Latest Expert Witness News

Anti-bullying scheme focuses on the community

A new approach to eliminate bullying that focuses on bystanders as well as the bullies themselves has been successfully trialled by researchers. University College London tested the ground-breaking method Creating a Peaceful School Learning Environment (CAPSLE) with researchers in the United States.

The study, published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, found aggression and bullying behaviour could be improved by focusing on all relationships within the school classroom and community rather than simply between bully and victim.

The programme works with students and staff across the wider school community, encouraging them to think about and accept their own role in maintaining the bully-victim relationship by abdicating responsibility.

Teachers were discouraged from taking disciplinary action such as sending students to the principal's office unless absolutely necessary and classes spent 15 minutes reflecting on events at the end of each school day.

Each class would then decide whether it had a good 'mentalising' day. The study found that children were much tougher on themselves than teachers would have been under similar circumstances.

back