Bullying Prevention Project: Creating A Peaceful School Learning Environment (CAPSLE)

CAPSLE (Creating a Peaceful School Learning Environment) is a structured programme for tackling the problem of bullying in schools. It was developed in collaboration with colleagues at the Menninger Clinic at Baylor College of Medicine.

The programme addresses the relationship between bully, victim, and bystanders. It assumes that all members of the school community, including teachers, play a role in bullying. It aims to improve the capacity of all the members of the school community to mentalize, that is, to interpret both one's own and others' behaviour in terms of mental states (beliefs, wishes, feelings). Greater awareness of other people's feelings counteracts the temptation to bully others.

The CAPSLE programme uses five key strategies to improve mentalization in schools:

a positive climate campaign highlighting the subjective experiences of bully, victim, and bystander
a classroom management plan that requires teachers to elaborate the thoughts and feelings associated with aggressive acts in the classroom
a defensive martial arts program based on principles of mindfulness
peer or adult mentorship that creates additional opportunities for reflective interpersonal interaction
reflection time which allows the class to consider shared immediate past experience as a group.

Through these devices, CAPSLE focuses on the mental states of all those involved in interpersonal violence (bystander as well as bully and victim).

A pilot investigation in a high-risk elementary school found the program successfully reduced the number of disciplinary referrals for aggressiveness and improving achievement test scores.

A randomized controlled trial comparing CAPSLE with (a) a program that worked only with 'problem' children and (b) treatment as usual found that CAPSLE substantially reduced aggression and improve classroom behaviour.

Publications

Fonagy, P., & Twemlow, S. W. (2005). The prevalence of teachers who bully students in schools with differing levels of behavioral problems. American Journal of Psychiatry, 162(12), 2387-2389.
Fonagy, P., Twemlow, S. W., & Sacco, F. C. (2001). A social systems-power dynamics approach to preventing school violence. In M. Shafii & S. L. Shafii (Eds.), School Violence: Assessment, Violence, Prevention. Washington: American Psychiatric Press.
Fonagy, P., Twemlow, S. W., & Sacco, F. C. (2005). A developmental approach to mentalizing communities: I. A model for social change. Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 69(4), 265-304.
Fonagy, P., Twemlow, S. W., & Sacco, F. C. (2005). A developmental approach to mentalizing communities: II. The Peaceful Schools experiment. Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 69(4), 265-281.
Fonagy, P., Twemlow, S. W., Sacco, F. C., & Brethour, J. R. (2006). Teachers who bully students: a hidden trauma. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 52(3), 187-198.
Fonagy, P., Twemlow, S. W., Vernberg, E., Sacco, F. C., & Little, T. D. (2005). Creating a peaceful school learning environment: the impact of an antibullying program on educational attainment in elementary schools. Medical Science Monitor, 11(7), 317-325.
Twemlow, S. W., Fonagy, P., & Sacco, F. C. (2001). An innovative psychodynamically influenced intervention to reduce school violence. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 40(3), 377-379.
Twemlow, S. W., Fonagy, P., & Sacco, F. C. (2002). Feeling safe in school. Smith Studies in Social Work, 72(2), 303-326.
Twemlow, S. W., Fonagy, P., & Sacco, F. C. (2004). The role of the bystander in the social architecture of bullying and violence in schools and communities. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1036, 215-232.
Twemlow, S. W., Fonagy, P., Sacco, F. C., Gies, M. L., Evans, R., & Ewbank, R. (2001). Creating a peaceful school learning environment: a controlled study of an elementary school intervention to reduce violence. American Journal of Psychiatry, 158(5), 808-810.
Twemlow, S. W., Fonagy, P., Sacco, F. C., Gies, M. l., & Hess, D. (2001). Improving the Social and Intellectual Climate in Elementary Schools by Addressing Bully-Victim-Bystander Power Struggles. In J. Cohen (Ed.), Caring Classrooms/Intelligent Schools: The Social Emotional Education of Young Children (pp. 162-182). New York: Teachers' College Press.