NASW Social Work Talks - EP19: Bullying Prevention

Episode Date: December 4, 2018

Guest Catherine P. Bradshaw, MEd, PhD, is a developmental psychologist and youth violence prevention researcher. She is editor of "Handbook on Bullying Prevention: A Life Course Perspective," which offers recommendations for prevention and intervention in bullying across the lifespan. Thanks for listening! Remember, we'd love to hear your ideas for future shows. Visit the show notes to learn more

I'm Kim Simpson with NASW. In this episode, we explore the topic of bullying and its prevention. Our guest is Dr. Katherine P. Bradshaw, the author of the NASW press title, Handbook on Bullying Prevention, A Life Course Perspective. Dr. Bradshaw is a professor and the Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development at the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. She also is the Deputy Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funded Johns Hopkins Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence and the Co-Director of the National Institute of Mental Health funded Johns Hopkins Center for Prevention and Early Intervention. To start off, I'd like to share an excerpt from the book. Bullying is a topic that

has raised major concern for our nation, so much so that all states have passed policies that specifically address this issue. This problem is very common among youth and adults and has the potential to have long-term effects. In the Handbook on Bullying Prevention, A Life Course Perspective, chapter authors provide recommendations for prevention and early intervention in bullying situations involving youth and adults across the life course. Thanks so much for joining us, Dr. Bradshaw. Can we begin by talking about the definition of bullying and how you measure bullying? Sure. Well, I really appreciate you all covering this important topic. The concept of bullying has been around for many decades. In fact, some of the earlier work that Dan Olveyas

had been doing in the UK documented some of the issues of bullying and peer abuse that were occurring abroad. And I think it really got punctuated in the United States when we started to see a wave of some of the school shootings that happened in the late 1990s. Certainly not the first incidents of bullying. We all can reflect back on our own experiences. However, when we started to see much more research around the topic, it was highlighted in large part because of the role it may or may not have played, actually, in some of the school shootings that occurred in the 1990s. And that's, in fact, when I got very interested in it. I was just finishing up some of the work I had done working with youth and juvenile justice and

became a little bit more attuned to some of the roots of bullying and aggressive behavior that were having their foundations laid in childhood. And I went to Cornell University to work with James Garbarino, who had done a lot of work on the issue of bullying and school climate and how that interfaced with some of the issues of school shootings. And so under his mentorship, I had an opportunity to really try to understand this concept of bullying and how it was different from other forms of aggressive behavior that youth experience, whether it be fighting or conflict or just disagreements that escalate and get out of control. And it's really hard for schools to try to prevent something that they don't have a good conceptualization of the root causes for.

So as we think through what are some of the typical definitions or defining features of bullying, we tend to think about it's an intensive and repeated form of aggressive behavior that's intentional in nature, and it often happens in the context of a power differential. And so there are kind of three core features of that that we can unpack as we think about how it relates to other forms of aggression that might show up across the life course. And in fact, that's the arc for the book is to really be thinking about these aren't just problems that affect youth and suddenly go away when they graduate high school, but rather they show up looking a little bit different in various contexts across the life course. And that's why it's so important for us to be talking

about this complex issue of bullying from a developmental perspective and understanding how roots in early childhood, if not actually addressed through prevention and intervention, can actually continue to show up, whether it be bullying and harassment in high school, or even harassment in the workplace, or other forms of abuse that occur among adults. So that's why I'm really excited that this topic is getting additional consideration and continued consideration, especially as we think of so much trauma and violence that kids are experiencing in the schools and the role that media and other kinds of issues that are more pressing in our society and have a wider range of access and influence across the life course. So it's an important topic to be thinking about from a clinical as well as from a prevention perspective. Is bullying limited to children, or do young adults and adults also fall victim to bullying behaviors? Well, if you think about those core features of the intentional aggressive behavior that's repeated generally

and occurs in a context of power differential, where we might not use the word bullying that happens in the workplace or adults interacting with students or even adults modeling bullying behavior on TV, We don't typically label that bullying, but it definitely meets some of those core criteria. And so that's why it's so important for us to be thinking a little bit more broadly about this concept and not using the term to stigmatize a certain age group or think about a setting where it happens. There can also be different cultural perceptions on this terminology. In fact, when we talk to youth, quite often they'll say, oh, that's what white kids in the suburbs experience. What I experience in the more urban settings is more like gang violence, but there's a lot of overlap between what the basic core elements of bullying are and gang activity or harassment or other kinds of interpersonal violence that can occur.

