USU research battles bullies
USU Assistant Professor Scott Ross, who works in the special education and rehabilitation department, will be awarded the first-ever National Ted Carr Initial Researcher Award from the Association of Positive Behavior Support in March of 2011.
The reception of this award was the result of fieldwork and data analysis conducted on bully prevention by Ross and his team of researchers, and its implications will reform the way that teachers and students deal with bullies, Ross said.
Named for the late Dr. Edward Carr, whose studies on autism treatment and positive behavior support are internationally renowned, the award honors researchers and their efforts to prevent bad behavior in the school. Nominees were first selected for the award and a committee of five prominent researchers then judged their work using criteria based on collected data, publications in scholarly journals, and the results of research.
Robert Horner, Ross’s dissertation advisor on the bullying project and the man who nominated him for the award, said, “Dr. Ross’ bully prevention program builds on the work of Ted Carr, and as such it is very fitting that Dr. Ross receive this award.”
After experiencing highly resourceful anti-bully programs in a clinical setting and programs lacking the money to focus on individuals during his teaching career, Ross returned to graduate school to find and provide an intervention. It led to many years of research and, eventually, a successful solution.
“Five or six years ago we started developing this new approach to bully prevention,” Ross said. “We did this program across three elementary schools where the principals nominated the two toughest kids from their school. We had data collectors out during recess from September through February, and they watched for teasing.”
During observation, Ross’s team noted that any form of harassment by the subjects happened, on average, three times every ten minutes, and 90 percent of the time bullying occurred, someone else was there, either laughing, arguing with the bully, or simply watching and doing nothing about the incident. All of these forms of attention only serve to encourage bad behavior, he said. That attention became the variable Ross aimed to eliminate.
The research that Ross’s team conducted provides a simple and yet dynamic way of removing harassment and bullying from school, Ross said. Rather than focusing on punishing the abuser or protecting the victim, Ross’s findings show that the most effective way to end school-wide harassment is to target the bystanders who are giving bullies their attention, thus removing the “pay-off” following any incident of bullying.
The intervention program Ross’s team created to target that attention involves a three-step response process where students tell the bully to stop, walk away if the harassment continues, and talk to a responsible adult if it still continues.
Ross’s research led to the development of a three-tiered method of intervention where bullying can be dealt with individually. According to his research, 80 percent of students fall into a primary prevention level, which incorporates “stop, walk, and talk” and encourages respectful behavior. Students who fall in the second category are considered “at risk” children, and are given peer support and targeted social skills instruction to keep them from exercising bad behavior. The goal of the secondary prevention program is to keep children from entering the tertiary prevention program, which deals with very aggressive behavior at a more personal level.
After implementing this form of prevention, Ross’s researchers determined that the amount of harassment incidents recorded during school time decreased substantially.
“The bully prevention program Dr. Ross examined reduced bullying on the playground by 72 percent. More importantly, the program taught all students how to deal with aggressive behavior from their peers,” Horner said. Ross’s research also proved that by eliminating peer attention and, thus, the bullying, teachers felt less stress in the classroom and that they were more effective.
Ross’s findings have been published in several academic journals, including the “Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis,” and he has toured several states to promote his intervention program.
Ben Lignugaris-Kraft, department head of the special education and rehabilitation program at USU, said, “He is very involved in schools. He understands school systems and how to promote change in them.”
Statewide, 120 schools have already begun to implement parts of his program, and Ross said he hopes that the national attention of the award will bring the funding to expand his research and potentially get it into schools all over the country.
He also said he hopes that his findings will provide a low-cost means of intervention that can help children of all ages and all situations.
“I was very honored to receive the award, especially because of the amazing impact the association is having on the field of education,” he said. “I am also very excited about the award because it will bring additional attention to the importance of school-wide systemic intervention with bullying.”
– ariwrees@gmail.com