1 March 2023

Discover the tools and resources available to help support teachers to prevent and respond to bullying. Plus, Woodville Primary School’s student wellbeing leader and school captain share how their site’s student-led restorative bench project encourages students to mend and build relationships through conversation. Thanks to Lydia, Lisa, Wendy and Emily for participating in this episode.

Show Notes

• Bullying prevention – educator tools and resources
• School support tools and resources
• Parent engagement tools
• Bullying. No Way!

Transcript

Intro: Teach is produced on the traditional land of the Kaurna people. The South Australian Department for Education would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land and pay our respects to all elders past, present, and emerging.

Bella Pittaway: Hello and welcome to Teach, a podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name's Bella Pittway and I'm from South Australia's Department for Education. Today we're taking a student wellbeing focus and talking about bullying prevention. Later in the episode, you'll hear from a student wellbeing leader in school captain at Woodville Primary School about their bullying prevention approach, which includes a student-led initiative that last year won a Children's Week Minister for Education award.

But first, did you know there's a suite of bullying prevention tools, resources, and guides that are available to you. To find out more about them and approaches you can take to bullying prevention, I'm joined by Engagement and Wellbeing Policy Officers, Lisa Gascoigne, and Lydia de l'Amour. Welcome to you both.

Lisa Gascoigne: Thank you. Thanks, Bella.

Bella Pittaway: First of all, how do we understand bullying now? What kind of behaviours fall under this definition?

Lydia de l'Amour: Well, here in South Australia, we use the national definition of bullying, which is found on the Bullying No Way, website. And based on the national definition, there are three key things to look out for when we are looking at bullying.

So these behaviours are one, ongoing and or repeated. Second, they are seen as a deliberate misuse of power. So we see a power imbalance occur amongst students. And finally, we might see repeated verbal, physical, or social behaviours that are intended to harm. So bullying can be seen in person or online, or a mixture of both.

It can also be obvious to others, but there are times when bullying can also be a bit sneaky and hidden. And might be harder for young people to be able to explain or articulate what's actually going on when we have conversations around bullying, referring to young people as victims, perpetrators or bullies is really unhelpful because it's not always clear where the issue has started.

So when we are talking about young people, we talk about young people involved in bullying. So they might be on the receiving end of bullying, or they might be the one who is engaging in bullying activity. Because demonising language is really unhelpful to have those restorative conversations and a more strengths based and supportive approach.

We need to consider how there's an overlap in roles when it comes to bullying, because it's not always clear cut. It is a complex social issue, and we acknowledge that. So when we are talking about bullying, it's important that we get the language right. But I'm going to take an opportunity to clarify what bullying isn't, because there are many times that we refer to behaviours and things that are happening in our school.

It's actually not bullying. They do require a response, but they're not actually bullying. And these things might be one-off acts of violence or intimidation or social exclusion. There might be someone saying something hurtful or abusive to another person. Or it might be just simply not liking someone.

They definitely require a response by the school. These are not bullying behaviours.

Bella Pittaway: What are those called? Those behaviours you've just mentioned there?

Lisa Gascoigne: Yeah, so there'd be things like violence, harassment, discrimination, all things that are really important for us to address within schools and across the community in general.

But it does really pay for us to kind of consider what is bullying and what are these other behaviours, because there are certain approaches we might take to bullying that you know are, are specific to those behaviours.

Bella Pittaway: And how might bullying look differently from the early years to say senior secondary?

Lisa Gascoigne: At different age groups, we might kind of see that occur differently. And it's really important for us to consider what's developmentally appropriate at different age groups. So obviously behaviours that might occur in the early years might not be considered bullying because they're just, um, the normal things we would expect of 3, 4, 5 year olds as they're kind of learning what those social skills look like. So the department does have a behaviour support toolkit that can help schools in kind of unpacking which of those behaviours are developmentally appropriate and what might be concerning or serious and need more of a response.

Bella Pittaway: And is that toolkit that's up on EDi?

Lisa Gascoigne: Yes. So you can access it on EDi. There's also hard copies that schools have been sent and they can request from the department as well. Obviously at different age groups as well. We see bullying kind of appear in different ways. So Lydia was kind of talking about covert bullying. Bullying that's a little bit more hidden in nature.

