Psychology Articles

Bullying Prevention, Climate and Culture

The purpose of this article is to show how bullying and other antisocial behaviors at school are preventable by looking at school culture and climate.

There are quite a variety of classroom and school-wide “stop bullying” programs and materials. These programs are useful for raising awareness and providing new skills for students, yet many ignore deeper, necessary improvements to actually prevent antisocial behaviors at school.

The goal of this article is to go a little deeper and look at some fine tuning of school climate and culture as a means to lasting change.

What is School Culture?

School culture is a model or a mindset by which actions are taken in the district, building or classroom. This model of action is based on the past experiences within the district. Thus, new employees or new students become indoctrinated into the culture, learning “how we do things around here.” This is the nature of any culture and explains why it is so pervasive, yet hard to see. It just seems like the right way to do things.

Any school’s culture can be observed in at least three contexts 1) the design and maintenance of physical spaces, 2) the values expressed (either intentionally or unintentionally) by the adults at school and 3) the beliefs that are taken for granted about human nature.

It is difficult to say any part of the school’s culture is good or bad but some elements can contribute to or reinforce antisocial behavior. For example, cramped physical spaces with too many students are ideally designed for bullying behavior. The target can’t escape and the bullier can go unnoticed.

Teachers who turn their back on antisocial behavior or simply stay in their rooms while trouble is outside the door express – probably unintentionally – a value about how students should be treated in this school.

What is School Climate?

Although there is not a consensus on the meaning of school climate many definitions focus on the “feel” of school and the human/social atmosphere. There are four components commonly discussed in regard to climate: 1) physical environment, 2) social environment, 3) affective environment and 4) academic environment.

Like culture, climate can influence or may actually be the root cause of antisocial behavior, like bullying. Each of the four components below can either hinder or help. Problems that can foster bullying are…

• A physical environment that is overcrowded, certain places hidden from view and congregating areas poorly supervised.

• A social environment where interaction is limited, students self-segregate, harassment and other forms of dominance are ignored.

• An affective environment where students are subject to favoritism, most feedback is negative or punitive, and families are excluded from the school community.

• An academic environment where expectations are low, learning styles are not taken into consideration and a sense of community is not part of the learning process.

These components of climate are interconnected. Social interactions are either enhanced or inhibited by environment. The affective environment helps the academic environment because students and families feel more a part of the school.

Prevention

The concepts of culture and climate are critical to the prevention of antisocial behavior at school. Student-centered activities like posters, slogans and assemblies are useful but won’t override the power of school culture and climate. These are forces that will swamp most programs, even those that work on social skills or language.

If bullying is a problem at your school and if you mean to put a stop to it, some changes to school climate or culture must occur. And the tricky part is that it’s the adults, not the just kids that need to make some changes.

Changes to Prevent Bullying

Many of the solutions needed to change school climate are known to us. Nevertheless, they seem too big, too expensive or simply hard to believe these types of changes will make much difference (after all our belief system is a major ingredient in school culture).

If we look at a culture and climate as key mechanisms in prevention then there are some clear opportunities for improvement:

• Leadership from administrators and site based management teams. Culture and climate changes are the work of the collective body of adults in school. Change is most likely to occur when there is a coordinated effort aimed at particular improvements.

• Regain control of student-run areas of school. Schools buses, playgrounds, lunch lines, lunch tables and hallways are just a few spots where kids set the rules. Who goes first, who sits at this table, who gets to play and so on. This is the breeding ground for hierarchy and control. Improvement requires more training and supervision by adults, less standing around and waiting by students and a better appreciation of kid’s time and personal space.

• Support student feedback and reporting. Subtle elements in the school culture discourage reporting. Concepts like tattling teach youth that grown-ups don’t want to be bothered. Repeated surveys of students show that most kids believe adults won’t help with bullying. And over 65% of bullying happens when adults can’t see it. Reporting is critical.

• Work to build a community. A community of people is united pulling toward common goals. Too often schools are cliques and subgroups – both adults and kids – vying to move up a hierarchical ladder. People need to see and experience the commonality of the school community. We see this coming together at times around tragedy or sports teams but it needs a more uniform presence.

A Complex Society

School districts and buildings are really complex societies where bullying is one in a set of potential antisocial behaviors. Bullying is about hierarchy and when kids (or adults) assemble hierarchies form. Sometimes these hierarchies are benign or occasionally positive. Unfortunately, too often, the hierarchies within groups of students are negative and damaging to some.

