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This paper summarises the results of a systematic review and meta‐analysis of the effectiveness of anti‐bullying programmes in schools. Extensive searches were carried out in 18 databases and in 35 journals. The number of reports on anti‐bullying programmes increased considerably over time. Nearly 600 reports were found, but only 59 of these (describing evaluations of 30 different programmes) were eligible for inclusion in our review because they described a high‐quality evaluation. We coded the elements of the intervention in these programmes and key features of the evaluation and related these to the effects of the intervention. These types of figures have never been presented in any previous systematic review or meta‐analysis of anti‐bullying programmes. Our meta‐analysis showed that school‐based anti‐bullying programmes are effective in reducing bullying and victimisation (being bullied), which were reduced by about 20‐23% in experimental schools, compared with control schools. The most important programme components that were associated with a decrease in bullying were parent training, improved playground supervision, disciplinary methods, school conferences, videos, information for parents, work with peers, classroom rules and classroom management.

The purpose of this paper is to take a critical look at anti‐bullying initiatives at work. It questions current prescriptive thinking about effective ways of tackling workplace bullying, illuminating neglected contextual conditions and organizational constraints that affect attempts to develop and sustain pre‐emptive management programmes.

A qualitative case approach was employed for a comparative analysis of two anti‐bullying initiatives: one each in the public and private sectors.

The case results challenge the popular belief that business needs provide an impetus to coherent action against mistreatment at work, revealing the significance of local reactions and the mediating influence of competing subcultures and group identities on the “working out” of formal initiatives.

This research underlines the importance of extending bullying research to include more in‐depth and applied work on the problems of enacting and sustaining anti‐bullying initiatives.

Effective action against bullying involves more than policy making, rule forming and guideline setting. It is important to cultivate the resilience of those at the sharp end of anti‐bullying projects, and engage with managers and employees who experience difficulties or confront unpalatable changes to their work situation as anti‐bullying initiatives develop.

This article casts light on an under‐researched area, since available literature concentrates on the underlying causes and consequences of workplace bullying. Prescriptions for tackling the problem tend to be drawn out of causal and impact studies with limited empirical evidence about their viability, or analysis of possible constraints on their implementation.

Anti-bullying legislation has been adopted in every state to prevent the victimization of youth, but the focus on deterring and criminalizing individual behavior can obscure the contextual factors that contribute to aggression. This theoretical paper engages sociological literature to understand the impact of recent anti-bullying legislation on students’ experiences.

We discuss stigma and account-making theory to theorize the ways students become particularly vulnerable to victimization and may or may not be sufficiently protected under the law. We also engage criminological theories to understand how punishment may not be sufficient for preventing aggressive behavior but may instead lead students to employ strategies to avoid being caught or punished for their behaviors.

We argue that the majority of current anti-bullying definitions and protocols in use are ambiguous and insufficient in protecting vulnerable groups of students, particularly students with disabilities, overweight students, and LGBT +  students.

Our findings suggest that schools should seek to understand and alter the school-wide cultures and norms that permit aggressive behavior in the first place, in turn creating more inclusive school environments.

The purpose of this chapter is to examine selected state laws regarding cyberbullying. The advances in technology have allowed bullying to take an online form, where bullies can remain anonymous and access their targets 24 hours a day. The online bullying has left school leaders in a legal dilemma as to how and when to address an incident that occurs off school grounds. The laws which guide school leaders are found at the state level. The major inconsistencies between state laws are illustrated in this chapter. The findings in recent research reveal that some state bullying laws define specific terms such as electronic communication, and intimidation, and harassment. Some state laws provide a detailed protocol for how teachers and administrators should report and handle online bullying that has an impact on the school environment. However, some states leave developing a protocol up to individual school districts. The varying school cyberbullying laws and policies mean that leaders across the United States do not have a unified way to handle issues originating off-campus. However, school leaders should have a comprehensive policy which helps to address cyberbullying issues. This chapter includes a critical examination of current laws in the states and a review of proposed federal statutes presently stalled in the U.S. Congress.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of the basic factors of age and gender in homophobic bullying behaviour, in order that recommendations for the design of anti-bullying programmes specific to homophobic bullying could be made.

In total, 475 fifth year students (ca. 16-17 years old) and 561-second year students (ca. 13-14 years old) at six secondary schools in the Republic of Ireland completed an English-language translation of a questionnaire previously used in a Norwegian study of sexual orientation and bullying behaviour (Roland and Auestad, 2009).

No evidence of “age-related declines” were found in reports of either bullying or homophobic bullying. Males were significantly more likely than females to report involvement (as both perpetrators and targets) in both bullying and homophobic bullying.

It was concluded that senior secondary school students, as well as their younger counterparts, should be involved in anti-bullying interventions; that males should be especially focused upon; and that programmes specific to anti-homophobic bullying, potentially targeting pre-adolescent students, should be supported.

This paper suggests evidence-based priorities for intervention programmes specific to homophobic bullying, accounts of which have been, to date, absent in the research literature.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how and why school-based programmes to prevent or reduce bullying involve parents, and what impact involving parents has on bullying.

A review of relevant literature, in particular systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

The logic of involving parents in school-based bullying prevention programmes is that this increases the likelihood of parents first, telling schools that their child is being bullied, which in turn enables the school to act appropriately, and second, being able to address bullying-related issues effectively at home. Parent involvement is associated with a reduction in bullying but further research is needed to determine if it is a causal factor. Programmes tend not to include a parenting education and support element, despite negative parenting behaviour being associated with children being a victim or a bully/victim.

