Compare And Contrast Violence Strategies

Compare and contrast two strategies for reducing violence:
Violence is the behavior involving physical or emotional damage intending to hurt or kill someone or something. The type of violence that will be focused on in this essay is bullying. There are many strategies to reduce bullying. The strategies that will be mentioned in this essay are counselling, reflectiveness, jigsaw classroom and the “whole school” approach.
Efforts at reducing violence often involve altering people’s immediate perceptions of others or the situational cues that may increase aggression. One of the strategies is the use of counselling in schools to teach all students appropriate anger management, as well as helping them to develop empathy. Dodge (1981) found that
children who have problems processing social cues tend to display a bias in their reactions to ambiguous harmful actions. They tend to react to them automatically hostile. While the immediate reactions are of this nature, their more considered reactions are not. In a subsequent study, Feshbach and Feshbach (1982) trained junior school children to imagine how they would feel in other children’s circumstances, to recognize the feelings of others, and to try to share their emotions. Compared with children in control groups, the children who engaged in this empathy training were much less aggressive in everyday playground activities.
More recent research has also used “virtual reality” in order to improve empathy.
Figueirdo et al. (2007) are testing the long-term effects of a computer game in which each child takes the role of an invisible friend of the victimized character, discussing problems and exploring possible solutions and coping strategies. The advice given subsequently influences the actions of the victim. The goal is to encourage students to be more reflective about bullying, and to test out strategies for intervention in a non-threatening environment. Another psychologist, Elliot Aronson (1979), has shown that the use of the “jigsaw classroom” (cooperative learning) lowers the rate of bullying in schools and increases positive interaction between out-groups during play or free-periods. Students must rely on each other for their learning. The classroom works on the idea that everyone has something to contribute to the learning process, and that by working together towards a common goal, everyone is valued. This study emphasizes cooperation and collective norms, thus reducing bullying. The research is qualitative, therefore there are possible researcher biases or Hawthorne effects. However, the research cannot measure whether the methods are effective outside of school. Thinking about it chronologically, the research is about 20 years old and other factors, such as policies and monitoring of students are also important. Overall, the strategy is quite effective, but the school should emphasize training of social
skills.
However, many researchers argue that the only way to reduce bullying in schools is to take a “whole-school” approach. Vreeman (2006) found that bullying can be curbed, but many common methods of dealing with the problem, such as classroom discussions, role-playing or detention, are ineffective. Whole-school interventions, involving teachers, administrators, and social workers committed to culture change, are the most effective, and are especially effective throughout high school. Olweus (1972) also developed a whole-school wide program for schools in Norway. In this program, the teachers are trained to recognize and deal with bullying. Cooperative learning is used, head teachers ensure that lunchrooms and playgrounds are adequately supervised, and counselors conduct intensive therapy with bullies and their parents. An important part of the program is for teachers and administrators to model non-aggressive conflict (resolution strategies in the classroom). It is also important that teachers are present in the school during break-times. The mere presence of adults in the corridors and at lunchtime significantly lowers bullying. The program has reduced bullying by about 50%. There is a generalizability problem for Olweus’ research because it was only conducted in Norway, a country that already emphasizes communitarian norms. It is possible that other, less communitarian or individualistic cultures also require a change in cultural norms. Moreover, policies and programs may only be effective if everyone is aware of them and committed to change, including parents. The research is also qualitative, therefore there are possible researcher biases or Hawthorne effects. The research cannot measure whether the methods are effective outside of school. Overall, anti-bullying programs have been shown to be effective and are important at all grade levels.
Overall, these strategies mentioned above contribute to efforts on reducing violence. Let’s not forget there are many other forms of violence other than bullying. We must also take into consideration the different settings in which bullying occurs in; it does not only occur in school settings/environments.