Conflict resolution and bully prevention skills for school success

Conflict Resolution and Bully Prevention: Skills for School Success ROBERTA A. HEYDENBERK WARREN R. HEYDENBERK VERA TZENOVA

In a two-year study, 673 elementary students participated in a bully prevention program that included seven training sessions introducing affective vocabulary, social and emotional literacy, and conflict resolution skills. Treatment groups showed statistically significant gains on the conflict resolution subscale of the standardized instrument employed.

No gains were found in the comparison groups. A decrease in bullying and an increased sense of safety were indicated from student and staff questionnaire responses.

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survey of more than fifteen hundred students for the World Health Organization found that approximately 20 percent of students reported having been bullied (identified themselves as victims), and 20 percent of students identified themselves as bullies. Despite positive changes in several measures of school safety, one in ten students reported having been threatened or injured on school property in the preceding twelve months, and more than 5 percent reported missing school due to safety concerns and threats from fellow students (Brener, Lowry, and Barrios, 2003). Victims are at increased risk for depression and other mental health problems while bullies are six times as likely as their less hostile counterparts to have criminal records as young adults (Hoover and Oliver, 1996).

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However, bullies and victims are not the only students who suffer the long- and short-term consequences of bullying. Students in school environments rife with bullying often fear they will be the next target of such behavior, reducing their sense of safety (Cooper and Snell, 2003). A decreased sense of safety in school has significant effects. A neurological response to fear, often termed hijacking, may prevent many students from learning in a threatening school environment. Active fear and stress reduce activity in the cerebral cortex—the area of the brain needed to complete complex cognitive tasks. When students do not feel safe, “it is the thinking brain in the frontal cortex [which] is overrun by the more automatic responses of the subcortical limbic system. To avert this occurrence, social and emotional skills must be strengthened through practice in a wide range of contexts” (Elias and others, 1997, p. 56).

Inspired by the prevalence and consequences of bullying, numerous studies have been conducted on the efficacy of varied school safety programs, and the findings of these studies are encouraging. Conflict resolution program evaluations show that such programs not only reduce aggression and violence in communities and their schools but also provide “life long decision making skills” (U.S. Department of Justice, 1997, p. 55) and enhance the self-esteem of students. A study conducted by the Center for Law-Related Education (Bodine, 1996) found that most conflict resolution programs reduce the time teachers spend on conflicts, improve school climate, and enhance problem-solving skills and self-control among students. Conflict resolution training effects include increases in peaceful problem solving and reductions of more than 50 percent in violence in even the most violent gangs (Sherman, 1997). Significant reductions in destructive behavior are often the case in school settings as well ( Johnson and Johnson, 1996; Zins, Weissberg, Wang, and Walberg, 2004; Heydenberk and Heydenberk, 2005).

Research has shown that the success of any program depends on skill development: “Without skills students and teachers can envision what a caring community can look like, but are unable to get there. As important as it is to build the vision and align people around the need to achieve the vision, it is also important to give them tools to create that envisioned reality” (Jones and Compton, 2003, p. 295). This study examines the efficacy and transfer rate of specific conflict resolution and social problem-solving skills as well as bullying behaviors and school safety within a diverse sample of third, fourth, and fifth grade students.

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Review of Related Research Aspy and her colleagues (2004) interviewed more than one thousand middle and high school students and parents. Using logistic regression analyses, the researchers examined the relationship between youth assets and high-risk behaviors. The sense of feeling safe at school and the ability to “resolve conflicts without fighting [and] speak calmly even when angry” (p. 273) were significantly associated with avoiding fighting and violence.

This corroborated our findings in this population: increased sense of safety, increased use of conflict resolution skills, and decreased fighting.

Poor social skills and poor affect regulation often predict peer rejection, weak attachments, and the alienation that leads to further social isolation and mental health risks. When a school develops a conflict resolution program, it helps students succeed in three ways. First, “resolving conflicts in principled ways promotes and preserves relationships, thereby facilitating the bonding that is essential” (Crawford and Bodine, 1996, p. 73). Second, the conflict resolution education helps students control their behavior and make smarter choices. Finally, setting up a conflict resolution program empowers students by encouraging them to solve their own problems rather than having them controlled by teachers and staff.