To effect change in these societies we need to operate at a deeper level, at the level of culture and climate. Understanding how bullying operates with concepts like victim, bullying and bystander or helping students be more assertive in the face of this aggression is important but not sufficient. These strategies place the burden of change on the children, when really it is only the adults that have the power to make significant improvements.

Since the Columbine tragedy in 1999 there has been more attention paid to bullying. This attention has heightened awareness but sadly has not reduced the incidence of bullying in schools nor relieved the pain for many US school children.

What can be done?

What can be frustrating about school climate or school culture for any one teacher or parent is they seem too big to influence. Nevertheless, change can happen with your best efforts. Here are some suggestions:
• Do some research, asking students, where bullying usually occurs. The results are always compelling and clearly show that “place” is the key ingredient. Make these places safer.

• Organize other concerned adults to speak with either the principal, site based management team or the school board. Help them understand the role of the climate and culture.

• Make a practice of listening but not necessarily reacting, to all student complaints or concerns. School staff unintentionally creates buffers around themselves because they are often too busy to attend to students’ issues. Instead of pushing them away, develop a repertoire of simple responses to minor issues so that the major issues reach your ears.

• Avoid creating dominance hierarchies. This includes public embarrassment, clearly identifying people’s skill or intelligence (or lack of) relative to others or simply using belittling language.

References

Astor, R.A., Meyer, H., & Behre, W.J. (Unowned places and times: Maps and interviews about violence in high schools. American Educational Research Journal (1999) 36: 3-42.
Espelage, D. L. & Swearer, S. M. Bullying in American Schools. New Jersey: Lawrence, Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2004.Gibbs, Jeanne. Tribes: A New Way of Learning and Being Together. Windsor, CA: CenterSource Systems, LLC, 2001.
Gonder, P.O., & Hymes, D. (1994). Improving school climate and culture (AASA Critical Issues Report No. 27). Arlington, VA: American Association of School Administrators.
Reinke, W. M. & Herman, K.C. Creating School Environments that Deter Antisocial Behaviors in Youth. Psychology in the Schools, (2002) 39: 549-559.

About the Author: Contact Brian at http://www.k12associates.com

Brian Koenig, M.S., is the President of K12 Associates. He has been a trainer, speaker, and consultant since 1983 and has worked with more than 100 districts to prevent antisocial behaviors at school. Starting in 1998, Brian developed and implemented The Keep It Safe Project, a five-year pilot program to prevent bullying and other antisocial behaviors in three Wisconsin school districts, funded by the Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault (WCASA). Through this project he discovered that in order to significantly reduce bullying, school districts needed to improve the overall climate of their schools. School districts that over-emphasized bully, victim, bystander programs without looking at the broader climate saw little or no decrease in bullying behavior. In 2003 he followed up The Keep It Safe Project with a new pilot called A Climate of Respect. This work was also funded by WCASA with additional funding from The Centers for Disease Control. From this grant Brian wrote the guidebook called Creating a Climate of Respect, and then a follow-up ebook.

In collaboration with Melissa A. Keyes, Ph.D. and Dorothy Espelage, Ph.D., Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois, he developed a set of popular school climate surveys currently used by more than 75,000 students, in 50 school districts nationwide. Brian is a graduate instructor through Viterbo University of La Crosse Wisconsin. He has been a presenter at the Wisconsin School Counselors Conference, Association of Wisconsin School Administrators Conference, the Standards of the Heart Conference, and various other state and regional conferences. He has co-authored a variety of articles published in a variety of academic journals, primarily in collaboration with Dr. Espelage at the University

Here’s a short primer on Cognitive and Behavioral Learning Theories

Behavioral learning theories suggest that learning results from pleasant or unpleasant experiences in life while cognitive theories of learning suggest that learning is based upon mental processes. However, in an admonishment against being too closely guided by any one set of pedagogical principles, Johnson (2003) suggests that a fixation with process oriented educational theories among those in the politics of education has not served the education community well by aligning practitioners into separate camps.

