Evidence for practice: whole-school strategies to enhance students\u27 social skills and reduce bullying in schools

While bullying behaviour is widespread and harmful in schools, research conducted at the Child Health Promotion Research Centre (CHPRC) at Edith Cowan University and elsewhere11 - 31 suggests bullying behaviour can be reduced. The CHPRC research team\u27s ongoing empirical research, conducted since 1999, has focused primarily on what schools can do to effectively prevent and reduce bullying behaviour. One of the most effective means to reduce bullying among young people is to enhance their social and emotional understandings and competencies, in developmentally appropriate ways throughout their schooling, using a whole-school approach. Friendly Schools Plus addresses the social and emotional learning of young people, both formally through explicit classroom pedagogy and learning strategies and informally through the development of a whole-school culture, organisation and structures that reinforce and uphold these essential understandings, skills and competencies. The seven-step Friendly Schools Plus process, described below, is a strengths-based, whole-school participatory process that enables schools to implement current and robust evidence-based policy and practice to enhance social and emotional learning and reduce bullying among school students in accordance with the needs of the school. In particular, Friendly Schools Plus has provided toolkits to assess and augment school staff capacity to recognise, develop and sustain those components of a whole-school approach that support their students\u27 unique social and emotional learning and foster the prevention of bullying behaviour

If it's about me, why do it without me? Genuine student engagement in school cyberbullying education

This study reports on a three-year group randomized controlled trial, the Cyber Friendly Schools Project (CFSP), aimed to reduce cyberbullying among grade 8 students during 2010-2012. In each year, 14-15 year old student „cyber‟ leaders acted as catalysts to develop and implement whole-school activities to reduce cyberbullying-related harms. This paper examines students‟ leadership experiences and the effectiveness of their training and intervention efforts. A mixed methods research design comprising interviews and questionnaires was used to collect data from 225 grade 10 students at the end of their leadership years (2010 & 2011). Four to six cyber leaders were recruited from each of the 19 intervention schools involved in each year of the study. The cyber leaders reported high self-efficacy post-training, felt their intervention efforts made a difference, and experienced a sense of agency, belonging and competence when given opportunities for authentic leadership. They identified key barriers and enablers to achieving desired outcomes. Students greatly valued having their voices heard. Their engagement in the development and delivery of whole-school strategies allowed them to contribute to and enhance efforts to promote their peers‟ mental health and wellbeing. However, a lack of support from school staff limits students‟ effectiveness as change- enablers.peer-reviewe

If it’s about me, why do it without me? : genuine student engagement in school cyberbullying education

This study reports on a three-year group randomized controlled trial, the Cyber Friendly Schools Project (CFSP), aimed to reduce cyberbullying among grade 8 students during 2010-2012. In each year, 14-15 year old student ‘cyber’ leaders acted as catalysts to develop and implement whole-school activities to reduce cyberbullying-related harms. This paper examines students’ leadership experiences and the effectiveness of their training and intervention efforts. A mixed methods research design comprising interviews and questionnaires was used to collect data from 225 grade 10 students at the end of their leadership years (2010 & 2011). Four to six cyber leaders were recruited from each of the 19 intervention schools involved in each year of the study. The cyber leaders reported high self-efficacy post-training, felt their intervention efforts made a difference, and experienced a sense of agency, belonging and competence when given opportunities for authentic leadership. They identified key barriers and enablers to achieving desired outcomes. Students greatly valued having their voices heard. Their engagement in the development and delivery of whole-school strategies allowed them to contribute to and enhance efforts to promote their peers’ mental health and wellbeing. However, a lack of support from school staff limits students’ effectiveness as changeenablers.peer-reviewe

“Why don’t I look like her?” How adolescent girls view social media and its connection to body image

Background: Adolescent girls appear more vulnerable to experiencing mental health difficulties from social media use than boys. The presence of sexualized images online is thought to contribute, through increasing body dissatisfaction among adolescent girls. Sexual objectification through images may reinforce to adolescent girls that their value is based on their appearance. This study explored how sexualized images typically found on social media might influence adolescent girls’ mental health, in positive and/or negative ways. Methods: In-depth interviews were conducted with girls aged 14–17 years (n = 24) in Perth, Western Australia. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Results: Participants identified body image as a major concern, reporting negative appearance comparisons when viewing images on social media. Appearance comparisons were perceived to exacerbate adolescent girls’ appearance-based concerns. Comparisons also influenced adolescent girls’ efforts to change their appearance and seek validation on social media. The importance of awareness and education from a younger age about social media and its influence on body image was emphasized, as was the need for strategies to promote positive body image and counteract negative body image. Conclusion: The findings of this study have important implications for professionals working with adolescent girls and for the development of health promotion programs addressing social media use and body image concerns

Problem behaviours, traditional bullying and cyberbullying among adolescents: Longitudinal analyses

Problem Behaviour Theory suggests that young people\u27s problem behaviours tend to cluster. This study examined the relationship between traditional bullying, cyberbullying and engagement in problem behaviours using longitudinal data from approximately 1500 students. Levels of traditional victimisation and perpetration at the beginning of secondary school (grade 8, age 12) predicted levels of engagement in problem behaviours at the end of grade 9 (age 14). Levels of victimisation and perpetration were found to moderate each other\u27s associations with engagement in problem behaviours. Cyberbullying did not represent an independent risk factor over and above levels of traditional victimisation and perpetration for higher levels of engagement in problem behaviours. The findings suggest that to reduce the clustering of cyberbullying behaviours with other problem behaviours, it may be necessary to focus interventions on traditional bullying, specifically direct bullying

Maximising parent involvement in the pedestrian safety of 4 to 6 year old children: December 2005

In Australia, pedestrian injury is the leading specific cause of death among five to nine year old children (AI Yaman, Bryant & Sargeant 2002). In 1999-00 in Australia, there were 1,144 hospitalisations of children aged 0-14 years for pedestrian injuries, with a hospitalisation rate of 29.1 per 100,000 children. These rates decreased with age and were lowest for children aged 1 0-14 years. Pedestrian injuries among 0-14 year olds in 1999-00 were the second highest cause of hospitalisation in children (AI Yaman, Bryant & Sargeant 2002). While fatalities from pedestrian injuries among children 0-14 years have declined from 3.7 per 100,000 children in 1991 to 2.7 in 2000, the reductions are mostly among 10-14 year olds rather than those aged 1-4 years (UNICEF 2001 ). In WA this may be a result of road safety initiatives targeting older children

“It just sends the message that you’re nothing but your body” a qualitative exploration of adolescent girls’ perceptions of sexualized images on social media

This qualitative study used in-depth interviews to explore adolescent girls’ perceptions of sexualized images they typically find when using social media. Twenty-four participants aged 14–17 years described sexualized images of females as normalized on social media. The interplay between gendered and social norms that endorsed and rewarded girls for posting sexualized images was seen to influence an expectation for girls to conform with their peers and post such images of themselves. They indicated sexualized images emphasize personal value on appearance and rejected this notion. However, participants also believed girls should be able to post sexualized images of themselves if they wanted to. There were tensions between whether girls’ sharing of sexualized images of themselves on social media would be interpreted as a display of confidence (socially acceptable) or attention seeking (socially unacceptable). Findings provide guidance for the development of health promotion programs to reduce potential harm from social media use by adolescent girls