What Can Be Done To Prevent School Violence?
What Can Be Done To Prevent School Violence?
Based on an interview with Marie Emond, CSSMB
With statistics showing an increase in school violence since the pandemic1 and the media regularly reporting alarming news, you may feel helpless and think that there are no effective ways to reign in this phenomenon.
However, some very promising initiatives have been implemented in some schools in Quebec.
We met with Marie Emond, who leads the Positive Behaviour Support program at the Centre de services scolaire Marguerite-Bourgeoys (CSSMB). She’s been working to implement this innovative program in collaboration with researcher Steve Bissonnette (Université Téluq) since 2016, and has seen very promising results in schools that have adopted the program.
What strategies are effective in preventing school violence?
According to Marie Emond, the Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) program has enabled school staff to take positive action in dealing with certain disruptive behaviours such as incivility, refusal to work, defiance, and verbal violence.
She believes that if we want students to be able to study in peace and fully develop their potential, we must ensure that the school is a calm and caring environment.
The PBS program is based on three levels of intervention:
👉Level 1, which resolves 80% of situations, consists of applying preventive measures to help all students adopt the behaviours expected by the school.
👉For the remaining 20% not responding to school-wide interventions, work is done in smaller groups of students with similar behavioural issues (level 2). If this is insufficient, students receive individual intervention (level 3).
Level 1 applies to the entire student body and is achieved through teaching and positive reinforcement of good behaviour throughout the year. To do this, behavioural expectations (in social spaces, the gym, classroom, etc.) are established by a school committee made up of about a dozen people, including teachers from each grade, a psychoeducator, and members of the school’s management team.
Once preferred behaviours have been established, the committee develops a decision-making tree that will help the school’s staff decide how to react to different situations. As a rule, teachers are responsible for managing minor inappropriate behaviours, while serious ones require the removal of the student and the intervention of the school’s management team and school youth workers.
These guidelines and training help the school team teach the expected behaviours to students in a consistent way and reinforce them over time. Emond says that, unfortunately, schools still too often believe that certain behaviours have to be acquired by a certain age and that it’s useless to teach them or to praise students for good behaviour. She believes that “if all you do is manage misbehaviour and neglect to praise students, your strategy won’t be successful. And if you only offer praise to reinforce behaviours but you fail to manage when students misbehave, your strategy won’t work either.”
What concrete tools are available to reinforce positive behaviours?
Emond says that the CSSMB has used a variety of methods to encourage good behaviour at school:
💪 Individually acknowledge students’ successes and progress.
For example, a student who has to made fun of other students in class, but later begins to adopt a constructive, respectful attitude should be congratulated. You can also use tools such as point cards or tokens, which are quite popular with younger students. By accumulating them, students can trade them in for school supplies, uniform shirts, or discounts for the prom or for their yearbook.
💪 Celebrate successes but don’t overlook group efforts.
When a class or grade achieves a goal (e.g., making less noise in the halls to avoid disturbing other classes), reward them with a special activity: extra outdoor time, a game of bingo, etc.
Every time you reward a student’s positive attitude, you create a moment of connection and let them know you’re proud of them, which boosts their sense of self-efficacy and self-esteem. The stronger the connection, the more positive interactions there will be, and the more receptive that teen will be if you have to manage their negative behaviours. According to Emond, “you have to have four times more positive than negative feedback in classes or in school in order to maintain strong connections with students.”
The school staff also reaps the benefits of this reward-based program. It’s much more demanding to correct a teen’s negative behaviours than to acknowledge their successes. Many teachers feel less exhausted because an increase in the use of positive reinforcement not only reinforces students, but also reduces the number of problems they have to manage.
How is the Positive Behaviour Support program’s impact on a school measured?
Emond says that the committee meets once a month to go over the actions that were implemented. The challenges schools have to deal with are constantly changing, so it’s important to make adjustments along the way if you want the initiative to be relevant over the long term. The school staff is informed of the decisions made at this meeting, either at the school’s general assembly or via weekly informational emails.
In addition, all significant problem behaviours are recorded in a centralized file so that every student’s situation can be monitored over time, regardless of the circumstances or the staff members present at the time of the incident.
This also makes it possible to:
- prevent student information from being leaked
• monitor each situation in a comprehensive way over the long term
• take more targeted corrective action
• effectively communicate with students’ families
• get an overall picture of the school—by grade, by group, or by common social space within the school
Lastly, all the information that’s collected is assembled and analyzed statistically to verify the impact of the Positive Behaviour Support program. The CSSMB has seen an average 70% decline in incidents of serious misbehaviour2 since the implementation of the Positive Behaviour Support program, even in the context of the pandemic.3
What are the conditions of success for a Positive Behaviour Support program?
According to Marie Emond, it is crucial that at least 80% of the school’s staff agree to participate in the program. Each school needs to put the program to a vote to be sure of the staff’s commitment prior to implementing the program. In addition, strong leadership is needed at the school management level if the school team wants to effectively transmit the program to students.
To conclude, here are three great pieces of advice from Marie Emond:
👉Don’t assume that students will always behave the way you expect them to, even the oldest ones, because age is not a guarantee of competency.
👉Manage misbehaviour through direct and indirect interventions for minor behaviours. A good positive approach is to teach replacement behaviours and set clear boundaries.
👉Use data and facts to make decisions instead of relying on impressions.
Sources
1https://www.inspq.qc.ca/sites/default/files/publications/3157-impacts-pandemie-developpement-enfants-2-12-ans.pdf
2https://cqjdc.org/files/La_foucade/CQJDC_La_foucade_23_1.pdf
3This data comes from schools that had data from before the introduction of the PBS program and where approximately 4,000 students were exposed to the system.