decades. There is now also evidence, including from the UK and other European countries, North America and Australia, that traditional forms of bullying in schools have decreased modestly over the last decade or so. This is very likely due to the increase in work to prevent bullying.

Yet much still persists. In 2010, the EU Kids Online project found 19% of children were victims of bullying and 12% bullied others. A recent follow-up study in 2014 suggested an increase in cyberbullying, though not in traditional bullying. Figures elsewhere are not dissimilar, although prevalence rates vary greatly in terms of how it is measured and how bullying is defined.

Lessons from Scandinavia

Bullying is usually defined as intent to harm another person repeatedly; with an imbalance of power, the victim cannot easily defend themselves. It can take the form of everything from physical and verbal attacks, to social exclusion, spreading rumours and cyberbullying.

Internationally, there have been many school-based anti-bullying programmes that bring about, on average, a reduction of some 20% in bullying. The Norwegian Olweus Bullying Prevention Programme aims to provide a different structure to school classrooms to discourage bullying and reward more helpful behaviours. The Finnish KiVa programme uses virtual learning methods and enlists high-status peers as defenders of those who are being bullied.

These two methods have been successfully replicated in their home countries, but the extent to which this can be done elsewhere should become clearer in the next few years.

In the UK, the philosophy has generally been not to adopt or impose a specific programme to stop bullying, but rather to make a range of options and resources available for schools to choose the most appropriate. There are now many sources of support for children, parents and teachers, from organisations such as the Anti-Bullying Alliance and BeatBullying.

To provide a good foundation for effective anti-bullying prevention and intervention, it is recommended that schools use an anti-bullying policy with clear definitions and procedures that are communicated to the whole school community.

Schools should have multiple avenues for reporting bullying that don’t stigmatise children, and a central recording system for incidents (particularly important as evidence). Staff also need ongoing training in intervention and regular auditing to measure the impact of anti-bullying work. Research is starting to show the range of strategies available to schools.

Preventing bullying

To introduce proactive strategies that can help prevent bullying, schools need to think about the whole school environment, including the classroom and playground. Schools should promote adults as good rolemodels, and provide an “open door” policy for parents or carers.

Other strategies can include using assemblies to underpin a clear, anti-bullying message or to develop the school council as an effective reporting system. The curriculum can also be used to embed anti-bullying work, while in the playground, schools can create quiet zones and train lunchtime supervisors.

Peer-support strategies use trained students to prevent and respond to bullying. These can include buddy schemes, peer mediation, online mentoring, anti-bullying committees and lunchtime clubs.

But some schemes, such as designated “buddy benches”, can be stigmatising if accessing peer support is too obvious. Others can be underused, or even misused. While peer supporters generally have high morale and are very positive about the schemes, pupils who use the schemes tend to have more mixed views, depending on the quality of support, accessibility of peer supporters, and follow-up on mentoring sessions.

Providing the right support for these kinds of schemes is vital. This might be that a school recruits the right number of peer supporters to avoid drop-out, or provides regular supervision with a designated supervisor.

And when it comes to the transition from primary to secondary school, peer supporters can be particularly effective – if the supporter to student ratio is high enough. Outreach work in primary schools can also help establish good relationships and help make school induction day easier for newcomers.

Reacting to bullying

Strategies to respond to bullying incidents after they happen also need to be put in place by schools. And there are a range of various possible responses.

Direct sanctions range from a “telling off”, to permanent exclusion and can send a clear message that bullying is not tolerated. To be effective, sanctions need to be expressed as a clear set of consequences in a school’s anti-bullying policy and used in the framework of another more restorative approaches. Isolation rooms for “internal exclusion” and a re-integration process for excluded students are also recommended.

Restorative approaches can provide an effective, flexible range of strategies to prevent and respond to all types of bullying. Schools using these strategies systemically report the best results in terms of stopping bullying. If using restorative approaches, all staff need to be trained and sanctions are needed as a back-up if the restorative process fails.

A third strategy is the seven-step support group method. It has been used by some schools in England because it is non-confrontational and avoids “punishment”. But other schools have chosen not to employ it because it avoids directly assigning blame or responsibility. Support groups can be effective especially for relational bullying, between friends. The strategy works best with older primary students and younger secondary students, particularly as they transition between the two schools.

The Pikas method of “shared concern” – where meetings take place with children suspected of bullying – is also non-confrontational but more rarely used. It may be effective as one of a range of strategies when other group-based approaches have not worked – or for “provocative victims”. For both support-group and Pikas methods, teachers and school staff need both specific training and other back-up strategies.

Research on school bullying over the last 30 years has resulted in a broad accumulation of knowledge about the issues involved. Two or three decades ago, we knew very little, and were unable to provide effective support for teachers, schools, parents and young people. We now know that well-planned interventions can substantially reduce bullying, although there can be pitfalls along the way. But there is still much to learn about which interventions are most effective and in which circumstances.

