Colloquium: Why aren’t we doing better in erasing bullying? Challenges and possible solutions - Christina Salmivalli (University of Turku, Finland)

Abstract: Although progress has been made in evidence-based bullying prevention and intervention, there are still too may school-aged children and adolescents who suffer prolonged victimization by their peers. This presentation focuses on the various reasons why stopping bullying can be challenging, and what we should do to further improve our anti-bullying work. The aim is to clarify, based on both quantitative and qualitative data, as well as practical examples from school personnel, when bullying prevention/intervention efforts fail, how, and why. It is argued that we must learn from our successes, but sometimes we learn more by taking a closer look at the failures. An additional focus is the phenomenon called “the healthy context paradox”, referring to the fact that in social contexts where the overall level of victimization goes down, students who remain victimized seem to be especially maladjusted ─ and the implications this has for research and practice.

Bio: Christina Salmivalli is a Professor of psychology at the University of Turku, Finland. She has done school-based research on bullying and its prevention since the early 1990’s. Salmivalli’s team developed the KiVa antibullying program, which is widely used in Finland and beyond. Salmivalli is the deputy head of the new INVEST flagship research center which aims at increasing wellbeing of Finnish society during childhood, youth and early adulthood and preventing psychosocial risks compromising such development through innovative interventions.