{"id":67655,"date":"2023-03-29T02:03:58","date_gmt":"2023-03-29T06:03:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=67655"},"modified":"2023-03-29T02:03:58","modified_gmt":"2023-03-29T06:03:58","slug":"our-new-study-provides-a-potential-breakthrough-on-school-bullying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/our-new-study-provides-a-potential-breakthrough-on-school-bullying\/","title":{"rendered":"Our new study provides a potential breakthrough on school bullying"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nYour child comes home from school and tells you three classmates are teasing her constantly. One even put chewed gum in her hair as she was listening to the teacher. The other two smiled, laughed and whooped.<\/p>\n

Hearing this, you understand your child is being bullied and their physical and mental wellbeing are under attack.<\/p>\n

We know bullying is\u00a0widespread<\/a>: 30% of adolescents experience bullying, and almost all see it happening. It can devastate victims and lead to depression, anxiety and self-harm.<\/p>\n

We are educational psychologists researching how to prevent bullying. And how, in a different scenario, these children could even be friends.<\/p>\n

Our\u00a0new study<\/a>, published in American Psychology, trialled a new way of tackling bullying among students in South Korea. Instead of trying to change individuals\u2019 behaviour, it puts the focus on how teachers can create an \u201canti-bullying climate\u201d in their classes.<\/p>\n

We believe this could be applied more broadly and provides a potential breakthough in approaches to this crisis.<\/p>\n

Previous bullying research<\/strong><\/h4>\n

For 50 years, educators have tried and failed to develop successful bullying-reduction programs.<\/p>\n

In a recent\u00a0journal article<\/a>\u00a0we reviewed existing school anti-bullying research. The results were disappointing. In particular, we found a focus on changing individual students\u2019 behaviour has been largely ineffective.<\/p>\n

We know bystanders can play an important role in standing up to bullies. But this is a risky thing to do. If you stand up to a bully, you put yourself at risk of retaliation and peer rejection. So bystanders are\u00a0reluctant to support<\/a>\u00a0victims and discourage bullies. This is why individual approaches have not worked well.<\/p>\n

This suggests we need to think more broadly about bullying and look at the social environment of the classroom to encourage more students to defend victims and defuse bullies.<\/p>\n

Our research<\/strong><\/h4>\n

To develop a new approach to tackle bullying, in a\u00a0separate study<\/a>\u00a0we looked at 24 experienced, full-time physical education teachers in Seoul. The group included both male and female teachers, teaching adolescent students.<\/p>\n

For each teacher, we looked at two different classes, so there were 48 classes in total and 1,178 students.<\/p>\n

The teachers were randomly assigned into two groups over an 18-week semester. One group was given a new approach to bullying to try, called \u201cautonomy-supportive teaching\u201d, while the other had no intervention.<\/p>\n

What is autonomy-supportive teaching?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

The idea behind\u00a0autonomy-supportive teaching<\/a>\u00a0is to prevent bullying by cultivating a caring, egalitarian classroom that minimises hierarchy, conflict and \u201cme-vs-you\u201d competition.<\/p>\n

The teacher sets the tone in the classroom and they can foster an anti-bullying climate when they:<\/p>\n