Understand and Stand Up:

Using the World Wide Web to create and sustain an anti-

bullying school culture

Basic Concept:

Research shows that the most effective way to reduce bullying behavior in schools is to create a culture with anti-bullying norms and values. The best way to establish such a culture is to provide EVERYONE in the school community with vocabulary & resources, as well as a forum for ongoing dialogue and learning, on the topic.

We can leverage

the World Wide Web

to make this happen.

Current Web-based Resources:

• Anti-bullying resources• Communication & collaboration tools• Interactive games• Multimedia (audio/video) resources• Data visualization resources• BUT NO ONE HAS PUT ALL THESE

PIECES TOGETHER, IN A SINGLE RESOURCE, IN THE INTEREST OF COMBATING SCHOOL BULLYING.

www.understand-and-stand-up.org

ABCD• Audience: K – 8 school communities in the US

• Students• Teachers• Administrators• Other school employees• Parents

• Behavior: Members of school community (including the “targets” themselves) stand up / speak out against bullying behaviors. Incidence rate of bullying behavior decreases.

• Condition: School climate in which bullying / peer abuse takes place (most, if not all, American schools)

• Degree: Decrease average portion of targets and/or bullies from 30% to 10% or less

Situation• Almost 30% of youth in the United States are

estimated to be involved in bullying, either as a bully, as a target of bullying, or both.

• Each day, 160,000 students in America miss school for fear of being bullied.

• Every 7 minutes, a child is bullied.– Adult intervention: 4%– Peer intervention: 11%– No intervention: 85%

• School bullying statistics and cyber bullying statistics are increasingly viewed as an important contributor to: – suicide – violence, including homicide

• Targets are prone to become depressed, feel anxious or insecure as adults

• - Bullies are prone to become criminals

Culture

• School culture (K-8)• American schools• Public/private/charter

Cultures within this audience vary significantly. Resource should be adaptable to a particular school's culture.

Usability

• Accessible to literate children & adults• Teachers/administrators serve as

facilitators/moderators• Login required for uploading/giving

input to the site (accountability)• Sorting of information on the site

allows easy navigation• UI would be clean & simple—child- AND

adult-friendly• Text + image + audio + video allows a

wide range of users

Learning Theories• Social Learning Theory (Bandura)

– People learn through observing others' behavior, attitudes, and outcomes of those behaviors. Environment influences behavior AND behavior influences environment.

• Constructivism – Learning is an active, contextualized process based on

personal experiences, refined through social negotiation.• Social Development Theory (Vygotsky)

– Students play an active role in learning; a person's cultural development first occurs between people, then inside the person.

• Multiple Intelligences (Gardner)—visual, musical, auditory, verbal, interpersonal, intrapersonal

• Experiential Learning (Kolb)– Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created

through the transformation of experience.• "Like ants, all of our thoughts & actions happen in the

service of emotional goals. But as humans, we have interpreted 'survival' to include social & cultural constructs. Learning is social. WE LEARN BY EMPATHY." - Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, Ed.D.

Scalability

Individual schools of any size can structure their respective forums according to their particular scale and culture. World Wide Web accessibility allows it to reach far throughout the world (though it may require modified content to accommodate places with school cultures different from the US)

Sustainability

• Building on others’ work (resources section; background research)

• By nature, addressing the problem of school bullying requires ONGOING dialogue, awareness, learning

• Funding may come from foundations or web-ads