Bullying Prevention

In the article "Bully Prevention in School: A United States Experience", authors, Ruth Bedell, and Arthur Horne, analyze the components of bullying and its effects. The components include the bullying behaviors, the types of bullies, and the types of bystanders. Risk and protective factors associated with developing bullying behaviors are also discussed.  The implementation of "Bully Busters", a bully prevention program, is introduced and discussed.

The four behaviors of bullying are physical, verbal, relational aggression and sexual harassment. These four behaviors could be expressed through hitting, name-calling, rumors, or gestures, respectively. The three types of bullies are aggressive (most common and initiate physical or verbal aggression), followers (reinforce the aggressive bullies) and relational (applies aggression indirectly). Victims of bullying are those who are systematically targeted for repeated aggression. The three types of victims are passive, provocative and relational. Bystanders are those who are aware of the situation and allow it to continue by either enabling the bullies and taking no action to stop them. According to the article, factors that can predispose people to display these aggressive behaviors are "the destruction of family values, exposure to violent media, poverty, easy access to weapons, drug abuse, gender, and oppression" while factors that can prevent these aggressive behaviors include "participation in extracurricular activities and positive parent-child relationships" (pg 62-63).

The intervention system introduced in this article for reducing bullying behavior in schools is "Bullybusters", a psychoeducational program, developed at the University of Georgia, focused on training. The goals for this program are to "(a) increase teachers’ knowledge and use of bullying intervention skills, (b) to increase teachers’ personal self-efficacy and teachers’ self-efficacy related to working with specific types of children, and (c) to reduce the amount of bullying and victimization in the classroom" (65). The implementation consists of 7, two-hour, staff development workshops held over the course of three weeks. These workshops focus on: "(a) increasing awareness of bullying, (b) recognizing the bully, (c) recognizing the victim, (d) taking charge (interventions for bullying behavior), (e) assisting victims (recommendations and interventions), (f) understanding the role of prevention, and (g) developing relaxation and coping skills" (pg 66). When conducted in trials, elementary schools reported an average of a reduction of 40% in aggressive bullying behaviors and a drop of 19% in victimization experiences. These statistics were reported by the students themselves.

Bullying has become an ever-increasing problem throughout schools and with the constant use of social media and online communication, has found itself is more settings than before. Although the information and statistics about the "BullyBusters" program seemed effective, I would like to see further research completed on the students online behavior as well.

In Second Language Acquisition theory, there is research that finds that students need to comfortable in a learning environment to be able to effectively take in and process information. This is known as the "affective filter" and when it is activted by stress, anxiety, or any other negative emotions in the classroom, students are no longer learning to their full capacity. I think that this can be true in any content and schools should be looking to implement educational programs like these to help students understand and manage their emotions and behaviors instead of just having zero-tolerance policies in hopes that students will simply fear the possibility of suspension or expulsion.

Reference: Bedell, R., & Horne, A. M. (2005). Bully prevention in schools: A United States experience. Journal of Social Sciences, 8, 59-69.

Integration of Mental Health and Education

In the article, "Toward the integration of education and mental health in school" authors, M. Atkins, K. Hoagwood, K. Kutash, and E. Seidman, argue that, in the best interest of the overall health of students, it should be a priority for educational policymakers to integrate the paths of education and mental health in schools' fundamental framework. However, in order for these new frameworks to be fully supported, strong research needs to be conducted affirming that these priorities are essential.

The authors identify the school settings as being one of the most influential aspects of a person's cognitive and social development. However, based on the lack of research at the time, there seemed to not be enough evidence to support that school implemented mental health programs would provide the same effectiveness as clinical programs.
One of the common pushbacks on mental health programs, still, is the lack of funding and resources. However, the authors acknowledge that a program focusing on mental health shouldn't require extreme additional resources. It should be considered how programs work best when they are integrated when they all work together to focus on the overall wellbeing of the students.

While mental health was once a taboo topic that was not talked about, let alone publicly acknowledged, recent widespread awareness and support have worked to decimate the generations of stigma around the topic. However, even though many national programs have emerged, programs in schools have not. Personally, I think that with so much media around mental health, youth can have so many more questions and without appropriate support set in place for them they can be left confused and ashamed. Although this article was published in 2010, I believe that mental health programs have still not received the priority that they should in schools. Until then, I think that it's up to us to be caring, supportive and approachable for our students. We must also be knowledgable about resources that can be accessible to our students when they need them. We may not have control over the entire educational system, but within the walls of our classrooms, we can create the environments that our students need.

Reference: Atkins, M. S., Hoagwood, K. E., Kutash, K., & Seidman, E. (2010). Toward the integration of education and mental health in schools. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, 37(1–2), 40–47.