There is good reason to involve parents in school-based bullying prevention. Given the parenting risk factors for bullying perpetration and victimisation, bullying prevention programmes could also usefully offer parenting education and support.

The paper focuses exclusively on the role of parents in school-based bullying prevention programmes. It articulates the logic of involving parents and summarises the impact of parent involvement.

While many problems of behaviour that are manifested in the school have their origins elsewhere, the school can represent a key point of entry for professionals to develop preventive strategies. This article examines the influence of the school upon the prevention of offending by children and young people and explores the effective dynamics of anti‐bullying initiatives and ‘optimal social work’ in the school.

Bullying affects at least one-third of the workers through either direct exposure or witnessing, both of which lead to compromised health, and as a result, reduced organizational effectiveness or productivity. However, there is very little evidence that organisations provide effective protection from bullying, and in fact, the converse appears to the case. The purpose of this paper to explore the role of both individual and organisational power in the creation and maintenance of the problem. Such an approach moves away from the specific practice of identifying “bullying” that typically engages targets and perpetrators in a dance that is really just around the edges (Sullivan, 2008) of a larger problem; a culture that permits the abuse of power and ill-treatment of workers, in both practices and through organisational politics.

This paper elucidates key problems with organisational response as identified in the literature and critically examines weak organisational response to workplace bullying using the power theory, arguing that while overt approaches to addressing bullying appear to be underpinned by a simplistic, functionalist understanding of power, practices on the ground are better explained by more sophisticated “second-dimension” theorists.

There is a need for organisations to move beyond the current individualistic understanding of bullying towards a more nuanced understanding of how anti-bullying policies and procedures are themselves an exercise in institutional power protecting and reinforcing dominant power structures.

The literature from which this paper is drawn is limited to studies published in English.

The authors advocate a realistic assessment of the role of both individual and organisational power in the creation and maintenance of workplace bullying, as a way forward to plan appropriate intervention.

Workplace bullying is problematic for organisations at several levels, and therefore for society.

That power is relevant to workplace bullying has been apparent since the work of Brodsky in 1976 and Einarsen's early work, this paper builds on a the more nuanced work of McKay (2014), D'Cruz and Noronha (2009), Liefooghe and MacDavey's (2010) and Hutchinson et al. (2010), exploring the organisational response to the raising of bullying issues by individual employees as an exercise of power.

Evidence on implementing effective adolescent mental health promotion and prevention interventions in the European context is underdeveloped. The purpose of this paper is to identify evidence-based mental health promotion and prevention interventions for adolescents that have been developed and/or implemented across the school, community and digital settings in Europe. This review also sought to identify the relevant implementation processes in relation to what works, for whom and under what circumstances.

A narrative synthesis of the evidence was conducted which included two stages: a systematic search of studies assessing adolescent mental health promotion and prevention interventions; and a selection of interventions with the most robust evidence base, using pre-defined criteria, that have been either developed and/or implemented in Europe.

A total of 16 interventions met the inclusion criteria. The majority of interventions were school-based programmes. The review findings support the delivery of interventions aimed at enhancing young people’s social and emotional learning (SEL) and preventing behavioural problems. Results indicate that the effective delivery of SEL interventions on a school-wide basis could provide an important platform on which other universal interventions such as anxiety and bullying prevention, and targeted depression prevention could be developed in a multi-tiered fashion. There were a limited number of studies providing robust evidence on the effectiveness of suicide prevention, digital and community-based interventions.

This review identifies a number of robust evidence-based promotion and prevention interventions for promoting adolescent mental health. While the interventions have been implemented in Europe, the majority has not been evaluated rigorously and few included detailed information on the quality of programme implementation. Evidence of the effective cross-cultural transferability of these interventions needs to be strengthened, including more systematic research on their implementation across diverse country contexts.

“Alterophobia”, which refers to prejudice directed towards members of “alternative” sub‐cultures, has been manifest in criminal cases such as the murder of Sophie Lancaster in 2007 (UK). The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether alterophobia is also evident in patterns of school bullying behaviour.

A total of 820 fifth‐year students (16‐17 years old; 339 male (41.3 per cent), 481 female (58.7 per cent), at nine secondary schools in Ireland, were asked to respond to a short, specifically constructed questionnaire, concerning membership of groups and sub‐cultures, and bullying behaviour.

Self‐identified membership of sub‐cultures was infrequent; reports of perceiving that one was identified by others as a member of a sub‐culture were more frequent. Self‐identified members of sub‐cultures reported both having been bullied and having bullied others more frequently than did members of the general sample. Participants expressed that members of “alternative” sub‐cultures (“moshers/rockers”, “goths”, and “emos”) were more likely to be bullied, and that members of “non‐alternative” sub‐cultures (“chavs” and “D4s”) were more likely to bully others. It was concluded that “alterophobic bullying” was a reality, and that members of “alternative” sub‐cultures may be considered to be “at risk” of being bullied.

This study is based on a simple and original questionnaire, and therefore provides indicative/exploratory findings; if a subsequent survey method were attempted, equivalent definitions of sub‐cultures would have to be ensured. It is possible to see how alternative research methods (e.g. focus groups) would permit for advances in understanding in this area.

It is suggested that specific mention of alterophobia in school anti‐bullying policies should be made, and that closer attention to the psychology of prejudice and “pro‐conformist aggression” could inform future anti‐bullying efforts.

The paper is the first to focus explicitly on “alterophobia”, and provides the first empirical evidence on “alterophobic bullying”.