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CPI Unrestrained Transcription

Episode 22: Dorothy Espelage

Record Date:

Length: 1:02:32

Host: Terry Vittone

Terry: Hello and welcome to Unrestrained, a CPI podcast series. This is your host, Terry Vittone, and today I'm joined by author, speaker, anti‐ advocate, and professor of educational psychology Dr. Dorothy Espelage. Hello and welcome, Dorothy.

Dorothy: Welcome and thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it.

Terry: You're welcome. My guest, Dr. Dorothy Espelage, is a professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign and an international expert in bullying, youth aggression, and . She has authored several books including Bullying in North American Schools, Bullying Prevention and Intervention: Realistic Strategies for Schools, and Handbook of Bullying in Schools: An International Perspective. In addition, Dr. Espelage is the author and co‐author of over 120 peer‐reviewed journal articles. Dorothy grew up in Virginia and received her bachelor's degree in psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University. She then received a master’s degree in clinical psychology from Radford University before receiving her Ph.D. in counseling psychology from Indiana University.

Since 1997 she has held the Edward William and Jane Marr Gutgsell professorship in educational psychology at the University of Illinois Urbana‐Champaign. Dr. Espelage has appeared as a speaker and consultant in numerous media outlets such as CNN, Anderson Cooper, Oprah, the Huffington Post, and many others. Dorothy is known for her work in bullying, homophobic , sexual , and teen dating violence. In particular, her research focuses on translating empirical findings into prevention and intervention programming.

So then, Dorothy, let's begin. In September of 2013 you gave a lecture to Colorado's Bullying Prevention Institute called “With Awareness Comes Misperception.” You opened the talk by reviewing some very common misconceptions about bullying followed by current scientific evidence regarding the same issue. So let's begin with misconceptions about bullying as you present Page | 2

them at the top of your presentation. The number‐one misconception, bullying is an epidemic.

Dorothy: Yeah. So I think that I've been studying this phenomenon for 22 years, really trying to draw attention to it even two decades ago. But it was only five years ago that our president had the first White House conference on bullying. And what it served to do was to really raise the awareness around bullying. But at the same time it almost instilled a panic in parents and teachers and administrators out there. And we were left with this notion that it's an epidemic. In fact it is a public health concern because there's a long‐term kind of outcome that is rather dark. But the reality is that we do know in some context and some schools bullying has gone down.

Terry: I see.

Dorothy: And so I think when we take that epidemic approach there's almost a reactionary approach versus a prevention approach. And it's interesting because many of my colleagues are like, “Dorothy, don't say that it's going down in places.”

And I'm like, “I'm a prevention scientist. I would like to understand in which schools do kids not experience this. That we do have kind of healthy climates.” So I'm not saying that it's not a public health concern, but it certainly is not an epidemic. It's something that's been with us for many, many generations. I think it's going to continue to be there at some level. But will we eradicate it? I don't think so. But I think that we want to minimize and then prevent it and create safe school climates for as many kids as possible.

Terry: Excellent. Another misconception or misperception, rather, is that are linked.

Dorothy: Yeah. So when we think about this notion of instilling panic in parents, you know, it's the media and other folks—“experts,” if you will (in quotes)—that have sent this message that if your child is being chronically victimized through bullying that they will have suicidal ideation and behaviors. So much so that when parents hear my kid is being bullied, instantly in their mind many of them will say, “Oh, I'm concerned about suicidal ideation.”

The reality is that we do know that being chronically victimized is one of a number of risk factors for adolescent suicide. And what we do know though—and this is what the discussion needs to be—is that if a child is being chronically victimized, and maybe doing this in silence not to bother their parents, that what happens is they become depressed, anxious, or withdrawn. Right?

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And it's that untreated or unknown depression, anxiety, that then places them at risk for suicide. So there's not a causation here, [bullying] being kind of one of a multitude of risk factors. But I think the larger discussion that we need to have is the difficulty and challenges that families have accessing mental help. And so that's where the conversation needs to lie in large part.

Terry: Excellent. I see. Another misperception is that bullies are young criminals.

Dorothy: Yeah. There's also this notion that there's just that one type of kid that engages in bullying. And we, in fact, know that there's a multitude of them. But two really dominate in the research literature. And those are those kids that are what we call “ineffective aggressors”—the Hollywood depiction of the thug bully. And those kids do go on and have risk for having anti‐social personality traits across the lifespan. So certainly those that are “ineffective aggressors,” and again, I put quotes around that because by the time kids enter middle school, say sixth grade, there's a group that emerges that's called the effective aggressor or what we also call “Machiavellian bully,” if you will.

Terry: Oh. Okay.

Dorothy: And these kids have high social capital, they're popular, they're over‐represented in athletic groups, and they will never come to the attention of the administrator. And so when we think about those really socially skilled kids that engage in these behaviors, we don't have any evidence that they will go on and have adult kinds of criminal records.

Terry: Right. Unless you look at the social aspect of the criminology of psychologically harassing people because you're smarter than they are, I guess. That's unfortunate.

Dorothy: Right.

Terry: But that's kind of what you're saying there and that's how someone could fly below the radar perhaps. Another misperception is that bullies need to be punished.

Dorothy: Yeah. I mean I think that we still have school districts that believe that there has to be clear, clear consequences for kids that engage in these behaviors and I often argue with my colleagues about that. I don't disagree with that but that in fact there needs to be clear consequences. I would like these consequences implemented with equity. My concern is if you continue to take the punitive approach then our kids with disabilities, kids in special ed, our ethnic minorities, or our under‐represented groups—let’s just say directly, African American kids—are going to be targeted through these punitive approaches. So I think that we need to take a much more preventative approach.

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We know that kids who engage in these high rates of behaviors do so in schools where there's a less positive school climate and where the adults are modeling this behavior. So if anyone should be punished it's the administrators and the teachers that are creating a climate. I mean in some ways you're creating a climate where these kids—this behavior is modeled and they're imitating any of the adults that are around them.

Terry: I see. The final misperception that you talk about in the lecture is that bullies come from dysfunctional families.