Understanding Student's Prior Knowledge

In the article "Prior knowledge is more than content: Skills and beliefs also impact learning", authors Susan Ambrose and Marsha Lovett, examine how teachers can determine the prior knowledge their students possess and how to effectively incorporate it into their teaching to promote student learning.
The four types of prior knowledge discussed in this article are content specific, intellectual skills, epistemological beliefs, and metacognition.  Strong and accurate content-specific prior knowledge can aid in a smoother acquisition of new information but when the foundation of this prior knowledge is weak or faulty,  new information is rejected because it does not connect with the prior and teachers must modify their instruction to correct misinformation. To assess content specific prior knowledge, teachers can administer diagnostics test, have students self-evaluate or look for patterns of error. Intellectual skills are what students need to be able to digest, express, apply and demonstrate the knowledge that has been taught to them and any form of assessment given can be affected if intellectual skills have not been taught. Epistemological beliefs are a student's views on learning stemming from their perceived capacities, experiences and notations of the world, which can have a bigger impact on students behavior than their actual capability. Teachers should be taking these perceptions on learning into consideration and plan to combat the negative beliefs that impact behavior and hinder learning.  Metacognition is also a crucial process that allows students to reflect, assess and plan on their own understanding of the content material. It allows students to take control of their own learning not only in grade school but prepares them to college and beyond.

Main point is that "(1) Prior knowledge plays a critical role in learning, which means that (2) faculty members need to assess the content, beliefs and skills students bring with them into courses and (3) use that information as both a foundation for new learning as well as an opportunity to intervene when content knowledge is inaccurate or insufficient; skills are not adequately developed; and beliefs are interfering with productive learning behaviors." (pg. 16)

The part of the article that really stuck out to me was how "Many believe that learners’ beliefs about their capabilities – often preconscious and often inaccurate– can be more important drivers of behavior than their actual capability (pg. 13). This made me reflect on a student that I have that has a hard time staying on task during independent work. The student often gets stuck early on in the work and instead of asking for help, the student goes on to distract other students. I have tried to combat this by frequently checking in with this student during independent work while we work on getting him more comfortable to ask for help. Outside of independent work, I have also tried to give the student discrete positive affirmations about himself to help build up his morale. When the student makes habituated negative comments about himself like "well, of course, I wouldn't understand that", I always try to immediately intervene on those as well. While it seems that this is a mindset that the student has already accepted about himself, I think that this would have been important information for myself, as well as future teachers that have him, to have known so that we could have worked on it since the beginning instead of waiting until the patterns brought up this concern.

Reference: Ambrose, S. A., & Lovett, M. C. (2014). Prior knowledge is more important than content: Skills and beliefs also impact learning. In V. A. Benassi, C. E. Overson, & C. M. Hakala (Eds.),Applying science of learning in education: Infusing psychological science into the curriculum (pp. 7-19). Retrieved from http://teachpsych.org/ebooks/asle2014/index.php

Mindfullness Against Burnout

In the article "The protective effects of mindfulness against burnout among educators", authors Abenavoli, Jennings, Greenberg, Harris, and Katz, analyze the self-reports completed by 64 educators (98 percent Caucasian) from two middle schools in Pennsylvania to associate the three components of burnout and its causes. Statistics gathered by MetLife show that 51 percent of US educators report "experiencing excessive stress several days per week and nearly 40percent leave the profession within the first five years of teaching" (pg 57). This study aims to identify factors that can be altered in the stress of the profession to help teachers cope and the authors believe that social and emotional competence can be the key. After weeks of reading and learning about Social and Emotional Learning, it seems pretty obvious that if teachers believe that it can be extremely beneficial to the overall well-being, motivation and academic excellence for students, why not apply the same practices for themselves to receive similar benefits.

The study's results found mindfulness (defined as paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgementally) to be a key component of association leading to burnout (characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and low personal accomplishment). Statistical data retrieved from this study showed a strong correlation between low levels of mindfulness and the characteristics of burnout as well as a strong correlation also between high levels of mindfulness and lower reports of characteristics of burnout. Mindfulness also seemed to be a "protective factor" against burnout, having found that when mindlessness is not strong, higher levels of ambition lead to high levels of burnout.

As learned throughout this course, Social and Emotional Learning can have a huge impact on students to give them the tools not only to maneuver through the educational system but through life. Again, if educators can promote this for students because of the known advantages and positive effects, why not promote it for themselves as well? Of course, if schools struggle with introducing and maintaining SEL programs for students, I don't seem them jumping at the idea of introducing them for their teachers as well. Nonetheless, even if districts or schools do not give full support for the implementation of these programs for teachers, there are still little things that can be done between departments or even individual teachers. A quick google search even brought up journals and books for teachers to use and go by. As teacher use each other for researches as well, those individually practicing SEL for themselves could also recommend it to their colleagues.

Reference: Abenavoli, R. M., Jennings, P. A., Greenberg, M. T., Harris, A. R., & Katz, D. A. (2013). The protective effects of mindfulness against burnout among educators. Psychology of Education Review, 37(2), 57-69.