Presenting practical research-based strategies to reduce bullying in schools.

Identifying Bullying

Craig and Pepler's playground observation research found:

• one incident of bullying every seven minutes.
• adult intervention in 4% of incidents
• peer intervention in 11% of incidents

What conclusions can bullies draw from this pattern?
What conclusions can targets draw from this pattern? 

Children, after all, learn from what they see us do, rather than from what we say. When adults do not intervene, bullies may feel there is nothing wrong with their actions. Targets may feel they deserve the bullying.

Adults can intervene effectively to reduce bullying. The first step is to identify bullying. It includes:

• Physical bullying: hitting, kicking, pushing, choking, punching
  
• Verbal bullying: threatening, taunting, teasing, starting rumors, hate speech.
  
• Exclusion from activities: This does not mean that a child should not have the right to choose to play, or not to play, with another child; it does mean that children should not be allowed to systematically exclude others: "No one play with Mary;" "No one wants to play with him;" "Don't be her friend."

Bullying is like spouse abuse or sexual harassment in that it:

• Done by someone with  more power or social support to someone with less power or social support
• Often includes the abuser blaming the target for the abuse
• Often it leads to the target blaming him or herself for the abuse.

What doesn't work?
For more information about stopping bullying, see information about the book Schools Where Everyone Belongs