Effective Bullying Prevention and Intervention Strategies for School Professionals

Abstract

This article examines state-level school laws that emerged over the last decade with regard to bully prevention. The purpose is to determine, among states that legally mandate public schools to address bullying, how extensively they have incorporated language representing the primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention levels.State bully laws were coded into a classification scheme representing three levels of prevention constructs and language from OIweus' Bullying Prevention Program. Findings include discussions of both the thematic review of the qualitative data and frequencies generated from data reduction. Findings revealed that 38 states wrote school laws that required bullying policies. Among these states, half (50%) had laws that addressed both primary and tertiary prevention levels, while only 10 states (26%) included secondary prevention in its laws.The discussion includes suggestions for expanding state bully laws to incorporate secondary prevention. Also, the discussion moves beyond what states currently require their school districts to do, to draw conclusions regarding alignment ofbest practices and school bully laws and policies. Health educators can be involved in lobbying for school bully prevention policy and laws at the state level.