# Coaching Teachers in Bullying Detection and Intervention

> **NIH NIH R01** · JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $570,330

## Abstract

7. PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Bullying is defined as intentional aggressive behavior that typically occurs repeatedly over time in the context
of a power differential.1,2 It is a public health concern3,4 because of its high prevalence and the deleterious
impacts on children’s social-emotional wellbeing, academic achievement, and health.5-8 In the school setting,
bullying can be inadvertently condoned through teacher non-response or ineffective responses to aggressive
and bullying behaviors.9-11 Teachers play a pivotal role during late childhood (i.e., elementary school) because
students are often with the same teacher most of the day, allowing for more opportunities to shape their social
development.12 Late childhood is also a key developmental period when bullying increases and shifts to more
covert behaviors that are difficult for teachers to detect.13-15 Though there are widespread mandates to address
bullying in schools16, programming is often aimed at students’ behaviors or brief professional development
(PD) for teachers. These PDs do not focus specifically on key knowledge, attitudes, and skills related to the
specific role that school staff play in creating a positive social emotional climate through behavior management
and preventing and intervening with bullying. Therefore, to address these critical gaps in bullying prevention
programming our team developed and piloted the Bullying Classroom Check-Up (BCCU).17-19 The BCCU
enhances bullying prevention programming beyond the typical student-focused approach. It is an innovative,
collaborative, and data-informed bullying prevention model that includes group-based professional
development for all school staff and one-on-one coaching that rigorously supports classroom teachers in
preventing, detecting, and intervening with bullying behaviors. The BCCU incorporates one-on-one coaching
using an adapted version of the Classroom Check-Up20, which leverages motivational interviewing to empower
teacher practice changes, as well as the mixed-reality TeachLivE© simulator21, and PD Modules. The BCCU
was tested in a 78 teacher, classroom- randomized trial within 5 middle schools (NIJ grant: 2015-CK-BX-0008)
and demonstrated improved teacher attitudes and skills in bullying detection and intervention.17 To avoid prior
design challenges and prevent contamination, this study will utilize a more rigorous school-level, cluster
randomized controlled trial.22 This 32 elementary school trial, conducted in the Baltimore metro area and
Philadelphia across 5 years, will examine BCCU effects on 3rd to 5th grade students’ reports of bullying
prevalence (i.e., perpetration, victimization, and witnessing) as well as the general bullying climate, sense of
safety, and positive bystander responses both at post-test and in the next school year. We will also examine
the effects of the BCCU on teacher skills/efficacy as well student-teacher and student-student relationships
across two school years. Finally, we will explore ...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10853051
- **Project number:** 5R01HD102491-04
- **Recipient organization:** JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Elise Touris Pas
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $570,330
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2021-06-01 → 2026-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10853051

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10853051, Coaching Teachers in Bullying Detection and Intervention (5R01HD102491-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10853051. Licensed CC0.

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