By no means am I trying to minimize those experiences or overreach in terms of our conceptualization of bullying, but we need to be thinking about these behaviors and how we're trying to address them in a more societal and developmental perspective. So what are the direct impacts of bullying and how do they differ between children, teens, and adults? Well, their most acute experiences tend to be kids feeling anxious, a bit concerned, or maybe even avoidant of certain situations where they anticipate this might happen, or certain peer groups or friends that they would avoid because they're concerned about that. And so those effects are very acute and often are very focused on that particular context. But you can imagine as that bullying experience can be very intensive or get

repeated over time, that those feelings and those acute emotions can be very generalized across multiple settings that might remind them of those experiences. It can make them hypervigilant to threat or anxiety that they would experience even in anticipation of going into those settings. There's some really important work going on about how bullying gets under the skin and can actually impact the way that you respond to other kinds of trauma or threat, creating somewhat of a vulnerability to other kinds of experiences that kids might have. And we all know about salivary cortisol and other kinds of tests that we can look at to see how stressed out people are, but quite often it's more of a dysregulation of those systems

that can occur as a result of a repeated exposure to trauma and violence. And in many cases, bullying can be that kind of traumatic experience for individuals, especially when it happens at certain transition points or vulnerable points. You think about adolescence, how insecure many kids are feeling and how important that relationship is and feeling accepted. And when then there's dysregulation or trauma or bullying that occurs and that makes kids particularly vulnerable to experiencing not only the acute symptoms, but sometimes those effects can be long-lasting.

And it's not just you get over it in the two or three minutes, but that chronic exposure or something that's really very threatening and can actually result in very long-term lasting effects. There's been a lot of questions about how does bullying cause violence? Does it cause kids to have mental health problems? but we often see it's much more of an interaction between other vulnerabilities or pre-existing mental health concerns and when they're coupled with incidents of bullying that can lead to an exacerbation of those kind of symptoms and those symptoms aren't just short-lived quite often they

can last across a life course and there's a dynamic process whereby if you have experiences of bullying and victimization that might change the way you interact with others or you even could be targeted because you're a little bit different you look or talk different from others or you have a tough time regulating your emotions and so become a little bit of a magnet or a target for some of those experiences. By no means am I blaming the victim here, just trying to understand how there might be individuals that are particularly stigmatized or vulnerable to those experiences,

and those are exactly the same kids that are likely to have most lasting harm associated with it. But in school settings, we often need to acknowledge how these problems relate to academic challenges that kids can experience. So it can cause them to be distracted, avoidant of school, skip school, and just be a little checked out or distracted by these kinds of experiences unless they're not able to focus on academics or being responsive to adult requests. They can certainly also lead to issues around depression and anxiety or even kids developing maladaptive coping strategies to try to regulate their emotions. So there are a whole host of other concerns that can happen. And sometimes it can also lead kids that are bullied to bully other kids or act out aggressively

because it's modeled for them in the home or in the workplace or at school and that they think that that's an appropriate way for them to actually respond or a way that's somewhat justified. Quite often kids that have experiences of victimization are somewhat hypersensitive to those things. They think somebody else triggered it for them, and so that they're responding to what they perceive as some kind of a threat, or that it's justified or retaliatory in nature. And for many kids, those are experiences that are chronic and occur over multiple years and multiple times. We also see some adaptation. As kids get a little bit older, they can self-select into different peer groups and try to avoid situations where they're not going to feel accepted. As you become an adult,

you might seek out a peer group that's more similar to you. And so you can somewhat avoid some of those experiences, whereas kids are, you know, all thrown together in a big group and you've got to interact with a whole bunch of different individuals. So there's a little bit of self-selection into some groups. That doesn't happen for everybody, obviously, in individual differences or cultural differences or gender differences. Perceived sexual orientation or gender identity development

