Coaching Students Helps Nip Bullying in the Bud

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When educators confront bullying in their schools, students begin to entrust them with information about bullying and victimization. An effective way to open up a channel of communication between adults and students is to teach students how to recognize and report bullying behaviours and to train staff to receive and follow up on these reports. Part of the follow-up can include a coaching model, which involves working individually with students who are directly involved in bullying incidents.

Educators often ask, “What are the most effective ways of dealing with bullying reports?” It is helpful to recognize that a majority of students in late elementary school occasionally bully or encourage the bullying of others (Frey, et al., in press). For many children, this may represent “experimental behaviour” that may die off if it is not rewarded. Unfortunately, aggression can pay handsome rewards: social status, access to resources, and in middle school, greater heterosexual attractiveness among boys (Pellegrini, 2002).

A strong anti-bullying program will work with repeat offenders as well as novices. The idea is to nip bullying behaviours “in the bud” before they become habitual. Canadian researchers Pepler and Craig (1999) point out that the whole school system can maintain, or conversely, deter school bullying. Effective programs work on multiple levels to improve supervision, provide clear rules against bullying, systematically promote respectful behaviour, and consistently intervene in bullying episodes.

What should those interventions look like? Because bullying can have serious, even life-threatening consequences, some educators have embraced the concepts of “zero tolerance” and what I think of as “high stakes” punishment, for example, in-school suspensions and expulsions. Although well-intentioned, “high stakes” punishment is counterproductive in three ways:

First, it discourages all but the youngest students from reporting victimization. Remember, many students (and adults) may tell targets of bullying behaviour that the event was inconsequential or “good for building character.” After repeated abuse, targets start to believe that they somehow deserve the abuse. Given that frame of mind, a school response that is perceived as “too big a deal” will discourage students from telling parents or teachers about their victimization.

Second, there are too many students engaged in bullying to suspend all the guilty parties, which can lead to inconsistent enforcement. Finally, with zero tolerance and high-stakes punishment, administrators back themselves into a corner. In order to suspend a student, they must show that the student is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Many times, the guilt can’t be proven and educators have no options for kids who may be operating just under the radar. Clear evidence that a child is bullying may not occur until the behaviour is well-entrenched. The high-stakes punishment works against having a consistent response and early intervention.

In contrast, an educational approach to bullying prevention can help schools work with students who bully as well as their targets. It can also put students, including bystanders, on notice and guide them in a more productive direction before bullying problems escalate. Rather than high-stakes punishment, an intervention model called coaching can be used. The coaching system Maureen Blum, principal of Our Lady of the Lake in Seattle, uses in her school in tandem with Steps to Respect: A Bullying Prevention Program is an excellent example of effective bullying deterrence.

Levels of Response
Our Lady of the Lake School (OLL) has two levels of response to bullying behaviour. The first level concerns children who were involved in their first bullying incident, and it is viewed by staff as an educational opportunity, rather than as a punitive measure. Students may practice assertiveness skills or be asked to imagine the feelings of children who are bullied. All hear, once again, that the school has clear norms for respectful interaction. The classroom teachers normally provide this level of response to children after a bullying incident is reported. The second level of response involves children who have exhibited or been targets of repeated bullying behaviours. Both levels involve coaching, but the second level of response moves into OLL’s regular discipline process, which includes a conference between Principal Blum, the student who is bullying, and his or her parents and teacher.

Coaching the Child Who Bullied
When coaching a student who bullied, the child is asked “What happened out there?” The emphasis here is on the student’s account of what happened: “I have been hearing that… I’d like to hear from you what happened.” Blum says that the child often admits to the behaviour inadvertently, by saying something like “How did you know I did that? Nobody could have seen me,” and wants to know who reported the incident. OLL teachers keep students focused during a coaching session by saying that they heard about the incident from more than one person and that they want to talk about better choices the student can make.

OLL staff members have the child read through the Steps to Respect Bullying Behaviours handout to identify his or her own behaviour, and then they look at the definition of bullying together to connect the child’s behaviour with it. They have senior students fill out parts of the Bullying Report Form themselves.

The next questions are “Why is this happening? What’s going on? What are you going to do to change this?” After they’ve drawn up a plan of what the child will do to change his or her behaviour, the child writes a note to his or her parents to let them know about the conversation. The child leaves the coaching session knowing what he or she needs to do differently.

Coaching the Child Who Was Bullied
Coaching targets of bullying behaviour calls for a different set of practices. Blum finds that it is important to help the child name adults in the school whom he or she trusts and feels comfortable reporting bullying to.

The child and coach make a plan that involves helping the child think of ways to make sure he or she isn’t alone, especially in the lunchroom and on the playground. The focus of these sessions is often friendship-making skills. The coach also reassures the child that the bullying behaviour will be addressed.

Working with Parents
Blum says that it’s usually easy to work with parents whose children are bullied because they appreciate the school’s concern.
She finds that the critical part of bringing parents on board is education—to make it clear that bullying defines a behaviour, not a child, and that all children are capable of exhibiting a variety of bullying behaviours.

Blum points out that many parents have a hard time accepting news of their child’s bullying behaviour. Having children write notes to their parents explaining what they did helps parents focus on the behaviour rather than feeling as if their child has been labeled a bully.
To help set realistic expectations, Blum tells parents up front: “I don’t think because we have Steps to Respect that we’re going to get rid of all the bullying. … we’re trying to create lifelong learners … we need to give [children] steps and skills and processes that they can use and adapt to their own personalities.”

Integrating an educational coaching approach into bullying prevention gives students who are directly involved in bullying incidents opportunities to generate positive solutions to bullying behaviour, whether they are on the giving or receiving end. In research undertaken by Leihua Edstrom and Miriam Hirschstein at Committee for Children, coaching is found to be an important tool for fostering positive behaviours. When teachers coach those involved in bullying, they exemplify the expectation of positive goals and respectful interaction, standards that all educators want to instill in their students.

References
Frey, K. F., Hirschstein, M. K., Snell, J. L., Van Schoiack-Edstrom, L.V., MacKenzie, E. P., & Bruschi, C. J. (in press). Reducing playground bullying and supporting beliefs: An experimental trial of the Steps to Respect program. Developmental Psychology.
Pellegrini, A. D. (2002). Bullying, victimization, and sexual harassment during the transition to middle school. Educational Psychologist, 37, 151–163.
Pepler, D., Craig, W. M., & O’Connell, P. (1999). Understanding bullying from a dynamic systems perspective. In A. Slater & D. Muir (Eds.), The Blackwell Reader in Developmental Psychology (pp. 440–451). Oxford, England: Blackwell.

Karin Frey is Research Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at University of Washington and research scientist for Committee for Children, a not-for-profit organization that researches and develops programs that support the safety, well being and social development of children. She has published more than 30 research articles, chapters and books dealing with bullying, self-regulation, and socially responsible behaviour.