Social Change Effort Project (SCEP) Assessment Results & Action Plan

Our assessment was predicated on surveys distributed to teachers and staff at Mound Fort Junior High School, Midvale Elementary, Guadalupe School and Sandy Elementary. Using the 48 surveys collected, we searched for overarching themes. This allowed for identification of an action plan benefiting all parties. Although each school reflected different trends, we did observe common themes.  

When asked to define bullying, our survey respondents provided statements such as “repeated aggression or threats,” “purposefully demeaning,” “recurrent intention to harm,” and “exerting power over another.” These definitions and key words are consistent with the two distinct aspects of bullying identified by Goldsmid and Howie (2014): repetition and a difference in power. Respondents are also in line with the research of Bowen et al. (2008) who state that bullying is one-sided, intentional, and repeated. In contrast, conflict was almost unanimously defined as some form of “disrespectful disagreement” between two or more parties.

Although the survey participants from all four schools identified and defined both bullying and conflict using similar terms, each school differed with regard to the frequency of such incidents. Mound Fort Junior High and Guadalupe School reported “constant” bullying (more than once a month), Midvale Elementary reported seeing bullying “sometimes” (three to six times a school year), and Sandy Elementary said it was seen “rarely” (one to two times per school year).

Despite variance in reports of bullying, each of the schools used a similar approach when addressing the situation, namely, the teachers and staff talked with the students involved and attempted to find a solution. Only four respondents stated that they contact the students’ parents and only eleven state that they involve administration. These statistics show that bullying is often handled exclusively by the teachers and staff, with little to no involvement from parents, school social workers, or the administration. Specifically, teachers reported using the following methods to address bullying: “gather information about the situation,” “basic conflict resolution, then proceed to assist the bullied student,” and “put them together and talk about it.” Ironically, when asked how they respond to conflict, many of the teachers’ answers were similar to their response to bullying. Reports included: “gather information about the conflict,” “talk to all parties involved to work out problems,” and “ teach skills to deal with future conflict.”

While both conflict and bullying may need adult intervention, they should not be dealt with similarly. For instance, as bullying is, by definition, one sided, the victim should not be expected to share the blame or be required to engage in problem-solving. This differs from conflict, which involves multiple parties, all of whom should be held responsible for their actions and should engage in conflict resolution.

When asked what kind of supports would help them in their role with students, over half of our respondents indicated they would like new training, programs, or protocols with regard to bullying and conflict among their students. One teacher requested a “school-wide positive behaviors reinforcement policy, with protocols for rewards and for transgressions so that students understand concrete expectations for everyday behavior.” The united voice of teachers and staff requesting support and change in addressing student behaviors directed our efforts.

As conflict was a constant at all four schools, our plan is to better prepare teachers to handle conflict amongst students. Our long term goal is for students attending Mound Fort Junior High, Guadalupe School, Midvale Elementary, and Sandy Elementary to be able to demonstrate knowledge and application of conflict resolution skills within their respective school settings. To accomplish this, we plan to implement a social skills curriculum to be taught and reinforced by the teachers within the classroom. As a result, teachers will be better able to handle instances of conflict, while referring instances of bullying to the school social workers and administration, who can then work in conjunction with students’ parents. Not only does this better prepare teachers, but it also provides incidents of bullying with requisite attention. Bullying behavior would no longer be akin to a minor conflict amongst students, but would be handled with appropriate severity so as to discourage that type of behavior as an acceptable offense.

Our process objective is that by April 9th, 2015 each social work intern will have met with their Principal, School Social Worker, or School Psychologist. By incorporating various members of the faculty and staff in this process, we will be distributing the responsibility and workload amongst the entire school. At this meeting we will discuss the benefits of incorporating conflict resolution skills into a weekly curriculum and of implementing a professional development class for teachers and staff. Our success will be determined by whether or not we have been able to hold this meeting by April 9th, 2015. A second reason why we have chosen to involve the administration is an attempt to implement what we learn from Pyles (2014), where she informs us that when organizing tactics, it is important to consider “the type of power that organizers wish to break through” (p. 159). We realize that we will need the support of administration at each school if change is to occur.