This article is part of a series on bullying. Read the other articles in the series here.

The Conversation

Peter K Smith, Emeritus Professor, Unit for School and Family Studies, Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London and Fran Thompson, Researcher, Unit for School and Family Studies, Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

  • no reactions
0
Share
Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Policy & Reform, Teachers

Education and esafety: Why You Shouldn’t Believe Everything You Read in the News

Note: The following guest post comes to us courtesy of Keir McDonald, Chairman of EduCare, a company that provides bespoke training solutions for schools. Their courses are available both online and on paper, and cover child protection and duty of care issues.

Media horror stories bombard us daily when it comes to students and esafety, but is going online really as dangerous for children as some journalists would have us believe? A new report from the London School of Economics has found that children might be better at self-regulating their internet usage than we usually give them credit for.

The influence of news stories on children is particularly strong when it comes to stranger danger and bullying, but do media representations of the internet empower children, or destabilise their development of effective online risk-management skills?

After speaking with 378 children about esafety, academics from LSE found that many children actively seek out ways to stay safe online by “planning” and “reflecting.” For example, when using social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, older children take precautions such as changing their privacy settings to protect themselves online.

Even younger children, between the ages of 9 – 11, are competent at avoiding problematic websites or applications by simply clicking away. This is an obvious but “effective tactic” when it comes to staying safe on the internet. Most children were able to recognise both the risks and the symptoms of internet addiction, including health problems, losing interest in other things and losing friends.

Though girls are “more likely to seek social support […] than boys,” both sexes are generally reluctant to approach an adult for help when an incident of cyberbullying occurs. Children are commonly able to react proactively to abusive messages by blocking the send or disabling their own account, but sometimes this isn’t enough and internet conflicts escalate rapidly.

Why are children reluctant to seek support when faced with bullying?

Children are often reluctant to seek support, preferring instead to minimise or downplay the significance of cyberbullying. However, this is an inefficient tactic and schools can do more by harnessing the power of the peer-group for their anti-bullying and esafety lessons.

As adults, we can encourage children to feel comfortable sharing their online problems with us by being more reasonable, and less sensational, when it comes to the internet. For one thing, when we talk to children about the internet, we should acknowledge the many good points as well as cautioning against the dangers. Monitoring our children’s online activity is fine for very young children, but as they get older, we can earn their trust by respecting their need for a certain amount of privacy.

Parents and teachers can try to ban Facebook and other websites, or limit their children and student’s internet usage, but they should be aware of the potential consequences. Using social networking sites, among other online skills, has become almost mandatory both in the wider world and in the modern workplace. Banning children from social networking instead of teaching them how to network safely is doing them no favours in the long run.

Read all of our posts about EdTech and Innovation by clicking here. 

  • no reactions
0
Share
Matthew Lynch published in Bullying

When coaches are bullies: What should students do?

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**

A guest post by Jennifer Fraser

High-level coaches like John O’Sullivan are concerned about the stark fact that seven out of ten kids quit sports at the age of thirteen. O’Sullivan has written best-selling books on how we must “change the game” so that kids don’t quit sports, but instead become athletes for life. In 2012, he became the founder and CEO of Changing the Game Project such is his passionate belief that we can learn a different and better way to treat young athletes. O’Sullivan focuses mainly on parents, whereas I want to focus on coaches.

Our son, along with five others, quit playing basketball in his final year of high school. He had been dedicated to the game since grade four and had planned to try out for college teams. He quit because he was given the tragic choice for a seventeen year old: play for bullying coaches or quit the game you love. The bullying was the same you might find on a playground or in a locker-lined hallway: homophobic slurs, swearing, insults, ignoring, yelling, grabbing, detaining. It’s just that it wasn’t kids doing it: the bullying was being done by teachers while supposedly “coaching” basketball.

Boys ranging from grade ten to first year university reported their treatment to the Headmaster, but the conduct was brushed under the rug as “old style coaching”; the boys who reported were singled out as problematic because they had “unhappy experiences” and a vague promise was given that the coaches would “tone it down.” Funnily enough, that’s not what the police said. Their assessment was that there was a “definite pattern in the complaints, all pointing to verbal and emotional abuse.” However, the police could not intervene because emotional abuse is not in the criminal code. So, the boys were given the choice by the Headmaster: submit to the abuse or quit the team.

After witnessing what really happens when kids speak up, I started wondering how many other kids are treated this way? We know students find it extremely difficult to report on peer bullying let alone teacher bullying. We know seventy percent of athletes are quitting their sport at thirteen. We keep going on and on about how vital coaches are in kids’ lives; they’re more important than almost anyone. Coaches, we are told, are key role models and ‘sports teaches character.’ But does it in its present form? Seventy percent of kids are losing these crucial lessons and the thirty percent that remain might be learning lessons in bullying and narcissism on some teams. According to the Workplace Bullying Institute and many others, our workplaces are overrun with bullies. Is it possible they learn the advantages to bullying while on the court or the field?

