On the Front Lines: Educating Teachers about Bullying and Prevention Methods

Abstract

Problem statement:Bullying is a serious problem in American schools and is characterized by aggressive behavior distinguished by unequal power and the intention to cause physical, social, or emotional harm to others Bullying is evolving from the classic image of a big schoolyard bully picking on smaller kids to a more technologically, sophisticated model of kids using cyber technology to electronically tease, bully and harass their peers with texting, voicemails, emails and posts on public websites, like Facebook, that are popular with young students. While parents are and should be encouraged and trained to recognize understand the insidious nature of techno bullying, it is not enough. The schools should take an active stance against bullying and this includes training teachers and other personnel to be trained to recognize the signs and to intervene in bullying. Approach: This article discussed a research project undertaken to get assess the following: how educators recognize bullying, what they can do and actually do to intervene as well as their need for more training and autonomy to intervene. Results: There were 145 completed surveys, with 51 partially completed surveys. The results were reported for the completed surveys only. Conclusion: This study examined how well a subset of teachers recognize the signs of cyber/techno bullying as well as their feelings of preparedness to intervene with the bullies and the bullied.

Is It Bullying or Sexual Harassment? Knowledge, Attitudes, and Professional Development Experiences of Middle School Staff

“…Most teachers continue to believe that there are not enough institutional polices to help them identify and intervene in bullying . At the same time, many teachers and administrators do not understand which actions comprise sexual harassment, for which they are also responsible for intervening .…”

“…Most teachers continue to believe that there are not enough institutional polices to help them identify and intervene in bullying. 29 At the same time, many teachers and administrators do not understand which actions comprise sexual harassment, for which they are also responsible for intervening. 12 Overall, school staff indicated that there was a general lack of consistent, mandatory, and long-term training and administrative support on both bullying and harassment.…”

Olweus Bullying Prevention Program: Components Implemented by Elementary Classroom and Specialist Teachers

“…More specifically, less than 30% of classroom and specialist teachers had explained/discussed the antibullying rules with parents or held classroom-level meetings with parents about bullying, which is similar to Glasner's (2010) finding that only 39% of teachers involved parents in general, bullying issues. In addition, our results are consistent with other research that has highlighted the challenges of engaging parents in bullying prevention efforts (Bender & Emslie, 2010;Sela-Shayovitz, 2011).…”

“…Moreover, school personnel are often unprepared and lack the skills needed to engage parents (Epstein & Sanders, 2006;Reschly & Christenson, 2012). This is particularly problematic given the ample evidence, which demonstrates the importance of including parents in bullying prevention efforts (Bender & Emslie, 2010;Glasner, 2010). Indeed, O'Moore and Minton (2005) found that among schools that involved parents in bullying prevention efforts, significant reductions in bullying and victimization were observed among children 9 to 12 years of age.…”

Editorial for the Special Issue on Cyberbullying

“…Thaxter, a school resource officer in Massachusetts, presents the obstacles to addressing cyberbullying with children in schools and how law enforcement can overcome these to enrich the educational opportunities about cyber behaviors • On the Front Lines: Educating Teachers about Bullying and Prevention Methods, by Glasner (2010). This paper reports on outcome data, specific to programming designed to educated faculty and staff in K-12 schools, about cyberbullying…”