are often factors that we see really peak in adolescence and as youth are struggling in many cases to try to communicate that with others in their family or within their peer group that can often make them a target for victimization during adolescence especially and sadly that doesn't end as they transition into adulthood and so that's also a factor when we start thinking about the intersectionality between different underrepresented groups especially youth that might be youth of color that are gender non-conforming and that that is a challenge for us to think about how we want to make sure we're supportive of all students and really inclusive of them and supporting them

during those transitions and any transition as you know is a vulnerability whether it's a move from one group to another or kind of out of the home or a transition in jobs and so those transitions create vulnerabilities And so from a life course and developmental perspective, we need to be thinking about how we support all kinds of kids. You think about kids that move around a lot. One of the areas that we had done some work on was kids of military family members because they move, you know, three or four times more than anybody else just on average. And some of the statistics are even quite a bit higher when you think about over their entire school years how many times they move. And that can create a certain level of vulnerability for them, being the new kid and always the new kid.

But interestingly, when you look at military kids or kids in military families, they're often more accepting and more empathetic of others because they've had that experience of moving around a lot. And so they personally tend to demonstrate higher levels of acceptance and appreciation for diversity because they're often the kid that's moving around a lot and have had those experiences. So it's interesting to think about different roles that kids might play and what might be protective in one setting could be a risk in another. Can you describe the difference between bullying and harassment or sexual harassment and bullying? Yeah, we typically talk about harassment in the case of protected classes of individuals, and that could be because of your race, ethnicity, religion, your sex, your sexual orientation. and we don't hear as much of a discussion of sexual harassment in school settings. I think in many cases because people are concerned about it and they don't like talking about sex and gender

and raises a whole lot of uncomfortable topics for schools to discuss and I think in some cases where it may actually lead to the level of legal recourse many schools are a little more comfortable kind of couching it in the context of bullying and there was a dear colleague letter that was released several years ago under the Obama administration that talked about the difference between bullying and harassment, particularly as it related to protected classes of individuals, and that schools might be pushing under the rug some instances and labeling them bullying, kind of dismissing them as such, when they would actually raise to the level of a harassment claim. And that was obviously very disconcerting for schools because it became much more of a legal

issue. And those of us that are trying to prevent these issues and talk about them and think about policies, we need to be thinking about the distinctions as well as the similarities. And the Me Too movement. Now, I think similarly to our understanding of the concept of bullying, we're developing a much better conceptualization. Well, what is harassment? What does it really look like? And does that really affect me? Does it affect others? Where am I seeing it? And am I actually beginning to label it. And so I think the evolution of that term and conceptualization of the Me Too movement is actually following a little bit of a similar course to the bullying that we saw more in school settings, that quite often there was a bit of an increased awareness

of what it was, better labeling of what it was, and more efforts to try to prevent it and address it and talk about it more openly. And so really trying to get beyond the stigma associated with and to be thinking about how we help and support people. And sometimes we need legal action to be able to protect individuals and make sure everybody really understands the implications of those behaviors. And so that's certainly something that's quite a bit different in the sexual harassment area. And the fact that it's adults rather than kids, that we tend to think of being more preventative and early intervention for school settings

and for younger populations, whereas you start thinking about adults in the workplace and the influence they have in the power dynamic. There's actually one of the papers in the book that Dorothy Espelage, one of the leading experts in this area, had authored and talked about some data and very solid testing of the model that she's developed that looked at how bullying experiences can actually lead to intimate partner violence as well as harassment across the life course. And so it was an area that we were trying to find connections between bullying and other forms of aggressive behavior that show up. A whole other set of papers look at issues in college campuses, like about hazing and harassment, that it can occur.

So obviously there's a lot more attention to issues of harassment, not only around the sexual nature, but also around issues of race and socioeconomic status. And I think they share a lot of commonalities with some of the developmental work around bullying of people of different classes and different political factors or different power differentials that can lead to this abuse of power and if it's not addressed and labeled and intervened on. And by no means am I trying to dismiss those behaviors by drawing a link to bullying. I'm really trying to highlight that we've got to address these issues much earlier on because they don't just appear out of nowhere, that I think that abuse of power can start very early in childhood, and we dismiss it. We kind of say, oh, that's just kids being kids, and those kids will just get over that, pull themselves up by their bootstraps or just hit back.

