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.