Dorothy: Again, there’s this notion that these kids that engage in high rates of bullying are dysfunctional. Right? And we need to understand that there's different types of kids that engage in these behaviors, that they have different motivations, and they're likely to come from a host of families.

Terry: Right.

Dorothy: We do know that kids—that there is somewhat of an association between bullying and exposure to family conflicts. So if there's a lot of sibling aggression, you're more likely to enact that behavior when you go to school. But there's certainly many kids that engage in these behaviors where the behavior's not modeled. And I always say that in 22 years of presenting, and I'm out there a lot talking to parents, I've had four moms come to me and say that they have raised a child that engaged in high rates of bullying. And if we look at the statistics that 17% of our kids skip through eighth grade, clearly there's some parents out there that have these kids that are engaging in these behaviors and maybe doing it because it's fostered in middle school, it affords them popularity, and it works for them.

Terry: In your opening remarks, you say approaching zero bullying is going to take probably a couple decades. I mean, given human nature and bullying behavior, do you think we can essentially eradicate or really minimize bullying in say 20 or 30 years?

Dorothy: You know, I think that's hard to know. I don't believe that we'll ever eradicate it. I think we can minimize it, but it's going to take a constant focus on it. And I can tell you the typical American style: we get ramped up about something and then we back off from it. We're very reactive. We have to be prevention. We have to think about an intergenerational transmission of a lot of this behavior. And so how do we interrupt that?

My fear is there's so much pushback in our schools that we don't have time for this and teachers saying, “It's not my responsibility.” Until that mindset changes with all teachers and administrators, we will continue to have schools that have bullying. And so I'm just very much concerned that if we don't put the spotlight and keep it Page | 5

on there for a while, then we're going to backtrack. It's very much like the focus now on sexual assault on college campuses. Well, we did that two decades ago, too. So now we're revisiting it as if it just emerged.

Terry: Speaking to a scientist, is it wrong to ask you if you're optimistic about the progress that we'll make in the next couple decades in anti‐bullying?

Dorothy: Oh. I am. Yeah. I really am.

Terry: Good.

Dorothy: I mean, I spend my time out in the schools and I see. And we're identifying where it works under what conditions. I mean, one of our unbelievable findings that was just published was that if teachers implement social‐emotional learning programs as intended with fidelity, we'd reduce all forms of aggression. But the basic notion is that you cannot pick and choose lessons out of a program that's intended to be a holistic program. Everybody in the field is shocked. Like, “Okay. If I implement with fidelity, it actually works?” I was like, “Yeah.” So what we've shown in the past that hasn't worked is because it hasn't been implemented as intended.

Terry: I see.

Dorothy: All right. So there's some basic lessons.

Terry: I see.

Dorothy: Yeah.

Terry: You know, we're working on a national definition of bullying for research purposes. But I don't believe we still have a national definition from a legal standpoint or even an on‐the‐ground definition that's going to erase what you call the “messiness” of understanding what is and isn't bullying. And in your opinion we need to shift our attention to positive school climate and pro‐social behavior, model safe behavior. And that shift in perspective is essential. Could you explain that idea or unpack that for us?

Dorothy: So for decades we've been arguing in the research community (and I would say even in the legal community) about how do we define it, how to define bullying. What are the critical components that make it different than pure conflict and aggression? And to be honest I think it's distracted us from actually doing some good work. I think we have to agree that we're not going to agree, especially in school districts, on a definition that has played out in science. We're only now doing some studies that show perhaps the power differential is important and that defines it from other forms of aggression. But what does that power look like? Page | 6

So I feel like in some ways this discourse around the definition really, we've been spinning our wheels. And I think that we need to think more holistically about the evidence that we have that there's less bullying in schools where the school climate is positive. Right? So bullying doesn't happen in a vacuum.

Terry: Right.

Dorothy: So maybe reframing it in more of a positive way in how can we create school communities that are supportive and caring, that have the structure, that have expectations for behavior without just constantly focusing on bullying.

Terry: Oh, and that leads into my next question. In your presentation, one of your slides is very eye‐opening! It says, “May 1, 2013: Dorothy Espelage cited in USA TODAY: ‘Stop using the word “bullying” in school.’” And I think what you just said makes pretty fair rationale for why that logic makes sense.

Dorothy: Well, and I think to everybody—anybody that's listening that is a teacher, a parent, an administrator—it’s become a buzzword. And it's losing its meaning because parents are applying it to everything that's happening. They might have a child whose friend doesn't want to be their friend anymore and somehow that's bullying. Or they won't let somebody sit at the lunch table and that's bullying.

And so what happens is it doesn't necessarily resonate with administrators and the teachers because they've become desensitized to it. So I was simply, in that USA Today, saying, “Let's call it what it is.” Especially when it escalates to the point of say or homophobic name‐calling or racism. And so I think we need to be very careful with if the behavior's actually violent in criminal and civil rights it's no longer bullying. Right? It's a different form of aggression.

Terry: So there's a greater gravity towards that behavior than might get lumped under bullying, which somehow doesn't have a very innocuous sound to it because of all the publicity. But certainly, racial discrimination, harassment, sexual harassment, or violence is outside the—as you're saying—outside the use of the word “bullying” as a catch‐all term.

Dorothy: Right. Well, and I think some of that will change because we have the Office of Civil Rights and Department of Education that did the “dear colleagues” letters to say, “Hey, administrators—if it rises to this level this is what it is and so do not call it bullying.” But another thing about that USA Today is there's lots of comments from supposed adults, I think, online about how ignorant I am for saying such things. Yes. So when that happens I think, “Well, we still have a lot of work to do.”

Terry: I would expect that would be your reaction. Page | 7

Dorothy: Yeah.

Terry: And that's a kind and productive reaction to that sort of negativity. You also talk about . You say cyberbullying involves the use of information and communication technologies to support deliberate, repeated, and hostile behavior by an individual or group that is intended to harm others. You say we want to pathologize cyberspace. What does that mean exactly?