Without a conflict resolution program, conflicts can predict “detachment from school and lower grades” (Johnson and Johnson, 1996, p. 482). An evaluation of conflict resolution programs in fifty Ohio high schools found that positive changes in school climate reduced fighting, and 90 percent of teachers felt their schools were safer as a result of the conflict resolution program. Eighty-six percent of the Ohio teachers in the study felt that students were more likely to take responsibility for resolving their conflicts (Batton, 2002).

Social interaction and a sense of self-efficacy appear to be so central to a child’s well-being that researchers have argued that these motivation systems are “inherent in our species” (Masten and Coatsworth, 1998, p. 208). Children’s innate motivation in the area of self-efficacy is “readily observable in the inclination of young children to actively engage with the environment and to experience pleasure from effective interactions” (Masten and Coatsworth, 1998, p. 208). Research focused on our youngest children reveals that babies exhibit motivation to achieve mastery of social self-efficacy with caregivers and show distress when they cannot interact successfully (Masten and Coatsworth, 1998).

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Problem-solving skills and a sense of self-efficacy affect students’ choices of activities, goals, and behaviors and “predict such diverse outcomes as academic achievement, social skills, pain tolerance, athletic performances [and] coping with feared events” (Schunk, 1991, p. 207).

People with a low sense of self-efficacy may avoid a task that would benefit themselves or others for fear of failure. Self-efficacy “is not the only influence on behavior” (Schunk, 1991, p. 209), nor is it necessarily the most important. Students must also have the requisite skills to maintain a sense of self-efficacy.

In social and academic settings, much of a student’s success will be determined by skills: a “high [sense of ] self-efficacy will not produce competent performances when requisite skills are lacking” (Schunk, 1991, p. 209). In short, when students have skills and the opportunities to resolve their problems successfully and handle problems effectively, they develop the selfefficacy and motivation dispositions that may enable them to continue to function well. In some instances, students who consider themselves good problem solvers not only accept but may actually welcome an opportunity to mediate a conflict successfully (Heydenberk and Heydenberk, 2000; Heydenberk, Heydenberk, Williams, and Pelly, forthcoming).

Social competence, including self-regulation and problem-solving style, is a “powerful predictor of academic achievement” (Wentzel, 1991b, p. 1066). In fact, these “interpersonal forms of competence are often more powerful predictors of achievement than intellectual ability” (Wentzel, 1991b, p. 1066). Wentzel’s study of the relationship between social competence and academic achievement found that “socially responsible behavior mediates almost entirely the relationship between students’ grades” (p. 1066) and other aspects of social competence, including sociometric status. Self-regulated behavior appears to be determined by three components: levels of interpersonal trust, interpersonal problem solving, and a sense of social responsibility (Wentzel, 1991b, p. 1067). All three of these subcomponents of self-regulation have been linked “empirically to objective indices of social competence as well as to intellectual accomplishments” (Wentzel, 1991b, p. 1067). It appears that “the ability to control negative emotional reactions to failure may contribute to both socially and academically competent outcomes” (Wentzel, 1991b, p. 1068).

There is abundant evidence that problem-solving skill development, self-efficacy, and social responsibility are essential to students’ academic and social success. Interviews and evaluation research on school programs CONFLICT RESOLUTION QUARTERLY • DOI: 10.1002/crq

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suggest that skill development is an essential component for program success. Pro-social values, good intentions, and vision are not enough if students do not have the requisite skills (Jones and Compton, 2003).

However, there is much less research on the specific social skills and conflict resolution skills that increase problem-solving ability and self-regulation for various age groups. For this reason, this study analyzed specific skills used to resolve conflict and avoid bullying behaviors as well as perceived sense of safety and peer relations.

