Coaching Teachers in Bullying Detection and Intervention

The classroom is a particularly important context for bullying prevention, as the vast majority of bullying occurs in this setting. Although nearly all states now require some type of mandated professional development for educators to address concerns related to bullying, research shows that teachers still struggle to detect bullying and rarely implement effective strategies to respond to bullying when it is detected. This chapter focuses on the importance of the classroom context in bullying prevention. We describe a novel approach to addressing bullying in the classroom through an adapted version of the Classroom Check-Up coaching model (Reinke et al. Motivational interviewing for effective classroom management: The classroom check-up. The Guilford Press, New York, 2011), which is combined with a mixed-reality simulator called TeachLivE© (Dieker et al. Focus on Exceptional Children 40(6), 1–20, 2008) to build teacher skills in preventing, detecting, and responding to bullying. Referred to as the Bullying Classroom Check-Up, the program aims to help teachers prevent bullying in the classroom and intervene effectively when it does occur. The current chapter summarizes qualitative data collected that informed the development of the model as well as preliminary quantitative data regarding feasibility and acceptability of the intervention.