Dorothy: Well, I think we see that there's this perception that every time a child or adolescent goes on to interact with social media that it's a negative interaction. And I think that we want to be cautious about that. I think that there's many marginalized youth who find support through the Internet. So students with disabilities or gender‐non‐conforming‐lesbian‐gay‐bisexual‐transgender youth, they may find their support through social media. We do know that kids are seeking out health information through social media. And so I mean I think we just need to be careful and there are data that show very clearly at a national level that the face‐to‐face bullying is still the most prevalent form—

Terry: I see.

Dorothy: —in comparison. So I think we just need to recognize that technology is a good thing, yes. Do kids need to be supervised? Yes. Certainly they do.

Terry: All right. And can you suggest a few effective strategies that might help mitigate cyberbullying?

Dorothy: Well, I think first and foremost we've got to remember that the brain is only developed by the age of 25. Right? So we have to be actively engaged in how kids are interacting with social media. We do know from five decades of developmental research that the number‐one kind of protective factor for kids getting involved in a host of risk factors is parental monitoring and supervision.

And I think now that kids are spending more time in social media spaces versus interacting with their family or out in the parks, I think we need—parents need—to rethink how they supervise. You know, and I often hear from parents as well, “I want to trust my child.”

I'm like, “Your child is 10 or 11 with an undeveloped brain with impulsivity.” So there has to be a negotiation.

I don't think parents want to put their hands up and say, “Oh. I don't have time for Facebook. I don't have time for or Instagram.” Well, that's where your kids are and that's where the supervision needs to be heightened. Page | 8

And I think that just watching this and very basic things of parents recognizing when a child is on a laptop and suddenly their face goes red and they shut the laptop. Something's happened. That is a moment—that’s a parenting moment. What has happened? What just upset them? Right? And most parents will say that they have noticed those types of things.

I also just think that there just needs to be a little bit more parenting going on and watching what their kids are doing. I think there's a small percentage of kids, and I think they're at risk anyway, that are going into spaces and acting inappropriate. But I think they're not monitored or their parents did monitor and they're now just exhausted from monitoring and supervising. Our most at‐risk kids—and it's about 80% of kids—go into unsafe spaces online, and we may not be able to reach them given the lack of parental supervision.

Terry: I see. Your study between bullying perpetration and cyberbullying perpetration, does that establish a causal link between mean behavior at school and mean behavior online?

Dorothy: Yeah. So we're one of the only ones, and I think other things are emerging now, to show that there is a causal link. And we kind of knew it generally. If you spend enough time in a school you know that something might happen at school on a Friday. It plays out online Friday night or at the football game and it just kind of festers until Monday morning. It blows up in the administrator's face. I often say we never as researchers or prevention folks go to the school on Monday morning. It's just not a good thing to do!

And so we were able to show that in fact if you engaged in high rates of bullying at school, six months later you did this online, and then we actually showed in another model that if you did things face‐to‐face then you did it online then you would also become a victim face‐to‐face as well. So there's an association just from the perpetration online to perpetration face‐to‐face, and it's reciprocal. And then it appears that there's some retaliation going on online as well.

Terry: I see. That's interesting, and I think you termed that phenomenon “the Monday Effect,” when people have to face the repercussions of all that speech.

Dorothy: Yeah. Monday Morning Effect. Again, I advise anybody if you have to do anything in schools I wouldn't go Monday morning.

Terry: Right. You go to a meta‐analysis next in your talk where you frame the bullying discussion and you're trying to move the bullying discussion to one about positive school climate. Could you talk about that?

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Dorothy: Right. So we look at meta‐analysis as being, really, a statistical summary of the body of literature. What do we know works in bullying prevention? In the first meta‐analysis that was conducted there were only 16 studies because there weren’t a lot of studies out there. We thought we had proven programs. Why would we evaluate when we thought we knew what to do? And plus the focus just wasn't on bullying for a really long time.

And that was Ken Merrell’s study, and the bottom line is he found no effect for these prevention programs on bullying behavior. But that's not surprising because there just wasn't a lot out there. The Campbell Collaboration Group has done the largest meta‐analysis to date. I know that they're redoing it now. And they found a 20 to 23% reduction in victimization and perpetration. Now you might be excited by that 20 to 23%, but it's not 100%. Right? So when people say “eradicate” it, we are so far from eradicating.

Terry: Right.

Dorothy: And even if you got 20 to 23% out of the gate I would suspect as a scientist that it's not likely to be sustainable if it's not institutionalized in the schools, which largely they're not. They're add‐on programs and they disappear when our researchers disappear. And in that meta‐analysis it did show that there's effects sizes and those reductions were largest outside of North America. Right?

Terry: Could you repeat that?

Dorothy: So Canada.

Terry: I didn't quite get that.

Dorothy: Yeah. The reductions in bullying of 20 to 23% were victimization that was outside of the United States.

Terry: Oh. I see.

Dorothy: Yeah. We did not fare well in this meta‐analysis, the United States or Canada.

Terry: What's the major differences between the efforts in Europe and those in North America?

Dorothy: Yeah, some very important differences. One, many of these countries are much smaller and they have a Ministry of Education that says, “You will develop and implement this program and we will give you support for it.” Right?

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Dorothy: So they're much smaller. These teachers in many of these European countries, Scandinavian countries, are respected by the general public. Right? They have an equivalent of a master’s degree. They may be paid more. They're generally just more respected because people just get that they're educating their children. Unfortunately, in the United States teachers do not in most communities get that respect that they deserve. I think they deserve it. But it's kind of a, I don't know, a PR problem if you will.

Terry: I see.

Dorothy: And then third, I think that the testing environment that we're in and the accountability really is overwhelming to teachers. What people don't recognize is that the teaching profession is one of the number‐one—has the number‐one highest turnover rate. So we have teachers coming in, new teachers coming in every year and teachers leaving at high, high rates because of disruptive behavior and not feeling supported by administrators. So I think you take that all together and then we put on their plate that's already full: “We would like you to also address bullying prevention in your classroom.” And so, I mean, I use this example. We're in the throes of a number of clinical trials where we're paying the teachers to do an implementation after a lesson because we just want to track their implementation.