Sample and Design of the Study The study was conducted in two suburban schools near Philadelphia. Both schools were within the same school district. The treatment groups were third and fourth grade students, and the comparison groups were third and fifth grade students from the same schools who did not participate in the conflict resolution program.

In year one, a pilot study of 437 students was conducted. A posttestonly student evaluation with high content validity was used to rate program effects and to evaluate program strategies. A teacher questionnaire was also employed during year one to rate program strategies, changes in classroom climate, sense of school safety, and changes in student bullying behavior. In year two, three instruments were used to assess program effects. The year-two study employed a pretest-posttest comparison group design with 236 treatment group students and 41 comparison group students. Intact classrooms were used, reducing the threats of reactive arrangements. This design controls for “the main effects of history, maturation, testing and instrumentation” (Campbell and Stanley, 1963, p. 48).

In year two, groups were pretested prior to training and posttested after the training was complete. The research team conducted all of the testing. The Student Attitude About Conflict (SAAC) served as a criterion measure. This test was used to assess effectiveness of conflict resolution strategies in the classroom. Developed by the New Mexico Center for Dispute Resolution to measure the effects of a statewide conflict resolution education initiative, the SAAC is comprised of thirty-two items that were selected after determining their reliability (Jenkins and Smith, 1992).

Their study involved twelve hundred fourth through twelfth grade students in New Mexico public schools during the 1986–87 school year. The item-total correlations were examined, and items with values less than twenty were discarded, resulting in the final version of thirty-two items.

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Factor analytic procedures were used to assess the construct validity of the SAAC. As a result of the factor analytic procedures, four underlying factors corresponding to four clusters of items were identified. These underlying factors were labeled as the four subscales of this instrument. The four subscales that were identified by the test developers are the Conflict Resolution subscale, the Social Skills subscale, the Peer Relations subscale, and the School Attachment subscale (Jenkins and Smith, 1992).

In addition to the SAAC, the posttest-only instrument from year one was modified and used in a pretest-posttest version during year two of the study. Designed with high content validity, the additional customized instrument measured multiple program effects, including bully-victim rates, skill development, use of strategies, sense of school safety, and use of new skills and strategies outside of the classroom (skills transfer rate).

The research team comprised two university professors and one graduate student in a conflict resolution program in another university, none of whom was involved with program implementation in the study under consideration. The researchers read all items from the instruments to students to accommodate a range of reading and oral vocabulary abilities within the classes. Furthermore, questions regarding vocabulary were answered by the researchers to ensure valid responses to items. All student responses were coded and anonymous. The classroom teachers were in the room during the administration of the aforementioned instruments to provide student assistance when indicated.

In addition to using student instruments and questionnaires in the treatment and control groups, teachers responded to a questionnaire related to program effectiveness and changes in student behavior. The Critical Incident technique was employed. It asked teachers to list the three most significant positive changes in their classrooms as a result of the conflict resolution training and the three weakest elements of the program.

Treatment Training was conducted by two Peace Center trainers. The Peace Center is a nonprofit conflict resolution education organization with a twenty-year history of providing programs to more than 150 schools. The two Peace Center trainers held advanced degrees in conflict resolution and education.

Training comprised seven one-hour sessions. The first sessions were designed to increase affective vocabulary (feeling words, as students called them) and CONFLICT RESOLUTION QUARTERLY • DOI: 10.1002/crq

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emotional awareness, such as Check-In sessions and the Emotional Cup activity. Other sessions were designed to increase self-regulation, empathy, and conflict resolution skills by using activities such as the STAR (Stop, Think, Act, and Review) strategy and the Peaceful Being strategy. The Check-In strategy was used at the beginning of most training sessions.

The Check-In

The verbal Check-In allows students to briefly communicate about their feelings at the beginning of each school day. One by one students verbalize their feelings and share events in their lives—a pet dying, a karate award won, a trip to visit relatives. Students may decline to check in if they wish to do so. The Check-In encourages students to explore their feelings and to disclose them appropriately to others. The Check-In simultaneously teaches I-messages (I feel . . .) and affective vocabulary (or feeling words), for example, “I feel scared today because my sister is having surgery” or “I feel happy because I’m going to my grandmother’s house tonight.” Students were not permitted to use I-statements to complain about a specific person or blame anyone for how they were feeling, such as, “I feel angry when Tony laughs at me.” Also prohibited were certain overused vocabulary choices such as tired, hot, cold, or sleepy, which describe a physical state rather than a feeling.

