A widely implemented common school programme aimed at improving kids’ behaviour helps to slow increase in bullying during the elementary grades, according to a new study.
Researchers found that teachers at schools with the behaviour programme reported fewer displays of aggression, teasing and rejection among their students, health news reported.
Catherine Bradshaw, who worked on the study, said the decreases in undesirable behaviours were ‘modest’, but they come at an important time in kids’ development.
‘If we wait until the rates of bullying are their highest, say, in middle school, we might have missed a developmentally sensitive time for intervention during the elementary school years,” Said Bradshaw of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. “We expect the benefits will continue to increase as children move on to junior high school,” she added.
About 16,000 schools have been trained to implement School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, a programme supported by the US Department of Education that provides a framework for discipline and for encouraging good behaviour.
The program involves a few days of training for those who will educate teachers and staff and Bradshaw estimated that it costs a school about an extra $ 1,000 to buy posters and other supplies.