A behavioral view in psychology has held that exploratory analysis of cognition must begin with an examination of human behavior (William & Beyers, 2001). Behavioral theory has benefited from the work of early researchers such as Pavlov, Thorndike, and later on the work of B.F. Skinner. Work relating to the development of behavioral theories in educational psychology has allowed theorists to explore ways in which human action could be controlled through manipulation of stimuli and patterns of reinforcement.

Cognitive theory as it relates to epistemological processes within the individual is based upon the idea that learning comes about as a result of processes related to experience, perception, memory, as well as overtly verbal thinking. Since the 1970s, information processing theory has been a dominant focus of study for cognitive theorists. Although the list of theories associated with cognitive theory is an expansive one to say the least, for the purposes of this paper, it is appropriate to mention several contemporary theories on cognition including: information processing theory, schema theory, and situated cognition theory.

Informational processing is based on a theory of learning that describes the processing of, storage, and retrieval of knowledge in the mind. Factors such as sensory register, attention, working memory, and long term memory play a significant part in this theory of cognition. Schema theory offers that human beings interpret the world around them based on categorical rules or scripts; information is processed according to how it fits into these rules or schemes. As an epistemology, schema theory focuses on meaningful learning and the construction of and modification of conceptual networks. Situated cognition theory postulates a social nature of learning situated within a community of practice in which knowledge is socially constructed.

An important component of this type learning, apprenticeship, is informed by social learning theory. Situational cognition as a theory posits that the individual is not a passive vessel, but rather, is an active self-reflective entity; as such, cognitive processes develop as a result of interaction between the self and others.

Another loosely related concept that relates to social cognition is the construct of reciprocal determinism. This is a behavioral theory under which it is theorized that the environment causes behavior and at the same time, behavior causes the environment Under this theory, personal factors in the form of (a) cognition, affect, and biological events, (b) behavior, and (c) environmental influences, create interactions that result in a triadic reciprocality (Pajares, 2002).

References

Johnson, B. (2003). Those nagging headaches: perennial issues and tensions in the politics of education field. Education Administration Quarterly, 39 (1), pp. 41-67.

Pajares, F. (2002). Overview of social cognitive theory and of self-efficacy.

Williams, R. & Beyers, M. (2001). Personalism, social constructionalism, and the foundation of the ethical. Theory and Psychology, 11 (1), pp. 119-134.

Liston W. Bailey is an educator and training specialist living in Virginia.

My recent research on Freud’s theory of mind control shocked me, the techniques that are now used by advertising agencies, politicians and public relations for over 100 years to inject fear and pleasure as a psychological drug to create slave employees, increase massive traffic of consumerism in the world of so called democracy.

Mass Media Brain Washing Techniques

The Freudian theory about the unconscious mind, and the hidden starving zombie inside each of us, can be activated by repetition display of advertising, to drill the unconscious mind, the giant zombie within, currently known as ‘the genius within the consequences of both self help programming or media control programming depend on the kind of hot syntax and imagery used to unleash the genius, or if you are exposed to advertising propaganda and public relations programming, you don’t unleash your genius within, you submit your genius, your creativity, your intelligence to those in power.

Intelligence Bankruptcy

So, mind control agencies use similar and carefully crafted pieces of Freudian theory for specific function that benefit the governments, the military, insurance companies, and world banks. If the psychology of repetition is used to advance the evolution of mankind, so be it, because, the techniques are not all that bad, and it has many beneficial advantages. However, because the 97% of the world population are not even using 1% of their psychology to get the edge, the power is left to the rich and powerful to control the masses.

Inside each of us lie the hidden irrational forces of fear, or pain and pleasure. It is these two devices, that the propaganda policy makers, PR, Media, and advertising agencies take advantage of when there is new policy to be introduced, increase in prices and taxes. They use hot syntax to manipulate the unconscious mind, and once the hot syntax spread the semantics ( meaning) through fear and pleasure, designed to sedate the conscious mind, and then access the unconscious, so that you submit to new policies, new taxes, new prices, and more control of your privacy thus preventing campaign or riot, in other words suppressing freedom of speech, without your knowledge.

Torture & Freedom Marketing Technique

Take for example, the history of tobacco, and how the PR agencies brain washed women into starting smoking, because they used the ‘hot syntax’ torture and freedom’ they have touched on the irrational factor of the human being, ‘desire and emotion, for women, ‘ cigarette was a symbol of equality, that just by smoking a cigarette, women felt equal to men, and that is how the tobacco industry is now a multi billion dollars industry. The unconscious mind can be trained to do anything despite your rational mind, but for those who are not training the mind to meet their full potential, are leaving their unconscious mind in the hand of their masters. If you think you are a free sovereign, think again.