Although the Check-In was designed primarily to increase affective vocabulary and self-awareness of emotions and to provide practice of I-statements, the activity also helps students to increase empathy and understanding of their classmates’ lives. The Check-In has been found to increase school and class empathy and attachment (Heydenberk and Heydenberk, 2000), providing an additional significant benefit to students’ resilience (Hawkins, 1995). After its introduction to treatment students, the CheckIn was conducted at the opening of all training sessions.

Peaceful Being

Treatment group students used cardboard to make student life-sized silhouette figures. The cardboard figures were called Peaceful Beings to avoid gender assignment. Students were then asked to provide examples of positive or negative social behaviors. For each negative behavior (namecalling, insults, or pushing, for instance), students were asked to think of an alternative peaceful behavior such as giving compliments or saying kind words. The peaceful behaviors were written on the Peaceful Being, which CONFLICT RESOLUTION QUARTERLY • DOI: 10.1002/crq

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was then placed on the wall to serve as an ongoing reminder of appropriate interactions with others. In class discussions, students reviewed the Peaceful Being and related behaviors with their classroom teachers. Students added pro-social behaviors to the Peaceful Being as the program advanced. Students drew individual Peaceful Beings in their Peace Journals and added to their lists of pro-social strategies in that context as well.

The Emotional Cup

The Emotional Cup activity asked students to create a small origami paper cup. Students discussed their feeling words (from the affective vocabulary list generated during the Check-In) and wrote them on colorful pieces of paper. The feeling words were kept in the cup. The trainers then introduced an emotional brain metaphor of the cup overflowing just as emotions may when the emotional brain is aroused.

Stop,Think, Act, and Review

The STAR activity served as a tool to remind students to stop and think. The activity invited them to engage in self-regulation and to use conflict resolution skills when they felt emotionally overwhelmed by anger or frustration. Essentially a metacognitive strategy, the STAR activity embodied elements of other lessons: recognizing emotions, considering others’ emotions, acting as a Peaceful Being, and choosing a response rather than an angry reaction when stressed.

Web of Life,Torn Heart, and Picket Fence

The Web of Life activity asks students to toss a ball of yarn to a classmate while standing in a circle. A student who catches the yarn is given a compliment by the student who tossed the yarn. This game serves as a teambuilding activity. Other team-building activities were designed to increase empathy. The Torn Heart and the Picket Fence activities both tell stories that reveal the consequences of negatively resolved conflict. Directed discussion was used with the class to explore the importance of resolving conflicts after reading the stories.

Findings The year-one pilot study evaluation of 437 elementary students revealed the following: CONFLICT RESOLUTION QUARTERLY • DOI: 10.1002/crq

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Seventy-six percent of students reported feeling safer in school.

Seventy-four percent of students reported that they were better at staying out of fights.

Eighty-four percent of students reported less bullying in their classroom.

Sixty-eight percent of students reported using skills routinely both in and outside of the school environment.

Sixty-seven percent of students reported improved peer relationships.

The year-two study of 236 students in treatment classrooms revealed the following: Seventy-six percent of students reported feeling safer in school.

Seventy-six percent of students reported that they were better at staying out of fights.

Eighty percent of students reported less bullying in their classroom.

Seventy percent of students reported using skills routinely both in and outside of the school environment.

Seventy-nine percent of students reported improved peer relationships.

