Anti-Bullying Campaign:

KiVa Strategy
Verbal Bullying
What constitutes as bullying?

Physical: different types of forces which includes punching, pushing, and

tripping.

Verbal: includes malicious comments, teasing, and name-calling.

Social: includes excluding others from social groups and/or gossiping

about a person or group of people.

Cyberbullying: includes interactions that happen in text messages,

social media, and email.

Verbal Bullying

This is something that happens throughout all of our schools and verbal

harassment can be just as damaging as the other types of bullying

The most common negative outcomes associated to victimization are depression

(with 29.5% of bullied adolescents reporting depressive symptoms compared to

7.3% of their non-involved peers), anxiety (with more than 50% of victims

reporting severe anxiety), and even suicidal ideation (Tsitsika, et al)

As we can see, with these bullying statistics, students are very negatively affected

by bullying.
How to Stop This

A popular strategy that is used in schools located in Finland is KiVa. With this strategy,

the whole school community is targeted and the group norms are formed by the school.

Students are encouraged to take responsibility over bullying and support the victims.

The culture of the school has changed and when bullying does take place, students are

held accountable and are encouraged to support the victim to prevent further

victimization.

This method is not really just addressing the issue on a case to case basis but really just

trying to change the climate over the school overall.

What We Can Do

Teachers: Can create a climate of respect within students and instructors. This

can be done by keeping language professional and attitudes at a minimum.

Students need to know that they are safe at school so ignoring name-calling in

the classroom cannot continue in order to fully sell this image.

Students: Stand up for your classmates when you see somebody is being called

names and let a responsible teacher know if you feel as though it is out of your

hands.

Read into the Kiva program: http://www.kivaprogram.net/is-kiva-effective

References

Jing Wang, PhD, Ronald J. Iannotti, PhD, Jeremy W. Luk, BA, BS, Tonja R. Nansel, PhD; Co-occurrence of

Victimization from Five Subtypes of Bullying: Physical, Verbal, Social Exclusion, Spreading Rumors, and

Cyber. J Pediatr Psychol 2010; 35 (10): 1103-1112. doi: 10.1093/jpepsy/jsq048

KiVa International. (n.d.). Retrieved April 24, 2017, from http://www.kivaprogram.net/program

Sharp, Sonia; How much does bullying hurt? The effects of bullying on the personal wellbeing and

educational progress of secondary aged students. Educational and Child Psychology, Vol 12(2), 1995,

81-88.

Tsitsika, A. K., Barlou, E., Andrie, E., Dimitropoulou, C., Tzavela, E. C., Janikian, M., & Tsolia, M. (2014).

Bullying Behaviors in Children and Adolescents: An Ongoing Story. Frontiers in Public Health, 2, 7.

http://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2014.00007