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There has been a lot of talk about improving school climate recently, in line with the U. S. Department of Education’s new focus for public schools across the nation (and their Safe and Supportive Schools initiative). I have recently discussed it in January at a NCPC summit, and covered it briefly two weeks ago while at the Bullying Summit in DC, but I’d like to expand on it for our readers. As a starting point, though, I need to provide a foundational backdrop. We’ll explore climate and cyberbullying in great detail over the upcoming months.

To begin, Welsh, Greene, and Jenkins (1999) have defined school climate as “the unwritten beliefs, values, and attitudes that become the style of interaction between students, teachers, and administrators…[it] sets the parameters of acceptable behavior among all school actors, and it assigns individual and institutional responsibility for school safety.” While that is a bit academic and wordy, I feel that it conveys what is meant. Basically, we are talking about the quality of life for students and staff on campus.

The benefits of a positive school climate have been identified through much research over the last thirty years. It contributes to attendance, student achievement, and other desirable student outcomes. Improving climate on school grounds has also been linked to improvements in student behavior – such as a decreased peer-on-peer bullying and an increase in perceived and actual safety.

In a recent study we conducted, students who experienced cyberbullying (both those who were victims and those who admitted to cyberbullying others) perceived a poorer climate or culture at their school than those who had not experienced cyberbullying. Youth were asked a variety of questions, such as if they “enjoy going to school,” “feel safe at school,” “feel that teachers at their school really try to help them succeed,” and “feel that teachers at their school care about them.” Those who admitted to cyberbullying others or who were the target of cyberbullying were less likely to agree with those statements.

We are continuing to explore this relationship, and believe strongly in efforts to enhance climate in schools across the nation. There are very practical ways to do this, and we’ll discuss them in forthcoming blog entries.

References:

Gottfredson, G. D., & Gottfredson, D. G. (1989). School climate, academic performance, attendance, and dropout. North Charleston, SC: Office of Educational Research and Improvement.

Haynes, N. M., Emmons, C., & Ben-Avie, M. (1997). School climate as a factor in student adjustment and achievement. Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation, 9, 321-329.

Hinduja, S., & Patchin, J. W. (2009). Bullying Beyond the Schoolyard: Preventing and Responding to Cyberbullying. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications (Corwin Press).

Nansel, T. R., Overpeck, M., Pilla, R. S., Ruan, W. J., Simons-Morton, B., & Scheidt, P. (2001). Bullying behaviors among U.S. youth: Prevalence and association with psychosocial adjustment. Journal of the American Medical Association, 285(16), 2094-2100.

Rigby, K. (1996). Bullying in schools: And what to do about it. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Stover, D. (2005). Climate and Culture: Why your board should pay attention to the attitudes of students and staff. American School Board Journal, 192(12).

Welsh, W. N. (2000). The effects of school climate on school disorder. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 567, 88-107.

I was featured on *Audio Ed* to discuss in detail how administrators, teachers, and staff can prevent and respond to cyberbullying among school students.  Please click here to download and listen (8 minutes, MP3 file).  Justin and I are passionate about training and working with public districts as well as private schools to meaningfully inform and educate youth, parents, and educators on this topic.  Please let me know if you have any specific questions about what I shared in this interview – I would be more than happy to flesh out my thoughts further.  Also, please check out our Top Ten Prevention Tips and Top Ten Response Tips for Educators for a quick and concise summary of what I discussed.

As I mentioned in my cyberbullying and sexting comments at the National Crime Prevention Council Circle of Respect event two weeks ago, “social norming” continues to bear relevance for dealing with cyberbullying at schools, and I’d like to flesh it out some more since I am a big fan of the concept.  Basically, youth tend to do what others are doing – largely in order to fit in, as they try to figure out who they are and what they stand for.  As they survey the landscape of trends in behaviors and attitudes, they pick up on what is seemingly accepted, endorsed, and done among their peer group.  This influences them consciously or subconsciously, and they then naturally tend to jump “on board” and act similarly in thought, speech, or action.  For example, if an adolescent high school freshmen is told he can’t hang out with friends after Friday night football games because that’s when “everyone” parties and gets drunk, he might begin to view that behavior as commonplace and therefore acceptable.  He may therefore be more inclined to do the same, since it seems “normal” and “known” behavior.

