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School-Based Bullying Prevention: Getting Stakeholder Buy-in

Bring in Reinforcements

  • Overview

    StartGetting “buy-in” refers to garnering support from various stakeholders to implement bullying prevention efforts successfully. Stakeholders include school administrators, such as principals, superintendents, and members of the school board; teachers; other school staff, such as guidance counselors, paraprofessionals, librarians, and bus drivers; school resource officers and other law enforcement personnel; parents; other members of the community; and, most importantly, students. All of these people play different roles in the community; therefore, it is important to consider each of their needs when gathering support for the program. Without support from those involved in the effort, there may be barriers to the implementation process that are hard to overcome, and a program may not have the desired impact on bullying.

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  • Steps to Take: Lessons Learned from the Research

    Steps to Take:  Lessons Learned from the Research

    Find a program champion to help secure support and provide other help.

    • Identify program champions who can support the program in many ways.
    • Recognize that a program champion could be any member of the school community.

    Establish an implementation team that can help secure support and design an implementation plan.

    • Use the implementation team to enhance the implementation process.
    • Include many different members of the community on the team.

    Gain school leadership support for the program by communicating the importance of implementing bullying prevention programs.

    • Provide school leadership with useful information about the bullying program.
    • If leadership does not show support, find a program that does not require their direct involvement.

    Work with teachers and school staff to recognize the value of bullying prevention and how it can be integrated into current teaching practice.

    • Show staff members how a program could help.
    • Select a program that works within current classroom lessons.
    • Acknowledge and include all staff members who come into contact with bullying.

    Provide opportunities for input from students and parents.

    • Involve students in the process.
    • Keep parents informed.
    • Finding a Program Champion

      A program champion can be someone who helps get support from the school community and serves as a go-to person for any questions and concerns. A program champion can also provide support and motivation before and during the program’s implementation.

      • Identify program champions who can support the program in many ways. For example, a qualitative study of the WITS Primary Program involved interviews with program champions across various schools in Canada. The interviews showed that the program champions played an important role in the success of the WITS Program in their schools by
        • Conducting initial research about the program;
        • Helping to gain support for the program; and
        • Addressing various barriers to success.
      • Recognize that a program champion could be any member of the school community. For example, in the study of the WITS Primary Program mentioned above, program champions included principals, a vice principal, librarian, police officer, school counselors, and teachers. Note that a program champion may be one person or a group of people (which can help maintain continuity if one person leaves the project).

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    • Creating an Implementation Team

      An implementation team can help gain support for the program during the planning process and offer guidance once the program begins.

      • Use the implementation team to enhance the implementation process. For example, in the KiVa Antibullying Program, KiVa teams were created, each with three teachers or other school staff from each school participating in the program. Then, these teams were formed into networks, which met three times throughout the school year to exchange ideas and experiences. The meetings helped build support for the program and gave the team members a stake in the program’s success. The KiVa teams were then able to better support the implementation process in their own schools.
      • Include many different members of the community on the team. For example, the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program includes the creation of a bullying prevention coordinating committee, which meets throughout the school year to ensure that the program is working. The committee coordinates all aspects of the school’s bullying prevention activities, including how the plan will be rolled out. It usually includes a school administrator, a teacher from each grade, a member of school staff (e.g., a bus driver), a parent, a representative from the community, and other key people.

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    • Getting Support from School Administrators

      Getting support from school leadership (principals and school administrators) is crucial, because they can make decisions about which programs will be implemented and which resources can be devoted to the program.

      • Provide school leadership with useful information on the bullying program. Keep leadership informed about important aspects of programs, such as the amount of time and resources needed, while emphasizing the potential results (that is, a decrease in bullying and a more positive school environment for all students and staff). The bullying programs featured on the Model Programs Guide can be used to find this information (see Doing Supportive Research for more information about conducting background research).
      • If leadership does not show support, find a program that does not require them to be directly involved. Although lack of school leadership support can make implementation more difficult, teachers and school staff can still continue with efforts to implement a bullying program. For example, the Bully-Proofing Your School program includes the creation of a bully-proofing cadre—ideally composed of various individuals, such as teachers, parents, or community members—to support and guide the implementation process. One school found the cadre was useful to teachers who implemented the program even with little support from the school administration.

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    • Getting Support from Teachers and School Staff

      Teachers and school staff are critical to the implementation of bullying prevention programs. However, they may feel overwhelmed with their current responsibilities and suspicious of additional burdens or passing fads. It is important to address these concerns as needed. Having staff support bullying prevention efforts can be key to the program’s success.

      • Show staff members how a program could help. Present school staff with information about the specific bullying problem in their school (for more information about raising staff awareness about bullying, see Conducting a Needs Assessment). But, staff can also be shown how a new program can help them address the bullying problem. For example, many of the bullying prevention programs featured on the Model Programs Guide lead to decreases in bullying and victimization. This evidence can help show teachers that investing time in a program upfront may result in less time handling bullying issues later on.
      • Select a program that works within current classroom lessons. This will help to minimize the burden on teachers who may be worried about the additional class time required for bullying prevention activities. For example, many of the components of the School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support are designed for everyday use in the classroom and do not require a lot of time to be set aside for lessons or trainings.
      • Acknowledge and include all staff members that witness bullying. Other school staff, who also witness bullying and can intervene to stop such incidents, can contribute to the success of a bullying prevention program and should be included in anti-bullying efforts. For example, the Steps to Respect program previously offered an all-staff training, which was open to such school staff members as playground monitors, janitors, aides, and office personnel (see Providing Program Training for more information about training programs that target all school staff).

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    • Getting Support from Parents and Students

      Since students are the primary targets of most bullying prevention programs, it is important to get their buy-in at the start. Parent support is also important, because parents may find signs or evidence of bullying that may be overlooked at school.

      • Involve students in the process. For example, the Playworks program includes a junior coach leadership development program. Junior coaches are students (usually upper-classmen in the school) who help the adult coaches to implement some of the components of the program during recess.
      • Keep parents informed. For example, the KiVa Antibullying Program and Success in Stages Program provide parents with information about bullying in general and the skills taught during the programs so that they can help reinforce the lessons students learn in the classroom. Similarly, in the Stop School Bullying program implemented in Greece, parents were involved through teacher-organized meetings. In the first meeting, teachers explained the goals and objectives of the program to parents. In the second meeting, students presented work they had done in the program to their parents.

      Learn More

      StopBullying.gov has a number of resources about working with various members of the community to address the problem of school-based bullying.

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