Discipline Project Tests Group Participation

New Justice Department research helps validate the need for all members of the “school community” to work together to improve campus climates.

Although many aspects of the bullying problem remain controversial, one finding has received general support: The real culprit is the “growing-up environment” of the bully.

Adults in the bully’s environment are often unaware of the bullying symptoms or ignore them. The bully’s environment is generally devoid of positive experiences. Instead, physical punishment dominates and violence is the major problem-solving method.

Schoolyard bullying is a symptom of an underlying problem: the inability of many schools to avoid or reduce disruptions in classrooms and on school grounds. All too often, student crime and misbehavior take time away from in-task activities and interfere with teaching and learning. The net effect is weakening of the school’s educational program, lower school morale, and, in the worst cases, the creation of a climate of fear that affects students and teachers alike.

EDC School Discipline Project
In September 1986, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, US. Department of Justice, awarded the Education Development Center (EDC) a grant to design and test an approach for dealing with the underlying problem of ineffective school discipline problems and inadequate student environments. The project is designed to reduce crime and misbehavior in the schools, including the serious and symptomatic activities of the school yard bully.

EDC’s School Discipline Project is being carried out in collaboration with the public schools in Providence, Rhode Island. Providence is a mid-sized city that faces the same problems experienced by other urban communities with diverse student populations. Two middle schools have actively participated in the project this first planning year. Middle schools have a disproportionate share of discipline problems, and over the last several years 38 and 49 percent of all disciplinary referrals in the Providence school system have come from these institutions.

Most of the classroom disruptions at this grade level (which account for three-quarters of the disciplinary proceedings) are relatively minor in nature — talking back, acting out in class, cutting class and poor attendance. Bullying in various forms is the next most frequent cause for disciplinary referral. These behaviors include fighting (9 percent of referred cases), assault (5 percent) or interference with others (9 percent). In most cases, school yard bullies use fists; in rare instances, they use knives or other weapons.

A fundamental premise of our approach is that schools will be most effective in reducing bullying and other forms of disruption if they address the students’ various environments. To do this, schools need to employ the collective effort of students, parents, educators, community representatives and law enforcers in order to identify and resolve disciplinary problems. While taking into consideration existing and anticipated legal precedents, schools can use participatory methods to tailor their local policies and practices to reflect local concerns and community norms.

We divided the project into three major components:

• Using formal and informal interviews with administrators, teachers, students and parents, we obtained up-to-date attitudinal data and information about school crime and discipline policies and practices.
• We analyzed the local discipline code to determine whether it was clear and well organized, was in conformity with federal and state laws and regulations, and was reasonable in the types of sanctions it recommended for various offenses.
• We worked with each school to create a forum for participatory decision making: the School Action Team.

School Action Teams: The Plan
School Action teams are representative groups that work together in shared decision making. These groups can play a major role in building more positive, participatory environments within the school, the home and the community.

The action team concept is consistent with recent sociological, psychological and school effectiveness theory and research. Social control theory stresses the importance of consistent interactions with positive role models, positive regard for normal developmental behavior, and regular communication between family members. Likewise, developmental psychology stresses participatory methods that include open and frank expression by everyone, role taking, maintaining integrity and mutual decision making. These are critical steps for helping children develop a sense of responsibility towards others and establish group norms against such misbehaviors as stealing, fighting and cheating. Further, school effectiveness research has found that positive social bonding occurs when administrators, teachers, students and parents participate in solving real-life issues together.

These theories and research provided us with a conceptual base to build upon in developing a program to address the school yard bully problem. First, participation is critical. Face-to-face problem solving between people is central from an early age, both in the home and in the school. Second, the quality of this participation must include learning such skills as talking things out, role taking, sharing, maintaining integrity and problem solving.

School Action Teams: the Process
Creating a participatory School Action teams sounds simple in concept. In actual practice, however, it is a complex and demanding task. School systems are not accustomed to participatory decision making. As in law enforcement agencies, they maintain fairly strict hierarchical structures that lodge most of the decision-making power with district and school administrators.

Schools have little experience in sharing power between administrators and teachers, much less between students and parents. Therefore, a process that empowers teachers, parents and students to share in decision making is not successful overnight. Below, we briefly describe the steps that unfolded in the development of the action teams. All the steps reflect the movement of these two school communities from a sense of “I-ness” to a sense of “we-ness” from exclusion to inclusion.

Creating trust and acceptance with district and school administrators. At first, the school personnel were suspicious of us as outsiders. They, like many urban school personnel, had been frequently “burnt” by outsiders who would come in, presume to know what was good for a school, and then leave-leaving behind unresolved problems and well aired criticisms but no solutions or the mechanisms for finding solutions.

From the start, it was important to dispel any perceptions that we knew what issues were important to the schools or that we knew the answers to their problems. In a series of meetings, we worked with administrators to create mutual trust. We listened to local needs and concerns, making sure that all those present had expressed their ideas about discipline needs in planning the overall project.

Gaining the trust and acceptance of other school community members. We also needed to gain trust and support from teachers, students and parents — people who were directly affected by administrators’ decisions, even though the system usually allowed them limited input in arriving at and implementing those decisions.

To do this, we made informal contacts in the halls, classrooms, teacher and student cafeterias, and teachers’ lounge. By introducing ourselves and listening to the concerns of secretaries, aids, teachers, administrators and students, the word began to spread that we were people who could be trusted and who cared about the school as a whole as well as about them as individuals.

Selecting action team participants. Based on psycho/social theory, the action teams should be broadly representative, involving teachers, administrators, students and parents. Theory also tells us, however, that participation must grow from the present source of power: the principals. Their direction guided the decision of who the initial members should be.

Once the initial membership was decided and a group met from each school (including the principal), the group became responsible for deciding who else should participate. Various people were suggested and included.

Connecting action team members together. At first, people tended not to talk at all. (“Why say anything when your boss is at the table?” “No one will listen anyway, much less do anything.”) When they did start to speak, they were likely to talk in terms of “I want this, I propose that….” Only gradually was there movement toward “we want this, we propose that….”

The participatory process has a number of fairly predictable stages: feeling out of the group (what is its purpose, is it safe to be open); expressing pent-up frustrations; determining whether anything can be done to improve the situation; isolating a workable problem; and making the first major decision about solutions.

Involving the entire school community. After action team members established a working organization, the next step was to include the people they represented. Initially, these members defined problems and proposed solutions for themselves. Thinking about how their decisions represented the entire school was still distant.

However, once their decisions were presented to the schools’ faculty, strong feedback indicated that other ideas and emotions “out there” still must be considered. Reacting positively, the action teams decided the participatory process must be expanded to represent all those with a stake in their decisions.

Reaching out to the community at large. The final step involved reaching out to the entire community to support school-based efforts.

Both action teams discussed the crucial role they need to play in establishing priorities for community involvement, in serving as linking agents to match students with needed services, and in helping school administrators extend their reach into the community.

Implications and applications
As the literature indicates, a major barrier in dealing with the schoolyard bully is the fact that administrators, teachers and parents often downplay bullying behavior. They either do not know about its existence, ignore its existence or treat it as if it were a normal part of adolescent development.

Hopefully, the EDC process can sensitize representatives of the entire school community to the nature of the problem. It can involve them in identifying, developing, implementing, evaluating and revising workable solutions. Our participatory process is based on the assumption that school yard bullying, like other school disruptions, is symptomatic of the larger problem of school climate and discipline. It seeks to improve the many environments of students, to tailor local solutions to local problems, and to involve all those with a stake in the process in the process in identifying and implementing those solutions.