How does this related to reducing online harassment among elementary, middle, and high school students?  Social norming has to do with modifying the environment, or culture within a school, so that appropriate behaviors are not only encouraged, but perceived widely to be the norm.  That is, schools must work to create a climate in which responsible use of Facebook and instant messaging programs (for example), is “what we do around here” and “just how it is at our school and among our students.”  This can occur by focusing attention on the majority of youth who do utilize computers and cell phones in acceptable ways.  If I told you that one in five teenagers are cyberbullied, you wouldn’t focus on spreading that fact around your student body.  Rather, you would reframe and reconceptualize that research finding, and then create cool and relevant messaging strategies emphasizing that the vast majority of your students are using Internet technologies with integrity, discretion, and wisdom, which would hopefully motivate or induce the remainder to get “on board.”  Ideally, the remainder would desire to fit in, would desire to be like everyone else, and would feel an informal compulsion to stop cyberbullying others and start doing the right thing.  Based on this, you can also see how social norming can be used to address sexting.  You can also see how the shaping of social norms is directly related to modifying the overall school climate or culture.

Spending too much time painting cyberbullying in alarmist colors may encourage more youth to act in similar ways, since those youth will perceive the act as “normal” and that “everyone is doing it.”  Are you doing social norming at your school?  In what ways has it worked?  In what ways has it not been as successful as you would have liked? The Cyberbullying Research Center is actively studying its utility, and will keep you updated on what we find.

I’ve recently discussed the susceptibility of youth with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) to be cyberbullied, outlining a number of reasons that contribute to such victimization.  When it comes to suggestions as to how we can help these kids, a few things stand out in my mind.

First, it is really important to try to understand exactly what is wrong – why the Aspie is being bullied, and how it makes him or her feel.  We also need to realize that what may seem normal to us – in terms of social interaction – is not normal to AS kids.  We have to venture into their definition of “normalcy” to fully empathize with how they are struggling.  The traditional ways that we help non-AS youth may not bear much fruit when working with AS youth, just like it is useless to implement multicolored lights on an instrument panel when the operator is color-blind.  Aspies receive social signals but cannot decode their meaning with any beneficial level of reliability.  They have what could be considered subjective blindness, and it is not a fault of theirs – it is simply how they are.

Personally speaking, I have found that Aspies tend not to ask for help, not because they prefer isolation or independence, but because it does not naturally occur to them that another person will have a different perspective, different experience/knowledge, and thus might find a different or better solution.  Encourage them to tell you how they are feeling, even though they may not respond.  If they can’t answer directly, perhaps they will share their thoughts on how the same instance of cyberbullying might make another person feel.  That might clue you in to the emotions they are wrestling with.

When you are trying to share advice or suggestions of prevention and response, repeat your message often for reinforcement and heavily use logical explanations.  It may be wise to create and use simple flowcharts to depict human behavior.  These can show actions, the way in which the actions affect others, and the way in which others’ responses then affect the subject, to aid their decision-making processes.  For example, “if I do X, it will cause effect Y on other people, which will cause them to respond to me with Z”.

Finally, when working with Aspie cyberbullying victims, it may be useful to jointly analyze stories, characters, plots and motivation in fiction, to point out tropes and story cues, and to figure out why characters act as they do.  Also, try using comic books or comic strips – which often convey some of the story through characters’ emotion-laden expressions, but in simplified “cartooned” art that is easier to comprehend.  Comic strips with humor that relate to real life situations are especially good; they teach typical motivations, reading faces, understanding humor, decision-making, and coping/response mechanisms all at once.

Let us know of your successes and failures.  We are especially interested in this population of vulnerable youth, and want to all we can to help.

This article from British Columbia refers to a high school principal who bought a cell phone signal jammer from an online dealer in China in order to thwart students from using their phones at school in violation of district policy.  First off, hats off to the resourcefulness of the principal in this situation – even though what he did was later deemed unlawful.  He was probably fed up with abuse and misuse of cell phones on his campus, and his decision may have been prompted by cases that severely compromised the learning environment he was trying to create.  It’s disheartening, though, that it came to this – that educational efforts, deterrent strategies, formal policies in place, and vigilant monitoring and sanctioning did not decrease the problem enough.  I’m not sure of the extent to which they were implemented.  Students are going to use cell phones at school if there is not a complete prohibition against it (and likely even still unless the accompanying penalties are heavy).  Secondly, maybe we can reduce the amount of texting students do between each other during the school day.  That said, we’re finding that parents are often contributing to the problem.  Parents are so used to reaching their children easily and quickly through cell phones.  This convenience is extremely valued, and even if you request them to relay messages through the school front office, it probably is not going to happen.  This is further reason why parents should perhaps formally agree to a policy at the beginning of the school year detailing the penalties their child will face if caught using their phone on campus – and maybe that will dissuade them from contributing to the problem.  Better yet – and as we’ve mentioned in a previous post – make it so the parents are meaningfully inconvenienced when their child breaks the rules.