This study focuses on bullying prevention in classroom context. An approach was used to address bullying in the classroom through an adapted version of the Classroom Check-up coaching model, which is combined with a mixed-reality simulator called TeachLivE to build teacher skills in preventing, detecting, and responding to bullying.

The Wisconsin School Violence and Bullying Prevention Study sought to understand the impact of comprehensive bullying prevention programs on outcomes related to violence, safety, and bullying rates. This study focused on 24 middle schools (grades 6 to 8) in Wisconsin. To examine the effectiveness of the school's current anti-bullying program, the Bullying Prevention Program Assessment tool (BPPAT) was completed at the end of the school year. The BPPAT focused on administrative policy and procedures geared towards students, faculty, parents, or administrators. This tool examined the following items: policy and procedures, program implementation, staff training, parental education and communication, student training, reporting systems, and continuous quality improvement (CQI). Students and faculty were given surveys to determine bullying rates and perceptions of school safety. The school safety survey was given to all students concerning their bullying victimization and perception of school safety. This survey contains the following demographic variables: age, sex, grade, and race. The verified bullying incident data contains incident reporting from faculty, which focused on the type of bullying and the demographics of the perpetrator and victim. After new bullying prevention programs were implemented, students were given the safety and bullying victimization survey which focused on perceptions of bullying and school safety. The number of bullying incidents, number of student victims and perpetrators, and the demographic characteristics of victims and perpetrators were retained in aggregate form for each school were submitted to the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) for analysis.

The purpose of this systematic review was to assess the effectiveness of school-based anti-bullying programs in reducing school bullying. The following criteria were used for the inclusion of studies in the systematic review: the study described an evaluation of a program designed specifically to reduce school (kindergarten to high school) bullying; bullying was defined as including: physical, verbal, or psychological attack or intimidation that is intended to cause fear, distress, or harm to the victim; and an imbalance of power, with the more powerful child (or children) oppressing less powerful ones; bullying (specifically) was measured using self-report questionnaires, peer ratings, teacher ratings, or observational data; the effectiveness of the program was measured by comparing students who received it (the experimental condition) with a comparison group of students who did not receive it (the control condition). There must have been some control of extraneous variables in the evaluation by (1) randomization, or (2) pre-test measures of bulling, or (3) choosing some kind of comparable control condition; published and unpublished reports of research conducted in developed countries between 1983 and 2009 were included; and it was possible to measure the effect size. Several search strategies were used to identify 89 anti-bully studies meeting the criteria for inclusion in this review: researchers searched for the names of established researchers in the area of bullying prevention; researchers conducted a keyword search of 18 electronic databases; researchers conducted a manual search of 35 journals, either online or in print, from 1983 until the end of May 2009; and researchers sought information from key researchers on bullying and from international colleagues in the Campbell Collaboration. Studies included in the review were coded for the following key features: research design, sample size, publication date, location of the study, average age of the children, and the duration and intensity of the anti-bullying program for both the children and the teachers.

The study assesses school climate and bullying across 45 schools in 20 rural districts and 5 counties of Southern Illinois. Investigators also evaluated the effectiveness of a low-cost, component-based intervention that focused on improving classroom management, playground monitoring, and school-wide disciplinary procedures. This mixed-methods study incorporated hierarchical linear modeling, with mixed-effects longitudinal models for repeated outcomes. The project design incorporated random assignment, with multiple pre- and post-intervention assessments. Major categories of variables include: students' feeling of safety in school areas; students' history of involvement in or observation of bullying; staff opinion and experience of bullying prevention methods; school policies on bullying; staff completion of training workshops; and demographics. The units of analysis are individuals and schools.

Bully-Proofing Your School (BPYS) was a school-based intervention program designed to reduce bullying and school violence. The BPYS program differed from other anti-bullying programs by providing teachers with a specific curriculum that could be implemented in the classroom. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the BPYS program at the elementary school and middle school level. The BPYS outcome evaluation consisted of school climate surveys administered to elementary school students (Part 1), middle school students (Part 2), and staff (Part 3) in both treatment and comparison schools. The design of the data collection for the study was a repeated cross-sectional design. The evaluation of BPYS took place over five years. In the spring semesters of 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006, all participating schools completed a school climate survey. The researchers collected 4,136 completed elementary school surveys (Part 1), 1,627 completed middle school surveys (Part 2), and 1,209 completed staff surveys (Part 3). For the elementary and middle school students, the mode of data collection was an in-class (group administration) anonymous self-completed survey. For the 1,209 staff surveys (Part 3), the mode of data collection was a mail questionnaire. Part 1 variables include sociodemographic and general school information items, school climate variables, school safety variables, and home and family environment variables. Also included is a filter variable which can be used to select the 3,497 cases that were used in the original analyses. Part 2 variables include sociodemographic and general school information variables, school climate variables, school safety variables, substance use variables, home and family environment variables, variables about guns, variables on activities the respondent participated in, and school attendance variables. Part 3 variables include school and staff characteristics variables, questions about general conditions in the school, questions on how the respondent felt about other people working at the school, questions concerning the resources and participation in the school and the community, and questions regarding staff perceptions of safety at the school.

