KiVa: A national antibullying program

Being bullied by peers at school is a threat to the healthy development of numerous children and youth all overthe world. As in many other societies, bullying has been a big concern in Finland for several decades. For many years there was a persistent belief that the problem can be tackled by legislative changes (i.e. putting schools underthe obligation of developing their own action plans against bullying), or by a commitment of school personnel to intervene immediately whenever they see bullying taking place ('zero tolerance’). Based on what is known today, reducing bullying requires systematic, ongoing efforts at the level of individual children, classrooms, and the whole school. Moreover, school personnel need concrete tools for bullying prevention work with children and youth, just as they need clear guidelines to intervene when bullying is detected. KiVa has a strong theoretical basis and is based on decades of research done by our group at the University of Turku and other leaders in the field from around the world.The program is predicated on the idea that how peer bystanders, who are neither bullies nor victims, react when witnessing bullying is crucial for either maintaining bullying or putting an end to it. Influencing the peer context is thus essential in effective antibullying work- and this is what the KiVa program does.

The Finnish school system has a reputation of being highly effective in terms of producing good academic outcomes (http: pisacountry.acer. edu.au). However, it is even more appreciated that the Finnish govern- ment wanted to take students'school well-being seriously and decided that preventing bullying was a priority. Funding from the Ministry of Education and Culture has enabled the group at the University of Turku to develop a comprehensive, research-based antibullying program which has already helped thousands of children and adolescents in the country. In Finland, the effects of the KiVa program have been evaluated in numerous studies. Besides reducing the prevalence of children bullying others or being bullied by others, the program leads to positive changes in antibullying attitudes, empathy, and constructive bystander behaviors. It increases school liking, academic motivation and even academic performance, and reduces social anxiety and negative peer perceptions. Importantly, the effects of KiVa seem to generalize to multiple forms of bullying, including cyberbullying which often takes place outside the school context. The use of KiVa in Finnish schools is remarkable. During the first three years of a national rollout of the program, 90% of schools providing comprehensive education have adopted it. International interest in KiVa has risen as well, and evaluation studies are beginning in several countries outside Finland, including the United States and the Netherlands.The strong theoretical and empirical base of KiVa leads us to believe that it will work in other contexts outside of Finland, as well.