Citation

Smith PK. Int. J. Behav. Devel. 2011; 35(5): 419-423.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0165025411407459

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The research area around aggression and violence in schools, and especially that on school bullying, has grown enormously in the last 30 years. There are good grounds for concern about these issues, given the negative effects of school bullying on mental health and in the more extreme cases, links to suicides. Intervention and prevention programs have grown since their origins in the 1980s, and are now quite varied and international. Recent meta-analyses suggest that on average, antibullying campaigns have had some modest success; but there is still much to understand about why programs vary in effectiveness, and much to learn about making prevention and intervention efforts more successful in the future. The five papers in this Special Section contribute to our knowledge in this respect. They are discussed in relation to some key issues, including: the nature of both prevention and intervention programs, school policies and implementation issues, importance of teacher training, extent of national support for school-based interventions, and sustainability of effects.