The year-two study included measures of pretest to posttest changes on the SAAC for 148 fourth grade students and 88 third grade students. The mean scores of the fourth grade treatment students showed positive changes from pretest of 33.93 to a posttest score of 34.63. The mean scores of the third grade treatment group rose from 33.69 prior to treatment to 34.19 after treatment. No pre- to posttest SAAC gains were found in comparison classrooms. Both third grade treatment groups (t ⫽ 2.454, p ⬍ .05, n ⫽ 88, df ⫽ 87) and fourth grade treatment groups (t ⫽ 2.894, p ⬍ .05, n ⫽ 148, df ⫽ 147) showed statistically significant increases on the conflict resolution subscale of the SAAC. The students reported a high skill transfer rate (over 65 percent) in both years of the study, citing the STAR and the Emotional Cup strategies as those most often used to avoid verbal and physical aggression both in and out of the school environment. Peaceful Being and Torn Heart were CONFLICT RESOLUTION QUARTERLY • DOI: 10.1002/crq

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third and fourth on the students’ list of strategies used to avoid negative interaction. During both years of the study, students rated the Web of Life and the Check-In activities as their favorite activities. However, the Web of Life activity was not listed by any of the 585 treatment students in the sample as an activity used beyond the training sessions. Several students reported reflecting on the Check-In (I-messages) to remind them how to communicate during the conflict resolution process; however, none of those students used the Check-In strategy alone. Therefore, the Check-In may have provided essential affective vocabulary that formed the foundation of the conflict resolution process, but it was not typically used outside of the classroom activity time.

During both years, all but one of the treatment teachers reported decreased bullying, increased pro-social behaviors, and decreased time spent on conflict, as represented by the following comments: Each lesson provided my class with a valuable resource of vocabulary to use. It also provided opportunities for practice and expression of skills we are learning in the classroom.

We love the Check-In. It enabled our students to voice their feelings.

This is something we’ll continue in our classroom.

This program will give students a reference point when a difficult situation arises. It will give me a chance to have deeper discussions when I witness or hear about a bullying incident.

The chance for students to think about the issues discussed weekly was very valuable. They looked forward to having the meeting weekly.

I feel the bullying program empowered students to feel confident in speaking up for themselves, and the students are less intimidated at the thought of confrontation and conflict resolution.

I feel, for my own classroom, it helps a great deal to be able to remind students of what we learned in regard to specific lessons. In other words, if a problem arises, such as name-calling, I can remind them of the Torn Heart.

Few criticisms were offered by teachers, all of which related to program scheduling. For instance, teachers felt that students resented lessons that interfered with recess time and suggested that the sessions be scheduled more frequently.

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Implications and Conclusions The conflict resolution program reduced verbal and physical bullying and increased pro-social problem solving and a sense of safety. All teachers in the treatment groups reported decreased time spent on student conflicts.

Teachers and students reported increased use of conflict resolution skills and decreased fighting, and the Conflict Resolution subscale scores on the SAAC corroborated these findings. If reviewed and practiced, the self-regulation gains and problem-solving gains may be strong predictors of other significant benefits.

Meta-analysis of educational research (Wang, 1992) has shown that students’ metacognitive competencies (the ability to stop and review one’s own thinking) and self-regulation skills explained a significant part of the difference between high-achieving at-risk youth and their low-achieving counterparts. Furthermore, research has shown that the increased self-regulation fostered in a comprehensive conflict resolution program is related to increases in students’ metacognitive competence (Heydenberk and Heydenberk, 2005). These findings set the stage for improved academic achievement, as found in earlier research (Johnson and Johnson, 1996; Wentzel, Weinberger, Ford, and Feldman, 1990; Wentzel, 1991a; Zins, Weissberg, Wang, and Walberg, 2004).

Approximately 70 percent of students used their conflict resolution skills outside of the classroom.

Contrary to frequently held assumptions, bullies usually have good self-esteem, but they are less able to empathize and self-regulate (Olweus, 1997). Both of these deficits take their toll on bullies as well as their victims. By the time bullies are young adults, “the former school bullies [have] a fourfold increase in the level of relatively serious recidivist criminality as documented in official crime records” (Olweus, 1997, p. 178) Therefore, the outcomes of increased empathy and reduced bullying behavior are positive markers for both bullies and their victims.

