Abstract

Bullying is a major concern for school-age children. This study compares the use of bibliotherapy and didactic instruction techniques for teaching anti-bullying strategies to young children. The study explores 36 first graders' perceptions of bullying and their perceptions of their roles and responsibilities in bullying situations. In comparison to the control group, students who were taught specific bully intervention skills, both through didactic instruction and bibliotherapy, reflected an increased understanding of bullying, used a larger bully vocabulary, and demonstrated more specific and varied actions in response to bullying from pre-test to post-test conditions. Participants in the group who received didactic instruction demonstrated more positive change in both describing the concept of bullying (77.2%) and providing adaptive responses to a hypothetical bullying situation (144%) than the bibliotherapy (33.3%, 44%) and control groups (13.4%, -15%), possibly due to the explicit instruction and repetition of concepts students received in the didactic group. These data suggest that children benefit from explicit instruction and rehearsal about how to combat bullying. Recommendations for practice are to schedule more time when planning to use bibliotherapy, to simplify concepts and use repetition, and to integrate social/emotional concepts into regular class activities.

Degree

EdS

College and Department

David O. McKay School of Education; Counseling Psychology and Special Education

Rights

http://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/