Might kind of, um, occur at different age groups. We know that bullying tends to peak around grade four and five, and also again as young people transition to high school. We're obviously going to take a different focus at different age groups. In the early years, we might focus on, um, building a strong foundation for young people around what positive friendships look like. In primary school, like we might hear from Woodville, focus on how they, uh, negotiate personal relationships or personal conflict. And in high school we might be kind of talking to young people about bullying and the law and what that looks like.

Bella Pittaway: And speaking of high school, I think most students, by the time they're in year seven, they probably have access to a phone and social media. How has the use of that digital technology impacted bullying in schools?

Lisa Gascoigne: Yeah, absolutely. So we know that cyber bullying or online bullying, so that might occur kind of using mobile phones or using digital technology is really the same behaviour. It's just carried out through a different medium. There are a few added complexities in that online or cyber bullying, more likely to be anonymous, so they might not always know, um, who's kind of using those behaviours. Online content can be easily shared, so there might be a much larger audience that that kind of is happening in front of, and children and young people can be exposed to online bullying kind of any time of day, any place that there's technology available.

So that does make it that little bit more complicated in that there aren't really boundaries around that. We also know as well that generally speaking, young people that are experiencing online or cyber bullying are also experiencing bullying in person. So it tends to be an extension of bullying that they might already be facing kind of in the schoolyard.

It is really important kind of when we are addressing cyber and online bullying, that we also address the general drivers of bullying.

Bella Pittaway: So how should schools respond to cyber bullying and other online safety incidents?

Lydia de l'Amour: So Simply put there isn't a one stop answer for this. However, a great place to start is the department's Responding to online safety incidents in South Australian schools procedure and guidelines. This is found on EDi as well. And this resource does help schools to respond consistently and proportionately to the incident at hand. And it helps schools to consider the many factors in making a decision on how best to respond because there may be a need to just do a local response.

However, there may be need to be able to do a more escalated response, and there is that support and procedural steps that schools can follow to do. There's also a lot of information on the department's website about cyber bullying and online safety that's accessible to everyone. Here, it points us to the eSafety Commissioner.

Now, the role of the eSafety Commissioner is to support families, educators, and students in responding to online safety incidents, and they may be called in to remove content. So there are always places that people can go for support.

Bella Pittaway: We're about to talk about this suite of bullying prevention tools that was released last year, but just before then, what is the best approach to bullying prevention?

Lydia de l'Amour: So Dr. Phillip Slee, who is an expert around bullying prevention from Flinders University has said, relationships, relationships, relationships. When we can strengthen our relationships. It means we can have a really strong approach to bullying prevention, but in that it's a three-pronged approach. So we need to include students, families, and communities, and the school. On the department suite of resources and support, we have a lot of tools and resources that can help schools to actually do that. But before we even discuss preventing bullying, it's important that everyone has the same understanding of what bullying is, and that's what these resources and the Bullying No Way definition can do. If we're talking about schools being a place where students can come and feel safe and feel included, we can actually have a strong bullying prevention approach right there. What that looks like is a place that celebrates diversity, calls out discrimination when it occurs, and teaches the skills around assertiveness and conflict resolution skills. Teaching students to have those difficult conversations and to be able to have a restorative approach when we're looking at relationships with each other.

One thing I want to point out is that having a zero tolerance approach or scare tactics around bullying actually has the opposite effect. It's probably what we encountered when we were children and it's probably what feels most familiar, but it actually, it doesn't work. Having a strengths base and a supportive approach can have the greatest impact.

Bella Pittaway: Let's get to these resources, cause I'm sure teachers are keen to, if they haven't already accessed them, find out all about them. What did you release last year? What can teachers access?

Lisa Gascoigne: Yeah, brilliant. Lydia was talking about how important it is for everyone to be on the same page. So all of these tools and resources are really focused on building that shared understanding using consistent language and messaging and increasing knowledge and skills for educators and school-based staff.

So they do include a suite of six professional development modules for educators. They're available across all three schooling sectors to make sure we have that consistency statewide. And they do kind of support schools to look at a range of topics, including understanding bullying, strengthening relationships for safe and supportive communities, providing effective interventions and responses, preventing and reducing bullying for children and young people at highest risk, and working with parents.

