Enhancing Primary School Children's Knowledge of Online Safety and Risks with the CATZ Cooperative Cross-Age Teaching Intervention: Results from a Pilot Study

Abstract

Children are heavy users of the Internet and prior studies have shown that many of them lack a good understanding of the risks of doing so and how to avoid them. This study examined if the cross-age teaching zone (CATZ) intervention could help children acquire important knowledge of online risks and safety. It allowed older students to act as CATZ tutors to design and deliver a lesson to younger schoolmates (tutees), using content material about online risks and safety provided by adults. Students in Year 6 (mean age = 11.5 years) were randomly assigned to act as either CATZ tutors (n = 100) or age-matched controls (n = 46) and students in Year 4 (mean age = 9.5 years) acted as either CATZ tutees (n = 117) or age-matched controls (n = 28) (total N = 291). CATZ tutors, but not matched controls scored significantly higher on objective measures of knowledge of both online risks and safety, and CATZ tutees, but not matched controls did so for online safety. Effect sizes were moderate or large. CATZ was highly acceptable to participants. The results suggest that CATZ is a viable way to help school students learn about online dangers and how to avoid them.

Comparing Early Adolescents’ Positive Bystander Responses to Cyberbullying and Traditional Bullying: the Impact of Severity and Gender

“…However, future research should explore whether these attitudes translate into their actual behaviour when acting as a positive bystander for both forms of bullying. A previous study showed that such beliefs may be engendered effectively by allowing older students to teach their younger peers about such matters (Boulton et al 2016). This, in turn, may promote and encourage future PBRs across all pupils.…”

Subjective versus objective knowledge of online safety/dangers as predictors of children’s perceived online safety and attitudes towards e-safety education in the United Kingdom

“…Following data collection, researchers initially read through the responses and arrived at a coding scheme of the most common responses for online dangers/safety. The coding frame was then reviewed and revised to meet prior research recommendations on children's online risks and how to stay safe online (Boulton et al, 2016;Chaudron et al, 2015;Livingstone et al, 2011). To receive an expert opinion, the coding frame was assessed by one of the authors who had prior experience in the police force being responsible for promoting e-safety issues and who is now currently responsible for child protection and advising safeguarding boards/committees.…”

“…Inter-coder reliability was high, 93%. This method is recognised as an accurate measurement (Gwet, 2014), and the use of a coding system has been used in prior research to establish an 'overall' score for the desired variable (Boulton et al, 2016;Macaulay, Boulton, & Betts, 2018;Saldaña, 2015). Krippendorff's alpha (α) was calculated to assess the reliability of the overall coding scheme.…”

Promoting Junior School Students’ Anti-bullying Beliefs with the CATZ Cross-age Teaching Zone Intervention

“…Co-operative group work (CGW) has been shown to assist students' learning in academic (Baines et al, 2007;Veldman et al, 2020) and social/behavioural domains (Blatchford et al, 2006;Cowie et al, 1994), including anti-bullying learning (Boulton et al, 2016;Ttofi & Farrington, 2011). Similarly, cross-age teaching (CAT) approaches have been shown to benefit tutors' academic development (Karcher, 2009;McDaniel & Besnoy, 2019;Robinson et al, 2005;Topping et al, 2011) and social/behavioural development (Robinson et al, 2005;Watts et al, 2019).…”