And we need to be thinking much more systemically about this issue because we do have evidence it's not going away. And if it's not addressed, it can actually escalate to be much more harmful and lead to a host of legal ramifications as well as mental and behavioral health concerns. How can bullying be identified and prevented? And I'm assuming when you go from setting to setting, how you prevent bullying might differ. Well, schools are often very eager to find some kind of shrink-wrapped book or package that's going to cure all their problems, whether it be promoting social-emotional learning or

behavior problems or bullying. But quite often, the risk factors and the challenges are multifactorial so that they need complex answers for complex questions. And in this kind of case here, it's not just use this one program or bring in this one speaker and this is all going to be solved. I think for a while people were looking for those very kind of quick and flashy solutions of let's have all these kids sign a pledge and then we'll be done with that. But it isn't just say no to drugs, just say no to bullying and we're done. In fact, similar to the drug work, we also have learned that it's going to take a lot more than just signing a pledge to actually help kids address these issues. And so there are several different elements of an evidence-based

approach, many of which include a school-wide approach and thinking about what kind of norms are we setting, what kind of expectations of empathy and peer support, who can kids go to, so are we training up our staff to really be able to respond to these issues when they see them, to know what to do when a kid reports bullying to you in a way that doesn't make the situation worse, because that actually leads to a cycle of kids not wanting to report to adults because they feel like the adults only botch it. and so we need to have some good positive proof points for kids to see that adults can help them out and can be a resource. We see kids going to adults a little bit more in the elementary school

than we do in the high school and middle school setting. Quite often they're turning to their peers or looking for peer support for this and this is a whole area of what we call bystander kind of upstander type of responses that that's why it's so important to address this from a whole school perspective. So it's not just the responsibilities of the adults, but we need to positively engage youth in this effort as well. So that way when they see bullying happening, they know to report it to adults. They know how to help their peers out without trying to take the problem into their own hands by solving it with their fists or other kinds of forms of aggression. We also need to be thinking about when kids are involved, what are we doing to

intervene with both the targets of the bullying as well as the kids that are perpetrating the bullying. And some of those targets of bullying need some more mental health support around coping with stress, emotion regulation, and some of the anxiety or depression that might occur. And that needs to happen separately from the kids that are actually perpetrating the bullying. Those kids need help too. And I think for a while the field was thinking, well, we could just suspend our way out of this problem. Let's just kick the kids out and that they'll learn from that. But quite often these kinds of problems are so entrenched in their behavior that they need to learn new skills and new strategies and develop empathy. And so we need a whole other set of

programs for the kids that are perpetrating the bullying so that way they can learn other ways. And some of those kids aren't just going to be able to shake hands and make up. And those forced apologies, sadly, are not ones that usually hold true. So we need to be very thoughtful about how we have systemic approaches to address this issue. In many cases, bullying is just an outgrowth of other kinds of behavior problems and mental health problems that kids will have. But I also don't want to pathologize every single act of bullying that happens. A lot of times kids will just try to test the boundaries on a relationship or really try to understand or don't really know how to interact in an inclusive way or feel threatened in some way about a peer dynamic. So that's why

we need to be thinking about what are some of those foundational skills around emotional learning and communication and emotion regulation that can happen in preschool. So while we may not label that behavior bullying, if it isn't addressed early on, it can escalate over time. And sometimes that means families have to be involved in not only how to respond to a situation but how to be engaged and talk to kids so that way parents can have the bullying talk too. And that bullying talk should include what happens if you see bullying in your peers. who do you go to for help? Because quite often when kids are thinking about hurting themselves or hurting other people, they disclose that to other people. They disclose it to other kids.