In addition to the modules, we also have released practice guidance to help schools kind of work through extra advice and tips on, on the best way to approach things. An induction checklist for leaders. So when new staff kind of come on board, they can help them step through that learning journey as well about what works best for bullying prevention and response, and a PowerPoint resource for schools to use when they might be running education sessions for parents as well so that we can make sure the whole school community's on the same page.

Bella Pittaway: And it's all, we'll share the links in our show notes so teachers can access them, but everything is on EDi for them to access.

Lisa Gascoigne: Yep. So the majority of resources are available via the external facing website to make sure they're accessible to all three schooling sectors, so we can have that consistency.

So young people that are accessing any school site are going to have the same messaging. But we do also have the professional development modules and some lessons that we have available. A package that focuses on bullying and the law that are available via plink, so schools can log in there and find all of the the resources.

Bella Pittaway: Awesome. And we're going to hear shortly from Woodville Primary School about the work they're doing in bullying prevention. Why are student-led initiatives important?

Lisa Gascoigne: Yeah, so prevention and response to bullying is much more effective when we involve students. We know students have the right to be involved in decisions that affect them, um, and that includes their schooling and their experience and, and how we might prevent and respond to bullying.

And we know that when we do involve them, that we are going to have better decisions services and and supports for them and for their school community. Really when we say kind of student-led approaches, um, we're talking about meaningful student participation and it can look different for different groups because we know that different age groups, different capabilities of students involved, but it really is about supporting them to express their views and influence the things that affect them that might student-led, where young people are kind of coming up with an idea, advocating it for it, and putting it in place. Through to more consultative where they're being asked for their decision, but it's being taken really seriously as, as a really valid source of information for the school as well. So earlier this year, in June, we, um, funded 75 sites to implement bullying prevention activities that, um, involved meaningful student participation. And Woodville Primary was one of those sites that received funding to put in place their idea.

Bella Pittaway: Just lastly, the other important community here are parents and carers. How can schools and teachers engage with parents and carers to prevent and reduce bullying?

Lydia de l'Amour: Yes, Bella, this is a good question because parents do come with their own experiences and understanding around bullying, and this may then influence the advice they give to children and how they think a school should respond.

So we need to take parents along with us as teachers in the journey around bullying prevention. So as Lisa mentioned before, we've developed a suite of resources that help teachers to be able to effectively engage with parents in bullying prevention. This starts with having that common understanding around what bullying is, and then second, supporting teachers be able to have those difficult conversations.

But there are things such as the teacher practice guidance to the plink module around how to best engage with parents. So there is support for teachers to be able to engage with families in bullying, prevention.

Bella Pittaway: It's really great to know that there are so many, um, resources out there that will be able to help teachers with approaches to bullying prevention.

Lisa, Lydia, thank you very much for your time today.

Lydia de l'Amour: Thanks, Bella.

Lisa Gascoigne: Thank you

Intro: Teach.

Bella Pittaway: Let's head off now to Woodville Primary School, where we're joined by Student Wellbeing Leader Wendy Jolley, and School Captain Emily. Welcome, Wendy. First of all, can you tell us a little bit about your school?

Wendy Jolley: Woodville Primary School, we're on Port Road. We've got about 240 student reception to year six. We've got a massive property. Great Lot of playing. and we're looking forward to having this podcast with you guys.

Bella Pittaway: Well, thanks for, for being with us. We are talking about bullying prevention approaches today. Can you tell us what the bullying prevention approach is at Woodville Primary School?

Wendy Jolley: One of our, um, prevention approaches is to use the restorative practice questions. There are five restorative practice questions that we use when children are having a conflict, a dispute, or a misunderstanding. We have a business card that we give to the children and when they come in and they want to have a discussion, we usually go through those five questions. The first question is, what happened?

So everybody has a turn and goes around the table and explains in their words what they consider to have happened. The second question is, what were you thinking at the time? And that's where we find out what everybody, their intentions were or what they were thinking while the incident was occurring.

The third question, then says what have you thought about since? So everybody has a turn to tell us what they have thought about since the incident. And often you see that they've corrected their thinking or they're letting other people know what their thoughts have been since then. And the fourth question is, who's been affected and in what way?

