The ‘climate’ or rather the ‘culture’ of social environments that students are a part of, plays an often invisible but important role in cyberbullying prevention and intervention. The following guidelines examine what different stakeholders need to contribute to a positive, healthy, bully-free social environment.
 |
Young people need:
- Awareness of how important it is to support peers that are targets of cyberbullying in and out of school and awareness of the importance of reporting the incidents.
- Training in effective strategies which they can use should they be witness to their peers being cyberbullied.
- Support when defending or seeking help for peers that are targets of cyberbullying.
- Opportunities to develop leadership skills, moral reasoning, empathy, and emotional coping.
- Students are in a unique position to have a vital role in addressing the problems of cyberbullying in schools, and should be actively engaged in these processes.
- Opportunities to practice safe bystander skills in the school.
- Assurance that parents, teachers and other adults will not over-react if they report cyberbullying as they often fail to report incidents of cyberbullying behaviour to school personnel for fear that the technology will be taken away.
|
 |
Parents need:
- Awareness of the role of bystanders, peer pressure and positive peer influence in relation to cyberbullying. They should encourage their children to intervene when they witness cyberbullying.
- Should parents learn of their children’s involvement in cyberbullying, they need to stress their disapproval and talk to their children about its damaging impact and consequences.
- Understanding of how important it is to lead by example and to have a positive and supportive relationship with their children.
- Established trust with their children, support in a non-judgemental and positive style.
- Encouragement to promote good social skills, in particular empathy, good moral reasoning, self-esteem and resilience of their children to reduce the risk of them becoming involved in cyberbullying.
|
 |
Teachers need:
- Active involvement of all stakeholders in creating a positive atmosphere in the classroom and positive relationships with their students.
- Training how to enable, assist and reinforce students in supporting targets of cyberbullying and how to work with students who cyberbully others.
- Ways to encourage students to report cyberbullying behaviour.
- Close teacher-student relationships to ensure a more positive class and school climate.
- Skills to notice and address conflicts and problematic situations between students.
- Opportunities to learn about the ways students use the Internet, while the students need to learn ways to solve social problems and develop social skills from teachers.
|
 |
Schools need:
- A positive and supportive school culture developed through positive relationships they build among staff and students.
- Caring, supportive and authoritative school personnel that contribute to better relationships, positive classroom climate, and supportive school culture.
- Open, supportive and trustworthy atmosphere with clear guidelines about how the community is expected to behave and respond to cyberbullying.
- Knowledge and skills to effectively respond and give support to those who are cyberbullied; to effectively teach these skills to all stakeholders.
- Strategies to encourage help-seeking behaviours from students, staff and parents.
- Promotion of positive discipline models instead of punitive approaches.
- A school culture that does not tolerate cyberbullying.
|