School Climate Reform In Australia

The behaviour policy outlines the school's aims of how to create “a positive community atmosphere in which children can learn effectively by promoting good standards of behaviour”. The school aims to recognise and respond to good behaviour in children, promoting a positive classroom environment where the focus is on praise of children's good behaviour and work. It outlines rewards and sanctions, and sets out a code of conduct that all children, staff, parents and governors should be aware of.

Schools are the most well-known settings for bullying. This is the place where students learn and socialize for most of the day. A school is a place meant to feel safe, not afraid. However, studies have shown us this is not the case. More and more students are reluctant to come to school. Why? Their peers may criticize them and abuse of them both verbally and physically. Bullying is more serious than most think. Many people just think it’s a simple hoax that was taken too far but this simple joke can lead to indelible emotional and physical scar that could hunt students for life eventually lowering their self-esteems and even ruining their lives. Schools and teachers have failed tremendously at stopping this.

The implementation of positive behavior management systems in schools play a vital role in creating and maintaining a safe and supportive school environment. According to (safeschoolshub) “A safe school is one that takes action to promote and recognize positive student behavior, ensure student safety and minimize risk.”

In this video, the presenter Dr. Georgia Sugai, discussed the ways to improve positive and prevent negative climates. Improving the impact of evidence-based practices involves high rates of reactive management practices. Reactive management practices try to control kids behavior. Violence prevention is a concern about bullying behavior. Violence prevention consists of formal social skills instruction, positive active supervision and reinforcement, positive adult role models, multiple-componenent, multi-year school-family-community effort. Positive school climates in the United States focuses on children learning, teachers teaching, and administration administering. The role of the cultural immigrants and many diversed cultures, such as

A principal needs to be an effective communicator with families, students, and staff and must ensure that each classroom has effective and consistent classroom management and the common areas of the school are set up to support the overall goal of consistent accountability and discipline. One way that this can occur is through the development of a school-wide Positive Behavior Support System (PBSS). When developed and implemented the PBSS should address all areas of the school and consistently be implemented. Dr. Knoff tells us that “we need consistent behavioral expectations, attitudes, responses by teachers, administrators, parents and students in the school” (The Research Base Week 4).

One of every five students is bullied each year (Bullying Basics,2017). Knowing that the problem of bullying is a large possibility in their classrooms, administrators’ and teachers’ main goal must be to offer a safe classroom and a positive, supportive learning environment to their students. If they work together to reach this goal, bullying can be

A school’s climate either positively or negatively affects teaching and learning within the school. School administrators have the responsibility to ensure the school climate supports learning. This responsibility can be met only when school leaders have an accurate understanding of climate in the schools they serve. This causal-comparative study examines administrators’ and teachers’ perceptions of school climate among the academic, social, affective and physical domains of school climate, using the revised School Level Environment Questionnaire (R-SLEQ). Data are examined using multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) to determine whether statistically significant differences in climate perceptions exist between administrators and

Bullying in Australian primary schools has become an epidemic, having a negative effect on children’s learning and development (Lodge, 2014). Therefore, it is crucial that schools and teachers are aware, understand and educated on how bullying can impact children’s learning and development; to be able to effectively implement policies, respond, educate and eliminate bullying in the school environment.

Accordingly, I look specifically at the National Safe Schools Framework to explore this topic within the Australian context. “A universal whole-school approach of long duration that takes a multi-faceted approach rather than focusing on one single component” (MCEECDYA, 2011), the National Safe Schools Framework (NSSF), initially developed in 2003, is an integrated national policy that promotes bullying prevention through whole school programs. It provides educators with a comprehensive set of principles used improve school climate through Schoolwide Positive Behaviour Support.

Because “all of the ecological systems significantly influenced bullying behaviors in either direct or indirect ways” (Lee 2010, p. 1688), interventions should too (Leff 2007). Researchers have suggested that anti-bullying interventions should encompass individual solutions, such as teaching problem solving, as well as solutions involving peers, parents, teachers and the school (Hanish and Guerra 2000; Leff 2007; Mishna et al. 2006); however to our knowledge, no research has employed a social-ecological framework to examine bullying interventions as it relates to disciplinary strategies used by

Schools are required to produce behaviour management policies, (DfES, 2007) to promote positive behaviour that extends from the individual to the whole school community. This not only reflects the rules within the classroom, but also creates an ethos within the wider school, thus setting high standards for behaviour. If the core rules are explicit and the children are encouraged to make a ‘positive contribution,’ (DfES, 2003) such as develop their own classroom charter, and then learning can be effectively facilitated with a consistent framework for behaviour. (Ellis and Tod 2009) Furthermore, Chaplain (2010) emphasises that if the teacher refers to the classroom rules frequently, and the procedures for behaviour are applied consistently then it can significantly reduce or even eliminate minor

schools everywhere are in serious risk of bullying and it can have long-lasting effects on the

Recognizing the multitude of negative effects resulting from the widespread phenomenon of bullying, the Steps to Respect: A Bullying Prevention Program (STR) has formulated a solution. As this program incorporates a social-ecological approach to countering bullying in schools, it focuses its efforts on the school as a whole as well as peers and individuals. The founding belief of STR is that bullying continues to be widespread as a result of peers, their attitudes and behaviors in relation to bullying, and existing bullying norms. Thus, efforts are made to increase empathy for victims of bullying, to change attitudes about bullying, and to teach students the importance of taking appropriate action against any form of bullying they witness. As prior implementations of STR have shown promising results in preventing bullying, the current study sought to answer three questions regarding the effects of STR on the social-ecological context of the school, on the way teachers interpret students ' behavior, and on the way students perceive the school 's atmosphere, personnel, and school connectedness. The study also attempted to examine the overall effectiveness of STR in reducing bullying as supported by prior studies.

Every experienced educator and, parents of the students recognize that having the respectable and sustainable cultured school environment/classroom is important to the success of the students. There is an urgency of a powerful methodology for building motivated schools that focus on getting results and mastering cultural change that will bring a competitive advantage. The educational institution should focus setting a direction that help on developing the motivation and capacity of individuals. Through a powerful and dynamic authority an effective school administrators must communicate high expectations for teachers and students alike. They must established a sustainable foundation from which teachers, and parents can establish strong cultural communication and hold one another accountable for defining the nature of working relationship, how we interact, what we expect from one another.

This review of the literature on school climate and bullying provides a grim picture of day-to-day life as a child in school. But there is hope. There are as many programs and tools to combat bullying on campus as there are negative narratives and statistics that reveal its dark impact. There are many kinds of responses that schools can have in regards to creating safe spaces. Some of them are considered “hard” responses. These are things like zero tolerance polices, more security staff on campus, and the ever-increasing use of metal detectors on school campuses. Other responses are considered “soft” responses. Examples of these are anti-bullying programs, conflict resolution programs, more counseling, and better parent-teacher and home-school communication. Certainly, aware teachers play a major role in creating safe environments and are often called upon to mediate conflicts on school campuses. It will take a combination of all of these approaches to keep everyone on the school campus safe. Furthermore, the approaches must be administered with reason and centered in respect or else they contribute to more violence on school campuses (Willoughby, 2016). For instance, there have been national examples of zero tolerance policies where an elementary child with a twenty-five-cent bubblegum machine, half-an-inch plastic gun – something that was obviously a tiny toy – where the child was thrown out of the school district for violating the zero tolerance rules. This is