And people are able to say how they're feeling about what's gone on. The fifth question is, what can we do to make things right? So people give their opinions about how to fix something. So we do that and traditionally we've done it in a session inside around a round table. But the initiative that we've had for a restorative bench means that we don't have to use those business cards inside.

So one of our things that we think is important is that open discussion often helps with bullying prevention.

Bella Pittaway: Just touching on that, how have you found the questions have gone? Like, why was that an approach that your school has chosen?

Wendy Jolley: I think we love the first question, what happened, because sometimes adults ask kids why they did something, and that's really philosophical, and the children have to search for an answer that they think the adult wants to hear, so they can usually relax.

As soon as you say with the first question, what happened? You usually get the story. And then after that, you can't challenge somebody else's thinking. So if the second question, what you are thinking at the time, then they're quite relaxed with that approach as well. So it opens up the discussion. We actually tell our families and our parents that they should have the business card on their fridge. And if anybody wants to have an argument at home, you should stand near the fridge. And you should go down the list of questions because we think you'll get a better response from everybody if you do that.

Bella Pittaway: I love that. That's the voice of Wendy Jolly, student Wellbeing Leader at Woodville Primary School.

Also joining us from Woodville Primary School is their school captain Emily. Hi, Emily.

Emily: Hello there.

Bella Pittaway: Can you tell us a little bit about your student-led restorative bench project?

Emily: So the other school captain and I were told toward the start of the year that we could get a grant of $4,450 to help stop bullying in our school.

We then both came up with the idea of installing a bench in our school with the restorative questions on it where people could discuss the question together. We were then nominated for the Minister of Education Awards. We attended the ceremony and were very happy to win one of the awards. We are now hoping the idea can be taken up around Adelaide and South Australia in both public areas and schools to tackle bullying issues.

Bella Pittaway: And for teachers out there who might be listening to this, can you tell us a little bit about what the bench looks like? And I understand there's also a QR code on it.

Emily: Yeah, there is a QR code, so it's like just a standard picnic table and it has the restorative questions on five blocks down the middle of the table so people can read them, and we are still yet to put the QR code on one of the blocks, so the QR code will link to our video and to prepare for the video, we wrote a script, held auditions.

This video features a conflict between our student actors who demonstrated how to use the bench, and it went for about three minutes. So a student drops the coin on the ground and another picks it up. There is an argument then, and basically the video explains how to use the bench and how to solve a problem.

Bella Pittaway: Yeah. That's awesome to have that, that visual guide as well with the questions. Emily, what's sort of been the response from, from students at your school to the bench?

Emily: I've seen a lot of people around just sort of using it and we've already had people coming over with, you know, conflict. So it's been really great to see people using it and we're hoping that it can be used a lot more in the future.

Bella Pittaway: And you did mention before about the Children's Week Minister for Education Award. How did you feel when you won?

Emily: I felt amazing. It was amazing. It's a cool glass trophy. It just looks amazing. Really excited.

Bella Pittaway: Wonderful. I'll just go back to Wendy before we leave you there. Wendy, what do you hope having this bench will mean for your school?

Wendy Jolley: I think the main thing we hope is that the students will have a skill for life. We want them to be really familiar with the idea that you can sit down and discuss things and come to some resolution. So we hope that they're going to use the bench to sort at their own issues. We've seen a few kids, as Emily said, sitting around the bench and talking, and they have come to us and said that they have used the bench.

Sometimes we think teachers might need to sit with them because it's not possible to solve it completely by yourself, but we're excited because it's outside in the fresh air and we don't have to stay inside around the wellbeing room table anymore. We also asked the Mayor of Charles Sturt to come to the opening because we believe that these benches would be really good right around South Australia in lots of parks.

So we asked whether she would want to come and see what the bench looked like, and because of the QR code, we think that people would be able to just click on that and use those questions even while they're sitting at a park bench and having a picnic.

Bella Pittaway: Yeah, it's a really, really great concept and and good to sort of get out, like you said, in the outdoors as well, and, and have those conversations.

Wendy, Emily, thank you very much for joining us.

Wendy Jolley: Thank you for having us.

Emily: Thank you so much.