CPD: 
Resolving School Bullying: Evidence-Based Strategies and Pupil-Led Interventions
CPD on ‘Resolving School Bullying: Evidence-Based Strategies and Pupil-Led Interventions’ aims to improve how participants understand and resolve school bullying by developing evidence-based strategies which substantially harness the voices of pupils and school staff. This training is based on my doctoral and post-doctoral research in bullying and evidence-based interventions. I have provided CPD on school bullying to various schools and organisations and I am an experienced teacher and lecturer. My research has been published in journal articles, educational magazines and in the national media, and I have recently written a book ‘The Teacher’s Guide to Resolving School Bullying: Evidence-based Strategies and Pupil-Led Interventions’. Although schools have a legal duty to tackle bullying, many teachers have not been adequately supported to do so; and dealing with bullying is only one of their many duties. Strategies to deal with bullying which do not thoroughly address the issues can place teachers, pupils and colleagues in an extremely vulnerable position.
The CPD is for school practitioners including teachers, support staff and school managers which lasts for one day but can be shortened to half a day. The session is interactive and includes activities such as discussions, analysing case-studies and news reports, and research. Bullying between pupils, pupils and school staff, and between colleagues will all be addressed. The session will help participants to recognise what behaviours constitute bullying. Some of the complexities involved will be discussed such as how to investigate when teasing constitutes bullying. Participants will learn why children engage in bullying such as to be popular and because of boredom. Different forms of bullying will be presented and discussed such as cyberbullying; sexual bullying; racial bullying; the bullying of children with special needs; bullying between teachers and pupils; and systemic bullying including the influence social class and gender can have on how children experience bullying. Recommendations from the DfE and Ofsted about how teachers and schools should address bullying will explained. Difficult situations that participants might be confronted with will also be analysed such as when they might think a pupil is being bulled but it is not reported. Signs and symptoms of bullying in pupils will also be discussed. Anti-bullying policies will be analysed and school practitioners will learn how to effectively communicate and develop their school’s anti-bullying policy, including how to address bullying between pupils and staff.
Practical tips and recommendations which will help school practitioners deal with bullying will be presented, including how to establish an anti-bullying advisory group of pupils and staff to meet regularly, consider how to respond effectively to the bullying, and improve school strategies for resolving bullying will be outlined. The mentoring programme I have developed for children who persistently engage in bullying to learn how to refrain from bullying and behave more respectfully will also be explained and a detailed description will be provided of how staff can implement this programme. Details will also be provided of how staff can design, implement and evaluate a pupil-led intervention to tackle bullying by working with pupils to find solutions to their specific problems of bullying.
The final part of this session will address workplace bullying amongst colleagues. The reasons why staff engage in bullying, and the signs and symptoms of workplace bullying will be addressed. How to harness the voices of staff to understand and resolve bullying will be discussed. Staff will learn how to effectively interpret, develop and communicate anti-bullying policies to address workplace bullying. Practical obstacles to complaining about bullying will be discussed and useful strategies will be presented to support participants to complain effectively about bullying, and learn how to resolve conflicts and improve relationships after a complaint has been made. Furthermore, strategies will be provided of how individuals who are perceived as engaging in bullying can refrain from bullying and respond to colleagues more respectfully.