Net Exchange Response
Title: Current concerns and research related to sexual harassment in schools
Date Posted: 11/14/2008

Question: “Annually, as well as monthly for all newly hired staff, I present our district's policy on sexual harassment to all staff. I am now preparing for a presentation on Sexual Harassment for all the administrators in my district. I would like to present the most current information and that which would be most pertinent, interesting and helpful to the administrators. I am seeking the most current research and data, ideas of how to present and other thoughts on the topic to give to district administrators and principal of grades K-12. I would like to sensitize the administrators to this issue and help them to understand how Sexual Harassment can be demonstrated by students in all grades. Many times I do not think they take the issue seriously enough and dismiss it because they do not want to deal with parents/community. There is much confusion on their part between sexual harassment/harassment and bullying. Any information will be helpful.”

Response: Mandated continuing education produces some of the same reactance in our colleagues that we see with students who are disengaged in learning. Looking at interactive processes that start with actual instances in your district, with small group discussion that are tested against district policy might be a good process. If the groups differ in their conclusions, this would provide a format for a real learning and shared understanding. Involving the district’s lawyers who might present cases from other districts might also increase taking the information more seriously.

With regard to current information and issues, there are two areas to address: One is the area of legal/ethical matters. Here are two recent articles from the American Association of School Administrators journal The School Administrator that were recommended: .

The second focus for discussion might be on what the research shows is effective in intervening. See, for example:

    >The Wellesley Centers for Women completed a large study looking at sexual harassment in middle schools. The report is entitled: Evaluation of Gender Violence/Harassment Prevention Programs in Middle Schools and is online at: http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/221892.pdf

Here is their Conclusion:

“This study was conducted to address the serious problem of GV/H through the development of a prevention program intervention for middle schools students in sixth and seventh grades. Most research in this area had focused on older middle and high school students, whereas we believed those groups were too old for this type of effort. Instead of relying on a single prevention curriculum, we designed two distinct curricula: an interaction-based curriculum and a law and justice curriculum. Also, in response to the need for more rigorous research, we used a randomized controlled trial design with a true (no treatment) control group. The randomized controlled trial design allowed us to compare the curricula to a control group, and in doing so, we were able to assess the following key outcomes: student knowledge of GV/H, attitudes of the students toward GV/H, behavior of the students (level of perpetration and/or victimization), likelihood of the student intervening as a bystander, and behavioral intentions to reduce/avoid violence.

The clearest findings emerging from this study related to the knowledge and attitude measure of GV/H and its prevention. The law and justice treatment group had a statistically higher level of knowledge than the control group at both waves. This finding verified the basic design and fact-based components of the law and justice curriculum. While we did not find significant results for the interaction-based treatment group’s score on the knowledge measure, we did not anticipate such a finding. We did not design the interaction-based curriculum to improve knowledge in the same way as it was incorporated into the law and justice curriculum.

Evidence related to the production of short- and long-term behavioral reductions in violence was mixed. Positive results occurred for peer violence, essentially no differences for “people you are interested in” violence, and some negative results for dating violence.... Overall, the interventions (in particular the law and justice curriculum) were shown to affect student knowledge and attitudes regarding GV/H in a positive manner. The findings on behavioral change were more difficult to interpret and more research is needed to aid in interpretation of the findings. Despite some of the mixed findings regarding the efficacy of the interventions in reducing actual violent victimization and perpetration, the results were encouraging and offer preliminary support to our contention that these types of lessons and pedagogy are effective with students in sixth and seventh grades, especially for increasing knowledge and changing attitudes. As a result of this study, scientific data are now available on the behavior, attitudes, and knowledge about GV/H among sixth and seventh grade students from an economically and ethnically diverse middle school population. Other researchers and program developers have the opportunity to expand on this study as they pursue efforts to interrupt the precursors to teen dating violence.”

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UCLA Center for Mental Health in Schools
Dept. of Psychology, P.O.Box 951563, Los Angeles, CA 90095.
tel: (310)825-3634
email: Linda Taylor ~ web: https://smhp.psych.ucla.edu