Antibullying Interventions in Schools: Ingredients of Effective Programs

Abstract

Because bullying is a serious problem in Canadian schools, antibullying programs have been widely implemented to redress the problem. School principals in Ontario (N=395) completed a questionnaire to document the severity of bullying, the amount of anti bullying resources, and the variety of antibullying activities in their schools. Results reveal that reductions in bullying in previous years, sufficiency of resources for resolving bullying, and amounts of antibullying programming were all positively associated antibullying program outcomes. These data suggest that the investment of time, effort, and money in school based antibullying initiatives can lead to safer and more peaceful schools environments.

Traditional school bullying and cyberbullying in Chinese societies: Prevalence and a review of the whole-school intervention approach

“…His anti-bullying program was arguably the first comprehensive and large scale whole-school intervention program that was implemented in Bergen, Norway with systematic monitoring and evaluation. The use of this approach in other countries was also reported in other studies (e.g., O' Moore & Minton, 2005;Olweus, 1993;Smith et al, 2005). The first national evaluation of Olweus' whole-school approach employed in 42 schools in Bergen, with a follow-up period of two and a half years, indicated that the program was conducted successfully in reducing the children and adolescents' bullying behaviors (Olweus, 1999).…”

“…Among others, the whole-school anti-bullying approach is arguably one of the most popular and widely used strategies around the globe in tackling school bullying. The primary concern of the whole-school approach is that the intervention strategy must be conducted at the whole school level, and not to be individually-based, in order to achieve positive outcomes (Richard, Schneider, & Mallet, 2011;Smith, Cousins, & Stewart, 2005). Programs that are implemented with systematic monitoring are likely to produce more promising outcomes than programs that are not monitored.…”

“…The Olweus' whole-school approach of anti-bullying program consists of four levels of intervention: (1) the school-level (i.e., an antibullying policy, a questionnaire survey, a school conference day, and playground supervision), (2) the classroom-level (i.e., curriculum activities, established class rules against bullying, regular class meetings with students and parents, and classroom management), (3) the individuallevel (i.e., discussion with bullying perpetrators, victims, and parents), and (4) the community-level (i.e., to solicit involvement of community stakeholders such as community leaders and organizations; Arora, 1994;Heinrichs, 2003;Samara & Smith, 2008;O'Moore & Minton, 2005;Smith et al, 2005). The Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (OBPP) was designed to enhance peer relationship and to promote a safe and positive school environment by fostering the whole-school awareness of bullying incidents, with the long-term goal to alter the students' attitudes and perceptions toward bullying behaviors (Olweus, 1994).…”

A Review of Legislation and Bylaws Relevant to Bullying

“…Thus, legislation that perceives bullying as solely physical or verbal undermines and underestimates the negative impact of other types of bullying (e.g., indirect) on individuals. A number of negative consequences associated with indirect forms of bullying have been empirically supported in the literature (Beran & Li, 2005;Brunstein et al, 2007;Mishna, Scarcello, Pepler, & Wiener, 2005;Shariff, 2005;Smith et al, 2005).…”

Le contexte et la raison : agir contre la violence à l’école par « l’évidence » ?

“…Au total ce sont 236 expériences qui ont directement porté sur le comportement violent dans ces deux synthèses. Par ailleurs, en ce qui concerne le problème spécifique du harcèlement, une importante recherche a été publiée au Canada (Smith et al, 2005), qui complète utilement la synthèse australienne de référence, qui résumait 13 évaluations dans des pays différents, en particulier en Europe du Nord (Rigby, 2002, voir aussi Greene, 2005. Sur le plan des troubles de comportement, il existe de nombreuses synthèses (par exemple Walker et al, 1995 ;Fortin et Bigras, 1996 ;Massé et al, 2005).…”