Our group’s outcome objective is aimed at teaching students the skills necessary to resolve their own conflicts. Our outcome objective is that by the beginning of the 2015-2016 school year, 50% of all teachers at these schools will have completed professional development training on conflict resolution and implemented it into their classroom curriculum, thereby facilitating students to resolve most conflicts independent of teacher mediation. Determining whether or not teachers have established and implemented the curriculum, and evaluating their success, will be carried out by the same individual with whom we met during our initial meeting as part of our process objective.

    Gamble’s (2010) inclusive program development model of community practice seems the most appropriate to meet our goal of having students internalize conflict resolution skills. Our group’s desired outcome is “expansion, redirection, and[/or] new development of programs” aimed at teaching students the skills necessary to resolve their own conflicts, which, in our estimation, would “improve service effectiveness” in schools because it would allow school counselors to focus their efforts on bullying (Gamble, 2010, p. 26, Table 2.1). The systems targeted for change in the inclusive program development model are the “beneficiaries of agency services,” which includes teachers and students,” and this model’s scope of concern is “service development for a specific population” (Gamble, 2010, pp. 26-27), which accurately describes the task we are undertaking. Utilizing this model enables our group to act in the primary roles of advocates, leaders, organizers, planners and assessors, while simultaneously acting in the related roles of spokespeople, visionaries, bridge-builders, trainers, and evaluators (Gamble, 2010, pp. 40-45).

As we begin applying this social change model, we are also mindful that as we are all working in Title 1 schools, we will be faced with issues such as low socioeconomic status, ethnic and cultural diversity, and layers of psychosocial problems. As such, we need to approach our goals using all three lenses of globalization, the increase in multicultural societies, and the expansion of human rights (Gamble, 2010, pp. 31-38). Globalization includes the “exchange and integration of culture [and] technological innovation” (Gamble, 2010, p. 32), which are particular challenges for some of our students who are English Language Learners (ELL). Each of our schools are multicultural in that they are “ethnically, racially, and culturally more mixed” as a result of “voluntary or forced migrations” due to economic factors, war, genocide, famine, or natural disasters (Gamble, 2010, p. 34). Expanding human rights aligns with the social work value and principle of pursuing social change “particularly with and on behalf of vulnerable and oppressed individuals and groups of people” (NASW Code of Ethics, 1996).

In order to develop strategies and tactics conducive to our goal of students capably demonstrating conflict resolution skills, we have used a strategy chart to identify our constituents, allies, opponents, and targets. We concluded that our constituents are the students, their parents, the teachers, and staff who directly interact with the students. Without their cooperation our objectives cannot be met. Our allies are those with an express interest in the safety and well being of the students as it pertains to conflict resolution. In our estimation, this group would consist of parents, school social workers, and potentially teachers willing to implement our proposed systemic changes to conflict resolution. Our opponents could be the administration and many of the teachers. Opposition may stem from the potential cost involved in implementing a new curriculum or a reluctance to invest time in learning a new curriculum at the expense of academic instruction. Teachers may also be opposed to teaching conflict resolution skills because they feel it is the role of the  school counselor.

Having identified our constituents, allies, and opponents, we selected the school social workers, administration, and the teachers as our target population as they will be most affected by this change. Once they have overcome any hesitation or reluctant, our secondary targets will be staff, students, and parents. We want all of the members of our school communities to embrace our proposed changes which will result in an improved ability to form and maintain friendships, as well as improved learning capabilities. This is of vital importance as “children with higher levels of social and behavioral skills actually learn more in school than others” (Jennings & DiPrete, 2010, p. 136).

To formulate our tactics, we looked to both widescope and focused research investigating ways to affect long term change in schools. According to Hargreaves and Goodson (2006), sustainable improvement in education “focuses on what matters,” so that it makes the improvement  “last and spread” beyond the target population and into the future and the community in which they live (p. 35). In a related study, Baker and Foote (2006) state that “sustainability is not simply a matter of how changes or improvements can be maintained within individual schools over time. It also includes how changes within individual schools affect others around them.” (p. 91). While we appreciate the idea of conflict resolution skills being reinforced beyond the walls of our schools through external support from the surrounding community, that challenge seems beyond our reach at this time. At this time, we will focus on the students with whom we work in the hopes that this initial change will create a ripple effect to the greater community.

