Starting at the Foundation: Implementing a School-Wide Bully Prevention Approach

• In Event: Bullying and Exclusion of Differently Abled Youth: Perspectives, Outcomes and Approaches to Foster Inclusion

Abstract

Bullying has become a fundamental concern for school administrators across the country. This session will outline strategies for developing a comprehensive school- and/or district-wide bully prevention approach. In brief, this approach will include a school-wide plan, implementing skill-based instruction within a tiered model, and legal considerations.

Bullying has become a fundamental concern for school administrators across the country. This session will outline evidence-based strategies for developing a comprehensive school- and/or district-wide bully prevention approach. This session will include details and evidence regarding a school-wide plan, school-wide and individualized assessment, implementing skill-based instruction within a tiered model, and legal considerations.

Following this session, participants will:
1) Understand risk characteristics associated with the bullying involvement,
2) Recognize the role of general and special education programming and supports in relation to bully prevention, and
3) Outline intervention efforts designed to be situated within a multi-tiered system of support.

This session will highlight universal, group, and targeted interventions designed to address bullying among youth with and without disabilities. Specifically, this session will detail interventions designed to provide youth with functional skills, while reducing bullying involvement, including universal interventions, assessing bullying involvement, screening for skill deficits, developing skill groups, identifying chronic victims and perpetrators, and implementing targeted interventions.

Overall, bullying has become a pervasive problem among school-aged youth. As a result, all 50 states and Washington D.C. have enacted legislation related to bullying and bully prevention. Unfortunately, these legislative efforts do not provide direction for implementing bully prevention programming at the school level. This is especially germane for youth with disabilities, as they are disproportionately involved within the bullying dynamic as perpetrators, victims, and bully-victims. Based on the lack of legislative direction, schools are left to independently design programming or purchase expensive commercial programs. This approach has often been ineffective and inefficient due to training, school demographics, and generalizable skill development.

While legislative efforts have not provided explicit direction in programming and interventions, research from the past decade has provided some insight into best practices, effective strategies, and supportive programming. Specifically, research related to youth with disabilities has determined that social and communication skill deficits are two of the most notable predictors of bullying involvement among this subset of youth, and multi-component or multi-tiered frameworks can be useful tools for implementing bully prevention interventions. Therefore, this session is designed to support the implementation and evaluation of a systematic, skill-based approach to bully prevention, including:

1) Establishing a system-wide bully prevention plan,
2) Developing a school-wide assessment,
3) Implementing a universal bully prevention program designed to support skill development,
4) Creating a reporting protocol and bystander supports,
5) Screening for bully predictive skill deficits (e.g., social skills, communication skills),
6) Selecting tier 2 interventions,
7) Establishing student groups,
8) Screening for chronic perpetrators and victims,
9) Conducting a functional assessment related to bully specific behaviors,
10) And implementing individualized (Tier 3) interventions to support chronic perpetrators and victims.

Authors

• Chad Allen Rose, University of Missouri - Columbia
  Presenting Author

• Katie Graves, University of Missouri
  Non-Presenting Author

• Cannon Ousley, University of Missouri
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lindsey Mirielli, University of Missouri
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tracey Milarsky, University of Missouri
  Non-Presenting Author