Passive Consumers

We are no longer citizens living in a world of democracy, we are turned into consumers, consumers led to the creation of a stock market boom, and this gave massive opportunity for banks to get you into buying shares, applying for loans and credit cards. This is what I call, The Snow Ball Psychological Techniques of Mass Media Brain Washing Effect. This is how the masters treat citizens, not as active citizens, but as passive consumers, this is what PR agencies, particularly in America, “the key to control, in a mass democracy”

When you hear the media politicians talking about ‘people are in charge what they truly mean is that people’s desire is in control, that is the difference. As long as massive advertising, as long as the Spamming virus of television and giant billboards exist, people’s decision making power is hijacked by the irrational emotional desires that the media controls. The masses don’t make decision based on their intellectual power, but make decision based on their emotional reaction buried deep in the unconscious mind.

Why You Never Followed through that Business Concept?

If employer gets you to wake up so early in the morning, wearing that uniform you were told to wear, be at your desk at specific time, and work all the way to the graveyard, for what? for a little reward that your unconscious accepted as the only option or die. The only system you can change is your belief system, and that can only be done, when you commit to treating your unconscious mind as a baby who needs to learn how to walk the right way, as opposed to the way you are carried by the unconscious starving emotions, and this requires daily MindGym training to rid yourself of the software of sabotaged belief system polluted with fears, worries inject in you by media propaganda advertising, mass received opinions, religion and cults.

Get The Edge

Just think of how you would feel to face your fears, uncertainties, doubts, procrastination, laziness, hidden depression, and defy them all, when you step up with all your might, your true powerful hidden self, and arrive at the finish line of success to become a winner, the best you can be, super fit, healthier, happier, and richer beyond your wildest dreams.

Become a seeker of practical knowledge, a lover of wisdom, in order to attract luck and become a winner, as opposed to being at the mercy of your masters. As long as you remain a loyalist to your masters, you will always remain a slave, chained by your hijacked unconscious mind. The only way to convince you that your intelligence is being hijacked is when you look around the country, in every single country, there is not single MindGym for the unconscious programming, but there are millions of physical fitness centres around the world, and ignoring the most important organ and power of the universe, The mind.

Freud’s Theory of Mind Control

Please note that I have mentioned Freud’s theory that does not mean I am in favor of his theory. He spoke hotly about sexual energy should be controlled, but then, he counseled his daughter Anna Freud about her sexual fantasies, and for someone who never had a sexual life, the father is counseling her about something she never tried. Another point about Freud is that he smoked heavily, a tobacco addict, and has the audacity to speak about addictions. In my mind, he was an intellectual and not an emotionally intelligent being. I find most of his theories controlling rather than liberating. Anna Freud appears to be a cold-hearted woman, managed to promote her father’s work, and continued to practice psychoanalysis.

I would rather be brain washed by a program that allows me to make free choices, that allows me to overcome my irrational desires, and television addiction that sabotage the brain and the life of TV addicts. But, thanks to NLP, we are now witnessing a real shift in consciousness, freeing people to become their full potential. When clients come to see me about their struggles, my role is to inspire, motivate, empower individuals to take control of their thinking, and feeling, and to unleash their own master within, so that they become free sovereign. The role of a coach or a mentor is to demonstrate sensitivity to encouraging openness to diverse perspectives, and to leveraging diversity.

Advertise Yourself

Learn to advertise what you desire to become, what you desire to create, and what you desire to receive. This is your life, and you must live it as you see fit. May You Remain a Seeker of Practical Knowledge, The Lover of Wisdom, and a Free Sovereign, blessed and a blessing to mankind.

Andre Zizi is the pioneer of N.V.L.S.E – Neuro Visual & linguinstic Syntax Encoding – and series of other not yet published books. Andre ZIzi is a philosophy graduate, qualified teacher, trained in the educational psychology, NLP, and has mega business concept that will revolutionise the way NHS provide therapy services. If you are an investor, or a publisher, or someone you know will be interested in ZiziWorld vision, then, contact us direct on 07999 579 135.

You can Join his New success Website – http://www.ziziworld.ning.com