Description
This training resource uses actors and role-play to give you realistic and practical guidance on the choices available to you to tackle bullying in schools and shows you how to implement strategies effectively. It does this by showing you a real-life bullying situation on the DVD and then illustrates the different ways of dealing with it.
Ken Rigby, ex-school teacher and international expert on peer victimisation, outlines six different methods of invention:
1. The Traditional Disciplinary Approach?? Students who have been identified as having engaged in bullying are punished to deter them from continuing to do so. This method works best with younger students who then may not dare to bully again for fear of the consequences.
2. Restorative Practice?? Those who have engaged in bullying are induced to feel remorse and to take appropriate steps to restore relationships that have been damaged by the bullying; this method, however, only works if the offender is remorseful.
3. Strengthening the Victim???Students are helped to acquire the necessary skills and resolution to confront and discourage the bullying, thereby removing the need for the practitioner to take direct action. This method will only really work when the imbalance between the bully and the target is relatively small.
4. Mediation?? Teachers or students trained as mediators gain the co-operation of the offender by revealing to them the distress that has been experienced by the victim. This is facilitated in a meeting in which students supportive of the victim are also present.
TACKLING GROUP BULLYING:
5. The Support Group Method???The practitioner empowers the students to solve the problem. This is tried by calling a meeting of the offenders and also students who might support the victim. The practitioner then goes round the whole group asking them ways in which they might support the victim and together they create a way forward.
6. The Method of Shared Concern???Students who have engaged in bullying are interviewed individually to make them understand how they have made the victim feel and they are asked how they think they can put it right. Then these students have a group meeting with a practitioner in which together they discuss ways of solving the problem. Once they have established a way forward the victim is then brought into the meeting and a plan for the future is communally decided.
Best Method For Your School
Choosing the ?best method? of intervention of bullying for your school depends on the nature of the bullying, the availability of resources, and the readiness of the school to support the chosen method. Here are some factors that need to be taken into account when a decision is made:
- The legal status of the offence
- The degree of imbalance between the students involved and whether it is realistic to expect that the target can be strengthened adequately to deal with the situation
- The readiness of the individuals in conflict to accept mediation
- Whether the perpetrator feels remorse or can be induced to feel remorse and act appropriately
- Whether there?is a single perpetrator or group involved
- The age of those involved
- Whether the target has acted provocatively
- The acceptability of the diverse approaches by a school
- The skill level of practitioners and available time to use a preferred method
- The acceptability of the approaches to parents.
This invaluable resource is informative and empowering, ideal for staff training days and teacher training to help tackle bullying and alleviate the distress caused by it and thereby improve the whole school environment.
Contents: DVD and a pdf 32-page booklet with summary information and useful discussion guidelines
DVD running time: 35 minutes.
Ages 11-18
ISBN 978-1-907370-12-0
Dr Ken Rigby is an ex-school teacher and now an international expert on peer victimisation, having published widely in both academic and professional journals. He is the author of several books on bullying including?New Perspectives on Bullying,?Stop the Bullying?and?Children and Bullying: How parents and educators can reduce bullying in schools.
?The DVD is very helpful in terms of introducing educational staff to the range of?methods available in addition to the more traditional disciplinary approach. As is?demonstrated in the DVD, some of these alternative methods may well be more effective for managing bullying in certain scenarios. The DVD contains teenager actors/actresses but the principles could equally be applied to younger children ? A valuable resource for equipping educational staff which I would be happy to recommend!?
Linda Philips