And many are refusing to even participate in this. And I think that they're overwhelmed. So that's the biggest difference is that we do not support our teachers like they do in other countries. And so therefore the teachers are much more open to incorporating bullying prevention into their school climate. So that's why I think this bullying prevention has to be housed in a larger school climate improvement process. One that I think—and Jonathan Cohen and I have written a great paper on rethinking bullying prevention on this to say that if we want to think about sustainability and long‐term improvement, we have to take a different approach where bullying prevention is just one notch there in a larger school climate improvement process.

Terry: I see. Because one of the things you say at this point in the lecture is that efforts to curb bullying may not have the kind of sustainable effects that we want them to have.

Dorothy: Right. And we say it over and over again that we do our studies and we may go to our control schools and say, “Hey, we're ready to train you up.” And they're like, “No thank you.”

Terry: And, go ahead. I'm sorry.

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Dorothy: Yeah. No. Go ahead.

Terry: Okay. Well, and then you follow that in your lecture with a section called “Pushing the Field Forward” saying, “Well, if we don't have these programs implemented that have proven sustainable effects, what do we do to go forward?” And you write, or you speak, that classroom management is a really critical component of the prevention of this sort of problem behavior. Could you talk about that?

Dorothy: Yeah. So, you know, often times these prevention programs or frameworks involve teachers implementing or delivering lessons or creating a classroom environment that's more positive. But the reality is if I have difficulty and challenges in managing behavior in my classroom, I'm not going to be able to get through, say, a social‐ emotional learning lesson. Right? And I'm not going to be able to create an environment where there are strong students, student relationships, and strong teacher‐to‐student relationships. And I have to say, being a professor in a college of education I have, over the last 18 years, seen where our discussion around classroom management and strategies has just disappeared from our curriculum. I mean, yeah. Pre‐service teachers get a lot of theory. But we know what happens to theory when you step into a classroom.

And so as we think about the school improvement process, part of that would be supporting teachers in managing their classrooms. And there's models for this that you can have older teachers mentoring new teachers. You could have co‐teaching. Right? So then you can see, the younger teachers can see the older more seasoned teachers', if you will, different ways of managing their classroom and creating a safe environment where the kids feel trusted and they feel that those relationships are strong.

Terry: Because you speak then about why the adult culture in the school is so important, and I think that kind of communication between teachers would be exactly the kind of thing that you're speaking to.

Dorothy: Yeah. I mean it's very clear in our data that if you have an adult culture that is positive and that's intervening to support kids in a vast variety, we actually find that the students report less bullying, less victimization. If the adults actually are intolerant of sexual harassment in middle school, the kids report less homophobic name‐calling and less sexual harassment.

And so we have to consider the adults. For decades we have not. We've mostly been putting programs in place that target the social‐emotional learning skills of the kids. But what I think we're doing is that—we’ll hopefully evaluate this in our next trial—is that when I observe a teacher implementing social‐emotional learning [SEL] I think that teacher is improving his or her SEL skills as well.

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Terry: I see.

Dorothy: And so it's important to focus on the adults.

Terry: Bullying sometimes occurs with other types of aggressive and risky behaviors. Is there a methodology to address and remedy them in aggregate?

Dorothy: Yeah. And I think we have to recognize that bullying doesn't happen in a vacuum. Bullying co‐occurs with other forms, whether it's sibling aggression, or with other behaviors as well: alcohol and drug use, sexual harassment, homophobic name‐ calling, teen dating violence. What was known for decades is that many of these phenomena share the same risk and protective factors. Right?

So Hawkins and Catalano talked about that kind of spectrum of problem behavior. So this isn't new. And what we had done is we got off track and we were thinking, “Okay. Put the flashlight right just on bullying prevention,” ignoring the risk and protective framework. So then in 1994 we had the sociable kind of notional learning introduced through a conference in 1994 where character ed and social skills and life skills and all of these folks came together to talk about “How can we take these risk and protective factors and create programs that to each kid feels like it's a deep perspective‐taking, taking in conflict resolution, problem solving, impulse control, all of those things?”

And so what we found with our study and many other SEL programs that are out there is that these programs, if implemented with fidelity, I always want to underscore that, can reduce problem behavior in the classroom, bullying, alcohol and drug use, teen dating violence.

Terry: I see.

Dorothy: And so taking that risk and protective framework and really developing rich, strong SEL programming can reduce these forms of behaviors in aggregate if the programs are implemented with fidelity.

Terry: Excellent. I see. You speak to bias‐based language in your talk and you say that bullying and harassment including homophobic teasing occurs in the LGBT community at a high rate, and sometimes complaints about this high rate are dismissed as unscientific. But you say that that is absolutely true. Could you speak to that?

Dorothy: Yeah. Consistently in the past few decades whether it's the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network studies or some of the work that we've done or Paul Poteat’s done at Boston, it is very, very clear that those kids that identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender report higher rates of hate language, homophobic Page | 13

name‐calling, victimization. But it's not all of them. Right? So we don't want to say that they're all pathological. Right?

In fact we find that there's high rates in comparison to kids that identify as straight but it's not LGBT kids. However, what we do know is that when they do experience this homophobic name‐calling, they experience it at high rates, and it's really driven by the school climate. So there's many LGBT youth that are in very open environments where there may be a gay‐straight alliance where there is what we call enumerated law where the bully law specifically says, “You will protect kids based on sexual orientation or gender expression.”

Terry: I see.

Dorothy: So there's great variability in how LGBT kids experience the schools in their community. But we do know they are at heightened risk.

Terry: I see. Another thing you speak to is the social and ecological perspective and its importance to the bullying discussion. Could you frame what the social‐ecological perspective is and why it matters?

Dorothy: Right. So the social‐ecological perspective we can think in the area of Bronfenbrenner. And many people listening to this will know this work that really came out and said kids grow up in different contexts and there's different systems and structures that influence their development. And so for so long we were talking mostly about the individual characteristics of the kids that engage in bullying or those that are victimized. Right? So we were talking about anger and impulsivity at the individual level. Well, that's what's called a micro‐system. But we also do know that bullying involvement as a perpetrator, as a target, as someone that does both actually is predicted by a host of interactions among these systems. So when I talk about the socioecological model, it's not a deterministic model. Right?

