Olweus Bullying Prevention Program
The Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (OBPP) is a comprehensive approach designed to combat bullying in schools, first introduced by Norwegian psychologist Daniel Olweus in the early 1980s. This program addresses the multifaceted nature of bullying by engaging not only students but also faculty, parents, and the wider community, recognizing that a supportive environment is essential for effective prevention. OBPP aims to create a stress-free school atmosphere, promoting respect and harmony among students and between students and educators.
To implement the program, schools establish a coordinating committee that gathers anonymous feedback from students to assess the bullying climate. This information informs the development of anti-bullying policies that emphasize compassionate interventions and accountability for bullying behavior. Communication and awareness are pivotal, with training sessions for faculty and workshops for students and parents designed to ensure everyone understands the policies and procedures in place.
While the program does not guarantee immediate results, research over three decades demonstrates its effectiveness in reducing bullying incidents, antisocial behaviors, and enhancing students' mental health and social skills. Ultimately, OBPP strives to foster a school culture where bullying is uncommon, ensuring every student's right to a safe educational experience is upheld.
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Olweus Bullying Prevention Program
After the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado drew attention to social cliques and bullying in schools, school systems worked to create an environment where students were not intimidated either verbally or physically because of their religion, gender, social manners, sexual orientation, ethnicity, economic status, dress, or academic achievement. Conservative estimates, however, suggest that despite these endeavors more than 40 percent of students still experience the humiliation of being bullied at some point between kindergarten and high school. The Olweus (pronounced Ol-VAY-oos) Bullying Prevention Program (OBPP), first codified by Daniel Olweus, a prominent professor of psychology in Norway in the early 1980s, offers schools a systematic approach to the problem of bullying that involves not only counseling the bullies and their victims also but reaching out to faculty, the student body, the administration, parents, and even the community at large.
Overview
The assumption behind OBPP is that a stress-free school environment is a basic human right. Designed for students from elementary school to senior high, the program identifies and reduces existing instances of bullying and seeks to actually prevent bullying from developing by creating a harmonious dynamic among students and between students and teachers by redefining the school environment itself. Initially, a specially appointed coordinating committee gathers information from the students through anonymous standardized questionnaires that help define the dimensions of the problem. The committee in turn coordinates distribution of the information to both faculty and parents concerning the school policy against bullying, stressing the program’s belief that specific instances of bullying should be remediated through compassionate intervention, positive reinforcement, non-physical punishments, and counseling. Schools must also make clear that bullying comes with consequences. OBPP stresses that anti-bullying policies must be administered across the board to effectively discourage deliquency, and, in turn, help create the optimum school environment.
Communication and awareness are critical to the success of OBPP. Students need to feel free to report harassment. Therefore, training sessions, led by counselors familiar with the process, assist faculty and staff in the appropriate protocols for handling specific situations. In addition, the program sponsors regular workshops for teachers to keep the policies clear and consistent as well as support groups for students and their parents. Distribution of the program’s materials to the community at large also helps foster an improved school environment. The goal is to make everyone involved aware of the problem. OBPP does not promise a quick fix to bullying—indeed, data indicates the program can take from eight months to two years to create the environment where bullying is rare. Data gathered about the OBPP over more than three decades, however, indicates this systematic approach to eliminating bullying and the culture of harassment in schools has been remarkably successful. Practitioners of OBPP report significant reductions in reports of bullying; significant drops in typical antisocial behavior (thefts, vandalism, fighting, truancy); and most importantly, significant increases in students’ mental well-being, specifically their social skills and their commitment toward schoolwork.
Bibliography
Bazelon, Emily. Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy. Random, 2013.
"Brief History of OBPP." Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, clemsonolweus.org/history.php. Accessed 6 Feb. 2025.
Coloroso, Barbara. The Bully, the Bullied, the Bystanders: From Pre-School to High School—How Parents and Teachers Can Help Break the Cycle. Morrow, 2009.
Dupper, David R. School Bullying: New Perspectives on a Growing Problem. Oxford UP, 2013.
Laminack, Lester, and Reba Wadsworth. Bullying Hurts: Teaching Kindness through Read Alouds and Guided Conversations. Heinemann, 2012.
Limber, Susan P., et al. Olweus Bullying Prevention Program. Hazelden, 2007.
"Olweus Bullying Prevention Program." National Gang Center, 7 Apr. 2021, nationalgangcenter.ojp.gov/spt/Programs/47. Accessed 6 Feb. 2025.
Olweus, Dan. Bullying at School: What We Know and What We Can Do. Blackwell, 1993.
Olweus, Dan. "Bullying/Victim Problems in School: Facts and Intervention." European Journal of Psychology of Education, vol. 12, no. 4, 2009, pp. 495–510.
Smith, Peter K., Debra Pepler, and K. Rigby, eds. Bullying in School: How Successful Can Interventions Be? Cambridge UP, 2004.