And especially if they have a weapon or some other kind of access to means of harm to others, they might disclose that to the peers. And so these issues of bullying often are quite closely coupled with issues around self-harm or other kinds of concerns that we need to be thinking very seriously about them. But not hitting the panic button every time something happens. But we also need to make sure we balance those extremes with being responsive and appropriate and helping kids learn from mistakes. Are kids likely to tell their parents about this sort of activity? They might feel a little bit more comfortable doing that in younger ages, but unless they have a really supportive and open communication with their

families, may be less inclined to do so. There's some interesting studies looking at even things like having dinner together or that car ride from point A to point B, just having that conversation, not necessarily about bullying per se, but the little check-ins that we all kind of blow off as adults. Those can be actually really nice windows for disclosure and opportunity. A lot of it is creating that condition for a kid to disclose an event. Much like other kind of mental health concerns, it might be a change in their routine. They usually ride the bus or they usually hang out with this friend or they usually do this or like going to basketball after school and you see a change in that could just be any kind of day-old change that they have but it could be avoidance of

a situation or a shift in that dynamic often changes in their peer group fairly suddenly can occur and if a kid's going through some other kind of transition whether it's around sexual identity development or even just physical maturation can put them ahead or behind other kids and in many cases makes them a little bit more stigmatized and potentially vulnerable to issues around bullying. A lot of education support professionals working in schools are not teachers and what was very interesting is we saw that a lot of kids were going to these education support professionals, the school bus drivers, the cafeteria workers and others in the school settings before they were even going to teachers because they felt a little bit more

closer to them in some cases. They may come from the same community where the students live as compared to the teachers, but yet they're often an overlooked workforce that's getting training around bullying. When you think of bullying, you think of children and young people, but bullying does occur also in the workplace. And you can see it on the media. There is so much relational aggression that's going on in the form of entertainment that we're somewhat numb to it. we don't even label it that. That we don't really see it when it happens in our own life. But you can think about similar kind of groups that develop and networks that happen in the workplace as adults. And it's important for us to also keep in mind the vast majority of bullying

that happens isn't of a physical nature. It's more of a relational. It's about that relationship and some kind of abuse of power effort to try to influence that network. And so that can happen verbally by what people say about others. It can happen over electronics like text messaging or even photos sharing embarrassing information. And it can create hostility in the workplace and a negative work climate. And certainly if it's of a sexual nature or around other protected classes, it can take the form of harassment. And I think sadly we've become so somewhat muted by all the exposure that we see through the media and social media. We're not holding the looking glass self up and actually seeing that this is happening to ourselves. And I think that's why it's so

important with the Me Too movement and other efforts to get the word out that recognize these behaviors and label them for what they are. And we found across the board teachers that felt more accepted and part of their own community were more likely to intervene on behalf of kids. So you want to create a nice supportive workforce, not only if you're a school, but if you're a business, you want people to want to work there. And to be distracted by issues of climate and bullying and harassment is only going to lead to more turnover. And that's a huge concern from not only that, but the litigation that could follow as a result of a harassment case. But I've been asked a lot about some of these media figures or high-profile issues that have come up.

And, you know, are these people bullies? And what does this really look like? And I'm not one to go finger-pointing and labeling bullying and bullies, but I do think that it's important for us to show that a lot of the behavior they're engaging in is around abuse of power, and that shares some commonality with bullying that we see in kids, and we shouldn't dismiss those. Say, oh, we'll just kind of get on with that. I think we've learned through the bullying literature that there are some people that are carrying some very serious emotional scars from those experiences. The kids that are engaging in those behaviors as well are often challenged in many ways. And so we need to be thinking how we can manage this and not just sue our way out of it, but actually put in place

prevention programs and strategies so people feel more comfortable disclosing and ultimately to try to prevent it before it happens. Is part of the strategy toward tackling the issue of raising awareness that it's okay to say something, it's okay to seek help, and to understand that this is not appropriate behavior. Yes, labeling the behavior is an important first step, but there are so many kids and adults that are engaging in these behaviors that we need to be thinking much more from a public health perspective. And I think that's one thing that's really nice about the book and the focus on social work is the engagement across multiple systems about how we're trying to prevent these problems and then develop tiered interventions for supporting

individuals that are identified as a result of that and sometimes we need to set policies and sometimes we need legal action to get attention and to communicate that we're serious around this but we need to be thinking much more about engagement and strategies and so when your colleague at work comes to you and says they're having this or when you see this text message go across your email what do you do how do you respond how do you stand up and talk to your colleague and support your colleague in that. And not minimize the behavior, or worse yet, pass it along to others and participate in that. When you don't intervene or you don't say something, in many ways you're condoning that behavior. You're setting the norm that that's

okay. Adults are usually engaging in these behaviors. They actually do know alternative strategies. They do know how to stop the behavior, but in many cases are choosing not to. or they've gotten away with it long enough that they think it's okay. So we need to really be thinking very directly about that. And what role we all play as witnesses to this. Are we enablers? Are we allowing that? We all play a role as either passive bystanders or active upstanders, and that's really where we need to be.

