Bullying in Schools - How successful can interventions be?

Edited by Peter K Smith, Debra Pepler and Ken Rigby

Cambridge University Press

English

English

Review of intervention strategies

Book

Policy Makers, Teachers, Researchers, School Directors.

Over 100 pages

Over the years there have been a number of different intervention programmes in schools against bullying. This book is a critical evaluation of some of those interventions, for educational practitioners and researchers.

Working on the principle that we can learn from both successes and failures this book compiles a detailed account of the recent major intervention projects and examines the processes as well as the outcomes and assesses the likely reasons for success or failure.

Criteria for inclusion were that the project should have intervened against bullying in more than one school, that there should be a description of the process of intervention and that there should be some evaluation of the outcome, including qualitative data on pupil experiences and/or on actual reported incidences of bullying.

The opening chapter summarises the history of research on bullying and makes the case for why interventions are important. There are then fourteen chapters of accounts of independent intervention studies, including chapters from Dan Olweus, and the SAVE model from Spain, the Sheffield project in England and many more.

Each of the separate authors has been encouraged to follow a standard format, describing first the impetus for intervention, the early stages of planning and funding, the selection of schools (and the characteristics of the schools and their students), the components of the intervention programme, evaluation and framework procedures, what actually happened - the achievements and difficulties in implementation, results of their evaluation and the likely longer term effects.

The final chapter is a summary of the main lessons learned.

We feel this is an excellent book which pulls together, in a very readable fashion, information about many of the well known and major anti-bullying strategies from work across three continents and eleven countries.

We particularly found the fact that each chapter follows roughly the same format to be very helpful and the reader can, if he/she wishes, look first at the results and outcomes before deciding whether or not to find out more about the strategy in more detail.

Most of the 'famous' strategies are covered e.g. the work of Dan Olweus, one of the earliest and most successful pioneers of anti-bullying research and strategies.

The final chapter, 'Looking back and looking Forward; implications for making interventions work effectively' is very perceptive and provides the reader with much 'food for thought' as it summarises the main lessons from what is a very substantial body of research and carries forward the debate on the best ways of tackling school bullying.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bullying-Schools-How-Successful-Interventions/dp/0521528038/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1302615117&sr=1-3

Wilsthorpe Community School