Reinforce the Skills
Coaching Students to Reduce School Bullying
Training school staff to receive and follow up on reports of bullying effectively is a key prevention strategy. Working individually with, or "coaching," students who are directly involved in bullying is an especially effective way for educators to follow up.
Bullying is one-sided, unfair behavior intended to hurt, frighten, threaten, or exclude others. Most children in elementary school occasionally bully or encourage bullying of others (Frey et al., 2005). These behaviors may sometimes serve as children's developmental "experiments" as they explore ways to be powerful.
Children who successfully gain power by bullying may repeat their behavior rather than develop socially constructive ways to meet goals. These behaviors also compromise the learning and safety of others, as well as the quality of the learning environment.
How Adults Must Respond to Bullying
For these and other reasons, adults must intervene effectively. Because bullying may have serious, even life-threatening consequences, some schools adopt a "zero tolerance" approach focused on punishments such as suspension or expulsion. These high-stakes punishments work against consistent and early responses to the widespread bullying behaviors that occur in school.
In contrast, an educational model of coaching enables educators to intervene in even low-level behaviors before they become chronic. Coaching also provides opportunities to teach fair and respectful behaviors to replace coercive ones, and to monitor student safety and change over time.
Coaching Helps Students Make Positive Plans
Coaching is an individualized dialogue between an adult and child that addresses specific behavior problems and long-term problem solving. Adults coach students who have been bullied separately from those who bully, as the relationship history, unequal power dynamics, and potential for retaliation make face-to-face contact between students inappropriate.
Two Coaching Models
The STEPS TO RESPECT program includes one coaching model for students who are bullied and another for those who bully. With a student who is bullied, educators affirm a child's feelings, gather information about the history of the situation, help generate a plan for the future, and follow up.
With a student who bullies, adults identify the problem behaviors, gather information about their history, apply consequences, help generate a plan for the future, and follow up. Children should leave coaching sessions knowing the behaviors that were inappropriate and that their progress and safety will be monitored over time.
Findings Show that Coaching Makes a Difference
Coaching offers a powerful educational opportunity to teach respectful interaction. Teachers who received training using the coaching models reported feeling more prepared to deal with bullying than teachers who received no training (Hirschstein and Frey, 2005).
In the context of whole-school implementation of the STEPS TO RESPECT program, teachers who did more coaching also saw greater reductions in aggressive playground behavior among their students than did teachers who coached less, particularly in the upper-elementary grades (Edstrom, Hirschstein, Frey, Snell, and MacKenzie, 2004).
These findings suggest that coaching may be a promising strategy to reduce bullying, one that focuses on developing a constructive and future-focused learning partnership between children and adults.
Miriam Hirschstein, Ph.D.
Research Scientist
Committee for Children
References
Edstrom, L. V., Hirschstein, M. K., Frey, K. S., Snell, J. L., and MacKenzie, E. P. (2004). "Classroom Level Influences in School-Based Bullying Prevention: Key Program Components and Implications for Instruction." In K. S. Frey (Chair), Policy to Action: Bullying Prevention in the Real World. Symposium conducted at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Prevention Research, Quebec City, PQ, Canada.
Frey, K. S., Hirschstein, M. K., Snell, J. L., Van Schoiack-Edstrom, L., MacKenzie, E. P., and Broderick, C. J. (2005). "Reducing Playground Bullying and Supporting Beliefs: An Experimental Trial of the STEPS TO RESPECT Program." Developmental Psychology, 41(3), 479-491.
Hirschstein, M., and Frey, K. S. (2005). "Promoting Behavior and Beliefs that Reduce Bullying: The STEPS TO RESPECT Program." In S. R. Jimerson and M. J. Furlong (Eds.), The Handbook of School Violence and School Safety: From Research to Practice. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.