Coaches who bully appear to have the ability to cover up what they do. We want to think of abusers as monsters, instantly identifiable, but that’s naïve. Abusers are far more often the most charming, sociable, and influential. They exude goodness publicly which appears to effectively cover up what they do behind the scenes. They seem to have a dual character presentation that I have discussed previously as a Jekyll and Hyde persona (1). Notably, this dual personality type or charismatic bully appears to be especially attracted to competitive sports because of the win-lose dynamic. Dr. Burgo explains,

It helps to view the bully as a kind of competitor on the social playing field, one who strives not only to win but to triumph over the social losers and destroy their sense of self. As in competitive sport, where winners and losers exist in a binary relation to one another, the bully is yoked in identity to his victims. To a significant degree, his self-image depends upon having those losers to persecute: “I am a winner because you are a loser.”

Dr. Burgo describes this competitive technique used by bullies and often by those who support them:

All bullies are narcissists, with an inflated sense of self-importance and a marked lack of empathy for their victims’ suffering, while many narcissists turn out to be powerful bullies. In defending his winner-status against detractors, for example, Lance Armstrong made extensive use of the legal system and his access to media in order to bully and intimidate anyone who challenged him. In particular, he tried to destroy their reputations. (2)

What’s so interesting is that this sport dynamic translates so readily into the work world and the cost is staggering. In a 2008 article on workplace bullying, Thomas Hoffman, quotes from Jean Ritala’s book, Narcissism in the Workplace where she compiles a list of behaviors exhibited by bullies at work.

There were at least fourteen students who came forward at my son’s school to say that they were being bullied by their teachers under the auspices of “coaching” and they wanted it to stop. Notably, the teacher-coaches involved exhibited most, if not all the behaviors used to describe bullies in the workplace. According to Jean Ritala, bullies or narcissists often display the following traits at work:

  • Arrogant and self-centered, they expect special treatment and privileges.
  • They can be charismatic, articulate and funny.
  • They are likely to disrespect boundaries and the privacy of others.
  • They can be patronizing and critical of others but unwilling or unable to accept criticism or disagreement.
  • Likely to be anxiety-stricken or paranoid, they may exhibit violent, rage-like reactions when they can’t control a situation or their behaviors have been exposed.
  • They are apt to set others up for failure or pit co-workers against one another.
  • They can be cruel and abusive to some co-workers, often targeting one person at a time until he quits.
  • They may need an ongoing “narcissist supply” of people who they can easily manipulate and who will do whatever they suggest – including targeting a co-worker – without question.
  • They are often charming and innocent in front of managers. (3)

This description fits so closely with what teenagers articulated about how their coaches conducted themselves at my son’s school. They found it hard to explain how charming the coaches could be which made no sense when put beside their out of control rages. They struggled to understand why they were penalized while other players were celebrated for identical conduct. They knew there was a history of kids quitting, but didn’t know how to understand it. They knew they were in pain, but lacked sophisticated reporting skills or insight to express it.

If adults in the workplace struggle to identify and shutdown bullying, imagine how remarkably difficult it is for teens. They have been taught all their school years that the teacher knows best and the teacher is a trusted figure to whom they can turn when bullying happens. Then suddenly they are in a situation where the teacher seems to be the bully, but that doesn’t make sense so they can’t even think of how to explain it.

Teachers and coaches have a sacred trust. They have enormous influence over young people. They need to get educated on just how serious the damage of emotional abuse is to the adolescent brain and psyche and they need to ensure it doesn’t happen ever on their watch. If they can’t control themselves, they need to seek help. Considering they too have probably been trained in a bullying dynamic, they need healing. Passing on the hurt is not the way to train young people to move from the court to the workforce.

References

  1. https://jenmfraser.wordpress.com/2015/08/06/recognizing-the-abusive-coach-as-jekyll-and-hyde/
  2. Joseph Burgo, “All Bullies are Narcissists: Stories of Bullying and Hazing in the News Break Down to Narcissism and Insecurity,” The Atlantic, November 2013: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/11/all-bullies-are-narcissists/281407/
  3. Thomas Hoffman, “Narcissists at work: How to deal with arrogant, controlling, manipulative      bullies,” Computer World, June 2008: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2535227/it-management/narcissists-at-work–how-to-deal-with-arrogant–controlling–manipulative-bullies.html

___________

Jennifer Fraser has a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Toronto and is a published writer. She is presently teaching creative writing and International Bacclaureate literature classes at an independent school in British Columbia.

  • no reactions
0
Share