Funded by the National Institute of Justice, and in collaboration with the Flippen Group, the South Carolina Department of Education, and the districts of Charleston, Georgetown, Greenville, and Richland County Schools, WestEd conducted a randomized controlled trial of violence prevention and a school climate improvement program known as Capturing Kids' Hearts Campus by Design (CKH). CKH is a skill intensive, systematic process, whole-school intervention, designed to strengthen students' connectedness to school through enhancing protective factors (strong bonds with teachers, clear rules of conduct that are consistently enforced) and targeting modifiable risk factors (inappropriate behavior, poor social coping skills). The CKH training program aims to address the mechanisms and processes of social skills instruction that lead to improved student behavior by promoting skills acquisition (i.e., modeling, coaching, and behavioral rehearsal), enhancing skills performance, removing competing behavior, and facilitating maintenance of social skills. Components of CKH have been widely used throughout the United States. As of 2013, CKH training has been offered to over 200,000 staff in more than 7,000 schools. Although widely used, the whole package of CKH training and service has not been sufficiently subjected to a rigorous evaluation to assess the effectiveness of the program. The purpose of this study is to test and evaluate the Capturing Kids' Hearts package of programs and processes offered in the school-wide model, CKH Campus by Design, which includes Capturing Kids' Hearts, Process Champions-Plus, Campus TrAction Pacs, Teen Leadership, CKH Recharged, and Leadership Blueprint.

Discipline in schools is typically disproportionate, reactive and punitive. Evidence-based strategies that have been recently developed focus on shifting schools to a more proactive and positive approach by detecting warning signs and intervening early. This project evaluates the implementation of an evidence-based intervention to improve students' mindsets and feelings of school belonging. This grant-funded project was designed to enhance school capacity to implement a Tier 2 intervention, Student Engagement and Empowerment (SEE), to improve student attendance, behavior, and achievement, while simultaneously evaluating the effects of this intervention. The intervention and research project were individualized to fit existing school operations in the school district. A grant-funded coach supported delivery of SEE at each school for the duration of the 3-year grant. SEE was delivered by trained teachers in the classroom over the course of a seven-session curriculum. The overarching project goal was to scale up and simultaneously evaluate a Tier 2 intervention that could be sustained after completion of the grant. The originally proposed research procedures consisted of an evaluation of the effects of the SEE program on the outcomes of students at elevated risk for disciplinary action and school dropout. Outcome data was collected for at-risk students in classrooms delivering the SEE program, and a comparison sample of at-risk students in classrooms not delivering the SEE program. Researchers initially hypothesized that students receiving the program would evidence a greater sense of belonging to school, endorse greater growth mindset, have better attendance and fewer suspensions/expulsions and course failure, and have better behavioral outcomes than students in the comparison group.

The project's overarching goals are to improve the knowledge and understanding of school safety and violence, and to enhance school safety programs through rigorous social and behavioral science research. This research project will meet these goals by implementing and evaluating a restorative justice school safety initiative that: 1) reduces bullying perpetration and victimization, aggression, and violence, 2) enhances school safety and mental health in middle and high school students, and 3) reduces the school to prison pipeline by diverting first offenders from the juvenile justice system into Teen Courts. In meeting this objective, we will implement and evaluate an innovative school safety initiative that includes a comprehensive school-based needs assessments using the School Success Profile-Plus (SSP+) student reporting system. In addition, Teen Courts will be implemented in schools to emphasize restorative justice, keep first time offenders out of the juvenile justice system, and reduce the school to prison pipeline. We will evaluate the efficacy of this restorative justice initiative for promoting school safety and reducing violence, by conducting a rigorous experimental trial of 24 middle- and high-schools that are randomly selected to either conduct SSP+ assessments and receive school-based Teen Courts (n=12) or to conduct SSP+ assessments without Teen Court programming (n=12).

The purpose of this study was to gather evidence on the relationship between discipline and the control of victimization in schools and to investigate the effectiveness of humanistic versus coercive disciplinary measures. Survey data were obtained from students, teachers, and principals in each of the 44 junior and senior high schools in a county in Ohio that agreed to participate in the study. The data represent roughly a six-month time frame. Students in grades 7 through 12 were anonymously surveyed in February 1994. The Student Survey (Part 1) was randomly distributed to approximately half of the students in all classrooms in each school. The other half of the students received a different survey that focused on drug use among students (not available with this collection). The teacher (Part 2) and principal (Part 3) surveys were completed at the same time as the student survey. The principal survey included both closed-ended and open-ended questions, while all questions on the student and teacher surveys were closed-ended, with a finite set of answers from which to choose. The three questionnaires were designed to gather respondent demographics, perceptions about school discipline and control, information about weapons and gangs in the school, and perceptions about school crime, including personal victimization and responses to victimization. All three surveys asked whether the school had a student court and, if so, what sanctions could be imposed by the student court for various forms of student misconduct. The student survey and teacher surveys also asked about the availability at school of various controlled drugs. The student survey elicited information about the student's fear of crime in the school and on the way to and from school, avoidance behaviors, and possession of weapons for protection. Data were also obtained from the principals on each school's suspension/expulsion rate, the number and type of security guards and/or devices used within the school, and other school safety measures. In addition to the surveys, census data were acquired for a one-quarter-mile radius around each participating school's campus, providing population demographics, educational attainment, employment status, marital status, income levels, and area housing information. Also, arrest statistics for six separate crimes (personal crime, property crime, simple assault, disorderly conduct, drug/alcohol offenses, and weapons offenses) for the reporting district in which each school was located were obtained from local police departments. Finally, the quality of the immediate neighborhood was assessed by means of a "windshield" survey in which the researchers conducted a visual inventory of various neighborhood characteristics: type and quality of housing in the area, types of businesses, presence of graffiti and gang graffiti, number of abandoned cars, and the number and perceived age of pedestrians and people loitering in the area. These contextual data are also contained in Part 3.