And I think in the school setting, this is one area that we're trying to raise teachers' awareness because they don't come to work every day wanting to have bullying in their classroom. and they certainly don't want that, but they've got a lot of things going on. It's hard for them to teach math and science and manage everybody's social network and who's on this phone and who had this party over the weekend. But kids don't understand that. They don't have a good understanding of how stressful it is to be a teacher. And they're sitting there thinking, I'm getting treated this way,

and that adult is supposed to be managing all this, and they're just watching as it happens to me. And that creates a big disconnect between the kid and the adult. So my colleague Elise Pass and I and Tracy Wasdorf just completed a project where we provided training to teachers in a simulator. It's like a video game where they have five kids in a classroom so we can train the teacher to better detect it and to be able to try to respond in real time during the classroom. Providing teachers an opportunity to get coaching on what bullying is and what it looks like in their classroom and practice intervening in the simulator actually does generalize to the classroom setting.

So now we're thinking the next stage of the work, what if we bring kids into the simulator and get them to be cool up standards? Because you don't want to be the dorky upstander. You want to be the cool upstander. How do you do this and save face and intervene on behalf of others? And rather than teaching kids how to respond to a bully per se, if they're being bullied, but how do they actually stop that cycle? It seemed a little less threatening, and that seems to be a really engaging strategy.

There are other technologies that are moving the field in this way that provide an opportunity for people to practice and make it more engaging. And the conversation around bullying is also becoming much broader, not only with the adult piece of this, but thinking about how does it relate to mental health and social-emotional learning and conflict resolution and empathy and all those core skills that we want kids to develop for not just the acute bullying situation, but for all of life. So I think that's the kind of next step in our work and where the field's moving a little bit more is to try to figure out how can we make these programs that are out there much more effective and easier for schools to use and more integrated with other kinds of activities that they have to engage in every day. We've covered a lot of ground. Is there anything that I haven't asked you that comes to mind that is important? Sadly, we don't have a lot of extensive data sets on this when we can look at other kinds of trends that have happened.

But there are a few federal agencies, like U.S. Department of Education and the Centers for Disease Control that have partnered to try to understand some of the trends over time. There are other research groups like ours that have been collecting data. And generally, we are seeing some improvement in the rates of bullying, certainly not eliminating it, but there was some indication that some of the policies that were being put in place and some of the attention to this issue

was making a little bit of a dent, certainly not solving the issue. However, more recent data have come out to suggest that maybe some of those gains that we made in the early 2000s, that things may have been kind of at least leveling off, if not maybe taking a little bit of a turn. So this is one of those areas

that we certainly haven't solved the problem by labeling it. We really need to continue to have consistent focus on it. and I think there's a lot going on in our society these days it's sending some confusing messages around issues of inclusion and acceptance of diversity and different perspectives that I think kids are tuning into and we need to make sure that we are consistent and very clear to kids about how that relates to their own lives and so I would encourage adults to have courageous conversations with kids about issues of inclusion and acceptance and diversity but I think at the the base of it, we need to have a much more inclusive and supportive, authentic relationship

with one another. So that way, when there are tensions that come up, that we have one another's interests at heart. The book is NASW Press Title Handbook on Bullying Prevention, a Life Course Perspective. Individuals who want to follow up on this conversation and learn more can visit the NASW Press website. Thanks so much for joining us, Dr. Bradshaw. Thank you very much for inviting me on. You have been listening to NASW Social Work Talks, a production of the National Association of Social Workers. We encourage you to visit NASW's website for more information about our efforts to enhance the professional growth and development of our members, to create and maintain professional

standards, and to advance sound social policies. You can learn more at www.socialworkers.org. Don't forget to subscribe to NASW Social Work Talks wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for joining us. We look forward to seeing you next episode.