The Effect of an Upstander Intervention on Preservice Teachers' Knowledge of Bullying and Promoting Upstander Behavior

Research shows that an effective method for decreasing bullying is for bystanders to intervene when they see bullying occur. If students are going to intervene they need to be able to not only recognize bullying, but also have strategies to combat it. Students should be able to get this information from their teachers. However, preservice teachers who will one day have their own classroom do not have knowledge of bullying and upstander behavior. We created an online training for preservice teachers to increase their knowledge of bullying and upstander behavior so they could share these practices with their future students and in turn their students could become upstanders and decrease bullying incidents. Implications for future research and policy include repeating the study over a longer period of time, and the inclusion of upstander behavior training into existing preservice teacher training programs.