In our research, we have found an evidenced-based curriculum that we believe could be implemented across all four schools as it applies to both elementary-aged children and adolescents. This program is called The Project ACHIEVE Social Skills Program (Knoff, 2000). The social skills program includes ten core and ten advanced skills, which are organized into four skill areas: prerequisite skills, interpersonal skills, problem-solving skills, and conflict resolution skills (Kilian, Fish, & Maniago, 2007, p. 8). We decided that this program would be most applicable at our schools as we are able to “[tailor] the program to [our] recipients by accounting for age, culture, ethnicity, community, and socioeconomic status of the target population”( Kilian, Fish, & Maniago, 2007, p. 3). We also appreciated that it used group work and role playing to increase students’ ability to implement the skills taught. However, for us, the true selling point for selecting this program was that the study found “consistent decreases in undesirable behaviors across all grades in classroom and non-classroom settings” (Kilian, Fish, & Maniago, 2007, p. 24). If the schools invest in this program, or create something similar, we will then be able to measure the outcome through behavior checklists which will be provided to teachers. We may also use a similar survey as the one distributed for this project to see if teachers report lower instances of conflict amongst their students.

In conclusion, the trend we found in reviewing our surveys was that both conflict and bullying among students are being handled by teachers and staff, and their approach to these divergent problems is, unfortunately, the same. We believe that teachers should be trained to deal with everyday student conflicts and that incidents of bullying should be handled by school social workers and administration. Our long term goal is for students to use conflict resolution skills in their interactions with their peers. Our outcome objective is to have teachers incorporate The Project ACHIEVE Social Skills Program into their weekly curriculum. Our process objective is to meet with our schools’ principal or social worker to discuss the benefits of incorporating such a program. We believe this action plan will create sustainability through teacher implementation and reinforcement with students of the importance of resolving conflicts. By securing the sponsorship of administration, our plan provides the necessary support to teachers and also a pathway for continued evaluation.

References

Baker, M., & Foote, M. (2006). Changing spaces: Urban school interrelationships and the impact of standards-based reform. Educational Administration Quarterly, 42(1), 90-123.

Bowen, J., Ashcraft, P., Jenson, W. R., & Rhode, G. (2008). Learning About Bullying. In The tough kid bully blockers book: 15-minute lessons for preventing and reducing bullying (p. 108). Eugene, OR: Pacific Northwest. Data Services. (n.d.). Retrieved November 26, 2014 from http://www.cayci.osu.edu/data-services/

Gamble, D. N., & Weil, M. (2010). Conceptual frameworks and models for community practice. In Gamble, D.N. & Weil, M. (Eds.), Community practice skills: Local to global perspectives (pp. 24-46). New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Goldsmid, S., & Howie, P. (2014). Bullying by definition: an examination of definitional components of bullying. Emotional and behavioural difficulties, 19(2), 210-225. doi:10.1080/13632752.2013.844414

Hargreaves, A., & Goodson, I. (2006). Educational change over time? The sustainability and nonsustainability of three decades of secondary school change and continuity. Educational administration quarterly, 42(1), 3-41.

Jennings, J. L., & DiPrete, T. A. (2010). Teacher effects on social and behavioral skills in early elementary school. Sociology of Education, 83(2), 135-159.

Kilian, J. M., Fish, M. C., & Maniago, E. B. (2007). Making schools safe: A system-wide school intervention to increase student prosocial behaviors and enhance school climate. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 23(1), 1-30.                        

Knoff, H.M. (2000). The stop and think social skills program for children and adolescents: Teaching effective interpersonal and self-management skills. (Preschool to early elementary, early elementary to middle elementary, middle to late elementary editions). Tampa, FL: Author.    

National Association of Social Workers, Washington, DC. (1996). Code of ethics of the National Association of Social Workers.

Pyles, L. (2014). Progressive community organizing: Reflective practice in a globalizing world, Second Edition. New York, NY: Routledge.