This evidence of skill transfer in treatment classrooms suggests that students internalized learning and that they will continue to use conflict resolution strategies in different contexts in their lives.

Students’ assessment of schoolwide bullying was unchanged or increased slightly in both the comparison and treatment groups; however, in the treatment groups, more than 80 percent of students reported that treatment group classmates engaged in less fighting and bullying within CONFLICT RESOLUTION QUARTERLY • DOI: 10.1002/crq

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the classroom, and students felt safer in their classrooms. This finding suggests that, as in other studies (Newman and Horne, 2004), bullying prevention programs can succeed at the classroom level if school-level implementation is not possible. This finding adds support to the usual practice of starting small programs within schools, often the only practical alternative to a schoolwide program implementation. The cost of this program ($600 per classroom) is minimal, especially considering that teachers can reinforce the activities in future years without the expense of engaging outside personnel.

Although school bullying has serious consequences, much of the behavior may occur in hallways, restrooms, bus lines, and recess areas, away from teachers and staff. Students’ self-reports of increased safety and decreased bullying are particularly significant in light of these findings.

Specific activities should be examined to determine those that are most effective and at what grade levels. In this study there appeared to be an inverse relationship between the activities students cited as favorites and the activities they used in conflict situations. Therefore, curriculum designers should not trust student enthusiasm about activities alone to guide their selection of activities without examining their actual use in and outside of the classroom. Furthermore, specific activities cited as most useful in this study may be ineffective because they are too difficult for primary-level students. For instance, the STAR activity was too abstract and apparently included too many steps for kindergarten and first grade students to use effectively, even though they gave it a high interest rating (Heydenberk, Heydenberk, Williams, and Pelly, forthcoming). Students are sensitive to activities that they perceive to be childish. For instance, the Circle of Peace activity, which provided students with a brightly colored plastic ring to hold while using the steps of conflict resolution, was a very effective tool for kindergarten and first grade students, but it was rebuffed by third- and fourth-grade students (Heydenberk, Heydenberk, Williams, and Pelly, forthcoming).

Finally, although several of the activities that were noted as students’ favorites were not those used to resolve conflicts, the students’ favorite activities may be valuable for program success. Students’ favorite activities may increase trust, interest, and student understanding, making these activities essential program components. Isolated or stand-alone approaches to conflict resolution such as posting the steps of conflict resolution or posting behavioral rules without discussion and reflection are seldom effective in changing student behaviors (Heydenberk and CONFLICT RESOLUTION QUARTERLY • DOI: 10.1002/crq

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Heydenberk, 2005). While such approaches supply the cognitive bases of appropriate social behavior and the specific steps of conflict resolution, they may not generate interest or positive student attitudes toward new behaviors without first building a foundation of trust, affective vocabulary, and empathy. Simply posting the steps of conflict resolution is seldom effective in fostering use of skills or transfer of these skills.

In research conducted on third- and fourth-grade students in urban Philadelphia (Heydenberk and Heydenberk, 2005) students given the useful conflict resolution strategies (for instance, STAR) in a stand-alone program showed no change in behavior or attitudes as measured by preto posttest changes on the SAAC. However, when students in the same school were given the conflict resolution strategies in the context of an integrated approach (which included team building and increased affective vocabulary from the Check-In activity), they showed statistically significant positive changes in their ability to resolve conflicts (Heydenberk and Heydenberk, 2005).

In schools that are pressured to meet high academic standards, teachers may be tempted simply to provide students with the steps of conflict resolution, such as the STAR activity, without the other foundation activities that are necessary for success. Unfortunately, learning the conflict resolution steps alone often does not change student attitudes or behavior. A balanced approach that includes activities to increase affective vocabulary and empathy and that promotes skill development may, in the long run, be an efficient use of school time by reducing time spent on conflicts, increasing school attachment and achievement.

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Roberta A. Heydenberk is adjunct faculty at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Warren R. Heydenberk is a faculty member at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Vera Tzenova was a visiting intern at the Peace Center, Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

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