So you can have a child that has some individual characteristics that place them at risk for being involved. But that will really only be expressed if they're in a family where there might not be any social‐emotional learning, training. There may be aggression there. But even so, if that child may be exposed to aggression in the family, but they go to a loving, caring school, then they may not express bullying perpetration. They may not be the target. Right? And again then you have to think, “What are the communities? What's their exposure to social media?” All of these things come together to play, because it's almost like this cumulative risk model. But at any point, we can intervene.

So a child could have individual characteristics that put them at risk, could be in a family where there’s not a lot of supervision and monitoring, but they go to school Page | 14

and the school is so supportive, the school is like a family, that they don't display that behavior.

Terry: I see.

Dorothy: And many parents will resonate with this. Right? I mean how many parents have gone to a school saying, “I'm having problems, behavioral problems with my kid.” And the teachers are like, “We don't see any of that.” Right? So I think that we need to recognize that these systems interact to either exacerbate the risk or they are much more protective to slow down the risk of being involved in bullying.

Terry: Now, in the same study, the social‐ecological perspective, you've found that adolescents who bully have higher peer status than children who don't bully. I think that's very intriguing. I wonder what the implications are of that so far as the “flying under the radar” kind of idea that we talked about earlier. Are they related?

Dorothy: Yeah. So let me just repeat this because I think it would be helpful. So the meta‐ analysis by Cook, the best way to describe it is when you ask a young kid in elementary school who engages in bullying—

Terry: May I stop you just for one second, Dorothy, so I make sure I get this right?

Dorothy: Sure. Yeah.

Terry: This is the Cook, Williams, Guerra, Kim, and Sadek study that we're talking about?

Dorothy: Yeah.

Terry: Okay. Great.

Dorothy: Yeah. Okay. So I think it's important to kind of break it down simply for folks that aren't, you know, meta‐analysis savvy. So Cook et al. actually showed that when you ask elementary school kids to name who the kids are that are engaging in bullying and then to name who they are friends with or who they want to be friends with, they name different people. Right? So they'll just name different people. The older kids, so about fifth grade, sixth grade, when you ask them to name kids that engage in these behaviors and who they want to be friends with or who they're friends with, they name the same kids.

So what we find is that social status plays a very different role in middle school as it relates to bullying. Also to break it down very simply is that those kids that engage in high rates of bullying actually are popular. I'm not going to say liked. But they're popular.

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Terry: I see.

Dorothy: So there's a distinction there. And they have what we call social capital. And so they dictate what music people listen to, how they dress, and they also engage in the high rates of bullying. What's also important to recognize here—

Terry: How do we upstand with students like that?

Dorothy: Well, and I think that we're only now kind of leveraging that social capital. How can we take those that have strong leadership skills and get them to consider pro‐social behaviors? And so there's been some social norming around this where, for example, where they would take these kinds of kids—that we also call public opinion leaders—we would take them, do some training with them, persuade them to create, give that leadership and ownership that you can create. You have so much power in leadership here. How can you shape and engage in these behaviors to create a bystander revolution, if you will? We're only thinking about that now. There's been some work at the high school level especially around sexual violence. But we're only now starting to think about those kids differently and how to leverage them. Because they do have high social capital.

Terry: Did you say bystander revolution?

Dorothy: Yes.

Terry: That's a great phrase.

Dorothy: So there's a . . . yeah, I encourage any parents that are listening to this to go to www.bystanderrevolution., and I think it's dot‐com, where there's some really good material to have discussions with kids in the classroom or your own kids to talk about the importance of being a bystander, not just kind of standing around but being one that revolutionizes the climate of a school and classroom.

Terry: And becoming then from a bystander to an upstander? Could that, would that be accurate?

Dorothy: Yeah. I mean some people don't like upstanding. I like upstanding. I think we also call it active defending.

Terry: I see.

Dorothy: We just don't want the passive defending, by standing around. I've seen people say upstander. Others have said in our work we talk about being an ally. So there's different types of language that can be used. But the bottom line is we don't want kids just standing around unless they feel completely unsafe. So I recognize that Page | 16

some of our schools in urban contexts that it's not safe to intervene. So then we promote other ways of helping that they've done. Whether that's an anonymous tip somewhere over here or simply going up to a group where it might be happening and walking off with the victim. I mean little things.

Terry: You feel upstanders can be very influential in mitigating the bullying behavior.

Dorothy: I think they can if they have social capital.

Terry: I see.

Dorothy: I mean if no one knows them then they have no power within the context of the middle school. They're going to be at risk for being victimized themselves.

Terry: I see. You also speak to family and social risk factors as they relate to bullying— things like lack of supervision and attachment, negative relationships, lack of discipline, violence in the family. What about the cases where the school presents essentially the same obstacles as the family?

Dorothy: Right. I mean I think that it's clear in the bullying research that the number‐one predictor from the family context is this lack of supervision and monitoring. But also sibling aggression tends to be a strong predictor of bullying involvement in school. So if there's a perpetrator and the victim . . . Now I tend to, when I give my talks, I tend to see this body of literature.

The best way to summarize it is a healthy school is a healthy family. An unhealthy school is an unhealthy family. So all of those characteristics—you know, we want to have caring relationships in both contexts. We want to have clear expectations. We do not want violent models. We want non‐violent strategies and courage. When administrators such as principals recognize that that school is their family, this is when we see a lot less kind of risky behaviors.

Terry: Oh. Excellent.

Dorothy: It is just very clear from the research. And so there's many principals out there that will say, “This is my family.” And they operate according to that and then they try to minimize all those things that are barriers to a positive school climate.

Terry: I see. Excellent. Well, let's go over to part of your lecture that I know you've done a lot of research on: the relationship between bully perpetration and sexual violence and the bully to sexual violence pathway. Reluctance to do rape prevention education in schools was overcome by telling administrators that it would help them with their bullying problem, with the thought it would have a residual effect on sexual violence. There are related conclusions in your 2012 journal article, Page | 17

“Bullying Perpetration and Subsequent Sexual Violence Perpetration Among Middle School Students.” Could you talk about that?

