The purpose of this paper is to report anti-bullying strategies used by a mentor for a program targeting middle school students. The paper first defines the setting of the school before explaining the theoretical underpinning, the expectancy value theory, and its appropriateness for the program. Thereafter, the paper describes the program and strategies of anti-bullying developed according to the cultural findings of the target group, including explaining how such cultural factors affected the choice of strategy.
This training on anti-bullying will take place within a school setting that is composed of students from different social, economic, cultural, racial, ethnic, and national backgrounds. The school is located within an urban metropolis, which exposes it to community forces such as cosmopolitanism that give it the specific demographic characteristic as noted. As it turns out, therefore, incidences of bullying could be a problem at the school, which is a cause for intervention practices. This factor is also accelerated by the fact that the students at the school have a ready access to the internet using computers since the school has a student-computer ratio of 1:1, which raises the risk of cyber bullying. The middle school of the institution is the same in terms of demographics, which means that they could be subject to the buying issues. Culturally, however, the students appear to have a unified approach propagated in them by their teachers. For example, the students are taught total respect for their seniors among others. Despite the fact that the students come from diverse backgrounds, their school environment unifies them. The fact that students are required to respect their seniors also appears to have a negative influence on their personality since it is feared that quite a number of them have developed fear of transgressing the set regulations.
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The Expectancy value theory founded during the 1970s by Martin Fishbein would be useful for this school setting. According to this model, the character of an individual has a direct relationship with the expectancies that they have in life as well as the value of their ultimate goal for which they work in life (University of Twente, n.d). Using such an approach, therefore, it is predictable that in the event that one has a choice of more than one type of behavior, the one they will opt for is that, which has the biggest combinations of anticipated value and success. It is also plausible to note that the value and expectancy theories contend that individuals are goal-orient beings. In this relationship, the manner in which they behave as a response to their values and beliefs are taken to help individuals attain a given end. Nevertheless, as much as such theories could be important in the explanation of central concepts concerning gratification and uses research, other factors are reported to influence the process (University of Twente, n.d). For instance, the psychological and social origins of needs that arise in behavior motives and later guided values and beliefs that lead to the pursuance of given gratifications are among such factors. In summary, therefore, this model suggests that the orientations of people are in accordance with their evaluations and their expectations.
The theory would be useful for this setting for two reasons. The first of such reasons is the fact that it attempts to explain the origin of people’s behavior through relating it to measurable aspects of the value of their dreams and what they expect in life. Dealing with bullying requires one to understand the basis of such character so that they can find how to approach it. For instance, according to this model, it is possible and plausible to posit that children develop such character because they live in unfriendly environments defined only by the ability of one to defend themselves. It would be necessary, therefore, that students learn to protect themselves from the potential negative effects of bullying, which involves bullying others to assert an authoritative existence.
Literature reports that middle school is of a significant importance to the development of students. For instance, the children start being embarrassed in public or begin to feel that they have been hurt physically at this stage of their development (Adams, 2015). Unfortunately, literature also reports a high rate of prevalence of bullying in schools. For example, according to National Center for Educational Statistics (2016), one out of every five students in the American school setting has reported being bullied at one stage of their life. Such bullying happens into two forms, with the traditional bullying being the more prevalent compared to cyber bullying. These trends indicate the need for intervention in the lives of students especially at the middle school level since the events of bullying are likely to produce the worst effects on the personalities and development of students at this stage. The fact that most students at the same level of learning will want to try out something new also means that bullying would be more impacting on their lives than in other developmental stages. It could be for such reasons that literature such as Musu-Gillette et al. (2015) and Adams (2015) report that most students experience a significant drop in their overall grades at this level of learning. The intervention taken in the preceding paragraph is an example adopted for this paper to help remedy such situations.
The peer-mentoring program designed for dealing with middle school students in the chosen school community will entail one journaling and one group activity. Concerning the journaling activity, the students will be directed to review a specific event involving bullying and the likely effects the perpetrators and victims are likely to experience. The students will them review the case in groups before presenting individual reports on the few questions structured to think about the scenario of bullying. For this case, the questions would be the ‘W’ questions since they have the potential of brainstorming and improving the levels of analysis of a situation (McCallion and Feder, 2013). The mentor will them be involved in explaining to the students the effects of their choices in life, guiding them according to the expectancy-value model to consider choices that would increase the social good for everyone at the school and community level. The choice of this method is based on the fact that at this level of learning, students begin to feel much in control of their learning, and they are prompted to adventure it. Critical thinking scenarios such as this, therefore, will build on their ability to think and make rational decisions.
The fact that the role of this mentoring process is to deal with bullying, an anti-social behavior, makes the choice of structured classroom discussions an effective method of dealing with bullying. In this section, the mentor will develop questions meant to raise the awareness of students on the prevalence and effects of bullying. The mentor will then engage the students in explaining the need to make the correct choices, those that enhance the social welfare of others in the community.
While presentation the mentorship program, the mentor will stick to activities that resonate with the levels of thinking of the students. For instance, the language of the presentation will be as simple enough to understand as possible since the students belong to different cultural backgrounds. The mentor shall also use polite language that resonates with the culture of respect at the school. The mentorship program shall also involve an inclusive approach since the objective of the program would be to eliminate the negative stereotypes that students may develop towards each other and result in bullying. The need to be as charming as possible to the students to attract their attention will additionally useful for the mentor.
In conclusion, the expectance value theory provides a useful tool in understanding the behavior of people. This model, as used in this paper, required that the mentor understands the cultural characteristics of the students before understanding the how bullying is perceived among them. Overall, the school setting used for this program was made up of a diverse community, which required that the mentor choses methods that promote social inclusion and critical thinking.
References
Adams, J.M. (2015). Taking aim at the 'middle school plunge' with a positive culture. Retrieved September 10, 2017 from https://edsource.org/2015/taking-aim-at-the-middle-school-plunge-with-a-positive-culture/83159
McCallion, G., & Feder, J. (2013). Student bullying: Overview of research, federal initiatives, and legal issues.
Musu-Gillette, L., Hansen, R., Chandler, K., & Snyder, T. (2015). Measuring student safety: Bullying rates at school. National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved from http://nces. ed. gov/blogs/nces/post/measuring-student-safety-bullying-rates-at-school .
National Center for Educational Statistics (2016). Student Reports of Bullying: Results from the 2015 School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey. Retrieved September 10, 2017 from https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2017/2017015.pdf
University of Twente (n.d). Expectancy Value Theory. Retrieved September 10, 2017 from https://www.utwente.nl/en/bms/communication-theories/sorted-by-cluster/Public%20Relations%2C%20Advertising%2C%20Marketing%20and%20Consumer%20Behavior/Expectancy_Value_Theory/
