Partnering to Promote Playground Success: Bully-Proofing Playgrounds During School Recess

Children spend up to 25% of their life in school playgrounds and often tease or bully because they have nothing to do.  We studied a community based bullying prevention program in a large urban elementary school in Philadelphia. We were interested in what factors contribute to bullying and aggression and what strategies would best promote prosocial behaviors on the playground during school recess.

Background

Low level acts of bullying (e.g., teasing, hitting, pushing, and threatening) occur frequently in schools across America and are associated with problems including difficulties getting along with peers, anger management challenges, behavior problems, and poor academic performance. Similarly, being the victim of bullying also associates with emotional problems including depression, anxiety, loneliness, low self-esteem, and sometimes school avoidance. In addition, some researchers suggest that early forms of aggression may lead children to become perpetrators of serious violence, as they become teenagers and adults. As such, it is important for schools to develop school-wide approaches to prevent low level aggression and bullying.

Given that the majority of low-level aggression occurs in unstructured school settings, such as on the playground during recess, it is surprising that few programs have been developed to promote children’s social skills as part of the school program (rather than part of the classroom culture) (Leff, Power, Manz, Costigan, & Nabors, 2001). Children from inner-city schools may be particularly vulnerable to victimization on the playground, because these settings are often understaffed and under-resourced with respect to age- and gender appropriate play equipment (Leff, Power, Costigan, & Manz, 2003). As such, more attention needs to be directed to re-designing school playgrounds, empowering playground supervisors to better guide children’s play behaviors, and helping educators implement age- and gender-appropriate activities for children during recess.

Partnerships between educators and researchers can be helpful in building schools’ capacities to promote child development and prevent bullying and victimization (Dowrick et al., 2001). A participatory-action research model enables the research team to integrate scientific methods with input from key community stakeholders to create and evaluate a potentially effective and acceptable intervention program. A participatory-action research model necessitates that researchers adapt evidence-based strategies to the particular needs of the school and community.

Our research team collaborated with school administrators, teachers, parents, and especially playground supervisors to design and implement a playground-based intervention. Researchers and school staff met on several occasions to better understand the strengths of the particular school and how they could improve children’s playground behaviors. We identified the concerns of children and families at the school and combined these with the team’s knowledge about research methodology and empirical literature.