Using the dynamic model of educational effectiveness to design strategies and actions to face bullying

Abstract

This project investigates the impact of the dynamic approach to school improvement (DASI) aiming to help schools face and reduce bullying through integrating research on bullying with educational effectiveness research (EER). A network of approximately 15 schools in each participating country (i.e., Belgium, Cyprus, England, Greece, and The Netherlands) received support to use DASI in order to improve the functioning of school factors included in the dynamic model of educational effectiveness which are associated with reduction of bullying. The Revised Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire was administered to students of the experimental (n = 1461) and control (n = 1535) group at the beginning and at the end of the intervention. With the use of multilevel modelling techniques, it was found that schools which made use of DASI were able to reduce bullying at a significantly higher level than the schools of the control group. Implications for the development of effective policies and practices in reducing bullying are drawn.

Keywords:

• educational effectiveness research
• school bullying
• dynamic approach to school improvement
• multilevel modelling

Acknowledgements

The research presented in this article is part of a 2-year project entitled “Designing evidence-based strategies and actions to face bullying by considering socio-ethnic diversities in school populations and evaluating their effects” funded by the European Commission's Daphne III Programme (Daphne Project: JLS/DAP/2007-1/226).

Notes

1. In this article, data from the study conducted in Belgium are not included. This is due to the fact that it was not possible to match the data from the two measurement occasions (pre and post) at student level in Belgium. Given the fact that the study conducted in Belgium was not a group randomization study, a different type of multilevel analysis of Belgium student final scores at each scale of the OBVQ was conducted. Specifically, in each analysis, the aggregated score of the premeasure at the level of school was treated as explanatory variable. The statistical power of this model is not as strong as the one used for conducting the analysis of the data of student final scores in the other four countries (cross-country analysis). However, within-country analyses of data from Belgium revealed that DASI had an effect on the reduction of bullying which was statistically significant at the .10 level (http://www.ucy.ac.cy/jls).