Dorothy: Yeah. So when we think about garden‐variety bullying, you know this involves excluding and name‐calling and that generally we find to be the prevalent form of bullying in fourth, fifth, sixth grade. And then what happens is that we start to see a causal link between, and an escalation from, this garden‐variety kind of bullying to what we call homophobic name‐calling. But that homophobic name‐calling really is homophobic epithets, you know, calling someone gay or, “that's so gay,” creating a kind of climate that's what we call heteronormative. That then sets the stage for then the development of sexual violence perpetration. Now you need to recognize that in middle school mostly when we talk about sexual violence or sexual harassment we're talking about unwanted sexual commentary and rumor‐ spreading.

Terry: I see.

Dorothy: We're not talking about sexual assaults or rape. Right? We’re still remembering they’re sixth, seventh, and eighth graders.

Terry: Okay.

Dorothy: There's just a lot of just unwanted sexual commentary and rumor‐spreading. And so Michael Kimmel and Nan Stein and others who have talked for decades about middle school kind of being the breeding ground for sexual harassment. So what happens is that bullying escalates to homophobic name‐calling and creates an environment that if you're gender‐non‐conforming or LGBT then you're at risk for being attacked for that. And so if, say, you're a male and you are being called these names by your friends as well. Right? So this is not just strangers. Right? The best way to demonstrate that you are not LGBT is to publicly sexually harass someone of the opposite sex.

Terry: Right.

Dorothy: So this is important because I do not want people to think that I'm talking about that it's just all around sexual orientation. Gender expression matters. So if you're a girl but you're not hyper‐feminine in some of our schools and you're a boy and you're not adhering to traditional masculinity and stoic and stuff, you are at risk for being attacked. And so many times I say to some parents and audiences that are very uncomfortable with talking about sexual violence among middle school kids because somehow they think that this doesn't occur, is to say that if you have daughters in this school, a lot of the homophobic name‐calling is denigrating of girls.

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So I think that anybody that is concerned about teen dating violence or intimate partner violence in adults, we should be concerned about the earlier development of this. And it begins with bullying, escalates to homophobic name‐calling, and then places one at risk for sexual harassment.

Terry: So that would be what you speak of as the longitudinal effect of bullying as it relates to homophobic name‐calling, for instance.

Dorothy: Yes.

Terry: I see.

Dorothy: And we have taken that even further. The kids, once they get to high school, then there is a causal link to teen dating violence perpetrators.

Terry: Okay. Should we prohibit—how do we go about curbing this kind of hate speech in schools? Should we address it on a level of policy?

Dorothy: Yes, most certainly. I mean I often say I would retire if I could get teachers just to say, “That language is not appropriate here.” I often say that we don't allow racial slurs; we don't allow the R‐word to refer to students with disabilities. The thing is that teachers need to understand that this is not benign language. And teachers will still say to me, “Well, they don't know what gay means.” Yes, they do. By sixth or seventh grade. They do. Right?

Terry: Of course.

Dorothy: And they're not talking about happy.

Terry: No.

Dorothy: Right. Yeah. They're not. So what we're doing—and I'm very excited by this, Terry— in our trial now, we have 28 schools getting a social‐emotional learning program in middle school, but then half of the schools we sit down with the teachers and we talk to them in two 45‐minute trainings. In the first training we build safety to talk about these issues. But then we do the basic things of what’s the difference between sex, gender, transgender, gender expression, sexual orientation, pansexual. Right?

Terry: Right.

Dorothy: How do you do simple things when you hear, “That's so gay.” How can you intervene without giving a history of the oppression of LGBT youth? Right?

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So that's what we're starting to do. We're trying to really build this understanding in teachers and administrators that it is their responsibility to create safe places for all kids and Title IX really does say that you will create safe spaces for kids that are gender‐non‐conforming or LGBT or students with disabilities. And so as teachers are feeling so overwhelmed—and teachers don't want to admit that they don't know the basic difference between sex, gender, and gender expression. Who wants to admit that “Hey, I don't know this.” But I also would come back and the college of education. We're not necessarily teaching this in pre‐service.

Terry: I see.

Dorothy: Teacher training. And the average American doesn't know the difference. Right? So I think that most certainly administrators have to give teachers spaces to talk about this. And teachers need to recognize that it's an obligation. And I'm happy to say that of the hundreds of teachers we trained in South Side Chicago only a couple pushed back with us. Many of them could recall their own experiences of where they wanted to, you know, as a female go out and join the football team but felt like that wasn't supported. So they all have stories.

And so how do we kind of leverage this so that they can have conversations? What's exciting is that we train the teachers and then they do exercises with the kids and the kids are excited. They're like, “Wow. We're going to talk about gender? We're going to talk about what's really important to us?” Because the kids now see gender on a spectrum.

Terry: So you moved onto the social‐emotional learning approach and I think as a way to sort of answer back this bully‐sexual violence pathway. But regarding SEL, say we know that sustainability is a huge issue. SEL programs alone without a larger positive school climate initiative is not enough. What about that?

Dorothy: Yeah. So this is what you'll hear from people: “Well, canned programs don't work.” And again in quotes, “canned programs.” If you're essentially bringing in a program that is taught 50 minutes a week and then the teacher puts the notebook on a shelf and doesn't reinforce the content, then you're not going to have sustainability. It's compartmentalized. Right?

SEL programs, social‐emotional learning has to be part of a larger school improvement process where teachers are trained around creating positive school climates in their classroom, administrators and teachers work together to create goals around social‐emotional learning and climate improvement. So we don't just come in with lessons in a canned program. We support. We do the training so that they understand the research behind social‐emotional learning.

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We do know in a meta‐analysis by American Institute of Research that if a child is in a school with an SEL program that is part of a larger climate initiative that their test scores will be 11% higher than those kids that are in a school without SEL. So clearly there's a recognition that social‐emotional learning programs not only reduce disruptive behavior in the classroom but they improve academic achievement in the end. And that's pretty powerful.

