Conference Report (Short Version)

Coping with school bullying and violence at the local/regional level

International Online Conference for persons involved in a communal/regional level on School Bullying and Violence, October 24 – November, 18, 2005

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Contents

In this short report of the online conference ‘Coping with school bullying and violence at the local/regional level’, you find a short description of the course of the online conference and its background. Then, the main results are briefly presented and shortly discussed in the final conclusion. More detailed information can be found in the full report.

About the online Conference

The online conference ‘Coping with school bullying and violence at the local/regional level’ was the second of five online conferences of the VISIONARIES-NET project. For an overview of the other conferences and more information about the VISONARIES-NET see ….

The audience of the conference were representatives of local or regional institutions dealing with school bullying. You find a list of all the participants and moderators with information on their background at conference2.bullying-in-school.info/content/participants.html.

The general objective of all five online conferences is to bring together experts on SBV via Internet and thus network people form all over the world, who wouldn’t have a chance to get together in real life.
The specific objective of the conference ‘Coping with school bullying and violence at the local/regional level’ was to bring together local representatives and discuss with them on matters like: What should be the involvement of local authorities/NGO dealing with school violence and violence? What kind of local actions to set up to deal with SBV authorities/NGO? What are the expectations on a National and European level?

That way, the participants were given the chance to: meet others who also offer web resources on school bullying and violence; find out more about approaches and ideas from other parts of the world; learn and profit from others who deal with the same problems and challenges; network with experts from other countries and cultures.

Concept and Methodology of the Conference

The conference consisted of an asynchronous forum to which only the invited participants had access. The forum was open 24 hours a day for four weeks. That way, it was made possible for the participants from all over the world to take part in the discussion whenever they found the time.
As the participants are considered the real experts, they were involved in the process of selecting the topics. The moderators offered them a short questionnaire with questions related to the four topics of the week. Those answers were then analysed and served as starting points for the conference’s discussions in different threads. There, the participants reflected once again about the answers they and their colleagues had given to the initial questions and used those answers as a base for further discussions.
This multilevel process is very similar to the so-called Delphi approach, which is used to explore new fields of research with help of a group of experts.
 
There was one major topic for every week, each consisting of 3-4 subtopics that were discussed in several threads. The topics were not – as intentionally planned – closed exactly at the end of the week, but left open somewhat longer in order not to interrupt interesting discussions.

The outcomes of the discussions were summarized at regular intervals and presented to the participants in the conference forum. They were informed about the opening and closing process via a daily newsletter. In an off-topic section, the experts could discuss other important issues which were related to the topic of ‘Coping with school bullying and violence at the local/regional level’ but didn’t fit in any of the main threads.

The conference’s main outcomes in brief

Topic one: The involvement of local authorities in the school bullying and violence prevention

Delphi questioning

• There is a wide range of local institutions that should be involved, according different levels, in the process of school bullying and violence. It is not only the pupils, theirs parents and the teachers who must be involved, but also the municipalities, the police either municipal or not, mediators, social workers, medical persons…
• Those actors need to work together in a complementary way. For instance, schools generally do not have the time and resources to handle these issues at the whole-school level and that is where the local authorities and other actors have the potential to come in and assist the schools.
• There are different sources of information to get a diagnosis on school bullying and violence and victimisation. Sometimes, they include other types of information related to issues on bullying such as coping skills, anger expression and self-concept Questionnaires and interviews:  these instruments, during the class time but without the presence of the teachers. Each instrument was anonymous.

Is SBV a local competence? 

• It is necessary to act locally because school bullying and violence remain the issues of a particular “school community” which is not homogenous in the different countries.
• But it is necessary to think globally, meaning that governmental level have to give an impulse to global prevention. the awakening and the engagement of national governments as regards school violence prevention are necessary and complementary to any local strategy of prevention.
• Local educational projects mainly succeed if they are closely organised with the projects of municipalities, and conversely, if the necessary complementarily of all local public policies is organised.

The different partners of local authorities dealing with SBV

• There remains a difference between “inside school” and “outside school” to determine who should be the local partners involved in dealing with school bullying and prevention.
• Partners are e.g. local politicians, the academic community as a whole, the regional and national authorities, the association sector and civil society, the family, the peers…
• The role played by each level at school is difficult to determine. This vagueness is not a guarantee of efficiency. Indeed, in those circumstances it is not easy to design each one’s responsibility.
• The role of local authorities can be on different levels, e.g. alerting, convincing, stimulating the cooperation, financing actions…

How do local authorities get a diagnosis?

• To get a diagnosis, police and staff reports are not sufficient sources. Surveys will always give a better picture of reality than the other two sources.
• More than a source of statistics, surveys have a lot of benefits e.g. raise motivation, create awareness... Nevertheless, surveys are quite expensive to conduct.
• There are different kinds of surveys e.g. adult reports, self-reports, peer nominations, direct observations, in-depth interviews, focus groups, incident reports, etc.

What is the extent of the local partnership in school bullying and violence?

• The level of partnership is not the same in every country. In some, partnership is compulsory whereas in other it can not be mentioned.  In several countries, the process by which the partnership to deal with school violence becomes formalized were the same. It is only after some rather severe incidents in schools and a somewhat broader public discussion that the running of anti-bullying programmes in these schools has emerged.
• Even when there is a structured partnership, the question remains about the gap between the theoretical scheme and the practical aspects. Above all partnership may suffer from the lake of participation of some partners.

Topic 2 and 3: Actions  on SBV

No Delphi questioning

Training on school bullying and violence

• Training can be either targeted to a specific public (parents, teachers or students) or dedicated to a joint public composed of teachers, directors, and parents
• Training can have different goals e.g. make people reflect on what SBV is, identify different types of SBV and increase awareness of SBV, learn about sources and consequences of SBV, study the characteristic bullies, victims and bystanders, reflect own experiences and strategies of coping with SBV and discuss with others, study different approaches for tackling bullying and violence and their effects…

School mediation

• School mediation aims at reducing or stopping a conflict inside school between two persons. Mediation helps both participants in the conflict to clarify the situation and by means of mutual agreement helps to find possible solutions to satisfy both sides in the conflict.
• Mediation is based on a free adhesion of the protagonists, or what some of the participants call a voluntary agreement. It is also defined by the guaranty of a certain neutrality, impartiality and confidentiality.
• It appears a debate about the fact that mediation is or not an alternative to some other measures, particularly to a discipline and penal measure.
• Mediators can be professionals but not necessarily as it is the case for of peer mediation.

CCTV or not at school?

• To implement or not CCTV in and around school to deal with school violence is a very sensitive issue.
• At best CCTV can only be part of the solution and not the solution to any problem 
• There is not much information on the effectiveness of cameras, but that is not only true for schools.
• It seems that the biggest advantage of having CCTV at school is a decrease in damaged property and vandalism within the school (and hence cost-effective) but not necessarily a safer school environment for children.

Evaluation of the action

• There are two different ways of assessing an action : either the question is “do training, mediation or CCTV reduce or not school bullying and violence?” or “how do they work?”.
• The only intervention which claims success is that of Olweus, which by the way has never been independently replicated.

Topic 4: The role of the European institutions in the field of local SBV prevention

• A European policy would have the advantage to accelerate the progress of National legislations, particularly those which are late to tackle bullying and violence at school.
• International initiatives such as networks, cooperation, projects etc. may inspire or on the contrary may dissuade others to set up more or less the same action
• .A guide of the various programmes of youth exchanges existing on an European level would be also very useful