The program uses a unique blend of tightly structured drama techniques and whole class peer teaching within the normal school curriculum. Through the drama students explore the causes of bullying, identify types of bullying behaviour - physical, psychological, emotional and cyber, and the protagonists - the bully, the person being bullied and the complicit bystander.
Students investigate the combination of power imbalance, clashes of interest and stereotyping that spark or fuel bullying. They devise and try out strategies for preventing, combating, de-escalating and resolving bullying. Through the peer teaching the learners share experiences of direct relevance to themselves with students only a little older, who would remember their own traumas; they then pass what they have learned to still younger children. As peer teachers they reinforce their own knowledge and develop confidence in their mastery of anti-bullying understanding and strategies; together, learners and teachers throughout the school establish networks of support and friendship. By the end of the program every student in a school will have experiences the program as both a learner and a peer teacher, often a number of times.
The teachers are in this, and Acting Against Bullying sets out to give teachers the skills to use the structured drama techniques and underlying pedagogy, and to understand and manage the peer teaching and its dynamics, through an intensive classroom-based sequence of collaborative planning and teaching. The full implementation involves every teacher in a school being involved in the operation of the program.
The research conducted during the operation of the AAB program in a large number of NSW and Queensland schools demonstrated extensive and significant changes in students' understanding of bullying, their attitudes to it and their behaviour related to bullying.
Introduction
The AAB program is an evidence-based, whole school approach to empowering students to manage their conflicts and become leaders in bullying management in their schools and in their communities. AAB uniquely combines two key approaches: educational drama techniques and peer teaching in a carefully structured sequence.
- It starts by teaching a senior drama class, the Key Class, about the roots and causes of bullying, and bullying management and mediation, all through drama techniques.
- This class then reinforces their own learning and starts the cycle of empowerment by teaching the concepts, again through drama, to younger classes in another curriculum, the Relay Class.
- These classes then reinforce their own understanding and are empowered to use the techniques to teach a third group of classes of younger students.
- In addition, the Key and/or Relay classes may take the process a major step further, into the community, by identifying significant bullying issues of community concern, and devising an interactive presentation of community theatre-in-education to clarify the issues and simulate healing discussions with the concerned community group.
The Program, when introduced to a school through inclusive professional development, is a highly motivating and exciting approach to whole-school bullying management. It strengthens communication among the different age and cultural groups in the school and the community, and reinforces the School's collective identity.