But if people just would sit back and think about this, who could teach a child complex math if they don't feel safe and they're anxious. You can't do it. Right? We're just now in this country understanding the importance of social‐emotional academic learning.

With No Child Left Behind we're so focused on the testing, and then we realized that kids need a space to understand and connect with the adults in the building that's not centered all around academics.

And that's what we find. When we interviewed teachers and students at the end of our last three‐year study where the kids had received 41 lessons from social‐ emotional learning, when we did focus groups and talked to the teachers and the kids, they couldn't really name more than six of the sixth grade that really changed their life. What they said was “I learned skills that I could use at home with my siblings when we had conflicts. I taught my parents some of these SEL skills.” And the number‐one thing you heard from both teachers and students, students said, “I feel like I really know my teacher now as a person that is more than a teacher.” And the teachers say, “I feel like I've connected with these kids in ways I hadn't before.”

Terry: What an excellent byproduct of an SEL program.

Dorothy: Yeah. Yeah.

Terry: That's very good. And that would fit into the broader PBIS framework. Positive behavior and intervention support framework in the school. Correct?

Dorothy: Yeah. So, you know what's nice about that is when there is PBIS or a chance where you have an expectation in the system for behavior because PBIS is a system. Right? It was created to track kind of behavior and provide support for creating a common language.

Terry: Right.

Dorothy: When a social‐emotional learning program is put into a PBIS school I would argue, people can disagree, but then social‐emotional learning becomes that secondary tier. Right? Page | 21

Terry: Ah. I see.

Dorothy: The primary tier of prevention but here we're now giving kids skills. Because PBIS has a language but they don't necessarily drill deep into the skills that we all need to be successful in life, like empathy, communication, problem solving. So those together, research has found, then improve the climate and minimize these disruptive behaviors like bullying.

Terry: Excellent. I'd like to ask a few questions about an article of yours that evaluates the impact of the middle school social‐emotional learning program called “Second Step: Student Success Through Prevention.” It's intended to reduce youth violence including peer aggression, , homophobic name‐calling, and sexual violence perpetration and victimization among middle school/sixth grade students. Tell us a little bit about that study.

Dorothy: Right. So this study was funded by the Centers for Disease Control and in this study we tracked about 4,000 kids across three years in 36 schools in Illinois and Kansas. These schools were randomly assigned to Second Step or Business As Usual. And Business As Usual usually means PBIS or nothing focused on bullying prevention. And so what happened is the schools were randomly assigned to Second Step, then we surveyed the kids, and we surveyed the kids in both the Second Step and the control schools across three years. And the kids in the Second Step received 15 lessons in sixth grade and then they went home for the summer; they came back as seventh graders and were given 13 more lessons.

And then in eighth grade 13 more lessons. And these lessons became developmentally more complex but they included constructs like empathy, perspective‐taking, impulse control, emotion management, communication skills, basic listening skills, problem solving, alcohol and drugs prevention, and three lessons on bullying at each level. And we talked about sexual harassment in seventh grade. And we talked about what bullying would look like within dating relationships.

So you can see that as the kids’ developmental challenges escalated, the lessons escalated as well. In year one of that study for up to 15 weeks kids in the Second Step schools were 42% less likely to engage in physical fighting. Now it's important to say that we focused on really a small number of outcomes: physical fighting; bullying; homophobic name‐calling, both victimization and perpetration; and then sexual harassment victimization and perpetration. So a total of seven outcomes and the first year out of the gate 15 lessons of SEL, we had 42% reduction in fighting.

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We did not curb what I would call the more subtle bullying, the homophobic language, or sexual harassment. Probably didn't expect to because we didn't introduce sexual harassment into the curriculum until seventh grade. What's important for the listeners to know about that is that if we go to the Healthy People 2020 and look at indicator 142 it says that we will reduce physical fighting on school property by 3% by 2020.

Terry: Could you—

Dorothy: Well, we did it in a very—

Terry: Could you repeat that one more time? It went by a little bit fast and I want to make sure that when we transcribe we get all of it.

Dorothy: So when we think about that 42%, it's important to look at the larger national initiative. In the Healthy People 2020, which really specifies how we're going to create a healthy population, one of the indicators says that we're going to, the goal of the federal government here is to reduce physical fighting on school property by 3% by 2020. We reduced it by 42% in one year. Right?

Terry: Right? Dramatic.

Dorothy: Now someone said, “Well, this isn't at a population level.” But the reality is that 4,000 kids across 32 schools is pretty big. Now moving onto year two. Year two we had reductions in sexual harassment and homophobic name‐calling. But those reductions were only found in Illinois schools. They were not found in Kansas schools.

Terry: Isn't there an ongoing Second Step program going through 2016 in Illinois?

Dorothy: Yes.

Terry: Yeah.

Dorothy: Yes. So this is the older one. So in year two—

Terry: I'm just thinking if administrators hear this and say, “Well, I would like to learn more about Second Step,” I'm sure we can get to that. But I mean that's a very dramatic result. If I was an administrator, I would want to know about possibly bringing that to my school.

Dorothy: Exactly. Right. Yeah. Because in year two we had upwards of 50% reduction in sexual harassment and homophobic name‐calling.

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Terry: Wow.

Dorothy: Yeah. In the state of Illinois. Not in Kansas. Now, in Kansas during that year—

Terry: Now was that reduction without any special emphasis or focus on why sexual harassment and homophobic language are so wrong and destructive? I mean that was just a byproduct of teaching kids about emotional management and problem solving?

Dorothy: Right. So sexual harassment is introduced in the seventh grade.

Terry: It is.

Dorothy: So we do have specific instruction on that. And I think that what we do know is that so much of the bullying is homophobic in nature. I think that they were learning that maybe we need to identify the language that is hurtful. And when you have 35 to 50% of bullying that's homophobic in nature in middle school, we're bound to move that needle a little bit if you're creating respectful environments.

Terry: I see. So 35 to 50% of middle involves homophobic teasing or language. Wow.

Dorothy: Yes.

Terry: That is very striking.

Dorothy: Yes.

