Research evidence on bullying prevention at odds with what schools are doing
Punishing the bullies doesn't really help, researchers say. But what does work?
In September 2018, I wrote about the so-called “Trump effect” on bullying in schools, citing a study that found higher bullying rates in GOP districts after the 2016 presidential election. But that piece raised an important question: what should schools do to address and prevent bullying?
The scientific evidence on what works is complicated.
There’s a whole cottage industry of consultants selling anti-bullying programs to schools but academic researchers say there is no proof they work. There are some small studies with positive results. But when reputable researchers study efforts to expand these strategies across schools among many students and compare bullying rates with those at schools that didn’t receive the intervention, there tends not to be a difference. For example, this 2007 review of anti-bullying programs found “little discernible effect on youth participants.”
“A lot of us know the dirty secret that these [bullying-prevention] programs don’t work out in the real world,” said Ron Avi Astor, an educational psychologist at the University of Southern California and an expert in bullying prevention. “All of us talk about it.”
Meanwhile, researchers notice that schools often address bullying in ways that are counter productive. Jonathan Cohen, a psychologist and an adjunct professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, is currently working on a paper about the gap between anti-bullying policies and the scientific evidence on bullying. He found that state policies typically encourage schools to focus on identifying bullies and punishing them. Often a student who is misbehaving and treating another student badly is sent to the principal’s office and punished with a suspension or an expulsion, Cohen said.
“That flies in the face of twenty-some years of empirical researchthat shows punishing kids is unhelpful,” said Cohen.
Instead, he argues that schools should combine consequences for bullies with mediation, counseling or a learning experience. “Not all, but characteristically, the students who fall into the profile of a Continue reading: Research evidence on bullying prevention at odds with what schools are doing - The Hechinger Report
