Results of a Social and Emotional Learning Program for Preventing Bullying in Junior High School in Relation to Students’ Level of Social Ability: Teacher-Led Intervention

Abstract

In a follow-up of a study (Nakamura & Koshikawa, 2014; in Japanese) of a 1-session (50-minute) school-based program for preventing bullying, the present article reports the evaluation of a 2-session psycho-educational program developed in the framework of social and emotional learning. The participants (N=151) from five classes of eighth graders were divided into a treatment group (N=88, three classes) and a wait-list control group (N=63, two classes). Sessions were conducted in their school; each session was 50 minutes long. In the first session, the children were taught problem-solving skills designed to protect victims of bullying; in the second, role-playing was used to teach skills necessary for defending victims against bullies. The instructor was a school teacher, i.e., not a clinical psychologist. The results suggested that, after the second session, self-efficacy for stopping bullying increased for both spectators and bystanders; this confirms the results reported by Nakamura & Koshikawa (2014). At a follow-up 9 days after the second session, the increase in self-efficacy was found to have been maintained. Immediately after the training sessions, the children’s tendency to bully was found to have decreased, and the norms for anti-bullying increased, but neither of those changes was maintained at the time of the 9-day follow up measurement. Those students with higher social ability showed higher anti-bullying tendencies than those with lower social ability did. The present results suggest that the training done by the teacher had an effect. Methods for preventing bullying were discussed in the context of educational practice.