Terry: So how do administrators support a program like Second Step? How do I participate if I'm an administrator?

Dorothy: Second Step is one of a host of social‐emotional learning programs. And there's other programs that have yielded similar reductions in aggression like Positive Action, like the Good Behavior Game. So I encourage all the listeners and administrators to become very comfortable with Roger Whitesburg's CASEL website, www.casel.org. So C‐A‐S‐E‐L. That stands for the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning.

Terry: Excellent!

Dorothy: On that website they've reviewed all the elementary SEL programs, all the middle school programs. So you can go and see, you know, what's your space? Because every school's different and some schools will have an advisory for 45 minutes where Second Step would fit in nicely. Page | 24

Terry: I see.

Dorothy: Other schools, they may want to do an extracurricular type of activity. They might want to put it in their arts classes. So if they go and review those programs they can say, “Okay, does this fit my population? Would it work in my context?”

Now, for Second Step we have three‐year results that showed reductions in all but one of victimization and perpetration. So we have this new randomized kind of file which I spoke to earlier. We were able to take what we learned in the previous study about implementation and the implementation barriers. And what we did in this study is that we sat down with administration to talk about what's the best implementation plan for your school.

So we didn't do that in the first study. We learned from that. We also had a meta‐ analysis that showed when teachers spent more time prepping, when they actually spent more time on the lesson, there was less of all of behaviors. Right? So there's less bullying, there's less homophobic teasing. So implementation matters. It seems so kind of cliché, but it does. So we encourage each school and we work with them to create an implementation team. And then we also learned that the schools where everyone was implementing at the same time on the same day there was major reduction. So like the school was just like, “It's Second Step time.” Right? And it just becomes this part of this weaving in of their larger school climate improvement.

Terry: I see.

Dorothy: So I think first and foremost administrators cannot see this as just an add‐on. That they have to figure out how a social‐emotional learning program fits into their larger school improvement process, which to most administrators are add‐ons.

Terry: But when they do, it seems it has a global reach. I mean across—

Dorothy: Yeah. Yeah.

Terry: Impressive. Now, Dorothy, is there anything more you'd like to say about Second Step that people should know?

Dorothy: No. I mean I think that it's a very strong program that is showing very good evidence if it's implemented with fidelity and if it fits into the larger climate. You know? I didn't develop Second Step. We picked Second Step for a randomized clinical trial because it was based on the risks and protective factors model; it's scripted so teachers that are overwhelmed can be guided through the curriculum. But also teachers can make it their own. I really just encourage that you have to Page | 25

implement as indicated and it should not just be an add‐on. That it should fit into the larger initiative in the school.

Terry: Would you consider the results of your study a recommendation of Second Step?

Dorothy: Yes. Most certainly. I would.

Terry: Excellent. Excellent. Dorothy, you are so passionate and prolific in your field of study. And I wanted to know who inspired you. How did you become what you do today? I mean, who inspired you?

Dorothy: Yeah. So I am a product of both the foster care system and also was in the military. So I was a military brat. Let me correct that. It feels like you're in the military when you grow up in the military. So I think for me having to move around a lot and having to figure out the social hierarchies of late elementary school and middle school and seeing how you establish dominance, that intrigued me. I think that when I started this work at Indiana in 1993 and it was very, very clear. So I was part of a graduate student CDC grant where they were going to use the “computer” to prevent violence.

All right. So this was a novel idea. They were going to use the computer for something. And I noticed. Right? I said to the CI, I was like, “There's this guy over in Norway that's talking about the whipping boys” and referred to it as bullying. And then I looked at the American literature and there's nothing essentially. There were a few articles in 1992 but it was with students with disabilities in special education. And we found through that study that the computer actually reduced—did not reduce physical fighting but it reduced the subtle form of what we were calling bullying. And so, since 1993, I've given my life to trying to get this government to create programs for American kids and stop adopting programs from other countries that really aren't culturally competent.

So I think that what has happened, to be honest, Terry, about it is I draw upon my childhood and experiences of where things can go wrong, if you will. Whether it's hanging out in the military or being in foster care.

Terry: Right.

Dorothy: And how do you build resilience? And so that's why I resonated towards SEL. So we uncovered homophobic name‐calling in early 2000. I'm like, “What is this? It's not benign.” Then we uncovered that it leads to sexual harassment; no one wants to talk about sexual harassment in middle school. And so now I'm fired up because I had . . . Biden called me at one point, Biden's office called me . . . Vice President Biden called me and said, “We've got your justice report that says that teen dating violence and intimate partner violence happens before college.” I'm like, “Yeah.” Page | 26

So every study I do and every kind of social issue and what we uncover in the research, I think, just energizes me even more forward to say, “This is where we need to focus.” You know?

Terry: I imagine that every study that demonstrates some improvement must be also very gratifying to you personally.

Dorothy: It is. It really is. And sometimes my colleagues will say, “Oh, I'm so sorry that it worked in Illinois and didn't work in Kansas.” I'm like, “Complex matters.” And as social scientists we should be pointing out where it works under what conditions to create this. But to pretend like it works across the board is just not very scientific.

Terry: Excellent. Excellent.

Dorothy: Yeah. Yeah.

Terry: First of all, Dorothy, thank you so much for participating today. Is there a last takeaway you might want to leave?

Dorothy: Thank you for having me.

Terry: You're welcome. Any last thought you'd like to have, give to our listeners today as a takeaway as they go out into their schools?

Dorothy: I always say to folks that I always feel good when I put my head down every night if I've had an effect on one kid. I think all of us can. If we're going to reduce bullying to a low level, it's going to take all of us and it's not just schools but any time you interact with a child. Are you supporting that child? Are you building real resilience? And if we're all doing that then I am very hopeful that a lot of the phenomena that I'm studying will be reduced.

Terry: Excellent and well said. Well, my guest today has been Dr. Dorothy Espelage. She is a professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana‐ Champaign and an international expert in bullying, youth aggression, and teen dating violence. Dorothy, thank you so much.

Dorothy: Thank you.

Terry: You're welcome.

Dorothy: Have a good day.

Terry: All right.