Elizabeth Englander on Targeting the Behaviors That Feed Bullying

Laura Varlas

Elizabeth Englander is director of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center (MARC) at Bridgewater State University and a nationally recognized researcher, author, and speaker on bullying prevention. I called her for advice on how educators could fine-tune their approaches to bullying, be more vigilant, and guard against "bullying blind spots."

Notice Gateway Behaviors

At the start of our conversation, Englander cut right to the chase, telling educators that being vigilant about bullying in their schools is the wrong approach to bullying prevention. "The problem is that … the behaviors that an educator actually sees are not necessarily bullying," she said, explaining that a better way to come at the issue is to look for what behaviors children could use to bully one another: "Overwhelmingly, kids no longer use things like physical altercations; they're not beating one another up to get their lunch money. They use psychological ways of expressing contempt. They laugh at somebody, or make fun of them, or roll their eyes to show the person what an idiot they are, or ignore them while they're talking." Englander calls those behaviors and words that express contempt "gateway behaviors."

She warned, however, that gateway behaviors are not exclusive to bullying situations. Kids could exhibit them in a fight or when they are in a foul mood because they didn't get enough sleep. "That's what makes it tricky," Englander acknowledged. "If a student rolls their eyes and laughs with a friend because somebody else gets the answer wrong, I don't know if it's bullying or fighting or anything else."

Yet even without knowing why a student is exhibiting a gateway behavior, Englander noted that the good news for educators is that these contemptuous acts are socially inappropriate in any context: "It doesn't really matter why kids are doing them. As you go through life, you're not supposed to laugh at people, ignore them, or roll your eyes at them."

"Instead of looking for bullying, what we train people to do is to look for gateway behaviors and to respond to them as an inappropriate social behavior. At least some of the time, those behaviors are going to be used to bully. So if you don't ignore them and you clearly make them something that is not OK, you're going to reduce other social problems."

Respond Consistently

I told Englander, from my experience teaching in middle and high school, that gateway behaviors—sucking teeth, rolling eyes, derisive laughter—were pretty constant. How are educators supposed to be responsive to every incidence?

"That's the bad news," she confided. "If you want to teach kids what your expectations are for their social behaviors, you have to be consistent." But, she clarified, for teachers who set expectations up front, the need to constantly respond to problematic behaviors tapers because kids just stop doing them. "When we ask the kids in our research studies, 'How do your teachers feel about gateway behaviors?' they always say the same thing: some teachers don't allow them, and some teachers just ignore them." In the classes that don't allow it, students stop doing gateway behaviors, she added. "After the kids begin to realize that you're one of those teachers who doesn't just let it slide, they will stop doing [the behaviors], and you won't have to be the gateway behavior police."

Noticing and responding consistently to gateway behaviors is not just a means to shut down bullying situations, Englander said: "It's also to help prevent them in the long term by reducing the landscape litter of these contemptuous behaviors. That's what we mean when we talk about changing a school's climate: making school a place where people expect to be treated well, or at least decently."

Responsibility to Prepare Digital Citizens

When asked in what ways educators across the board struggle with bullying prevention, Englander singled out challenges in understanding how digital behaviors intersect with in-school problems, even at the elementary level.

"Using digital communications is one of the basic skills that anybody growing up in today's society has got to master," she insisted. "It's not a matter of just understanding what button to push; it's also understanding how communication changes in digital environments." With old-time bullying, Englander said, it was easier to connect the dots between behavior and emotional problems, but "that's not true online."

"There are all kinds of errors that you can make in how you perceive things [in digital communications] that can lead to social problems," said Englander. For example, sitting in your room and texting with a friend may feel private because you're in a physically private place. But, she explained, students need to understand that those messages can be shared or posted for others to see. Students need a broad base of education for communicating in digital contexts, she added.

"However children communicate with each other, they are communicating in the world that we, the adults, have set up. We're responsible for it, not them. We can't just tell kids they're doing it all wrong," said Englander. "We really have to train them in this. That's our responsibility as adults and as educators."

MARC's website includes free evidence-based curricula, with support from the Digital Trust Foundation, for helping students improve their digital communication skills.

Laura Varlas is the managing editor of ASCD Express and a contributor to ASCD's Education Update.

ASCD Express, Vol. 12, No. 19. Copyright 2017 by ASCD. All rights reserved. Visit www.ascd.org/ascdexpress.