Based on research showing that teenagers who commit violent acts often showed signs of aggressive behavior while in elementary school, some school-based violence prevention programs are targeting children at the elementary school level. Two new studies indicate that some of these efforts are achieving success.
The first study highlights the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program (RCCP), which seeks to change the mental processes and interpersonal behavioral strategies that lead children to aggression by teaching constructive conflict-resolution strategies and promoting positive intergroup relations.
Since its 1985 founding, the RCCP has served more than 200,000 children in several hundred New York City public schools and is now being implemented in 12 other school systems. The study highlights researchers' findings involving 11,160 children in grades 1 through 6 from 15 New York City elementary schools from 1994 to 1996.
The study found children whose teachers taught more lessons in the program's creative conflict resolution were less likely to make hostile attributions to peers in provocative social situations; were less likely to be aggressive in interpersonal negotiations; reported fewer conduct problems, depressive symptoms and aggressive fantasies; and engaged in fewer teacher-reported aggressive behaviors. The effect of the RCCP intervention was essentially the same for both boys and girls and for children from different economic and racial/ethnic backgrounds.
The RCCP intervention has two major components: teacher training/coaching and classroom instruction. Additional features include peer mediation, principal training and parent training. According to the study, lessons given by teachers focused on key skills such as active listening, assertiveness, negotiation and problem-solving. The three most common types of RCCP lessons were about "communication," "conflict" and "feelings," stated the study. Skills were taught through role-playing, interviewing, small-group discussion and brainstorming. Specific objectives of the RCCP include making children aware of the choices they have besides passivity or aggression for dealing with conflicts; helping children develop skills for making those choices real in their lives; and encouraging children's respect for their own culture and others'.
From ages 6 to 12 , girls had lower levels of aggressiveness and higher levels of competent interpersonal negotiation strategies than did boys, according to the study. A six-year follow-up study is currently under way to examine whether the RCCP program reduces children's future risk for actual aggression and violence in adolescence.
The second study highlighted the PeaceBuilders program, a schoolbased violence prevention program to reduce aggressive behavior and improve social competence mainly for children in kindergarten through grade 5. The program teaches students and staff simple rules and activities aimed at improving social skills and the frequency of children's positive behavior, such as praising people; avoiding putdowns; and noticing and correcting hurts.
Researchers evaluated the program's use for more than 4,000 students in eight matched elementary schools in Pima County, Ariz., from 1994 to 1996. The students in kindergarten through grade 5 were randomly assigned to either immediate intervention using PeaceBuilders or a delayed intervention-students who entered the program one year later. After the first year of PeaceBuilders, students who had the immediate intervention were rated significantly higher by teachers on social competence than were the control students, with moderate effects obtained for students in grades 3 to 5.
"There aren't that many interventions focused on younger kids in a universal way," said Daniel Flannery, Ph.D., director of the Institute for the Study and Prevention of Violence at Kent State University and the study's lead researcher. "[PeaceBuilders] is not a high-cost strategy. That's one of the attractions of it."
The program's activities are built into the school environment and into daily interactions among students, teachers and other staff. The program emphasizes placement of visual materials around the school, such as comic books in which the children become the heroes of the story.
Flannery said that the students who were rated most aggressive at the start showed the most noticeable improvement.
"It's about giving kids a lot of recognition and support for positive behavior," he said. "The more socially competent you are when you're young, the less likely you are to be as aggressive as your peers." The positive effects were largely maintained for all students in the second year of the program.
The focus of PeaceBuilders was to alter the entire school climate, not just individual risk factors. Researchers noted that persistent behavioral change is more likely to occur when children are younger, the behavior is more changeable, and the intervention is maintained over time.
Researchers said although this study was limited to outcomes after the first two years, they are continuing to follow the children as they go through middle school and they expect the intervention effects to be maintained.
Aber JL, Brown JL, Jones SM: Developmental trajectories toward violence in middle childhood: course, demographic differences, and response to school-based intervention. Dev Psychol 2003; 39(2): 372-378. Flannery DJ, Vazsonyi AT, Liau AK, et al.: Initial behavior outcomes for the PeaceBuilders universal school-based violence prevention program. Dev Psychol (2003; 39(2): 292-308.
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